Wikileaks is providing information on what ambassadors are sending to Washington and things like that. Maybe some of that has a right to some kind of secrecy, but there is a heavy burden and I think its pretty hard to meet. I haven't read everything from Wikileaks by any means but the parts that I have read and seen I think are things the public should know.

Should a community... be free to enact legislation to say they don't want blacks? Now that's illegal. Fifty years ago it was legal. Is that progress or is that regress?

Internal security means something. It means war against your own population.

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

Some innate capacity - some part of the human genetic endowment - enters into language acquisition. That much is uncontroversial among those who believe that humans are part of the natural world. If it were not true, would be a miracle that my granddaughter reflexively identified some elements of the blooming buzzing confusion as language-related and went on to acquire capacities of the kind that you and I are now exercising, while her pet kitten (chimp, songbird, bee...), presented with exactly the same data, could not take the first step, let alone the later ones.

It's perfectly obvious that there is some genetic factor that distinguishes humans from other animals and that it is language-specific. The theory of that genetic component, whatever it turns out to be, is what is called universal grammar.

One contribution scientists can and should make is to be clear and explicit about the limits of scientific understanding, a matter that is particularly important in societies where people are trained to defer to alleged experts.