Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges, theologist, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America:

"I'm an enemy of fundamentalism, period. ... The new Christian right (wing) in this country are heretics. The notion that we are called upon to amass wealth, ... I mean, that's not Biblical. It's not supported by the Bible." 

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"Our decline began when we shifted from an empire of production to an empire of consumption... by the end of the Vietnam War, when the costs of the war ate away at Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society," and domestic oil production began it's steady, inexorable decline, we saw our country transformed from one that primarily produced to one that primarily consumed... 

We started borrowing to maintain a lifestyle - as well as an empire - we could no longer afford... we began to use force to feed our insatiable thirst for cheap oil... and the bill is now due... America's most dangerous enemies are not Islamic radicals, but those who sold us the perverted ideology of free market capitalism and globalization... they have dynamited the foundations of our society.


In the 17th Century these speculators would have been hung. Today, they run the government and consume billions in tax-payer subsidies. These corporate forces will never permit real reform. It would mean their extinction. The oil and gas industry will never allow us to achieve energy independence. That would devastate their profits. Real reform would wipe out tens of billions of dollars in weapons contracts."

 -  Empire of Illusion speech.