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The Fact That There Could Be An Isis West Bank, The Fact That The Palestinian Government In Gaza Doesn't Even Acknowledge Israel's Right To Exist, The Fact Of Constant Terror, Delegitimization Campaigns In The Palestinian Schools, These Are All Much Bigger Facts. And For The Barack Obama Administration To Focus On This One Fact, Almost, Not To The Expense, But To Diminish Some Of The Others Which Are Much More Important, Is To Cast All The Blame On Israel And To Take The U.n. Policy Toward Israel, Which Has Been Longstanding, And Sort Of Surrender To It.

-David Brooks

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The Fact That There

David Brooks

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The Fact That There Could Be An Isis West Bank, The Fact That The Palestinian Government In Gaza Doesn't Even Acknowledge Israel's Right To Exist, The Fact Of Constant Terror, Delegitimization Campaigns In The Palestinian Schools, These Are All Much Bigger Facts. And For The Barack Obama Administration To Focus On This One Fact, Almost, Not To The Expense, But To Diminish Some Of The Others Which Are Much More Important, Is To Cast All The Blame On Israel And To Take The U.n. Policy Toward Israel, Which Has Been Longstanding, And Sort Of Surrender To It.

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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.

[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.

Nonetheless, So Whether It's Unconstitutional Or Not [for Judges To Overruling Presidents], I Leave To Others.

Unconstitutional

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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."

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The Message Of The Summoned Life Is That You Don't Need To Panic If You Don't Yet Know What You Want To Do With Your Life. But You Probably Want To Throw Yourselves Into Circumstances Where The Summons Will Come.

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We Pretend To Be A Middle Class, Democratic Nation, But In Reality We Love Our Blue Bloods. ... We Love The Prep School Manners, The Aristocratic Calm, The Skull And Bones Mystery, The Dappled Lawns Stretching Before New England Summer Homes. How Else Can Be Explained The Bush Vs. Kerry Match-up That Confronts Us This Year?

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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.

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.

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

English Language

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Individual Power

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Daily Activities

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Double Standard

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

I Don't Think History Will Ever Be A Science Because History Will Never Be Reduced To Law-like Behavior. People Are To Unpredictable.

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When A President Speaks That Usually Means A Lot.

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

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."

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.

If You Know That Most Processing Is Below The Level Of Awareness, You Learn The Value Of Sleep. You're Brain Is Working On The Problem Anyway.

Republicans Are Living In A Hermetically Sealed Republican Universe, Just As Democrats Are. And So They're Responding To Their Own Universe, Even If It Leads To Electoral Downfall.

Donald Trump's Got To Do Some Big Changes, Because What He Was Voted On. But When You Think About How To Do It, It Would Take Massive Expertise, Which His People, Believe Me, Do Not Have.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

It's A Completely Irrational Decision To Drop Out Of School.

When Your Institution Is Under Threat, You Feel You Have A Lot Of Hostility, You Feel Things Are Slipping Away, You Have Got Internal Problems, There's A Tendency To Turn Inward And To Focus On Yourselves.

Trade Has Suddenly Become Massively Unpopular. I Think That's Massively Unjust. I Think Free Trade Has Been Wonderful For America On Balance.

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

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

The Government Is Supposed To Provide A Level Playing Field Where People Can Compete Fairly. It's Not Supposed To Cut Deals With One Company Or Another To Do So.

Pain Now Is Better Than Pain Deferred.

I Just Think, Realistically, There's A Lot Of Room Outside The Trump Populist Right And The Bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren Populist Left. There Are A Lot Of Us Who Believe In Open Trade, Open Borders, A Dynamic Forward-looking Economy, Not A Nostalgic Economy, But Do Want To Provide A Significant Level Of Social Service Or Sort Of Economic Milton Friedman Foreign Policy, Ronald Reagan Domestic Policy, Franklin Roosevelt. And There's A Lot Of Room In The Center.

Woe To You Who Insults The Intelligence Community, If You're President.

I Think The Barack Obama Position And The Majority Position Of American Jews And A Lot Of Americans Is A Two-state Solution Between Israel And Palestine. Settlements Get In The Way Of That. If They're Not Stopped Soon, There Is No Prospect For That Type Of Solution.

With The Case Of [mike] Pence, Giving A Little Aurora Of Likability To A Candidate, A Lead Candidate Who's A Little Lacking In That Department.

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.

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.

I Really Think Of [donald] Trump Erratic. I Think That Was The Big Message That Came Out. The Positive Agenda For Hillary [clinton] Was A Little Less Vibrant.

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

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.

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.

Freedom Without Structure Is Its Own Slavery.

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

Bragging About What A Good Deal You Got Is One Of The Many Great Art Forms That My People, The Jews, Have Introduced To American Culture.

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.

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

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