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Ecology's implications for capitalism are too momentous for the capitalist to contemplate. The plutocrats are more wedded to their wealth than to the Earth upon which they live, more concerned with the fate of their fortunes than with the fate of humanity. The present ecological crisis has been created by the few at the expense of the many.

Michael Parenti

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Michael Parenti
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: January 1
Historian
Journalist
Political Scientist
New York City
New York
Upon
Fortune
Ecology
Political
Crisis
Ecological
Earth
Fate
Implications
Live
Created
Expense
Many
Concerned
Contemplating
Wedded
Wealth
Expenses
Momentous
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Capitalist
Fortunes
Humanity
Capitalism
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More quotes by Michael Parenti

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[The ruling elites] know who their enemies are, and their enemies are the people, the people at home and the people abroad. Their enemies are anybody who wants more social justice, anybody who wants to use the surplus value of society for social needs rather than for individual class greed, that's their enemy.
Michael Parenti
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The last four secretaries of defense have pointed out that defense spending creates jobs. So do pornography, prostitution, and narcotics.
Michael Parenti
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To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.
Michael Parenti
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The problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst part of us: the ruthless, competitive, conniving, opportunistic, acquisitive drives, giving little reward and often much punishment-or at least much handicap-to honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard work, love of justice, and a concern for those in need.
Michael Parenti
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The two party electoral system performs the essential function of helping to legitimate the existing social order.
Michael Parenti
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Russia became a juicy chunk of the Third World, with immense reserves of cheap labor, a vast treasure of natural resources, and industrial assets to be sold off at giveaway prices.
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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.
Michael Parenti
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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.
Michael Parenti
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Capital requires protection, as do the institutions through which it operates. As capital expands its operations, the state that is associated with its protection must develop its capacity for autocratic control. Thus, the Free World increasingly resembles a dreary string of heartless police states.
Michael Parenti
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A huge national security state has developed in the United States since World War II. Its function is to buttress anticommunist, procapitalist governments and undermine and destroy popular movements whenever possible.
Michael Parenti
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Maintaining silence about a dirty truth is another way of lying, a common practice in high places.
Michael Parenti
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The US government is usually on the wrong side against the poor and downtrodden, because the wrong side is the right side, given the class interests upon which the [US] policy is fixed.
Michael Parenti
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Only by establishing military supremacy were the European and North American colonizers able to eliminate the crafts and industries of Third World peoples, control their markets, extort tribute, undermine their cultures, destroy their villages, steal their lands and natural resources, enslave their labor, and accumulate vast wealth.
Michael Parenti
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There is a century-old saying, The dollar votes more times than the man.
Michael Parenti
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The powers that be not only try to control events, but they try to control our memory and understanding of these events, which is part of controlling the events themselves.
Michael Parenti
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The peculiar danger of executive power is that it executes.
Michael Parenti
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The nation, like the church, has its visible symbols and insignia, its parchments engrossed with the revealed word, its dogmas, hymns, liturgy, holy day celebrations, its early Fathers, prophets and martyrs, its priesthood and its lay sodality, its myths of sacred genesis and apocalyptic crises, its world-saving mission and its missionaries.
Michael Parenti
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The crucial role communists played in organizing industrial unions in the 1930s and struggling for social reforms, peace, and civil rights strengthened rather then undermined democratic forces.
Michael Parenti
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Our fear that communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti- communism already has.
Michael Parenti
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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.
Michael Parenti