Suppose that we believe what we are taught. . . . destroying the environment and militarizing outer space are rational policies . . . of institutional lunacy.

There was a striking example of this in Pakistan when the US sent in Special Forces, to be honest, to kill Osama Bin Laden. He could easily have been apprehended and caught but their orders were to kill him.

With regard to freedom of expression there are basically two positions: you defend it vigorously for views you hate, or you reject it in favor of Stalinist/Fascist standards.

Not being optimistic falls a long way short of predicting that all is finished.

You can go into the Library of Congress and find information on just about anything, but that doesn't do you much good unless you know what you are looking for.

Before the 1970s, banks were banks. They did what banks were supposed to do in a state capitalist economy: they took unused funds from your bank account, for example, and transferred them to some potentially useful purpose like helping a family buy a home or send a kid to college.

It's kind of interesting and sick that the intellectual culture called the 1960s, "time of troubles," a dangerous period in which a lot of harm was done to the society. And the reason is because we were civilized and that's dangerous. That increased the commitment to democracy, to rights and so on, and this left people much less obedient.