In fact if you look at Reagan's global war on terrorism it very quickly turned into a massive terrorist war: [by us] Central America, South Africa, the Middle East, all U.S.-backed terrorism. That's one of the reasons why it disappeared from history and why the standard line is that Bush 43 declared the war on terror. Actually he just repeated what Reagan had said 20 years earlier.

Since the civil war in Laos was resumed in earnest in 1963, American participation has been veiled in secrecy.

The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor led to many very good things. If you follow the trail, it led to kicking Europeans out of Asia - that saved tens of millions of lives in India alone.

Another recollection is that [ Paul Johnson] mostly kept away from ideas and dedicated activism, and concentrated on sex lives and other gossip.

Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions.

So Marxism, Freudianism: any one of these things I think is an irrational cult. They're theology, so they're whatever you think of theology; I don't think much of it. In fact, in my view that's exactly the right analogy: notions like Marxism and Freudianism belong to the history of organized religion.

...a very terrifying aspect of our society, and other societies, is the equanimity and the detachment with which sane, reasonable, sensible people can observe [war and human suffering]. I think that's more terrifying than the occasional Hitler ...or other that crop up - these people would not able to operate were it not for this apathy and equanimity - and therefore I think that it is in some sense the sane and reasonable and tolerant people who should share a very serious burden of guilt, that they very easily throw on the shoulders of others who seem more extreme and more violent.