The reason the founders chafed at the idea of an American standing army and vested the power of war making in the cumbersome legislature was not to disadvantage us against future enemies, but to disincline us toward war as a general matter... With ci...
The devil goes away and heaven comes to stay.
When the earth is hot, the worm stays in the ground.
Hens perched on top will shit on those below.
You cannot hide the sun with one hand.
When civilians are not asked to pay any price, it's easy to be at war - not just to intervene in a foreign land in the first place, but to keep on fighting there. The justifications for staying at war don't have to be particularly rational or cogentl...
I am a child of the American Century, and I feel a genetic commitment to understanding why it happened, and why I take it so personally.
Statistically, if you're reading this sentence, you're an oddball. The average American spends three minutes a day reading a book. At this moment, you and I are engaged in an essentially antiquated interaction. Welcome, fellow Neanderthal!
As often I have been a science fiction writer writing science fiction for the community of science fiction readers, I am also, for good or ill, an American writing American literature to an American audience. Most fundamentally, though, I am a human ...
I have four relatively small children, and around fourth grade, they start doing big projects on Native Americas: everything is Native Americans in elementary school. Do you know how many Native American dresses I've sewn, on and on; it's a full year...
I part of this great nation because my grandfather was born here, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He took a horse, back in 1895, and ride it all the way down to Guanajuato, looking for his American dream. No penny in his pocket, only dreams in his head. And he ...
You're just another american who is willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick being shoved up your asshole every day... The owners of this country know the truth... it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe ...
Distances and days existed in themselves then; they all had a story. They were not barriers. If a person wanted to get to the moon, there is a way; it all depended on whether you knew the directions... on whether you knew the story of how others befo...
[Iain, addressing the Rangers at the end of the French & Indian war] "Never has the world see a war as this one, but you turned the tide of it, spillin' your blood to keep frontier families safe. Years from now, people will remember the Rangers, the ...
Everyone I have lost in the closing of a door the click of the lock is not forgotten, they do not die but remain within the soft edges of the earth, the ash of house fires and cancer in sin and forgiveness huddled under old blankets dreaming their wa...
Before September 11, the skinny, jittery black guy made security think one thing: drug mule. But after the attacks, security only cared about bombs. So it was the Arab guys, the Puerto Ricans and Indians, even white men, that got searched. I was too ...
I’m not that kind of Indian,” Shanti said, her practiced smile never leaving her face, though it faltered just a bit, and in that slight wobble was something hard and angry, something that looked like centuries of colonial oppression boiling up i...
Well," she said, "how can I be sure there aren't invisible people in the world? Scientists didn't believe in the mountain gorilla for hundreds of years. And now look. So if scientists can be wrong, then all of us can be wrong. I mean, what if all tho...
I grabbed my book and opened it up. I wanted to smell it. Heck, I wanted to kiss it. Yes, kiss it. That's right, I am a book kisser. Maybe that's kind of perverted or maybe it's just romantic and highly intelligent.
[Or perhaps my friends should have realized that they shouldn't have left behind the FRICKING REASON FOR THEIR PROTEST! And that thought just cracked me up.] It was like my friends had walked over the backs of baby seals in order to get to the beach ...
Don't the overwhelming majority believe that mankind is the crowning achievement of Creation, that man is better than everything, even things we haven't yet investigated? And don't those people who aren't able to escape the bonds of their own ego thi...
