Michael Parenti
American political scientist, historian and media critic.
Every ruling class has wanted only this: all the rewards and none of the burdens. The operational code is: we have a lot; we can get more; we want it all.
Conservative pundits have a remarkable amount of free speech.
The media have been tireless in their efforts to suppress the truth about the gangster state.
Even though the crime rate has dropped in recent years, the United States has more police per capita then any other nation in the world.
The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.
Revolutions are not push button affairs; rather, they evolve only if there exists a reservoir of hope and grievance that can be galvanized into popular action.
It may come as a surprise to some academics, but there is a marked relationship between economic power and political power.
Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was a member of the Salvadoran aristocracy. He could not have risen to the top of the church hierarchy otherwise. But after he began voicing critical remarks about the war and concerned comments about the poor, he was assassinated.
Maintaining silence about a dirty truth is another way of lying, a common practice in high places.
It is ironic that people of modest means sometimes become conservative out of a scarcity fear bred by the very capitalist system they support.
Union busting has become a major industry with more than a thousand consulting firms teaching companies how to prevent workers from organizing and how to get rid of existing unions.
All economic and political institutions are contrivances that should serve the interests of the people. When they fail to do so, they should be replaced by something more responsive, more just, and more democratic. Marx said this, and so did Jefferson. It is a revolutionary doctrine, and very much an American one.
To complain about how the media are dominated by liberals, Limbaugh has an hour a day on network television, an hour on cable, and a radio show syndicated by over 600 stations.
When change threatens to rule, then the rules are changed.
The real danger we face is not from terrorism but what is being done under the pretext of fighting it.
You will have no sensation of a leash around your neck if you sit by the peg. It is only when you stray that you feel the restraining tug.
The dirty truth is that the rich are the great cause of poverty.
The dirty truth is that many people find fascism to be not particularly horrible.
The two party electoral system performs the essential function of helping to legitimate the existing social order.
Twelve states in the Great Plains have a wind energy potential greater then the electric use of our entire nation.