We still are America though. We're still a country that is a country of social mobility. We're still a country of immigrants. We're still a country with common ancestors. And reviving the civics of America and the idea that we're going to be united, at least not right now, but in some common future, and talking in that hopeful way that Martin Luther King did, that Abraham Lincoln did, seems to me that's the way.
David BrooksI 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.
David BrooksIf there is a series of attacks like that or, God forbid, if ISIS is really sending soldiers across Europe and maybe across the world for a barrage of these things, then the political climate is revolutionized here. And maybe the [Donald] Trump speech will look like a precursor to a climate that we're all about to walk into.
David BrooksThe thing that should most concern us is a shift in American foreign policy. We have had a bipartisan belief in American foreign policy based on the post-World War II institutions that believed in democratic global world, which Russia and the Soviet Union was often seen as hostile to. And most Republicans and Democrats have always basically believed in this world order. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and maybe Marine Le Pen do not agree with this basic structure of the world.
David BrooksWe 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?
David Brooks