It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else.

It cannot be too often stressed that Israel had no credible pretext for its 2008-9 attack on Gaza, with full U.S. support and illegally using U.S. weapons.

As international support for Obama's decision to attack Syria has collapsed, along with the credibility of government claims, the administration has fallen back on a standard pretext for war crimes when all else fails: the credibility of the threats of the self-designated policeman of the world.

Social action must be animated by a vision of a future society, and by explicit judgments of value concerning the character of this future society.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.

The effort to try to present the Social Security program as if it's a major problem, that's just a hidden way of trying to undermine and destroy it.