George Clooney: Straight-talking liberal

I read an interesting George Clooney interview this month in Esquire titled Curious George. Clooney has some definitely progressive political views that I thought were particularly pointed:

Being a ruthless liberal
We don't have to put the word compassionate in front of liberal the way conservatives do to prove we give a shit about people. I think we should change what we call ourselves. I think we should be ruthless liberals. We need to show that we're tough, that we really give a shit about people.

About gay marriage
Now what's the argument about? Who really thinks the sanctity of marriage works? What is there, a 50 percent divorce rate? So the argument about gay marriage becomes "What's next? Can you marry a goat?" And you come back with "Okay, let's make marrying a goat legal. Let's make it legal! If you're some backward jackass who wants to marry a goat, go right ahead!" It's illegal to jump a building. Now, if you made it legal, there wouldn't be a rush of people wanting to jump off a building. But you get these people saying, "This is destroying our morals." What? Because two people love each other and want to express it?

Diamonds are forever; Oil isn't
So, okay, this is a war? Let's take the other side's weapons away. Their weapon is oil. Ten years from today, we're not going to have cars that run on internal combustion engines. At some point, we're going to have to do it anyway, because oil is finite. So why don't we take the leap right now?...If we take oil off the table right now, suddenly all those little countries that really didn't come into power until the thirties - and did so only because there was oil under their sands - will go back to the sort of power structure that they were originally designed to have. They don't get to control our economy...We take away the thing that makes them so powerful, and we create new technology along the way. It's a new day.