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A lot of people in the adult population have a very limited idea as to why they are Americans, why we have a First Amendment or a Bill of Rights.
Nat Hentoff -
I like John Cardinal O'Connor a lot. He - I started a - to know him - when I asked William Shawn at The New Yorker, `Sh - can I do a profile of Cardinal O'Connor?' He said, `All right. Find out what he's like.' So I went to his office, and I heard somebody - and it turned out to be O'Connor - yelling outside, and I've never heard him since raise his voice.
Nat Hentoff
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I wrote the column. I - you know, - the column simply said that Clay Felker is destroying this paper. And I heard that he was about ready to fire me, but two other people on The Voice interceded and, fortunately, he had a very short attention span, so I wasn't fired.
Nat Hentoff -
Now that is dangerous, when the people don't know what's happening to their Constitution.
Nat Hentoff -
I was less angry at Carl Armstrong, though I was angry at the people who came to his trial: Dan Ellsberg, who ordinarily I respected a lot; Philip Berrigan; the guy who teaches at Princeton still - I can't remember his name. And they were saying - well, they were saying, really, what Arthur Koestler had people saying on "Darkness at Noon." The means were unfortunate and, sadly, someone died, but the end is what is important and this was a great symbolic - something or other - sign against the war in Vietnam.
Nat Hentoff -
I know Arthur Koestler fought in the Spanish Civil War. He was in prison, I think, in Spain and in Russia. He came to the United States; that's when I saw him in the mid-1940s.
Nat Hentoff -
This sounds corny, but I once told a kid when I was in a the library conference, the best - not the best, what I really hope for is that someday 20, 30 years from now, some kid, 12-year-old, 15-year-old, in Des Moines will be going through the stacks, if they have stacks anymore - they probably won't - and find a book of mine and get something from it.
Nat Hentoff -
In England, you have what I would call government-imposed euthanasia.
Nat Hentoff
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I grew up in a household in which we had a clock that we won at Revere Beach during the Depression - one of those brass clocks that didn't work - but it showed Franklin D. Roosevelt standing at the wheel of the New Deal.
Nat Hentoff -
I was writing - at least beginning to write Boston Boy and there were a lot of holes in my so-called research. I didn't know the towns my mother and father came from in Russia. I didn't know the name of the clothing store I went to work for when I was 11 years old. I didn't know a lot of things. So I called for my FBI files, not expecting to have that stuff there, but I wanted to know what they had on me.But they did have the towns my mother and father lived in in Russia. They had the grocery store I worked in when I was 11 years old.
Nat Hentoff -
I was co-editor of the magazine called The Jazz Review, which was a pioneering magazine because it was the only magazine, then or now, in which all the articles were written by musicians, by jazz men. They had been laboring for years under the stereotype that they weren't very articulate except when they picked up their horn.
Nat Hentoff -
The death panel issue arose with Tom Daschle, who was originally going to be the Health Czar. Daschle became enamored with the British system and wrote a book about health care, which influenced President Barack Obama.
Nat Hentoff -
Duke Ellington had a song, "What Am I Here For?" - this is what being pro-life is.
Nat Hentoff -
That race is still part of what Barack Obama is riding on. Except that, too, is diminishing.
Nat Hentoff
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The need for a pro-life point of view undergirds everything you do.
Nat Hentoff -
I have two boys. One, Nicholas, is a criminal defense attorney in Phoenix in which he - gets into - a lot of very controversial cases. He has sued Sheriff Arpaio, the famous sheriff who keeps people in tents, gives them green bologna and the like. My other son Tom is with Williams & Connolly in Washington, where he does intellectual property defamation cases.
Nat Hentoff -
Every life is different; being pro-life is not only about saving the fetus, being pro-life is about all the stages of life.
Nat Hentoff -
I'm working on "Living the Bill of Rights," and it's about people - well, it starts with Brennan and Douglas as people who not only live the Bill of Rights, but try to shape the reason for that.
Nat Hentoff -
The immigration bill - the new immigration bill - Bill Clinton has stripped the courts, which Congress can do under the leadership of the president, so that people who had a right to asylum or to petition - for asylum who were legal residents are now unable to go through because that part of the bill has been taken out.
Nat Hentoff -
Bob Dylan was really mad with my wife. I had asked by Rolling Stone - the only assignment I ever had for them - to do a story on the Rolling Thunder Review, which was Bob Dylan, Alan Ginsberg, Joan Baez and a host of stars. My wife, some weeks before, had written in The New York Times that The Kid wasn't The Kid anymore and he wasn't all that winning anymore.
Nat Hentoff
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If Bill Shawn liked the piece, then he would run it. But he wanted the magazine to be something that was more than just a weekly event. And as a result you could pick up a New Yorker under him, as I mentioned before, a year from then or 10 years or 20 years and there would always be something worth reading in it.
Nat Hentoff -
I think Obama is possibly the most dangerous and destructive president we have ever had.
Nat Hentoff -
I am an atheist, although I very much admire and have been influenced by many traditionally religious people.
Nat Hentoff -
I always wanted to be a lawyer,but I certainly never wanted to be a trapeze performer.
Nat Hentoff