There are many terrorist states in the world, but the United States is unusual in that it is officially committed to international terrorism.

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.

Sports plays a societal role in engendering jingoist and chauvinist attitudes. They're designed to organize a community to be committed to their gladiators.

What the [James] Monroe Doctrine stated, in effect, is that the US should dominate the hemisphere.

In Turkey also, for a long time, the military was the decisive force but in the past 10 years they have backed off somewhat and the civilian government has gained more independence and autonomy even to shake up the military command. In fact, it even arrested several high-ranking officers [for interfering in governmental affairs]. Maybe Pakistan can move in a similar direction.

[My father] came over as an immigrant and didn't know any English. He went to work at a sweat shop in Baltimore. He told me later that this guy was coming around, and the guy seemed to be for the workers, so he signed up. It turned out that guy was an IWW organizer . My father didn't regret signing up; he just really didn't know what was going on.

[James] Madison pointed out in the discussion of the constitutional debates - the constitutional convention - that democracy would be a danger. He used England of course as the model and said suppose that in England everyone had the free right to vote; the poor, the propertyless - who are the great majority - would use their voting power to take away the rights of property owners to carry out what we would call land reform.