Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.
Politics also reflects the fault lines in our society, and the fact is that it is not very easy for any marginalised group to come forward in any domain.
Politics is a pure meritocracy. That's why Gordon Brown's cabinet had two brothers and a married couple in it. They just happened to be the best people around.
Martyrdom is evidence only of a man's honesty - it is no evidence that he is not mistaken. Men have suffered martyrdom for all sorts of opinions in politics and in religion; yet they could not therefore have all been in the right; although they could give no stronger evidence that they believed themselves in the right.
Keralites have become fed up with this kind of politics that creates martyrs.
After the Tiananmen Massacre, I felt compelled not only to continue writing but to actively resist the restrictions placed on freedom of speech. I set up the publishing company in Hong Kong, with offices in Shenzhen in mainland China, and managed to publish works of fiction, philosophy, and politics by unapproved authors.
There was a time when 'science' meant the systematic pursuit of knowledge through experimentation and observation. But it's rapidly becoming a synonym for progressive politics and materialist philosophy.
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
I never stood for any president in my life, never voted, before Barack Obama. It changed my life to vote. It starts there with me. I never cared for politics before Barack Obama. I never thought it mattered to people like me.
I would summarise my politics very simply as the maverick left and proud.
Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
Well there's nobody who has a more supportive husband than I do, and he has a business that he runs, and it's his own business, so he has work to do, my kids have school to do, I mean, people have - there are other things in life besides politics.
People don't want to believe they have to speak like Obama or Clinton to participate meaningfully in politics, because most of us don't speak like Obama or Clinton.
The term 'the American Left' is as near to being meaningless or nonsensical as any term could really be in politics. It isn't really a force in politics anymore. And it would do well to ask itself why that is.
It's that evil twin part of me that always comes out at the absolute wrong political moment, like a demon possessing my soul; it exhibits itself as an arrogance or disdain or obnoxiousness or meanness or anger or pettiness - all traits that are lethal in politics.
I don't think consensus-building politics is what I'm meant to be doing.
If Iran seeks to meddle in domestic Indian politics by creating disaffection among the Shias of Uttar Pradesh, what better way to counter that by reminding all concerned that while the Shias maybe an important vote bank in U.P., they constitute only 10 per cent of Indian Muslims, while the Sunnis account for an overwhelming 90 per cent.
I would rather not meddle in the domestic politics of the United States.
There's a flip side to having prominent public intellectuals, which is that they start meddling in politics and often with quite disastrous results.
It's been a concern of mine for years that the mainstream media coverage of culture and politics takes place in two nodes, Washington and New York, and yet all the voting goes on somewhere else.
