There’s no more morality in world affairs, fundamentally, than there was at the time of Genghis Khan.

China is the center of the Asian energy security grid, which includes the Central Asian states and Russia. India is also hovering around the edge, South Korea is involved, and Iran is an associate member of some kind. If the Middle East oil resources around the Gulf, which are the main ones in the world, if they link up to the Asian grid, the United States is really a second-rate power. A lot is at stake in not withdrawing from Iraq.

The ideal is to create a completely fragmented atomized society where everybody is totally alone, doing nothing but trying to pursue created wants, and the wants are created.

If you want to find weapons of destruction, you can find them all over the place. Take, say, Israel. There is a very great concern right now about proliferation of nuclear weapons, as there should be. Israel has a couple of hundred nuclear weapons and also chemical and biological weapons. This stockpile is not only a threat in itself but encourages others to proliferate in reaction and in self-defense. Is anybody saying anything about this?

Democratic societies can't force people. Therefore they have to control what they think.

The beam in our own eye is harder to detect, although - or more accurately because - to detect it, and remove it, is vastly more important on elementary moral grounds, and commonly more important in terms of direct human consequences as well. Intellectuals have historically played a critical function in performing these tasks, and [Ivan] Illich is right to observe that claims to scientific expertise and special knowledge are often used as a device.

The United States is a very insular society. Most people know very little about the outside world and don't care that much. They're concerned with their own affairs.