And on this issue of the Shia in Iraq, I think there's been a certain amount of, frankly, Terry, a kind of pop sociology in America that, you know, somehow the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular.

The media claimed to be non-partisan, centrist. It's not been that way for a lot of history.

Leo Strauss's discoveries in the history of political philosophy had the effect of liberating his students from the yoke of contemporary thought.

I am on the whole a defender of the current, despite being a conservative. I mean, I think things are better than when I was younger.

I think the whole dynamic is different. Whereas in [Barack] Obama's case, even though there was no incumbent, he was able to run against eight years of Bush-Cheney and a Republican Congress, and everyone was tired of everything. He was able to benefit from that.

The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.

I was "Never Trump." But it turned out never republican was really the theme of this election.