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.

Trade has suddenly become massively unpopular. I think that's massively unjust. I think free trade has been wonderful for America on balance.

Civility is the natural state for people who know how limited their own individual powers are and know, too, that they need the conversation.

I wouldn't say philosophy and theology are dead. Brain science doesn't invent new philosophies but it helps remind us which of our existing philosophies are more true.

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.

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.

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.