All the common people want is to be left alone. All the ordinary soldier wants is to collect his pay and not get killed. That's why the great forces of history can be manipulated by astonishingly small groups of determined people.

America is an empire that does not wish to be one ; we are easily discouraged from doing what must be done to maintain the global order that allows democracy and prosperity to flourish.

Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey.

Two sides of the same coin, but which side is which?

And above all, what does being liberal have to do with opposing, or, uh, supporting the war against terror? Our enemies in the war against terror are so anti-liberal that you would think it would be liberals leaping to protect the world from these monstrous ideologies.

. . . All these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world, not with my eyes only, but also with their own.

Madness, and then illumination.