I'm regarded outside New York University as a looney tunes leftie, self-hating Jewish communist; inside the university, I'm regarded as a typical, old-fashioned, white male liberal elitist. I like that. I'm on the edge of both; it makes me feel comfo...
I'm amused when Congress tries to place the blame on somebody but never themselves. I've never heard any of them ever say, 'I've made a mistake.' I do. I say I called it wrong. But they just try to find somebody to blame.
But he would give the Spainish no satisfaction. When they offered him a drink, he smashed the glass and ate the shards, preferring his own English blood to their sweet wine. He died soon after.
It is grievous to read the papers in most respects, I agree. More and more I skim the headlines only, for one can be sure what is carried beneath them quite automatically, if one has long been a reader of the press journalism.
The founders were very worried that if parties developed in America, you might have something like the modern Italian system, where you have 20 different parties that divide Congress and the country and can't govern.
I don't believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that's the case, you ain't self-made.
Race was thick in the O.J. Simpson case from the very beginning, but it wasn't evident. And I think the O.J. Simpson case revealed that there is subtle race, and there is sophisticated race, and there's evident and observable race.
When you look at a guy like a Jay-Z or look at a guy like a Nas, you don't necessarily qualify them as conscious rap purely, although they are extremely conscious of the social inequities that prevail.
We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.
All right-wing antigovernment rage in America bears a racial component, because liberalism is understood, consciously or unconsciously, as the ideology that steals from hard-working, taxpaying whites and gives the spoils to indolent, grasping blacks.
For liberals, generally speaking, honoring procedures - means - is the core of what being 'principled' means. For conservatives, fighting for the right outcome - ends - even at the expense of procedural nicety, is what being 'principled' means.
As a general rule of thumb, Democrats do better in national elections when the year's defining issue is economic fairness, and Republicans do better when the defining issue is national security.
I think that all politicians who aspire to the presidency are a little nuts, but for different reasons. What kind of person aspires to be the most powerful person in the world? The answer is someone with an internal drive that is so dynamic and so de...
Somehow, failures in the public sector are always judged as systematic. The private sector thus exists to ride to the rescue - and their failures are only judged anomalies. A pretty nice arrangement for investors. The only people who suffer are the c...
A ghost is someone who hasn't made it - in other words, who died, and they don't know they're dead. So they keep walking around and thinking that you're inhabiting their - let's say, their domain. So they're aggravated with you.
I'm not one of those critics that believes U.S. foreign policy is confused, or stupid, or misinformed, or well-intentioned but it goes awry. I think it's a brilliant policy filled with many brilliant, terrible, horrible victories.
Julius Caesar was an aristocrat who sided with the Roman people. He's not my hero, but he was one of a long line of what we'll call 'populares,' which were popular leaders who tried to institute these reforms that the people were fighting for.
Salem houses present to you a serene and dignified front, gracious yet reserved, not thrusting forward their choicest treasures to the eyes of passing strangers; but behind the walls of the houses, enclosed from public view, lie cherished gardens, fu...
I had the closest thing I have ever had to an out-of-body experience lying in bed one morning. I turned on the 'Today' programme and item four on the news was: 'The shadow chancellor has ruled himself out of the leadership.' I lay there thinking that...
We simply can no longer afford to deny the full potential of one half of the population. The world needs to tap into the talent and wisdom of women. Whether the issue is food security, economic recovery, health, or peace and security, the participati...
It is a fact that the Left routinely resists, then as now: Americans fought and died in Vietnam for freedom, just as they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan today. Whatever mistakes generals and policymakers have made along the way cannot detract from...
