People From California

"My @HooverInst colleague @SWAtlasHoover has consistently warned that government must follow science, not politics, in doing the least amount of harm to its people. It's ironic that criticism directed at him has been done so in an unscientific fashion."

"Old-boy networks, alumni giving, affirmative action, sports, and diversity have pretty much put an end to classical meritocratic admissions. That decline of standards in admissions is perversely ironic, because at about the same time, a new campus ethos of grade inflation was predicated on the self-important notion that if you were smart enough to get into Princeton or Harvard, then Harvard and Princeton would make the necessary adjustments and concessions to make sure you graduated. The result of self-congratulation is that a Stanford graduate now usually knows less history than his Hillsdale counterpart. A successful self-made businessman can know a lot more about the economy than does a Harvard M.B.A."

"[O]n most of the major issues of the last 40 years, what we were told by economists, foreign-policy experts, pundits, and the media has proven wrong — and doubly wrong given the emphases placed on such assertions by the supposedly better-educated professional classes."

"Free-market economics and tolerance for Chinese violations of trade and commercial protocols did not result in either the liberalization or the democratization of China. Over the past two decades, we have been told that the Japanese, the European Union, and the Chinese successively would eclipse America with their respective superior paradigms."

"There is no end of history. Instead, civilization is a constant fight to embrace what has worked for the common good through the ages—and to reject what in the past has failed abysmally."

"In truth, elite education has become a cattle brand. It signifies lots of things other than knowledge: for some, politically correct certification; for others, good test scores and grades that got them in; for a few, later entry into the alumni ranks of high business, law, academia, government, and the media."

"Every problem has a resolution — but often not a good one."

"A Latino-American undergraduate who is a student of Shakespeare is not "culturally appropriating" anyone’s white-European legacy, but instead seeking transcendence of ideas and a common humanity. Asian-Americans are not “overrepresented” at premier campuses. Their high-profile presence should be praised as a model, not punished as aberrant by number-crunching bureaucrats. African-Americans who excel in physics and engineering are not “acting white” but finding the proper pathways for their natural talents. Being one-half Southeast Asian or three-quarters white is not the touchstone to one’s essence and is irrelevant to one’s character and conduct. No one is impinging on anyone’s culture when blacks dye their hair blond, or when blondes prefer to wear cornrow braids. Campuses desperately need unity czars, not diversity czars. Otherwise, we will end up as 50 separate and rival nations — just like other failed states in history whose diverse tribes and races destroyed themselves in a Hobbesian dog-eat-dog war with one another."

"[W]e need to develop a new racial sense that we are so intermarried and assimilated that cardboard racial cutouts are irrelevant. Our new racialism must be seen as a reactionary and dangerous return to 19th-century norm of judging our appearance on the outside as more valuable than who we are on the inside."

"For some reason, contemporary America believes that it can reject its uniquely successful melting pot to embrace a historically dangerous and discredited salad-bowl separatism. Is there any evidence from the past that institutionalizing sects and ethnic grievances would ensure a nation’s security, prosperity, and freedom? America’s melting pot is history’s sole exception of e pluribus unum inclusivity: a successful multiracial society bound by a common culture, language, and values. But this is a historic aberration with a future that is now in doubt..."

"It is growing harder and harder to equate elite university branding with proof of knowledge. Barack Obama, another Harvard Law graduate, proved this depressing fact a number of times when he asserted that the Maldives were the Falklands, "corpsmen" was pronounced with a hard p, Austrians spoke a language called Austrian, there were 57 states, and Hawaii was in Asia."

"It is time to step back from the apartheid brink..."

"As a general rule, whatever Europe is now doing, we should do the opposite — for our very survival in an increasingly scary world."

"America was born as an immigrant nation. It went through many periods of nearly unlimited immigration, coupled with xenophobic backlashes when particular groups — Germans, Jews, Irish, Mexicans, or Poles — came in such numbers and so abruptly that the traditional powers of assimilation were for a time overwhelmed. But the eras of ethnic ghettoes and tribal separatism were usually brief, given the inclusive popular culture and official government efforts to overwhelm identification with the home country."

"War itself is not a mere science but a more fickle sort of thing, often subject to fate or chance, being an entirely human enterprise..."

"So far, America has beaten the odds and remained multiracial rather than multicultural, thereby becoming the most powerful nation in the world. We should remember that diversity is an ornament, but unity is our strength."

"The masters of the universe of Silicon Valley did not, as promised, bring us new-age tranquility, but rather only greater speed and intensity to do what we always do. Trolling, doxing, and phishing were just new versions of what Jesus warned about in the Sermon on the Mount. Spiritual transcendence is the timeless water of life; technology is simply the delivery pump. We confused the two. That water can be delivered ever more rapidly does not mean it ever changes its essence. High tech has become the great delusion."

"Vladimir Putin is a thug and a killer who in the grand tradition of Russian autocracy has no intention ever of holding free elections."

"In a racially diverse society, it makes sense to phase out state sanction for the battle flag — as South Carolina governor Nikki Haley advocated yesterday, in calling on the state legislature to vote for the removal of the battle flag that has been flying over the grounds of the state capitol..."

"New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is the most prominent athlete to embrace veganism, crediting his mostly plant-based diet for allowing him to play at an MVP level into his 40s. He made the change starting in 2014, and detailed his approach in his 2017 book, The TB12 Method ."

"Do you know how many NFL players are switching over to plant-based diets? I see it all the time! Look no further than the very best, Tom Brady."

"Why do i continue getting daily pliability? Because I want to play football for as long as possible. I love my sport. I love my teammates. I love what i do... to me, sustained peak performance means doing what i want to do, and what I love to do, for as long as I can."

"You can make life a lot harder for yourself by focusing on negative things in your path or making excuses for why things didn't go your way. Or, you can refuse to take things personally, let them go, learn from them, and become the best version of yourself. It's a choice. It's actually your choice. If I throw an interception or have a bad day or make a bad business decision, by staying in that place I will just make things worse."

"Wisdom, someone said, is about knowing the difference between the things you can control and the things you can't. Today, if things go my way, great; and if they don't, that's okay, too, since I always have the chance to overcome them in the future. Whenever my team loses a game, it's an opportunity to learn something. A game is always an experiment."

"I believe that what we get out of our bodies is a direct result of what we put in. I (mostly) follow a plant-based diet of whole foods that helps my body stay in balance and limits additional inflammation. I try to surround myself with positive people, and I work to minimize distractions whenever possible. My lifestyle has helped me stay physically and mentally fit."

"I have always believed the sport of football is an 'all-in' proposition — if a 100% competitive commitment isn't there, you won't succeed, and success is what I love so much about our game. There is a physical, mental and emotional challenge EVERY single day that has allowed me to maximize my highest potential. And I have tried my very best these past 22 years. There are no shortcuts to success on the field or in life. This is difficult for me to write, but here it goes: I am not going to make that competitive commitment anymore. I have loved my NFL career, and now it is time to focus my time and energy on other things that require my attention. I've done a lot of reflecting the past week and have asked myself difficult questions. And I am so proud of what we have achieved. My teammates, coaches, fellow competitors, and fans deserve 100% of me, but right now, it's best I leave the field of play to the next generation of dedicated and committed athletes."

"When things don't go your way—or, rather, what you don't think of as your way—there can be a variety of opportunities that may not be obvious in the moment but that through hard work, preparation, and persistence can present themselves over time and make you better."

"To be honest, Tom Brady is an influencer there because of the stuff he talks about, and how healthy he is."

"The beginning of the end of Trump’s presidency arrived on March 11, 2020, when he addressed the nation for the first time on the subject of the pandemic and showed himself to be completely out of his depth. The virus was a fact that Trump couldn’t lie into oblivion or forge into a political weapon—it was too personal and frightening, too real."

"Monopoly of public policy by experts—trade negotiators, government bureaucrats, think tankers, professors, journalists—helped create the populist backlash that empowered Trump."

"Trump’s legacy includes an extremist Republican Party that tries to hold on to power by flagrantly undemocratic means, and an opposition pushed toward its own version of extremism."

"In a sense, Americans expected a degree of fabrication from their leaders. After Jimmy Carter, in his 1976 campaign, promised, 'I’ll never lie to you,' and then pretty much kept his word, voters sent him back to Georgia. Ronald Reagan’s gauzy fictions were far more popular."

"Trump’s lies will linger for years, poisoning the atmosphere like radioactive dust."

"It’s hard to build a narrative around actions not taken, disasters possibly averted, hard realities accommodated. The story of what didn’t happen isn’t an easy one to tell."

"Trump’s barrage of falsehoods—as many as 50 daily in the last fevered months of the 2020 campaign—complemented his unconcealed brutality. Lying was another variety of shamelessness. Just as he said aloud what he was supposed to keep to himself, he lied again and again about matters of settled fact—the more brazen and frequent the lie, the better."

"More than any modern President, Barack Obama had a keen sense of the limits of American power—and of his own."

"Barack Obama was always better at explaining the meaning of democracy than at fighting its opponents."

"At the heart of Obama’s narrative was a belief that progress, in the larger scheme of things, was inevitable, and this belief underscored his position on every issue from marriage equality to climate change. His idea of progress was neither the rigid millennial faith of Woodrow Wilson nor Bush’s shallow God-blessed optimism. It was human-scale and incremental."

"After Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the burden of proof is on anyone who would make the case for military action as a force for good."

"Progressives find it hard to imagine that there are others who in good faith don’t want the better world they’re offering and will fiercely resist it."

"America under Trump became less free, less equal, more divided, more alone, deeper in debt, swampier, dirtier, meaner, sicker, and deader."

"Barack Obama was a writer before he became a politician, and he saw his Presidency as a struggle over narrative."

"[Vegetarian lifestyle] made me feel great. I still feel young, totally healthy. I’ve fought in the sport for many years and I feel like it’s something that’s helped me tremendously. But I’ve never eaten meat, so I can’t compare the two and say, ‘This is what it does better.’ But all the people I know who have gone from eating meat to not eating meat say they feel much better."

"Would you support public executions of anyone who helps a child transition? This would include doctors, therapists, teachers, guidance counselors, etc"

"Thailand’s entire economy is based off of sex tourism The men are so demoralized and emasculated many even become women The youth need a nationalist party to expel foreigners and shut down whore houses How can the men sit back and allow the world to come to abuse their women"

"All throughout high school and college everyone told me I couldn’t be an athlete [as a vegetarian], so I wanted to prove them wrong. … Being a vegetarian is great. I have always grown up this way, so it’s not even something I really think about too much. I think a lot of people have to make the decision whether they want to do it or not, but for me it’s been easy; I never even really thought about eating meat, it’s something that always seemed a little gross to me, especially with the way animals are treated and what not. The older I got, the more I started doing a little research, and started realizing all the health benefits as well."

"People can see the achievement and how hard work leads to it."

"We are role models to a lot of young people, not just African Americans and soldiers."

"From a 2011 blog post, quoted at Openmatt.org"

"They're always telling me I'm too angry"