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The two things he most valued, which is to say liberty and equality, were not natural allies.

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We know of no spectacle more ridiculous—or more contemptible—than that of the religious reactionaries who dare to re-write the history of our republic...more

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Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe mo...more

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The people who must never have power are the humorless. To impossible certainties of rectitude they ally tedium and uniformity.

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The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The...more

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Half the published articles on Gaza contain a standard reference to its resemblance to a vast open-air prison (and when I last saw it under Israeli oc...more

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Well, as Hannah Arendt famously said, there can be a banal aspect to evil. In other words, it doesn't present always. I mean, often what you're meetin...more

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It is notorious that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation was kept from the people of Texas and not celebrated until 'Juneteenth'. There may be t...more

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If you say you're a unifier, you expect and usually get applause. I'm a divider. Politics is division by definition, if there was no disagreement ther...more

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Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and ...more

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[I]f you think that American imperialism and its globalised, capitalist form is the most dangerous thing in the world, that means you don't think the ...more

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So this is where all the vapid talk about the 'soul' of the universe is actually headed. Once the hard-won principles of reason and science have been ...more

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Here we are then, I was thinking, in a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate. Fine. We will win and they will lose. A pity...more

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At least two important conservative thinkers, Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss, were unbelievers or nonbelievers and in any case contemptuous of Christianity....more

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Not to dampen any parade, but if one asks if there is a single thing about Mr. Obama's Senate record, or state legislature record, or current program,...more