Wikileaks is a democratizing force. Its giving individuals access to decisions and thinking by their representatives and in a democracy that ought to be reflexive.

The target of preventive war must have several characteristics. It must be virtually defenceless; it must be important enough to be worth the trouble; it must be possible to portray it as the ultimate evil and an imminent threat to our survival.

What's called "liberal" in the intelectual culture means highly conformist to power, but mildly critical.

UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of thisfaculty as a 'language acquisition device,' an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.

Michael Flynn, national security adviser, [his reaction] to the Iranian missile test the other day was very frightening. Now the missile test is ill-advised, they shouldn't have done it. But it's not in violation of international law or international agreements. They shouldn't have done it. His reaction suggested maybe we're going to go to war in retaliation.

Our concern is to help people counter the efforts of those who seek to "regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers," so that the self-designated "responsible men" will be able to run the affairs of the world untroubled by the "bewildered herd" - the general public - who are to be marginalized and dispersed, directed to personal concerns, in a well-regulated "democracy."

In the 1960s, there was a point, 1968, '69, when there was a very strong antiwar movement against the war in Vietnam. But it's worth remembering that the war in Vietnam started - an outright war started in 1962.