After Nixon resigned in 1974, he engaged in a very aggressive war with history, attempting to wipe out the Watergate stain and memory. Happily, history won, largely because of Nixon's tapes.
Nowadays it is the fashion to emphasize the horrors of the last war. I didn't find it so horrible. There are just as horrible things happening all round us today, if only we had eyes to see them.
I was so happy that it filmed in New York not only because it's an amazing city, but also because a lot of people across the world somehow started to think about New York as a dangerous place to be and envisioned it as some war zone after that happened.
Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.
In the issue war in Iraq, it was very clear to me that the policies that were being espoused by neoconservatives were totally devoid of substance - but they marketed it wonderfully.
When a government goes to war, particularly a democracy, it is the most solemn and awesome responsibility of our leaders - to decide to send our kids to go off and kill and die for us.
Character... is a habit, the daily choice of right over wrong; it is a moral quality which grows to maturity in peace and is not suddenly developed on the outbreak of war.
At that time a lot of young men didn't want to go to the war and kill. This guy that I fell in love with was one of those so he escaped to Canada and I followed him.
But it required a disastrous, internecine war to bring this question of human freedom to a crisis, and the process of striking the shackles from the slave was accomplished in a single hour.
