So I think one can say on empirical grounds - not because of some philosophical principle - that you can't have democracy unless you have a market economy.

In acute suffering the need for meaning is as strong or stronger than the need for happiness.

Unlike puppets we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. In this act lies the first steps towards freedom.

Institutions provide procedures through which human conduct is patterned, compelled to go, in grooves deemed desirable by society. And this trick is performed by making these grooves appear to the individual as the only possible ones.

One can't understand the Christian Right and similar movements unless one sees them as reactive - they're reacting to what they call secular humanism

But we don't have an example of a democratic society existing in a socialist economy - which is the only real alternative to capitalism in the modern world.

Even if one is interested only in one's own society, which is one's prerogative, one can understand that society much better by comparing it with others.