Urban areas tend to attract members of the 'knowledge class' - people who work with ideas, data, information.

America is a knowledge-based society, where information counts as much as material resources. Therefore those with the power to define what qualifies as knowledge - to determine what are the accepted facts - wield the greatest social and political power.

Indigenous people have discovered that Christianity is not inherently Western but universal - 'translatable' into any cultural idiom.

Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.

Beginning under the Roman Empire, intellectual leadership in the West had been provided by Christianity. In the middle ages, who invented the first universities - in Paris, Oxford, Cambridge? The church.

Competition is always a good thing. It forces us to do our best. A monopoly renders people complacent and satisfied with mediocrity.