I grew up in Mexico City at a time when the country was a repressive one-party dictatorship almost wholly dependent on oil revenues.
— Bret Stephens
Generosity is a virtue, but unlimited generosity is a fast route to bankruptcy.
Democrats should have learned in 2016 that what counts in American politics is location, not turnout.
People want leaders. Not ideologues. Not people whose life experiences have been so narrow that they've been able to maintain the purity of their youthful ideals. Not people whose principal contact with political life comes in the form of speeches and sound bites rather than decisions and responsibilities.
Anyone who has been the victim of the social-media furies knows just how distorting and dishonest those furies can be.
We elected Donald J. Trump to keep us jittery and entertained. He's delivered.
The American birthright belongs, potentially, to everyone. This is unprecedented. Other countries accept migrants on the basis of economic necessity or as a humanitarian gesture. Only in America is it the direct consequence of our foundational ideals.
Nearly everyone I know seems to have a well-developed theory as to why this country is past redemption, or almost, and every theory seems almost right.
I get if you're a conservative, and you're saying, I don't know, 'Government shouldn't be mandating what's taught in classrooms,' or, 'Government is too intrusive in our economic life,' well, that's standard conservatism.
There was a time when the conservative movement was led by the likes of Bill Buckley and Irving Kristol and Bob Bartley, men of ideas who invested the Republican Party with intellectual seriousness.
I don't see the point of belonging to a party on the increasingly dubious assumption that it's slightly less bad than the opposition.
I grew up with parents who liked the old line that they didn't leave the Democratic Party - the Democratic Party left them.
It's normal that elections make fierce partisans of many of us. It's normal that Mr. Trump would attract the usual right-wing buffoons to his banners. Normal, also, is that many voters may not be troubled by Mr. Trump's cruder statements when they hear him addressing their deepest economic and social anxieties.
I think Black Lives Matter has some really thuggish elements in it. Look - at the risk of being incredibly politically incorrect, but I guess that's my job - I think that all lives matter. Not least black lives.
Successful nations make a point of trying to learn from their neighbors. The Arab world has been taught over generations only to hate theirs.
I think that for the United States, Hillary Clinton, as awful as I find her, is a survivable event. I'm not so sure about Donald Trump.
It may be a truism that the country cannot be strong abroad unless it is strong at home, but it's also a fact that the country's economic prosperity depends on its security abroad - not only in the core of the liberal democratic world but often well beyond it, too.
Down with politics and the art of the possible; up with pronouncements and the allure of the prophetic: It's the way of demagogues everywhere.
'Democratic socialism' is awful as a slogan and catastrophic as a policy. And 'social democracy' - a term that better fits the belief of more ordinary liberals who want, say, Medicare for all - is a politically dying force. Democrats who aren't yet sick of all their losing should feel free to embrace them both.
No adviser to a president is going to get his way all of the time, but at a minimum, that adviser should be able to defend the tilt of an administration's policy as if it were his own. If not, he should make room for those who can.
The people we need to hear from most are the ones who make themselves heard least - except, of course, on Election Day.
The criterion for racism is either objective or it's meaningless: If liberals get to decide for themselves who is or isn't a racist according to their political lights, conservatives will be within their rights to ignore them.
The American tradition rests on pillars of self-questioning, self-actualization, and disagreement.
Among the events of John McCain's five-and-a-half years of imprisonment and torture in North Vietnam, probably the most heroic, and surely the most celebrated, was his refusal to accept an early release from his captors.
I'm simply here to say guns should be owned by responsible people, and there should be high tests and a high bar to prove your responsibility.
There is something kind of aggressively and inhumanly repetitive about this line that guns are essential to American liberties - hard one to stomach when so many thousands of people are dying every year for this so-called liberty.
Voter fraud is a reality in American elections, but it is typical of the candidate to confuse anecdote with data and turn allegation into conspiracy.
Free trade was once a Republican conviction.
When those of us in the words-making world use the term 'overregulation,' we are mostly putting a name to a concept we rarely experience consciously.
Everything Republicans once claimed to advocate - entitlement reform, free trade, standing up to dictators, encouraging the march of freedom around the world - turns out to be negotiable and reversible, depending on Donald Trump's whims and the furies of his base.
I write my columns pretty carefully.
The Arab world's problems are a problem of the Arab mind, and the name for that problem is anti-Semitism.
When it comes to trade, when it comes to standing up to countries like North Korea, when it comes to standing up to guys like Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump is not a conservative.
Since the end of World War II, U.S. presidents of both parties have recognized that foreign and domestic policy do not have to be pursued at the expense of each other.
Humanitarianism is commendable, but not when you're demanding that others share the burdens and expense.
Liberals always cry wolf.
Before the word 'resignation' became a euphemism for being fired, it connoted a sense of public integrity and personal honor.
Ignore Trump's tweets. Yes, it's unrealistic. But we would all be better off if the media reported them more rarely, reacted to them less strongly, and treated them with less alarm and more bemusement.
Countries we love will inevitably do things we don't like or fail to understand. The same goes for people.
It's easy to deprecate some of the puffery and jingoism that often go with affirmations of 'American greatness.' It's also easy to confuse greatness with perfection, as if evidence of our shortcomings is proof of our mediocrity.
In the scale of American blunders - from the Dred Scott decision to the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s to the tragedy of Vietnam - is the Trump presidency really unique?
I don't think it is impossible to make the case to sensible Americans that far greater restrictions on their so-called gun rights is imperative for public safety. It is an argument we can win.
It's important that Donald Trump and what he represents - this kind of ethnic, quote, 'conservatism,' or populism - be so decisively rebuked that the Republican Party, the Republican voters will forever learn their lesson that they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any way, shape, or form.
I think there's always merit in getting out of our ideological silos and being exposed to points of view with which we don't always agree.
My father's political heroes were Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
Donald Trump is a demagogue. Period. The fervor of his crowds recalls Nasser's Egypt. His convictions are illiberal. His manners are disgusting. His temper is frightening.
Do I think police chiefs, many of which are African-American or Hispanic, wake up and say, 'Let's systemically oppress African-American communities?' No, I don't. Are there instances in which that happens? I'm sure there are.
The hater always suffers more than the object of his hatred.
The United States survives so long as at least one of its major parties is politically and intellectually healthy. I don't think the Republican Party, or I should say the Republican Party as the vehicle for modern American conservative ideas, survives with Donald Trump.
I will never vote for Donald Trump.
