Noam Chomsky

Real popular culture is folk art - coalminers' songs and so forth.

In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

There was unprecedented elite condemnation of the plans to invade Iraq. Sensible analysts were able to perceive that the enterprise carried significant risks for U.S. interests, however conceived.

If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does, he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees.

In February 2004, the two traditional torturers of Haiti - France and the United States - combined to back a military coup and send President Aristide off to Africa. The U.S. denies him permission to return to the entire region.

The Republican Party has become overwhelmingly so extreme that it's hardly a traditional political party anymore.

Anarchism means all sort of things to different people, but the traditional anarchists' movements assumed that there'd be a highly organized society, just one organized from below with direct participation and so on.

To summarize, draft resistance can make use of the inegalitarian nature of American society as a technique for increasing the cost of American aggression, and it threatens values that are important to those in a decision-making position.

Free institutions certainly exist, but a tradition of passivity and conformism restricts their use - a cynic might say that this is why they continue to exist.

Perhaps the most striking assault on the foundations of traditional liberties is a little-known case brought to the Supreme Court by the Obama administration, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project.