I'm not an austere person.

I've been impressed, over the last 15 years, with how often the somewhat conspiratorial comments of Haitian villagers have been proven to be correct when the historical record is probed carefully.

lean water and health care and school and food and tin roofs and cement floor, all of these things should constitute a set of basics that people must have as birthrights.

Again, conventional Catholicism does not much appeal to me.

I mean, everybody should have access to medical care. And, you know, it shouldn't be such a big deal.

The poorest parts of the world are by and large the places in which one can best view the worst of medicine and not because doctors in these countries have different ideas about what constitutes modern medicine. It's the system and its limitations that are to blame.

Haiti was founderd by a righteous revolution in 1804 and became the first black republic. It was the first country to break the chains of slavery, the first to force Emperor Napoleon to retreat, and the only to aid Simón Bolívar in his struggle to liberate the indigenous people and slaves of Latin America from their colonial oppressors.