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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.

-David Brooks

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There Has Never Been

David Brooks

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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.

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

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.

There Are No Free And Democratic And Wealthy Countries In The World That Have Us Rate Of Gun Violence. We Have To Worry About Loners And Alienated People. We Have To Do Better On Mental Health.

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.

If You Withdraw From The Game, You're Out Of The Game. And We Have Withdrawn From The Game. And We Said Bashar Assad Has To Go. He's Going To Stay. So We're Out Of The Game.

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

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.

We Don't Have The Choice To Control Our Emotions, But We Do Have The Power To Educate Our Emotions. And We Do That Through Literature And Through Art And Music To Give Ourselves A Repertoire Of Emotional Experiences.

I Expect [donald] Trump To Do What He's Done Very Successfully, Which Is, Whether You Like Him Or Not, He Will Be The Dominant Player .

Students Are Too Busy Jumping Through The Next Hurdle In The Résumé Race To Figure Out What They Really Want. They Are Too Frantic Tasting Everything On The Smorgasbord To Have Life-altering Encounters. They Have A Terror Of Closing Off Options. They Have Been Inculcated With A Lust For Prestige And A Fear Of Doing Things That May Put Their Status At Risk.

People Generally Don't Suffer High Rates Of Ptsd After Natural Disasters. Instead, People Suffer From Ptsd After Moral Atrocities. Soldiers Who've Endured The Depraved World Of Combat Experience Their Own Symptoms. Trauma Is An Expulsive Cataclysm Of The Soul.

The Corruption Will Come Back To Haunt The Trump Administration. But Mostly, It'll Come Back To Haunt The American Economy, As Companies Decide They Can Make Money By Rent-seeking, By Getting Money From Government Rather Than Earning It The Old-fashioned Way.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Freedom Without Structure Is Its Own Slavery.

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?

America Is Not Just A Democracy, It Represents A Certain Culture Of Competitive Mobility And Personality Aspirations, Politics Is Not Merely A Clash Of Interests, But A Clash Of Dreams.

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.

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

We're No Longer Living In Tammany Hall America.

Of Those Two [hillary Clinton And Donald Trump], I Do Think That The - Right Now, At Least In My Mind, The Democratic Theme Is Eclipsing The Republican One.

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

Since 2005, A Majority Of Americans, According To The Gallup Poll, Have Said It Was Wrong And A Mistake To Go Into Iraq.

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

Maybe You're Willing To Tolerate A Lot Of Bigotry From Donald Trump If You Say, Just Change Things, Just Change Things.

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.

A Lot Of People Think Barack Obama Should Have Responded To The Russian Hacking Of The U.s. Elections Weeks Ago, Months Ago. So These Happened On His Watch. There's Nothing Wrong With Him Dealing With It.

We Are All Fundamentally Equal Souls, And If You Make A Zillion Dollars, You're Not Any Better Than Anybody Else Spiritually. You're Still An Equal Soul.

[donald Trump] Will Be The One On Offense. He Will Be The One Serving Volleys, And It May Be Some Weird Stuff About The Russians, But He Will Be Controlling Things A Little More Than He Probably Did Over The Last Two Weeks.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Some Children Lack Tools To See Their Course In The World In Far-sighted Ways. Just Introducing School Vouchers Won't Change That. You Have To Have Nurse-home Partnerships, Early Childhood Education, Mentoring Programs And So On. People Learn From People They Love.

Almost Every Successful Person Begins With Two Beliefs: The Future Can Be Better Than The Present, And I Have The Power To Make It So.

I Generally Think Debates Within A Party Should Not Be Treated As A Scandal. They Should Be Treated As A Sign Of Strength, To Be Honest.

It’s Not That Egypt Doesn’t Have A Recipe For A Democratic Transition. It Seems To Lack Even The Basic Mental Ingredients.

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 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.

What You Hear In Focus Groups And Conversations, People Will Give You 20 Minutes Of Rage About How The Borders Are Out Of Control. But Then You Start Saying, Practically, What Are We Going To Do About It? What Are We Going To Do About The 11 Million Here? What Are We Going To Do To Get Some Workers We Need For The Farms? Then People Start Having A Normal Conversation.

Economists Sometimes Do Try To Reduce Behavior To Law-like Predictability. But People Respond Differently To Different Primes, To Different Contexts Even From One Moment To The Next. We Possess Multiple Selves That Are Aroused By Different Circumstances.

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.

[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.

I've Argued That Trump's Biggest Success In His First 100 Days Was To Keep The Russia Story At Bay, Toss Out Whatever It Takes To Push The Story Back, Including Those False Charges That Obama Had His Wires Tapped.

Whatever It Takes

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

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 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.

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.

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

English Language

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

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

Every Time Kellyanne Conway Goes On Tv, There's Another Fight With Whoever's Interviewing Her That Particular Day.

To Explain The Unknown By The Known Is A Logical Procedure; To Explain The Known By The Unknown Is A Form Of Theological Lunacy.

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."

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

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.

If Donald Trump Is Just Tweeting About A Union Guy, Then He's Just Being The Bully We Have Seen. But If He Uses The Power Of The Presidency To Back Up Some Of Those Tweets And He's Really, Really Coming Down With A Hammer On People He Doesn't Like Using The Power Of The Presidency, Then We're Seeing Something Very New And Very Different.

I've Come To Think That Flourishing Consists Of Putting Yourself In Situations In Which You Lose Self-consciousness And Become Fused With Other People, Experiences, Or Tasks.

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.

The Politics Is Broken Up And Down. And Trump May Emerge From A Reality Tv World That Is Much More Powerful Than We Think. And There Is The Prospect That This Is Where We Are, Which Is An Horrific Thought.

People Who Give Money In Large Amount In Politics Are Basically Not Altruistic.

It Is Especially Painful When Narcissists Suffer Memory Loss Because They Are Losing Parts Of The Person They Love Most.

Tim Kaine Has Been Obviously A Governor. He's Been A Senator. He's One Of The Smartest Rising Stars In The Democratic Party. He Is Very Plausible As Someone Who Could Sit In And Be President.

Jeff Sessions Has Some Problematic Spots On His History, But He Has Been A Pretty Normal, Respectable Senator, More Conservative Than A Lot Of Us, But A Respectable Senator For A Long Period Of Time.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Learning Was A By-product Of Her Search For Pleasure

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.

If It's All Win-loss, Then You Do Whatever You Can To Win And To Make Money And To Beat The Deal.

Donald Trump Didn't Emerge From The Orthodoxy Of The Republican Party. And So There's Going To Be Bigger Differences Than Normal.

Charter Schools Are Public Schools. They're Paid For Publicly And They're Part Of The Public System. They Just Have A More Independent Structure.

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.

The Natural Human Reaction Is To Greet Hatred With Hatred, Revenge By Revenge. That's The Natural Genetic Reaction.

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

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.

I Think Romney's Foreign Policy Is Sensible.

There Will Just Always Be A Distance Between You And The People Around You. Now, [hillary Clinton] Can Clearly Emotionally Connect With Her Intimates Within The Zone Of Trust. It's Just The Wall Outside The Zone Of Trust Is So Impermeable.

I Learned I'm Not A Science Writer. I'm Not Very Good At Describing How Something Is Happening. I Try To Describe "so What?"

What's Sort Of Remarkable Is That, Especially In The Israel And The Russia Cases, You Have Got A U.s. Citizen, Donald Trump, Siding With A Foreign Leader Against The U.s. President. There Is A Reason Why President-elects Have Tried To Remain Mute During Their Transitional Periods, Relatively, Because You Just Don't Want To Be For Somebody - Some Other Country Against Your Own Government, And Especially When You're About To Take The Helm Of That Government.

It’s Only Useful To Ask, What Wisdom Have You Learned From Your Misjudgments That Will Help You Going Forward?

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.

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

We Are Primarily The Products Of Thinking That Happens Below The Level Of Awareness.

Marital Happiness Is Far More Important Than Anything Else In Determining Personal Well-being.

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

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

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

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

Jim Stavridis Is The Former Nato Commander Who Is Sometimes On People's Lists, Also Very Plausible, Self-possessed, Someone With Sobriety.

I Think We Are All Disgusted By The Way George W. Bush's Administration Has Allowed Honesty And Candor To Seep Into The Genteel World Of International Affairs.

The Party Cannot Be Competitive Nationally Unless It's Competitive In California, Oregon, Washington, New England, Pennsylvania, Along The Coasts. And The Problem For The Party Is, You Can't Get There From Here. You Can't Start Out Where The Current Republicans Are And Win Back Those Places. To Me, What You Have To Do Is Create A Different Republican Party That Can Win In Those Places.

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.

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

You Have Got To Be Loyal To People Beneath You.

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin And Marine Le Pen Seem To Have No Respect For The Institutions That Were Created After World War Ii, And They See A Potential Alliance Of Populists Around The World Who Would Fight Islam And Restore A Certain Semblance Of Traditional Values.

[mitch Daniels] Was Not A Bad Governor. He Could Be Playful, But - Or Communicator.i'm Just Saying It Will - I Think Will Be - Every Candidate Comes Into The White House, Assuming If [hillary Clinton] Wins, Or If She Does Win, With Strengths And Weaknesses. This Will Be A Weakness, Because This Was Such An Easy Moment To Show Some Heart.

I'm Of Course Nostalgic For Barack Obama All Of A Sudden.

If You Thought Donald Trump Was Going To Be Swallowed Up By The Conventional Republican Party Or By Washington, You Were Wrong.

I Do Think Hillary Clinton Should Have Pivoted And Say, I Am Change, I Am Change, Because People Do Want Some Change.

I Generally Think The President [donald Trump] Should Get His Cabinet Picks, Unless They're Egregiously Out Of The Range, Either Ethically Or Intellectually Out Of The Range Of What's Acceptable.

Donald Trump's Ego Is Like A Comet The Size Of Jupiter Just Traveling Through The Solar System, And We All Have To Be Affected By Its Gravitational Pull.

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.

This Death Cult Has No Reason And Is Beyond Negotiation. This Is What Makes It So Frightening. This Is What Causes So Many To Engage In A Sort Of Mental Diversion. They Don't Want To Confront This Horror. So They Rush Off In Search Of More Comprehensible Things To Hate.

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.

Populists Love Rich People. They Just Hate Professionals.

Live Life As A Series Of Revelations

I Don't Know If I'm Sexist, Though I Have Not Paid Much Attention To The Women's Bracket.

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.

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

Betsy Devos Is Not The Most Informed Person On Education Policy, But I Have Seen Her Present A Few Times, And She Presents As A Pretty Respectable, Intelligent Person Who Has Cared Passionately About Education And Cares About Charter Schools.

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

Unconstitutional

I Sort Of Feel We Have To Owe Some Respect To The Process And Owe Some Respect To The Electorate And The People Who Voted Donald Trump, On The Assumption That They Have Something To Teach Us.

The Public Is Not Only Shifting From Left To Right. Every Single Idea Associated With The Educated Class Has Grown More Unpopular Over The Past Year. . . . A Year Ago, The Obama Supporters Were The Passionate Ones. Now The Tea Party Brigades Have All The Intensity.

I Could Tell You That When You Have Trouble Making Up Your Mind About Something, Tell Yourself You'll Settle It By Flipping A Coin. But Don't Go By How The Coin Flips; Go By Your Emotional Reaction To The Coin Flip. Are You Happy Or Sad It Came Up Heads Or Tails?

With A Normal President Like President [barack] Obama, He Says A Word, And That's Because There Has Been Some Thought That He's Done And There Had Been Policy Papers And There's Been Aides And There's Been Advisers And Then There Is A Connection To An Actual Set Of Policies. And So, The Words Like Have Roots Into Actual Stuff.

A Wise Soul Once Declared That The Ultimate Power Of The Writer Is That He Has The Choice Of Whom He Wants To Be Co-opted By.

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

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

Donald Trump Just Needs The Ego Fed All The Time.

When You're Running For President You Have To Take Some Risks And You've Got To Show People Something Fresh And You've Got To Stay Interesting.

Donald Trump Is This Whirling Dervish Of Chaos. He Picked A Fight With Mexico. Germany Is Not Far Behind. He Will Pick A Fight With Them. He Will Pick A Fight With China, Which Would Be Truly Cataclysmic.

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

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

The Three People Who Are Most Often Talked About With Hillary Clinton, Whether It's Tim Kaine Or Vilsack Or Cory Booker, They Are Three Extremely Nice People.

Would [betsy Devos] Be My First Pick? No. Is She Someone Who Has Dedicated Her Life To Education Policy? Yes, Actually, She Has.

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."

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.

It’s Easy To See Why Politicians Would Be Drawn To The Populist Pose. First, It Makes Everything So Simple. The Economic Crisis Was Caused By A Complex Web Of Factors, Including Global Imbalances Caused By The Rise Of China. But With The Populist Narrative, You Can Just Blame Goldman Sachs.

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.

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

Decision-making Power, Whether It's On Foreign Affairs Or Domestic Affairs, Is Concentrated In The White House In A Reasonably Small Circle.

[donald Trump] Has Shifted - President [barack] Obama Has Shifted American Policy In A Much More Critical Way In Israel With The Settlements Than The Previous Presidents.

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.

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.

The Brain Is Not The Mind. It Is Probably Impossible To Look At A Map Of Brain Activity And Predict Or Even Understand The Emotions, Reactions, Hopes And Desires Of The Mind.

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.

On The [betsy] Devos Case, I Agree That The Gun - Her Gun Position Is Kind Of Weird, Kind Of Crazy, But I Do Think She Does Know About Public Schools.

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 Moral Foundation Of The Society, The Way We Interact With Each Other Is More Fundamental Than The Supreme Court.

I'm Beginning To Think [ted] Cruz Had A Good Convention, That If [donald] Trump Goes Down, Cruz Is Pretty Well Positioned To Be The Republican Major Figure In Four, Six Or Even Within Two Years.

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

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.

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.

Fundamentalism Is Still On The March.

Politics Is Based On Social Identity, And So, Again, There Is Going To Be Differences Between Rural And Urban And Between Left And Right.

Sometime Over The Past Generation We Became Less Likely To Object To Something Because It Is Immoral And More Likely To Object To Something Because It Is Unhealthy Or Unsafe. So Smoking Is Now A Worse Evil Than Six Of The Ten Commandments, And The Word Sinful Is Most Commonly Associated With Chocolate.

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

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

When You're Running For President, You're A Guest In The Living Room For Four Years. And If People Don't Think You're Going To Be Around The Living Room As A Pleasant Experience, They're Not Going To Vote For You Even If They Agree With You.

There Was This Famous Clash Of Civilization Thesis From Samuel Huntington, A Political Theorist. And The Idea Was That Western Civilization Is At War With Islam And Maybe Some Of The Other Civilizations Around The World. And I Don't Agree With That. But I Do Think There Is Such A Thing As Western Civilization. I Think It Starts With The Greeks And The Romans. Then It Goes Through The Enlightenment - Or The Reformation, The Enlightenment. It Goes Through The Scientific Age. And It Somewhat Defines Some Of The Cultures And Mores Of Europe And North America And Some Other Countries.

I Would Like To See An Animating Passion. Tim Kaine Actually Had A Good Line. What Animated You Before You Got Into Politics? And She Actually Does Have A Story There To Tell About Children. And So Drawing That Animating Passion Will Do Good.

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

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.

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.

This Is How Life Works. Deciding Whom To Love Is Not An Alien Form Of Decision-making , A Romantic Interlude In The Midst Of Normal Life. Instead, Decisions About Whom To Love Are More Intense Versions Of The Sorts Of Decisions We Make Throughout The Course Of Our Existence, From What Kind Of Gelato To Order To What Career To Pursue. Living Is An Inherently Emotional Business.

The Roots Of Great Innovation Are Never Just In The Technology Itself. They Are Always In The Wider Historical Context. They Require New Ways Of Seeing. As Einstein Put It, 'the Significant Problems We Face Cannot Be Solved At The Same Level Of Thinking We Were At When We Created Them.'

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 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.

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.

Liberals Lost Touch With Working-class Americans Because They Never Had To Have A Conversation About Values With Those Voters; They Could Just Rely On The Courts To Impose Their Views.

The Republican Party Has Become An Ethnic Nationalist Party.

Republican Party

The Reason The Betsy Devos Case Was The Centerpiece Case For The Democrats Wasn't About Her Weakness As A Knowledgeable Person On Education Policy.

Knowledgeable Person

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

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.

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.

Stairway To Wisdom”) David Brooks Detailed The Needed Ingredients To Gaining A Deep Understanding Of A Social Problem, Beginning With The Data And Moving On To First-hand Accounts. The Highest Rung On His Stairway, Though, Went Beyond Those: “empathy Opens You Up To Absorb The Good And The Bad. Love Impels You Not Just To Observe But To Seek Union—to Think As Another Thinks And Feel As Another Feels.

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

For Us Going Forward, It's To Not Reverse The Dynamism Of American Society And The Diversity. It's To Pay Attention To The People Who Are Being Ruined By It, And So This Doesn't Happen Again.

When A President Speaks That Usually Means A Lot.

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.

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

Double Standard

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

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

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.

Everyone Is Dividing Based On Demographic Categories.

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.

We Live In A Culture That Encourages Us To Be Big About Ourselves, And I Think The Starting Point Of Trying To Build Inner Goodness Is To Be A Little Bit Smaller About Yourself.

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.

We Actually Have To Have A Government. We Have To Have People Confirmed And Put Into Office.

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.

The Key Factor Separating Geniuses From The Merely Accomplished Is Not A Divine Spark. It's Not I.q., A Generally Bad Predictor Of Success, Even In Realms Like Chess. Instead, It's Deliberate Practice. Top Performers Spend More Hours (many More Hours) Rigorously Practicing Their Craft.

Clearly, Politics Is A Team Sport. Trump Is Not So Much Of A Team Player.

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

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.

That Is The Job Of The Catholic Church, To Be A Balance To The Materialistic Drives Of Our Culture And Of Economy.

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.

People Used To Complain That Selling A President Was Like Selling A Bar Of Soap. But When You Buy Soap, At Least You Get The Soap. In This Campaign, You Just Get Two Guys Telling You They Really Value Cleanliness.

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