A Puppet Is Free As Long As

You Cannot Take Death For Apostasy Seriously And Be Working For Peace.

Nothing In Chomsky's Account Acknowledges The Difference Between Intending To Kill A Child, Because Of The Effect You Hope To Produce On Its Parents (we Call This “terrorism”), And Inadvertently Killing A Child In An Attempt To Capture Or Kill An Avowed Child Murderer (we Call This “collateral Damage”). In Both Cases A Child Has Died, And In Both Cases It Is A Tragedy. But The Ethical Status Of The Perpetrators, Be They Individuals Or States, Could Not Be More Distinct For Chomsky, Intentions Do Not Seem To Matter. Body Count Is All.

The Problem Of Human Suffering Is Never Too Much Rational Thinking, Or Too High A Demand For Evidence. But The Solutions Are. ... Reason Is Nothing Less Than The Guardian Of Love.

Liberals Tend To Understand That A Person Can Be Lucky Or Unlucky In All Matters Relevant To His Success. Conservatives, However, Often Make A Religious Fetish Of Individualism. Many Seem To Have Absolutely No Awareness Of How Fortunate One Must Be To Succeed At Anything In Life, No Matter How Hard One Works. One Must Be Lucky To Be Able To Work. One Must Be Lucky To Be Intelligent, Physically Healthy, And Not Bankrupted In Middle Age By The Illness Of A Spouse.

The Problem Is Not That Religious People Are Stupid. It's Not That Religious Fundamentalists Are Stupid. I Happen To Think That You Can Be So Well Educated That You Can Build A Nuclear Bomb, And Still Get--and Still Believe That You Will Get The 72 Virgins In Paradise--that Is The Problem. The Problem Is That--religion--because It Has Been Sheltered From Criticism As It Has Been--allows People--perfectly Sane, Perfectly Intelligent People--to Believe En Masse, What Only Idiots Or Lunatics Could Believe In Isolation.