People know elections, like television commercials, are not real.

If you think about it, Washington's overwhelming power in the world is founded on death, the awesome arsenal for killing people.

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

The trauma of 9/11 stimulated infinite possibilities for worry - some quite plausible, but most inspired by remote what-if fantasies. A society bingeing on fear makes itself vulnerable to far more profound forms of destruction than terror attacks. The "terrorism war", like a nostalgic echo of the cold war, is using these popular fears to advance a different agenda - the re-engineering of American life through permanent mobilization.

A profound political question is suddenly on the table: Must the country continue to give precedence to private financial gain and market determinism over human lives and broad public values?

The present struggle seems less about abolishing big government than about who gets to use it.

Creating a positive future begins in human conversation. The simplest and most powerful investment any member of a community or an organisation can make is to begin with other people as though the answers mattered.