We may repeat the awful revolutionary history of the 20th century because of the vulnerability of social movements to demagoguery.

So American culture is itself a hybrid and lends itself to use in other people's hybrids.

American movies and music deliver themes of freedom, innocence, and power that appeal to others - partly because America itself was put together out of a multiplicity of national traditions.

Who of us does not recognize that the life we live, however larded with brave talk about values and thought and ideals, is not actually a life dedicated to immersion in the endless torrent of images, songs, sounds and stories?

There is a fuzzy but real distinction that can and I believe should be made, between patriotism, which is attachment to a way of life, and nationalism, which is the insistence that your way of life deserves to rule over other ways of life.

I am concerned about how to reverse the process by which a fundamentalist right and a corporate elite were able to seize power in the United States.

I first came to think about media and politics in the late 1960s, having observed some distortions up close, but since then I wouldn't say that my personal experience has remained an important motive for my writing about media.