The easily ridiculed, so-so status quo often hides Herculean efforts by those whom we take for granted, and who, working in the shadows, guarantee civilization instead of chaos.

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.

Racial inequality has gotten worse in the last years because any time you have a moribund economy, the people who historically have had more problems getting jobs have suffered. And that, I think, is triggering a lot of the animosity.

Behind every American soldier, dozens of their countrymen tonight sleep soundly — and hundreds more in their shadow abroad will wake up alive and safe.

It is a hard thing for intellectuals to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it.

The easily ridiculed, so-so status quo often hides Herculean efforts by those whom we take for granted, and who, working in the shadows, guarantee civilization instead of chaos.

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.