I don't suggest that the observations are surprising or profound. Rather, they seem to me the merest truisms. I was not aware that [ Michel] Foucault had used the phrase "speaking truth to power." I had thought it was an old Quaker phrase.

No sane human being devotes 100% of his or her life to political activism.

Selfish-gene theory tells us nothing about the value of interacting through language.

Karl Marx said, “The task is not just to understand the world but to change it.” A variant to keep in mind is that if you want to change the world you’d better try to understand it. That doesn’t mean listening to a talk or reading a book, though that’s helpful sometimes. You learn from participating. You learn from others. You learn from the people you’re trying to organize. We all have to gain the understanding and the experience to formulate and implement ideas.

The Republicans went so far to the right that they just can't get votes. They've become a dedicated party of the very rich and the corporate sector.

Haitian rice farmers are quite efficient, but they can't compete with U.S. agribusiness that relies on a huge government subsidy, thanks to Ronald Reagan's free market enthusiasms.

The neo-cons constitute a radical reactionary fringe of the planning spectrum, but the spectrum is narrow.