When self-important people and powerful institutions are governed by illusion, history has a way of biting back.

Maybe the reason some folks lag behind in our free enterprise system is because they depend too much on the free part and not enough on their own enterprise.

The rich nations of the world are acting like ancient usurers, lending money to the desperate poor on terms that cannot possibly be met and, thus, steadily acquiring more and more control over the lives and assets of the poor.

Democracy begins in human conversation. A democratic conversation does not require elaborate rules of procedure or utopian notions of perfect consensus. What it does require is a spirit of mutual respect-people conversing critically with one another in an atmosphere of honesty and shared regard.

Democracy is held captive, not just by money, but by ideas - the ideas that money buys.

Our values are defined by what we will tolerate when it is done to others. Everyone's sense of virtue is degraded by the present reality. A revolutionary principle is embedded in the global economic system, awaiting broader recognition: Human dignity is indivisible. Across the distances of culture and nations, across vast gulfs of wealth and poverty, even the least among us are entitled to dignity, and no justification exists or brutalizing them in the pursuit of commerce.

The problem of modern democracy is rooted in its neglect of unorganized people.