“America and Greece are at different stops on the same one-way street, all too familiar to us immigrants. There's nothing new about Obama: been there, done that. Nothing could be less hopeful, or less of a change. He's the land where we grew up, with its union bullies and marginal tax rates and government automobiles and general air of decay all re-emerging Brigadoon-like from the mists entirely unspoilt by progress. it's like docking at Ellis Island in 1883, coming down the gangplank, and finding everyone excited about this pilot program they've introduced called "serfdom".”

“I'm an immigrant to this great land. For fellows like me, this is where the bus terminates. There's nowhere else to go. Everywhere else tried this, and it's killed them. There's nothing new about Obama-era "hope" and "change." For some of us, it's the land where we grew up: government hospitals, government automobiles, been there, done that. This isn't a bright new future, it's a straight-to-video disco-zombie sequel: the creature rises from the grave to stagger around in rotting bell-bottoms and cheesecloth shirt terrorizing a new generation. Burn, baby, burn. It's a Seventies-statist disco-era inferno.”

“If there is a country in the world where concord, according to common calculation, would be least expected, it is America. Made up as it is of people from different nations, accustomed to different forms and habits of government, speaking different languages, and more different in their modes of worship, it would appear that the union of such a people was impracticable; but by the simple operation of constructing government on the principles of society and the rights of man, every difficulty retires, and all the parts are brought into cordial unison. There the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged. Industry is not mortified by the splendid extravagance of a court rioting at its expense. Their taxes are few, because their government is just: and as there is nothing to render them wretched, there is nothing to engender riots and tumults.”

“There rolls the deep where grew the tree. O earth, what changes hast thou seen! There where the long street roars, hath beenThe stillness of the central sea.The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands; They melt like mist, the solid lands,Like clouds they shape themselves and go.”

“But it's also true that the person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing. All we know about the future is that it will be different. But perhaps what we fear is that it will be the same. So we must celebrate the changes.”

“But what has changed? The truth is that nothing changes...It is we who have changed, we who are beguiled by technological change, we who have ceased to believe that a certain situation exists while beginning to believe a new one has replaced it. We still love and hate, suffer and feel joy, resent and admire, covet and sacrifice. We still allow some with power to exploit and marginalize others without power, and we still look on quietly, feeling bad about it all but doing nothing. Nothing at all changes when new technologies are introduced into a culture. Nothing changes but our attitudes about what is and is not “real,” what is and is not “important,” what is and is not worth knowing. And we change because we choose to change, because media, as McLuhan tells us, are nothing more than extensions of us.”