The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies.

Melting of the huge Antarctic glaciers, proceeding more rapidly than anticipated, threatens a rise in sea level that will drive tens of millions from the low-lying plains of Bangladesh alone, with disastrous consequences elsewhere.

We're supposed to worship Adam Smith but you're not supposed to read him. That's too dangerous.

The Left, in a general sense, is very much atomized. We live in highly atomized societies. People are pretty much alone; it's you and your iPad.

The people of the Third World need our sympathetic understanding and, much more than that, they need our help. We can provide them with a margin of survival by internal disruption in the United States. Whether they can succeed against the kind of brutality we impose on them depends in large part on what happens here.

Syria is descending into suicide. It's a horror story and getting worse and worse. There's no bright spot on the horizon. What will probably happen, if this continues, is that Syria will be partitioned into probably three regions; a Kurdish region - which is already forming - that could pull out and join in some fashion the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, maybe with some kind of deal with Turkey.

It seems self-evident that we should want people to be free, to be able to play an active part in making decisions about matters of concern to them, to the largest possible extent.