The racism is so profound and the recognition - the kind of deep recognition that you have to humiliate. It's not about to killing or torture. It's to humiliate. So the oppressed feel degraded. And both the oppressed understand and the oppressors understand. It's constant.

Social and political issues in general seem to me fairly simple; the effort to obfuscate them in esoteric and generally vacuous theory is one of the contributions of the intelligentsia to enhancing their own power and the power of those they serve.

To summarize, draft resistance can make use of the inegalitarian nature of American society as a technique for increasing the cost of American aggression, and it threatens values that are important to those in a decision-making position.

Those lucky enough to qualify as "intellectuals" have their own special responsibilities, deriving from their good fortune. Among these is the task that [Edward] Said describes, surely an important one.

If [climate change ] became a serious proposal in the United States, there would be a huge propaganda onslaught by the business community, the energy corporations and many others, to try to frighten the population into opposing it - claiming that if they have it, all sorts of terrible things will happen, like you won't be able to heat your home, or whatever the story is.

Today's Democrats are pretty much what used to be called moderate Republicans a generation ago.

A fundamental element of human nature is the need for creative work, for creative inquiry, for free creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive institutions. A decent society should maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to be realized.