There's a good reason why nobody studies history, it just teaches you too much.

French intellectual life has, in my opinion, been turned into something cheap and meretricious by the 'star' system. It is like Hollywood. Thus we go from one absurdity to another - Stalinism, existentialism. Lacan, Derrida - some of them obscene ( Stalinism), some simply infantile and ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida). What is striking, however, is the pomposity and self-importance, at each stage.

Suppose that the US really is trying to get rid of drugs in Colombia. Does Colombia then have the right to fumigate tobacco farms in Kentucky? They are producing a lethal substance far more dangerous than cocaine. More Colombians die from tobacco-related illnesses than Americans die from cocaine. Of course, Colombia has no right to do that.

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

Part of the NAFTA legislation required studies of labor practices, and there was quite a good study that came out by a labor historian on the use of NAFTA to undermine and destroy unions.

There is a phrase in trade theory; it's called "kicking away the ladder." First you violate the rules - the market rules - and then by the time you succeed in developing, you kick away the ladders so others can't do it too, and you preach about "free trade."

Bear in mind that we [ with Edward Herman] did not devise the terms "manufacture of consent" and "engineering of consent." We borrowed them from leading figures in the media, public relations industry, and academic scholarship.