When people denounced [former Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad for rejecting and criminalizing homosexuality, it should be remembered that was true of the United States until very recently. Women's rights were unheard of. Civil rights proponents were horribly treated, not just in the South. It was awful there, but pretty bad here. Environmental issues did not exist. Opposition to aggression was virtually zero. In fact, so little, that to this day, even scholarship mentions the Vietnam War as beginning in 1965.

Surely no rational or realistic person will discount the possibility that [during wartime] the United States might suddenly resort to nuclear weapons. Those who retain the instinct for survival, not to speak of minimal concern for their fellow man, will seek ways to act before rather than after the event.

The most powerful country in world history, which is sure to set its stamp on what follows, placed the entire government (executive, legislative, judicial branches) in the hands of an organization - the Republican Party - dedicated to escalating the race to disaster.

Roughly speaking, I think it's accurate to say that a corporate elite of managers and owners governs the economy and the political system as well, at least in very large measure.

There's a very committed effort to convert the US into something resembling a Third World society, where a few people have enormous wealth and a lot of others have no security.

Putting it in plain terms, the general public must be reduced to its traditional apathy and obedience, and driven from the arena of political debate and action, if democracy is to survive.

If anybody thinks they should listen to me because I'm a professor at MIT, that's nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it.