—school prayer, or “desecrating” (literally, making unholy) the flag.
Whatever the problem, the quick fix is to shave a little freedom off the Bill of Rights.” (Pg 406)

“Those who seek power at any price detect a societal weakness, a fear the can ride into office. It could be ethnic differences, as it was then, perhaps different amounts of melanin in the skin; different philosophies or religions; or maybe it’s drug use, violent crime, economic crisis, —

Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” (Pg 241)

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. —

—to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.” (Pg. 26)

Oof, Carl. He was complaining about “Beavis and Butthead” et al, but still….

— no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable—-

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a ver few, and —