Our national leaders tend to try to protect the national interest as they see it. They may screw up in that, but they at least see that as their role. In contrast, where issues of our national values are involved, which covers pretty much any humanitarian issue, they pretty much drop the ball.

More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides in six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren't actually angry at the president about inaction

It’s time for a 21st-century abolitionist movement in the U.S and around the world.

You could perhaps better tell the story of a place by writing of a tiny village as a sort of prism into the bigger issues the culture was facing. It struck me as a better way to learn about a place, or at least a different way, than just going to interview the president. So I have often tried to tell the story of a place through people there. But I'm just amazed.

Write letters to your editors, write to your members of Congress, and write to your news stations.

...Environmental groups are too often alarmists. They have an awful track record, so they've lost credibility with the public.