Eugene McCarthy

I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons and I also support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun

If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.

The problems we face now – poverty and violence at home, war and destruction abroad – will last only as long as we continue relying on the same politicians who created them in the first place.

Anyone who doesn’t regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.

Debates, I hate.

WE are good, and THEY are evil. That useful principle trumps virtually any argument. Analysis of commentary and much of scholarship reveals that its roots commonly lie in that crucial principle, which is not argued but asserted.

Exaggerating slightly, in totalitarian countries the state decides the official line and everyone must then comply. Democratic societies operate differently. The line is never presented as such, merely implied. This involves brainwashing people who are still at liberty.

My notion of the KGB came from romantic spy stories. I was a pure and utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education.

It’s dangerous when people are willing to give up their privacy.

If you go back far enough, [socialism] meant basically control of production by producers, elimination of wage labor, democratization of all spheres of life; production, commerce, education, media, workers’ control in factories, community control of communities, and so on.

I would prefer to abandon the terminology of the past. ‘Superpower’ is something which we used during the cold war time. Why use it now?

Advertisers will want, more generally, to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the “buying mood”…and thus fit in with the spirit of the primary purpose of program purchases-the dissemination of a selling message.

When you chop wood, splinters fly

I was shocked more than most white people to find we had a black President!

If the Democrats could get their act together, overcoming the schism between the donor-oriented New Democrat Party management and the increasingly activist and social democratic base, they would have a decent chance to take over Congress.