BENJAMIN R. BARBER

The modern democratic state is legitimated by the priority of the public over the private, where public goods trump private interests, and the commonweal takes precedence over individual fortunes.

Government has a perfect right, indeed a duty, to intervene in the economy in the name of justice, ecology, strategic interests, full employment, or other public goods in which the market has and can have no interest.

Islam … is a story of the struggle between reason and belief, between consent and authoritarianism, between resistance to tyranny and tyrants.

Capitalism has put democracy in trouble, because capitalism has tried to persuade us that being a private consumer is enough. That a citizen is nothing more than a consumer

Above all, democracy means pluralism.

We sell our sovereignty down the river when we become a debtor nation.

Just beyond the horizon of current events lie two possible political futures -- both bleak, neither democratic. The first is a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe against tribe -- a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths against every kind of interdependence, every kind of artificial social cooperation and civic mutuality. The second is being borne in on us by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food -- with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's, pressing nations into one commercially homogenous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce. The planet is falling precipitantly apart and coming reluctantly together at the very same moment

Influence elected government officials, don't just elect them. Your right is to govern yourselves, not just to choose your governors.

Terrorists aren’t states; they are martyrs with no address.

In a world where socialism has disappeared, it can still be found lurking in the boardrooms of failing and bad-risk investment companies … that yearn to spread their losses across the backs of long-suffering taxpayers.

We do live, like it or not, in a world that is deeply interdependent. 9-11 proved that even security is something that we cannot achieve by ourselves.

Education is unlikely ever to win an “open market” competition with entertainment because “easy” and “hard” can never compete on equal ground, and for those not yet disciplined in the rites of learning, “freedom” will always mean easy.

Government has a perfect right, indeed a duty, to intervene in the economy in the name of justice, ecology, strategic interests, full employment, or other public goods in which the market has and can have no interest.

In a world where socialism has disappeared, it can still be found lurking in the boardrooms of failing and bad-risk investment companies … that yearn to spread their losses across the backs of long-suffering taxpayers.

Islam … is a story of the struggle between reason and belief, between consent and authoritarianism, between resistance to tyranny and tyrants.

The modern democratic state is legitimated by the priority of the public over the private, where public goods trump private interests, and the commonweal takes precedence over individual fortunes.

Influence elected government officials, don't just elect them. Your right is to govern yourselves, not just to choose your governors.

Terrorists aren’t states; they are martyrs with no address.

Capitalism has put democracy in trouble, because capitalism has tried to persuade us that being a private consumer is enough. That a citizen is nothing more than a consumer

Above all, democracy means pluralism.

We sell our sovereignty down the river when we become a debtor nation.

Just beyond the horizon of current events lie two possible political futures -- both bleak, neither democratic. The first is a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe against tribe -- a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths against every kind of interdependence, every kind of artificial social cooperation and civic mutuality. The second is being borne in on us by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food -- with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's, pressing nations into one commercially homogenous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce. The planet is falling precipitantly apart and coming reluctantly together at the very same moment