We may casually talk of all sorts of new programs and 'stimulus,' but the vast trillion-dollar collective national debt and rising annual deficits will insidiously hamstring almost everything we plan to do.
I think the Democrat Party is taking its cue from the media. When the media has a narrative, whether it's the use of profanity, the Democratic Party follows it.
Unhappy voters thought the anemic economy, Obamacare, the collapse of U.S. foreign policy, the scandals in government, and the incompetent handling of everything from the Islamic State to Ebola were the only real issues. Democrats' refusal to acknowledge them did not make these failures go away.
Of course, the Clintons are not only corrupt but cynical as well. They accept that the progressive media, the foundations, the universities, the bureaucracies, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley honor power more than trendy left-wing politics; they well understand that their fans will, for them, make the necessary adjustments to contextualize Clinton criminality or amorality.
There's just no - nothing like this country, which is the only, really, multiracial country that's tried to share in a common culture in the history of civilization that's pulled it off. A lot of the times, we want perfection. If we're not perfect, we're not good.
Donald Trump, he didn't dismantle Eastern European missile defense. He didn't go to Geneva and press a plastic red button. He didn't make fun of Romney for saying Russia was an existential enemy. He didn't have a hot mic exchange with a Russian President saying that he would be more flexible with the Russians after the elections.
After three elections, voters finally caught on that Obama's faults were not in the stars, but in himself. They apparently tired of the usual distractions from a dismal presidential record.
Even in its third century, America is still the most meritocratic nation in the world.
It's radical Islamic terrorism. And yet, when you see the last eight years, something's gone wrong to call it violent extremism or man-caused disasters. It would be as if we were looking at [Adolf] Hitler in the 1930s. And we were afraid to say that he was a Nazi.
Almost every key indicator of the current economy - unemployment, deficits, housing, energy - argues that Obama's reactionary all-powerful statist approach has only made things far worse.
I think there's a group of students - whether it's the micro-aggression or the safe space or the trigger warning that garner a lot of attention - but that the fundamental issues that they're more interested in are - and I'll be very frank here - how much money do I pay for a unit? And what is that unit going to do for me when I'm graduating?And even though this is mostly in a progressive landscape, they're asking questions that have not been asked of the university. And the university can't supply answers to them.
Americans spend more money on Botox, face lifts and tummy tucks than on the age-old scourges of polio, small pox and malaria.
We have had raucous moments in our history. And I think we're in one now. But it's not going to endanger the future of democracy.
Even Hollywood millionaires are now clamoring for legal protections for their illegal-alien nannies and gardeners, though such elites would hardly countenance a similar legal laxity that would allow foreign film technicians, screenwriters, and actors to flood southern California to work in their industry for a fourth of their own pay.
Our institutions, if they do not erode entirely, can survive periods of decadence brought on by our material success, eras when the whole notion of civic militarism seems bothersome, and in which free speech is used to focus on our own imperfections without concern for the ghastly nature of our enemies.
In the case of [Donald] Trump, he was able to tell people that elites live in gated communities, where they have walls around their home.
The American people are not naifs who yearn for isolationism, but they are starting to ask some hard questions about the way we have been doing business for 50 years, and it may well be time to grant the French, Canadians, Germans, Turks, South Koreans, and a host of others their wishes for independence from us: polite friendship - but no alliances, no bases, no money, no trade concessions, and no more begging for the privilege of protecting them.
It is a hard thing for intellectuals to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it.
I think people are beating each other up in the halls of Congress, as they did in the late 1850s.
[People] are alike in a sense that the Bernie Sanders anger at Hillary Clinton was that she was a so-called progressive and yet had managed to make $125 million.
Often, the pretexts for starting a war are not real shortages of land, food or fuel, but rather perceptions - like fear, honor and perceived self-interest.
This is something that Donald Trump has been very effective at exploiting because throughout our history, one of the things that was important to galvanize the country against a perceived threat has been philology.
What is about Palin that drives the elite, especially elite women, crazy? Great looks? That Middle-America accent? The 5 kids and he-man husband? The lack of a powerful father or spouse who could jump-start her 'feminist' career with money, contacts, and influence? That Idaho BA? The wink? The charisma and, indeed, sensuality so lacking in her angry critics?
Obama's immigration legacy will be the juxtaposition of his serial insistence that he was not a king or an emperor, and could not contravene the Constitution by granting a blanket amnesty, with his efforts to do just that when it was no longer politically inexpedient. I don't think a president has ever quite so habitually warned the country of the dangers that would soon emanate from himself.
If I talk to rural people where I live - mostly Hispanic but also poor white - they're not sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement.
