Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take … - Noam Chomsky

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.

It's certainly true that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein, and also without the people who supported him through his worst atrocities, and are now telling us about them.

Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.

Now, of course, I’m opposed to such speciously rationalized moralistic policy but I’m not in the least opposed to truly moral policies. And I don’t see the slightest reason why moral considerations must be left out until some final stage is reached at which destruction is imminent. It seems to me that, particularly in a society which is the beneficiary of both past and present violence, moral questions should be raised at the very first point. Quite apart from whether the West reached its present stage because of exploitation of the Third World (so called), the rape of India, and so on and so forth, quite apart from that issue, we should, for example, press for the proper use of the capacities that exist in this country to alleviate the misery and backwardness of much of the rest of the world. Toward that, we would need to organize our society properly and organize our concepts and morals properly. That’s a moral act, of course, and I don’t see the slightest reason why we should refuse to take that moral act.