However as an environmentalist and socialist I would assert that the greatest threat to our species and indeed the planet is now market capitalism and its suicidal addiction to GDP growth, the new "pie-in-the-sky" of rampant consumerism which has replaced the old-paradise myth of established rightwing religion.
Truman Capote, describing the composition of In Cold Blood, spoke of "maintaining a stylistic and emotional upper hand over your material", asserting that "the greatest intensity in art in all its shapes and sizes is achieved with a deliberate, hard and cool head".
In a recent Newsweek cover story pegged to the Tiger Woods scandal, Neal Gabler, the author of "Life: the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality," absurdly asserts that celebrity is "the great new art form of the 21st century".
The language of this amendment seems straightforward on its face, but could Republican presidential aspirant Donald Trump be right when he authoritatively asserts that "many of the great scholars say that anchor babies are not covered?" Of course, by "anchor babies" he is speaking, however pejoratively, of the infants of undocumented immigrants, usually from Mexico.
Pope Paul "sent them a special message, asserting that "the great majority of Catholics throughout the world have given both assent and obedience" to his encyclical.
But I will end by asserting that the great legacy of our most transformational Presidents -- like Lincoln, FDR, and Reagan -- was their ideas, even more than their programs.
Some of them assert that the great power he wielded was not his own personal achievement, but that of the dynasty he represented; they also argue that, since Byzantine imperial power declined catastrophically after Manuel's death, it is only natural to look for the causes of this decline in his reign.
It is hard to take seriously a book which asserts that "the single greatest achievement" of a man who counts the Nobel peace prize among his distinctions was "to get almost everybody to call him 'Doctor'".Mr Hitchens's curtain-raiser deals with Mr Kissinger's role during the run-up to election day in 1968.
Jones arrives and asserts that Olivia has great abilities due to her Cortexiphan doping but must coax them out of Olivia.
