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.

Self-actualization is what educated existence is all about. For members of the educated class, life is one long graduate school. When they die, God meets them at the gates of heaven, totes up how many fields of self-expression they have mastered, and then hands them a divine diploma and lets them in.

It's hard to imagine a party that is not corrupted by hatred.

Bibi Netanyahu, froze the settlements and offered to go toward a two-state solution. The Palestinians didn't take him up on it. Historically, we have had a series of these offers. And the settlements themselves are not the keystone here. It seems to me myopic and bizarre that at the last moment, the Barack Obama administration would surrender the whole balanced array of policies that are obstacles to peace and focus on the one that is most detrimental to Israel.

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.

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.

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.