And what do Democrats stand for if they are so ready to defame concerned citizens as the 'mob' - a word betraying a Marie Antoinette delusion of superiority to ordinary mortals. I thought my party was populist attentive to the needs and wishes of those outside the power structure. And as a product of the 1960s I thought the Democratic party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech.

To pursue a so-called Third Way is foolish. We had our experience with this in the 1960s when we looked for a socialism with a human face. It did not work and we must be explicit that we are not aiming for a more efficient version of a system that has failed.

Obviously my life and my job in 2010 is very different from Peggy's experience in the 1960s. I exist in a world that enjoys more equality between men and women. But I don't take any of that into my performance. I just want to play the character as who she is as an individual - scene to scene.

In the 1960s we were fighting to be recognized as equals in the marketplace in marriage in education and on the playing field. It was a very exciting rebellious time.

I believe history will come to view 9/11 as an event on par with November 22 1963 the date on which John F. Kennedy was murdered cutting short a presidency that was growing ever more promising. Dreams died that day in Dallas it is easy to imagine the 1960s turning out rather differently had President Kennedy lived.

Sydney in the 1960s wasn't the exuberant multicultural metropolis it is today. Out in the city's western reaches days passed in a sun-struck stupor. In the evenings families gathered on their verandas waiting for the 'southerly buster' - the thunderstorm that would break the heat and leave the air cool enough to allow sleep.

Well I had a lot of help from my father with the soldering and so on and he was very good at math and was fascinated with computers and so I was fortunate enough to have a bunch of exposure going all the way back to high school - this was in the 1960s.

I think I was lucky to come of age in a place and time - the American South in the 1960s and '70s - when the machine hadn't completely taken over life. The natural world was still the world and machines - TV telephone cars - were still more or less ancillary and computers were unheard of in everyday life.

I respect the astute and rigorously unsentimental David Horowitz as one of America's most original and courageous political analysts. He has the true 1960s spirit - audacious and irreverent yet passionately engaged and committed to social change.

Back in the 1960s I saw Peter Paul and Mary. I was at that age about 14 and I was mesmerized.