Obama's latest line is that he didn't establish a "red line" but the world did through its conventions on chemical warfare.

George Kennan is another extreme case. He was the American consul in Berlin until the war between Germany and the United States broke out in December 1941. And until then he was writing pretty supportive statements back stressing that we shouldn't be so hard on the Nazis if they were doing something we didn't agree with - basically repeating the idea that they were people we could do business with.

If in fact, the US story is correct, if it is true that Syria used chemical weapons, then it wouldn't be a major crime to send a kind of shot across the bow saying you can't do this anymore. Not the best thing in the world, but not a major crime, either. So, I think at the very least there should have been an inquiry into what happened. But just joining the bandwagon about how we're finally standing up to crimes in Syria, that's ridiculous.

As far as Marx's analysis of capitalism, there's a lot of very useful ideas in it, but he's developing an abstract model of 19th century capitalism. It's abstract and it's changed.

It is now well-known that the Taliban's creation was facilitated by the CIA and the ISI as part of the 1980s anti-Soviet war.

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."

I think the Christian Coalition could be extremely dangerous. We should always be concerned when any group wants to impose their doctrinal concerns on all. To an extent that's what they are trying to do.