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Russian Hackers Interfered In Our Elections, And We Like Penalized A Few Of Them. Whatever They're Doing Underground, We Don't Know. No, This Is Going To Be A Big Issue. And I Have To Say The Barack Obama - The Donald Trump Position Is, A, Mystifying, But, B, Doomed. He Has A Nice Little Vladimir Putin Romance Going On Right Now. I Think We're Going To Get Out The Hankies, Because This Is Going To Turn Into An Ugly Relationship Within A Year Or Two.

-David Brooks

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Russian Hackers Interfered In

David Brooks

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Russian Hackers Interfered In Our Elections, And We Like Penalized A Few Of Them. Whatever They're Doing Underground, We Don't Know. No, This Is Going To Be A Big Issue. And I Have To Say The Barack Obama - The Donald Trump Position Is, A, Mystifying, But, B, Doomed. He Has A Nice Little Vladimir Putin Romance Going On Right Now. I Think We're Going To Get Out The Hankies, Because This Is Going To Turn Into An Ugly Relationship Within A Year Or Two.

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I Can't Imagine That Being In The Trump Cabinet Will Be A Very Important Job. I Do Think This Will Be A White House-run Administration With A Teeny-tiny Group Of People Surrounding Him, Including His Family Maybe.

If I Were Donald Trump, I Would Definitely Not Pick Mitt Romney Because It's Very Easy For Mitt Romney To Have Have A Separate Foreign Policy Operatus In The State Department That Would Run A Dissenting Foreign Policy From The White House Foreign Policy. There, I Think The Populist America-first Foreign Policy Of Donald Trump Does Run Against A Potential Rival.

I Have Come To Think We Have To Treat Donald Trump's Tweets Like Snapchat. It's Just Something That Is Going To Go Away. And It Flies Out Of Some Region Of His Brain And It Goes Out Into The Ether. And Usually It's On The Realm Of Media.

I Think Mitch Daniels, The Former Governor Of Indiana Was A Case Of That, Who Was An Outstanding Administrator.

I Think, From A Progressive Point Of View, To Have A Democratic Congress And A Democratic White House, And To Have Spent The Time On Obamacare, Which Had Real Benefits, 20 Million Insured, But Not On Inequality, Was A Major Cost To The Democratic Party, Costing Them Their Majorities, But Also A Bit Of A Cost To The Country, Because It Didn't Address The Fundamental Issues That Led To Donald Trump And That Led To A Lot Of Unhappiness, Just The Continued Widening Inequality.

I Am Not A Jew For Jesus But I Am Definitely A Jew For Christmas. Christmas Is One Of The Best Things You Christians Have Given Us, Along With Mac And Cheese, Bono, Croquet And Politeness.

I, Personally, Think Trump Improved Pretty Dramatically And Certainly Changed Pretty Dramatically Over The Last Hundred Days. He's Less Of The Populist. He's More Of The Corporatist. He's Less Incompetent. He's Trying To At Least Turn Toward People Who Can Put A Decision-making Process. And He's Trying To Adjust To The Job. And So Whatever One Thinks Of Him, He Is Certainly A Learning Creature.

Our Emotions Tell Us What To Value. They're Like A Little Gps System: Go That Way. Don't Go That Way.

The Technology's Going To Change, But What People Want To Read Is Going To Be Basically The Same.

On The [andrew] Puzder Point, I Do Agree There Has Been A Double Standard.

Double Standard

I Think Americans Expect Optimism In Their Leadership. The Most Popular And Effective Leaders, Whether It Was Bill Clinton Or Ronald Reagan Or Jack Kennedy, Brought To It A Sense Of Optimism And Possibility.

Hillary Clinton Continues To Say Donald Trump's Unacceptable, He Doesn't Have The Character To Be President. He Is Saying - Continues Saying She Needs To Be In Prison.

We Have An International System. We All Profit From It. Trade Profits From It. Peace. We Can Travel Around The World Because Of It. And Part Of That System Is Certain Ideas, The Certain Ideas You Can't Invade Other Countries For No Reason. You Can't Commit Genocide. You Can't - Rogue Regimes Can't Have Nuclear Weapons, And You Can't Gas Your Own People.

The Teachers Union May Not Like Betsy Devos, But She's Clearly Within The Range Of Republican Policy-makers.

It's Part Of Donald Trump's Psychodynamics To Always Care About His Press Coverage Intensely. He's More Interested In That Than Anything Else.

Putin's An Egomaniac, So There Are Two Ways He Can Process His Ego Mania. He Can Say, "oh, I Stood Up To The U.s.," Or, "hey, I'm Essential To The World Order."

Trump Has Picked The More Extreme Versions Of All Republicans So Far, The More Aggressive. And I Think The Thing To Watch Out For Is, I Could Totally Paint A Scenario Where Trump Runs An Authoritarian Regime. I Can Totally Paint A Scenario Where He Has No Control Over His Own Government.

I Think The Voters Who Voted For Donald Trump Certainly Are Willing To Tolerate A Lot Of Ugliness, But Maybe, If You're In Desperate Circumstances, Or You Think America Is Deeply In Trouble, You're Willing To Tolerate That Without Necessarily Liking It.

The Policies Of The Democratic Party Have Always Been In Cultural Consonance With The Culture Of The Working Class. And, Somehow, They Missed That.

What Bannon And Trump Have Presented Us With Is An Idea Of America That's Not Been The Traditional Idea, Not The Walt Whitman Idea, Not The George Washington, Abraham Lincoln Idea, Which Is One Of Welcoming Because We're The Last, Best Hope Of Earth.

A Heroic Moral Victory For The New York Mets. It May Be The Only Kind Of Victory We're Achieving This Season, But He Set A Good Example For Professional Athletes And The Rest Of Us.

It's Almost Inherent, But I'm A Massive Stanley Kubrick Fan. I'm A Big Admirer Of What Guys Like Christopher Nolan Have Been Able To Do. For Me, To Be Able To Try To Make Big Films That Reach A Lot Of People, And That Hopefully Have Something To Say, Is A Lofty Goal, But That's My Goal.

The People Who Really Have Character Make Deep, Unshakable Connections To Something Outside Themselves.

Institutions Do All The Things That Are Supposed To Be Bad. They Impede Personal Exploration. They Enforce Conformity. But They Often Save Us From Our Weaknesses And Give Meaning To Life.

Politics Really Is A Team Sport. You Really Have To Work The Whole System To Get Somewhere Down The Road.

Empathy Makes You More Aware Of Other People's Suffering, But It's Not Clear It Actually Motivates You To Take Moral Action Or Prevents You From Taking Immoral Action.

Populists Love Rich People. They Just Hate Professionals.

I Agree With The Idea Of Cutting [budget], But It Should All Be Coming Out Of Entitlements For The Affluent And Not Out Of Domestic Discretionary, Which Is Welfare, Education, All The Stuff The Government Does, Parks, Fbi, And It Shouldn't Be Coming Out Of Medicaid.

I Think Trump's Attention Span Is Super Low. I Don't Think He Has The Expertise To Actually Run A Foreign Policy.

People Have Been Raised In A Morality That Says, "if It Feels All Right For You, It's Probably Ok."

The Idea That A Big Country Is Going To Go Out And Send Troops Into Some Country To Take Their Resources, And Then The Rest Of The World Is Going To Somehow Trust Us Is Just A Ridiculous Notion.

Your Dvd Collection Is Organized, And So Is Your Walk-in Closet. Your Car Is Clean And Vacuumed, Your Frequently Dialed Numbers Are Programmed Into Your Cordless Phone, Your Telephone Plan Is Suited To Your Needs, And Your Various Gizmos Interact Without Conflict. Your Spouse Is Athletic, Your Kids Are Bright, Your Job Is Rewarding, Your Promotions Are Inevitable, Everywhere You Need To Be Comes With Its Own Accessible Parking. You Look Great In Casual Slacks.

I Take A Benign View Of Digital Connectedness. I Notice In Most Young People's Lives, Facebook And Such Doesn't Replace Normal Dating Or Hanging Out, It Just Facilitates It.

We Are A Democratic, Egalitarian People Who Spend Our Days Desperately Trying To Climb Over Each Other.

Of Course I Don't Know What's Going On In That Meeting On In The Mind Of Donald Trump. But I Do Know One Of The Things President Barack Obama Was Struck By Was How Much Time He Spent On Cyber-security As President. And One Of The Things He Said Was That, In The Years Ahead, The Next President Will Be Spending Even More Time. And Cyber-security Isn't A Thing That Goes Away After This Election. It's A Constant Flow.

Britain Is Blessed With A Functioning Political Culture. It Is Dominated By People Who Live In London And Who Have Often Known Each Other Since Prep School. This Makes It Gossipy And Often Incestuous.

I'm Not The Most Emotionally Attuned Guy In The World. My Wife Says That Me Writing About Emotion Is Like Gandhi Writing About Gluttony.

Putin Has Been - And With A Lot Of The Groups, The Conservative Groups, The More Extreme Conservative Groups That Underlie Trump, He's A Bit Of A Hero Because He Speaks For Traditional Values, He's Against The Global Institutions.

When You Get A Big Crisis, Everyone Wants Somebody With Some Experience And Some Credibility.

On The Larger Issue Of The Travel Ban, Our Friend Charles Krauthammer Of The Washington Post I Think Put It Pretty Well. I'm Not Sure It's Illegal, But It's Extremely Stupid.

If We Got Rid Of Everybody In Washington Who Sold Access For Donations, Then The Town Would Be Empty. But It's Unseemly.

One Of The Things Capitalism Does Is, It Does Enhance And Exacerbate The Sin Of Pride, Making Yourself, The Material World The Center Of Your Universe, Instead Of God's Will.

It's Rare In An Administration For A Secretary Of State And A Secretary Of Defense To Get Along Really Well.

Mitt Romney Knows A Lot. He's A Very Professional - A Consummate Professional.

Most Poverty And Suffering - Whether In A Country, A Family Or A Person - Flows From Disorganization. A Stable Social Order Is An Artificial Accomplishment, The Result Of An Accumulation Of Habits, Hectoring, Moral Stricture And Physical Coercion. Once Order Is Dissolved, It Takes Hard Measures To Restore It

I Think The Presidency Is A Bad Way To Measure The Effective Campaign Finance, Because In The Presidency, There Is So Much Publicity, There's So Much Money Floating Around.

There Is The English Language And Then There's The Trump Language.

English Language

The Daily Activity That Contributes Most To Happiness Is Having Dinner With Friends. The Daily Activity That Detracts Most From Happiness Is Commuting. Eat More. Commute Less.

Daily Activities

I Think Actually In Any Party It's A Sign Of General Health To Have Different Views, And Especially On The Subject Of Trade.

What's Interesting About The Trump Administration Is How Bitterly Divided They Are In Their Attitudes Towards Putin.

Civility Is The Natural State For People Who Know How Limited Their Own Individual Powers Are And Know, Too, That They Need The Conversation.

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Highly Educated Young People Are Tutored, Taught And Monitored In All Aspects Of Their Lives, Except The Most Important, Which Is Character Building. When It Comes To This, Most Universities Leave Them Alone.

People Tend To Marry People With Similar-width Noses, Eyes Similarly Apart, With Complementary Immune Systems.

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Most People Don't Form A Self And Then Lead A Life. They Are Called By A Problem, And The Self Is Constructed Gradually By Their Calling.

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Donald Trump's World View Is That It's A Dangerous, Miserable Place, People Are Out To Get Him, And He Needs To Strike Them First.

Donald Trump Appalls Me. I Won't Be Shy About That.

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Trade Agreements Are A Net Benefit For The World, And A Net Benefit For Our Foreign Policy, And In The Long Run, Given The Dislocations, Are A Net Benefit For Us, Too.

If You're A Soldier Or Marine In An Arab Country, Islam Is The Solution. And You Need To Show Respect.

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I Do Think British And American Politics Rhyme. They Go In Cycles. They Go In Thatcher-reagan Cycles, Blair-clinton Cycles.

The Republican Party Has Become An Ethnic Nationalist Party.

Republican Party

I'm A Little Uncomfortable With The Idea Of Judges Overruling Presidents On National Security Matters.

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Funny Graduation

The Gun Becomes This Psychological Totem, This Thing Of Who I Am. And It's Almost As If Using The Gun Is Going To Be The Thing That's Going To Be My Expression Of How I Make A Difference In The World.

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Unconstitutional

[betsy Devos] Is Quite A Smart Person, Capable, Pretty Sophisticated In Subtle Thought. And So To Me, That Puts Her In The Realm Of Policy. But We're In A Climate Where, As Today, She Tries To Visit A School, And She Can't Even Do That Because Protesters Are Blocking That.

The Effectiveness Of A Group Of People Is Not Determined By Their Iq But By How Well They Communicate.

The North Korean Regime Is Extremely Fiery, Extremely Insecure, Sometimes Hysterical. And When You're Around Somebody Who's Screaming And Unstable, The Last Thing You Want To Do Is Add To The Instability With Your Own Unstable, Hysterical Rhetoric.

The Madman Theory Is That You Can Be A Successful Deterrer If You - If They Think You Could Be Crazy. And So I Think It Can Be Very Effective, So Long As You're Not Actually Crazy.

When You're In Governance, You Understand The Limitations And The Complexities Of Governance.

If You Do Something Really Cognitively Demanding, Like Buying Furniture, It Turns Out Buying Furniture Is One Of The Most Difficult Things We Do. Go Into A Furniture Store And Look At A Sofa.

You Have Got To Have Two Things In Education Reform. You Have Got To Have Some Flexibility, So People Can Figure Out What To Do. But You Also Have To Have Accountable, Basically What The Common Core Standards Were, Some Sort Of Set Of National Standards, So We Can Measure.

Democrats In Environmental Agencies Tend To Be More Sensitive To Environmental Harm. And Republicans Tend To Be More Sensitive To Business Harm.

The School Asks A Person Who Has Achieved A Certain Level Of Career Success To Give You A Speech Telling You That Career Success Is Not Important.

The Brain Writes The Autobiography Of Our Species At The Conscious Level.

I Think Barack Obama's Foreign Policy Will Be Regarded More Failure Than Success.

Bill Clinton Pandered By Telling You What You Wanted To Hear. John Kerry Panders By Never Telling You What You Don't Want To Hear. This Is Negative Pandering; He Talks A Lot Without Really Ruling Anything Out So You Can Draw Your Own Conclusions.....kerry Has Been Talking For Years, And Yet Such Is The Thicket Of His Verbiage That He Has Achieved Almost Complete Strategic Ambiguity.

President Obama Was The First President Not To Abide By The Limits In The General Election.

People Ask, Quite Legitimately, Why [betsy] Devos And Why Not A Lot Of The Others? But It's Because It Has To Do With The Special Interest Groups That Run A Lot Of Washington.

... Trash Talk ... Washington Floats On A River Of Aspersion.

I Think Donald Trump Is Going To Find It Very Hard To Do The Kind Of Massive Change He Wants.

You Have To Have A Plan, Or Else You're Just Creating A Recipe For Chaos.

Sometimes, You Go - You Achieve A Few Things In Life. I Have Achieved More Career Success Than I Ever Experienced Or That I Ever Thought. And I Just Realized, It Doesn't Make You Happy. It's An Elemental Truth. It's So True.

There Are Plenty Of Team Players In Government Who Do Whatever The Leader Says. There Are Too Few Difficult Members, Who Have Complicated Minds, Unusual Perspectives, The Toughness To Withstand The Party-line Barrages And A Practical Interest In Producing Results.

As A Director, I Like Trying To Unlock The Subtext Of The Scene And Try To Put The Camera In A Place That Helps That.

The More Attention Hillary Clinton Gives To The Country, The Less People Seem To Like Her.

I Do Not Believe That Anything Like What Donald Trump Just Proposed Is Going To Get Through Congress. Those Deductions Have A Lot Of Defenders. The Idea That They're Going To Completely Explode The Deficit Is Just A Party Killer For The Republican Parties.

There Has Never Been Evidence That People From These [banned] Countries Are Disproportionately Likely To Commit Terrorist Acts. We Have Sent Chaos To The Airports. We Have Offended The World. We Have Derailed The Administration. We Have Done It In Such An Incompetent Way, The Administration Has, That People With Perfectly Legal Residence Have Been Widely Inconvenienced.

Creativity Is Not A Solitary Process. It Happens Within Networks... When Talented People Get Together, When Idea Systems And Mentalities Merge.

Certainly, The Country Can't Have Two Presidents At Once, So The Tradition Has Been To Hang Back If You're The President-elect And Wait For Your Time In Office. [donald] Trump Is Not A Hang-back Kind Of Guy.

Often, I Go And See Films Where I Can See The Beats Coming. So, If I Read Something Where I Don't See The Beats Coming And It Takes Me Somewhere Unexpected, That's A Great Thing To Build Upon.

I Do Think Creating An Open Free-trade Economy But With Strong Social Support Is The Way To Go.

Courage Is The Most Important Virtue Because It Is The Hardest.

It's Just A Lot Safer To Be An Incumbent. So I Think They Have Used The Campaign Finance Reforms. They Have Passed Laws That Will Help Themselves Stay In Office. And I Think That's One Of The Flaws That We Do Have In The System.

Friendship Allows You To See Your Own Life But With A Second Sympathetic Self.

It's Hard To Imagine A Party That Is Not Corrupted By Hatred.

Every White House I Have Covered Since Reagan, When I Got Here, Power Has Been More Concentrated In The White House Than The One Before.

Donald Trump Is Sort Of An Orwellian Figure, An Authoritarian Figure Who Is Twisting Words In An Orwellian Manner, "1984," To Exercise Power And Control People's Minds, Or Is He A 5-year-old Who Has An Ego That Needs To Be Fed, And The Universe Has To Warp Around His Ego Needs So He Can Feel Good About Himself, And Everybody Has To Produce Photos To Make The Monarch Feel Like He's Made Of Gold.

When You Talk About The Problem Of Illegal Immigration, People Are Angry And Polarized. When You Talk About The Answers, The Debate Gets A Little Different.

If You're Cutting Deals With One Company Or Another, Eventually, There's Going To Be A Quid Pro Quo. There's Going To Be A Bribe. There's Going To Be Something.

Benjamin Netanyahu Is A Fascinating Figure.we Say Nixonian About A Lot Of People. He Really Is Nixonian. He's Brilliant. He's Very Isolated And Insular.

I Was Really Fortunate That I Went To A High School Where We Actually Had A Film Theory Program.

Hillary Clinton Is Still - She's Such A Private Person.

The Drugs Are Just Growing All Around The Country, And So, It All Feeds Into Problems That Are Not Just Urban, But Are Just Spread Throughout The Country.

Our System Is Not Only Based On Rules, But A Series Of Self-restraints That We Won't Be As Barbaric As We Could Be In Competing For Power Because We Know If We're All Barbaric As We Could Be, The Whole Country And The Whole Society Falls Apart.

Donald Trump Has A Pre-modern Monarchic Family Structure. His Business Is A Monarchy With Family Members All Around. His Administration Is A Monarchy With Family Members All Around.

If Donald Trump Wants To Fire Somebody For Not Getting Obamacare Repealed, He Should Fire Himself.

I Wasn't Born With A Tie Or With Mark Shields Stapled To My Left Hip. I Have Another Life.

The Question Is Whether Donald Trump Recognizes That Vladimir Putin Is A Bad Guy. And I Guess There's No Indication That He Regards Putin As In Any Way A Bad Guy.

Personally, I Think Mitt Romney Would Be A Great Secretary Of State.

If You Do Have To Look At Polls, You Should Do It No More Than Once Every Few Days, To Get A General Sense Of The State Of The Race. I've Seen The Work On Information Overload, Which Makes People Depressed, Stressed And Freezes Their Brains. I Know That Checking The Polls Constantly Is A Recipe For Self-deception And Anxiety.

People Want A Reality That Tells Them They're Right All Of The Time.

It's The Rising Tide Of Enmity In The Country, Donald Trump Attacking Judges, Donald Trump Attacking John Mccain, Senator [richard] Blumenthal, The Town Halls, The Riots In Berkeley. You Have Got The Incivility On The Floor Of The United States Senate. You Have Got Just A Rising Tide, Every Single Story.

Everyone Is Dividing Based On Demographic Categories.

Who Could Have Predicted This, That The Presidency Is Kind Of A Hard Job? Nobody Knew That. I Also Like The Fact That Trump Is A Detail-oriented Person. I Find His Interviews Amazing. He's Actually Kind Of Remarkably Candid.

Donald Trump Tried To Set Up This Debate Where It Was Going To Be Globalists Vs. Nationalists, And The Republicans Were Going To Be The Nationalists. But, If Anything, The Democrats Looked More Patriotic And More Nationalist At The End Of These Two.

Barack Obama Won Such A Big Electoral Mandate Because A Lot Of People Thought He Was - Transcended Partisan And Ideological Barriers And Was Going To Put Aside The Old Debates. So, He Was Able To Get A Lot Of Moderates And A Lot Of Independents.

We Have Rapidly Increasing Technology, Which Is Making Life Very Good For People Who Are Good At Using Words, And Not So Good For People Who Are Not Good At Using Words.

Even In This Nuclear Thing, [ Donald Trump] Says We Should Be Stronger And Expand. What Does That Mean? So, What Is Concrete In What He's Saying?

We Still Are America Though. We're Still A Country That Is A Country Of Social Mobility. We're Still A Country Of Immigrants. We're Still A Country With Common Ancestors. And Reviving The Civics Of America And The Idea That We're Going To Be United, At Least Not Right Now, But In Some Common Future, And Talking In That Hopeful Way That Martin Luther King Did, That Abraham Lincoln Did, Seems To Me That's The Way.

The Prevailing View Is That Geniuses Are Largely Built, Not Born.

My Colleague Ross Douthat Wrote That Any Time You Give Donald Trump The Benefit Of The Doubt, He Always Lets You Down.

Benefit Of The Doubt

People Who Give Money In Large Amount In Politics Are Basically Not Altruistic. They Have Some Issue. They Have Some Interest. It May Be World Peace. It May Be Preserving Carried Interest. But It's Not Altruistic.

I Happen To Think Most People Go Into Government Do It For The Right Reasons And They Really Do Things As They See Them On The Merits Of The Issues.

The Point Of Being A Teacher Is To Do More Than Impart Facts, It's To Shape The Way Students Perceive The World, To Help A Student Absorb The Rules Of A Discipline. The Teachers Who Do That Get Remembered.

What Family You Were Born Into Matters So Much More Than It Did Before In A Perverse Way.

The More People Doubt Their Own Beliefs The More, Paradoxically, They Are Inclined To Proselytize In Favor Of Them.

There Is A Virtue In Shamelessness.

Donald Trump Is So Egregious In The Way He Talks About Women, The Way He Allegedly Treated Women.

I Came To The Conclusion Is That We Have A Very Shallow View Of Human Nature In The Policy World. We're Really Good At Talking About Material Things, Really Bad At Talking About Emotions, Really Good At Stuff We Can Count, Really Bad At The Deeper Stuff That Actually Drives Behavior.

I Want To Limit The Effects Of The Power Of Donors, No Question About It.

Much Of Life Is About Failure, Whether We Acknowledge It Or Not, And Your Destiny Is Profoundly Shaped By How Effectively You Learn From And Adapt To Failure.

Populists Hate Journalists, They Hate Teachers, They Hate Lawyers, But They Tend To Like Rich People. There's Something Deeply Consistent.

People Want Reality That Tells Them How Right They Are All The Time.

Labor-rich Manufacturing Doesn't Exist Anymore. Manufacturing Jobs Are White-collar, Silicon Valley Programmers Or Highly-skilled Technicians. They Are Not Going To Employ Lots Of People.

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Donald Trump Is Sitting On The Control Deck Of The Starship Enterprise, And He Can Push A Lot Of Pretty Buttons, But Those Buttons Aren't Connected To Anything. And So Nothing Is Happening.

How Can We Expect Young People To Be Rooted In Things Such As Character, Morality And Honesty? How Is One Supposed To Be At Once An Arrow Soaring Skyward And An Oak Planted Firmly In The Ground? The Meritocratic Culture Hones Strivers On Every Aspect Of Their Lives Save One - How To Cultivate Character.

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The Legitimacy Of A War Is Not Established By How It Is Organized But By What It Achieves.

Research By Donald A. Redelmeier And Sheldon M. Singh Has Found That, On Average, Oscar Winners Live Nearly Four Years Longer Than Nominees That Don't Win.

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It's Hard For Parents Just To Measure Schools.

The Idea That When You Correct A Fact, You Erase That Fact From People's Memories Is The Reverse Of The Truth. When You Correct A Fact, What You Do Is You Further Lodge That Fact Into People's Minds, And They Remember The Error.

America Has An Important Role To Play As The World Leader In Creating A Global Order, Free Trade, Free Waterways, Free Commerce, Free Movement Of People. That Happens Because Of U.s. Military Might.

Those Cultural Wars, Sexual Revolution Issues Are Fading From The Scene, And The Coming Generation Has Basically Settled Them.

For The Democrats, They're Trying To Avoid Having The Sanders-clinton Debate Over And Over Again. But, To Some Degree, They're Sentenced To That Debate. Clinton Is Much More Embracing Of The Global Economy And The International World Order. Sanders And Warren Are Much Less So. And They Have Got To Figure Out Which Side The Party Is On, If They're Going To Have A Clear Message. I Think This Is Probably One You Probably Can't Straddle.

One Of The Things I Think About With Donald Trump Is What Are His Words Actually Attached To? With Trump, I'm Not Sure The Words Have Roots. They Are Emanations Of His Psyche, But Has He Thought It Through? Is There An Argument, Is There A Policy Implication?

I'm Not Sure [donald] Trump Has Had That Distinction Between Private And Public Life In His Head. And So, I Think There's Likely To Be An Erosion Of Just That Standard, That Different Standard, Consciousness, And I Think It's Likely We'll See What We Haven't Seen In The Last Eight Years And Even The Last 12 Or 16 Of Private Enrichment In Office And Scandals Where People Have To Resign And Things Like That, Because Just Once The Standards Go, Behavior Tends To Go.

The Most Interesting Thing Is That The White House Staff And The People Under Donald Trump, At Least Some Portion Of Them, Some Large Portion Of Them, Seem To Have Turned Against Donald Trump.

I Think The Twenty-first Century Happened, Basically. That This Century Started On 9/11. And Basically, It's Been A Century Of Counter Reaction To Globalization And The Meritocracy. And A Good Century For 72 Nations Have Gotten More Authoritarian. We've Had Brexit. We Have Le Pen Rising In France. We've Just Got A Lot Of These Types All Around The World. And The People Who Are Suffering From Globalization And The Meritocracy Are Saying, "no More. You Know, We Get A Voice Too."

Russia Has A Very Sophisticated, Advanced Attack On U.s. Businesses And U.s. Government And U.s. Institutions. And It's Not Like Donald Trump Is Going To Be Walking Away From This. He Will Be Spending A Lot Of Time On It, If He's Any Sort Of Normal President.

The Core Threat To Democracy Is Not In The White House, It's The [bush] Haters Themselves.

It's Very Hard To Find An Evangelical Person Under 45, Let Alone On Some Of The Christian College Campuses, Who Has Any Tolerance For Donald Trump.

If You Just Rely On One Model, You Tend To Amputate Reality To Make It Fit Your Model.

I Want To Try To Make Big Films That Hopefully Connect With People.

It's Important For Presidents To Emotionally Connect, With The Country In Times Of Crisis, But Also With People In Washington. If You Can't Emotionally Connect - And [barack] Obama Is Not The Greatest, But He Can At Least Do It - Then People Won't Be With You When The Times Are Hard.

Israel Is A Country Of Six Million People. They Need The U.s. It Used To Be Bipartisan On Israeli Politics. You Never Messed With That Relationship. The Fact That [ Benjamin] Netanyahu Is Willing To Do That, I Thought Would Horrify Voters More Than It Turned Out It Did.

It’s Worth Noting That You Can Devote Your Life To Community Service And Be A Total Schmuck. You Can Spend Your Life On Wall Street And Be A Hero

I Think As We Interpret Him And Frankly As The World Learns To Interpret Donald Trump, Are These Just Words That Are Enigmatic Things Floating On Air Or Are They Actually Shifts In Policy And Will They Change Moment By Moment, Day By Day Without Any Underlying Connection To The Actual Stuff Of Governance? I Don't Know.

I Do Think Trying To Live Each Day As A Bunch Of Moral Occasions, Did I Live Up To What I Would Hope, And, If I Didn't, What Can I Do Tomorrow To Be A Little Better, I Do Think We Can Improve. We Get Better At Life As We Get Older.

When You Cover Politics, You Realize That Knowing How To Talk About Character Matters More And More. The Way We Hold Ideas Is More Important Than The Ideas.

Just, As I Have Traveled Around From School To School, Whether It's Project-based Learning Or An Outward Bound Curriculum, It's Very Hard To Tell The Difference Between Charters And Public Anymore. There's No Fine Line.

The Ugliness Can Sometimes Be Super Ugly, But Also A Warning Sign Of Something Down Below.

If We Are Going To Stop Wars On This Earth, We Are Going To Have To Make War On Hunger Our Number One Priority.

Through American History, We Have Had Populist Movements That Often, Often, Often Have This Ugly Racial Element. But, Often, There Are Warning Signs Of Some Deeper Social And Economic Problem.

I Certainly Hear A Lot Of People Say That Donald Trump Not Only Incited Some Bad Things. He Also Exposed Some Things. He Exposed Pain In America That A Lot Of Us Didn't Have The Full Extent Of, Some Of The Divisions And Chasms In The Country.

The Idea That Russia Felt Emboldened And Apparently Fearless To Go Into Our Election And Manipulate Our Own Election Process, Whether Successfully Or Not, Is A Sign That They Are Outside The Norms Of Normal Society.

Election Process

Learning Was A By-product Of Her Search For Pleasure

Some People Think Humility Is Thinking Lowly Of Yourself. Some People Think It's Not Thinking About Yourself. But, To Me, The Best Definition Of Humility Is Radical Self-awareness From A Distance, Seeing Themselves From A Distance And Saying, What's My Problem?

Thinking About You

The Zooming Wealth Of The Top 1 Percent Is A Problem, But It's Not Nearly As Big A Problem As The Tens Of Millions Of Americans Who Have Dropped Out Of High School Or College. It's Not Nearly As Big A Problem As The 40 Percent Of Children Who Are Born Out Of Wedlock. It's Not Nearly As Big A Problem As The Nation's Stagnant Human Capital, Its Stagnant Social Mobility And The Disorganized Social Fabric For The Bottom 50 Percent.

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