Policies are also to blame: the only thing that the governments and people can come up with to give to the poor people is charity. Poor people get hand outs from the state. But this is not a solution to poverty.
If people want me to go round and talk to governments and others then I feel that responsibility which is why I am on the road a good deal of the time and why I'm not slowing down.
Probably it's insufficient to say that behind the governments, behind the apparatus of the State, there is the dominant class; one must locate the point of activity, the places and forms in which its domination is exercised. And because this domination is not simply the expression in political terms of economic exploitation, it is its instrument and, to a large extent, the condition which makes it possible; the suppression of the one is achieved through the exhaustive discernment of the other.
The most destructive thing governments do is divide people against each other, all in competition over the reins of the state.
Most governments are pragmatic, most people are logical. There are pockets of extremism in Israel, in the U. S. and in the Muslim world. But we have to fight them with reason, with logic and with compassion.
Governments and citizens blend together only in the imaginations of political theorists. Government is, and always will be, an alien power over private citizens. There is no magic in a ballot box that makes government any less coercive.
For years now, the fake European 'left' is trying to portray European citizens as victims of the US imperialism. It is even trying to make the world feel sorry for those European workers who do not get a fair deal from their governments! It is thoroughly absurd.
We don't have to suppose we need oil, or governments, or anything.
We often have an exaggerated sense of what nonprofits and governments are doing to help the poor, but the really inspiring thing is how much the poor are doing to help themselves.
Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more.
I believe in friendly compromise. I said over in the Senate hearings that truth is the glue that holds government together. Compromise is the oil that makes governments go.