We never used to blink at taking a leadership role in the world. And we understood leadership often required something other than drones and bombs. We accepted global leadership not just for humanitarian reasons, but also because it was in our own best interest. We knew we couldn't isolate ourselves from trouble. There was no place to hide.
— Robert Reich
I wish it were simply a nightmare, but I think that any reasonable person watching American politics would come to the conclusion that a second Bush administration would in fact incorporate a more radicalized version of what we've seen in the first administration.
Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.
The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality of result. It's equality of opportunity. There's a fundamental difference.
The largest party in America, by the way, is neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. It's the party of non-voters.
You can't inspire people if you are going to be uninspiring.
Centrism is bogus.
True patriotism isn't cheap. It's about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.
A lot of attention has been going to social values - abortion, gay rights, other divisive issues - but economic values are equally important.
There will always be a business cycle, and white-collar workers will get hit in the next recession like they always do in recessions.
Median wages of production workers, who comprise 80 percent of the workforce, haven't risen in 30 years, adjusted for inflation.
Globalization and free trade do spur economic growth, and they lead to lower prices on many goods.
You can't create a political movement out of pabulum.
Your most precious possession is not your financial assets. Your most precious possession is the people you have working there, and what they carry around in their heads, and their ability to work together.
We do not want to live in a theocracy. We should maintain that barrier and government has no business telling someone what they ought to believe or how they should conduct their private lives.
Our moral authority is as important, if not more important, than our troop strength or our high-tech weapons. We are rapidly losing that moral authority, not only in the Arab world but all over the world.
The silent majority really is a liberal majority, even though the word liberal has taken a real beating over the last 20 years by radical conservatives.
There is a crisis of public morality. Instead of policing bedrooms, we ought to be doing a better job policing boardrooms.
It's not government's business what people do in their private bedrooms.
Radical conservatives want to police bedrooms.
A leader is someone who steps back from the entire system and tries to build a more collaborative, more innovative system that will work over the long term.
