History always happens to us and nothing ever stays the same.

As citizens of a free society, we have a duty to look critically at our world. But if we think we know what is wrong, we must act upon that knowledge.

I grew up in a world where the social democratic state was the norm, not the exception.

Today, neither Left nor Right can find their footing.

American social arrangements, economic arrangements, the degree of inequality in American life, the relatively small role played by the government in American public life and so forth, compares to exactly the opposite conditions in most of the European societies.

What I am against is false optimism: the notion either that things have to go well, or else that they tend to, or else that the default condition of historical trajectories is characteristically beneficial in the long-run.

The East European small countries have a sense of betrayal, of having been forgotten by Western leaders.