We have to remember that literally within months after Castro's taking office the planes from Florida were beginning to bomb Cuba. Within a year, the Eisenhower administration secretly, but formally, decided to overthrow the government. Then came the Bay of Pigs invasion. The Kennedy administration was furious about the failure of the invasion and immediately launched a major terrorist war and economic war that got harsher through the years. Under these conditions it is kind of amazing that Cuba survived.

The current period of regression is registering some success in "producing people" who are subordinated to external power, diverted to such "superficial things" as "fashionable consumption" and other pursuits more fitting for the "bewildered herd" than participation in determining the course of individual and social life.

U.S. analysts estimate that Russian military expenditures have tripled during the Bush-Putin years, in large measure a predicted reaction to the Bush administration's militancy and aggressiveness.

Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile.

There's a radical insurgency, which is a large part of the Republican base, which is willing to do anything, destroy the country, whatever, in order to get rid of this Affordable Care Act. That's the one thing that they're able to hang onto.

The question in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided . . . democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may well be essential to survival.

...if you ask me whether or not I'm an atheist, I wouldn't even answer. I would first want an explanation of what it is that I'm supposed not to believe in, and I've never seen an explanation.