15 quotes
The reading public isn't born that doesn't think foreigners are either funny or faintly sinister.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
Perhaps the values of socialists can only be realized by socialists in a nonsocialist society.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
That most risky and volatile of all things—a self-pitying majority.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
The disquieting thing about newscaster-babble or editorial-speak is its ready availability as a serf idiom, a vernacular of deference. "Mr. Secretary, are we any nearer to bringing about a dialogue in this process?"
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
If a great city or a great state should fall as the result of an apparent "accident", the there would be a general reason why it required only an accident to make it fall.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
What a country, and what a culture, when the liberals cry before they are hurt, and the reactionaries pose as brave nonconformists, while the radicals make a fetish of their own jokey irrelevance.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
The conservative aptitude for stressing the "individual responsibility" of all parties except themselves.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
We have preachers and savants who dilate endlessly on the sanctity of family and childhood but who tolerate a system in which a casual observer can correlate a child's social origin with its physical well-being.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
"The Twilight of Panzerkommunismus" (1988).
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
The polls undoubtedly help to decide what people think, but their most important long-term influence may be on how people think. The interrogative process is very distinctly weighted against the asking of an intelligent question or the recording of a thoughtful answer.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
The pornography of tough-mindedness, covert action, and preparedness for "peace through strength" has had a predictably hypnotic effect on the legislative branch, turning it from legal watchdog to lapdog.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
There is a limit to the success of conservative populism and the exploitation of "little guy" or "silent majority" rhetoric, and it is very often reached because of the emaciated, corrupted personalities of the demagogues themselves.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
And where did anyone get the brainless opinion that the super-rich are too wealthy to steal? ...from Ford to Hughes to Iacocca and Trump and the other tycoon redeemers, we have an exact demonstration that nobody is more covetous and greedy than those who have far too much."
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
The United States has an isolationist and insular culture, combined with a global and interventionist posture. This highly dangerous and febrile mixture, which greatly facilitates the task of the fear-mongers and chauvinists, needs a very exact and nuanced diagnosis. I don't think that analogies from the totalitarian model, however suggestive, are sufficient.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
It was an axiom of "containment" that no part of the known world could be considered neutral. "Neutralism" was among the Cold Warriors' gravest curse words, applied with caustic hostility to India and even France. Those who were not with were against, subjected to intense economic and ideological — and sometimes military — pressure to fall into line.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)