"I’d say what we have now in the United States is working up a nice tyrannical persona for itself and for us."
--Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal: Bush Inaugural Speech Was Most Un-American Ever
US Could Become Dictatress of the World And Lose Her Soul
LINK-DEMOCRACY NOW
GORE VIDAL QUOTE: "There's not a word of truth in anything that he said. Our founding fathers did not set us on a course to liberate all the world from tyranny. Jefferson just said, “all men are created equal, and should be,” etc, but it was not the task of the United States to “go abroad to slay dragons,” as John Quincy Adams so wisely put it; because if the United States does go abroad to slay dragons in the name of freedom, liberty, and so on, she could become “dictatress of the world,” but in the process “she would lose her soul.” That is what we -- the lesson we should be learning now, instead of this declaration of war against the entire globe. He doesn't define what tyranny is. I’d say what we have now in the United States is working up a nice tyrannical persona for itself and for us. As we lose liberties he’s, I guess, handing them out to other countries which have not asked for them.."
Gore Vidal: America Has Worst Educational System of Any First World Country
GORE VIDAL: "...And that an American audience would sit there beside the capitol or reverently in front of their TV screens and watch this and not see the absurdity of what was being said -- absolute proof of a couple of things that I have felt, and most of us who are at all thoughtful feel: We’ve got the worst educational system of any first world country. We are shameful when we go abroad, because we know nothing. Just to watch the destruction of the archaeologists’ work at Babylon. Babylon is a center of our culture. Nobody knows that. Nobody knows what it is, except it's a wicked city that the lord destroyed. Well, it was the center of our civilization, the center of mathematics, of writing, of everything. And apparently our troops were allowed to go in and smash everything to bits. Why did they do it? Was it because they are mean bad boys and girls? No. They're totally uneducated. And their officers are sometimes mean and bad, and allow them to have a romp, as they also had in the prisons, none of which we heard about in the last election. We were too busy with homosexual marriage and abortion, two really riveting subjects. War and peace, of course, are not worth talking about. And civilization, God forbid that we ever commit ourselves to that."