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" Did you loathe and detest the Bush administration? If so, you'd probably say its ideas were horrible and their execution worse. Did you not loathe and detest the Bush administration? In that case, you might say its ideas were pretty good - only the execution often left something to be desired. "

Bret Stephens

Say

Ideas

Good

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" Food insecurity is not remotely the same as hunger. "

" I am sorry that Mr. Cheney, and every other supporter of enhanced interrogation techniques, has to defend the practices as if they were torture. They are not. "

" 'Character Doesn't Count' has become a de facto G.O.P. motto. 'Virtue Doesn't Matter' might be another. But character does count, and virtue does matter, and Trump's shortcomings prove it daily. "

" 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. "

" The people we need to hear from most are the ones who make themselves heard least - except, of course, on Election Day. "

" The United States can only lead a world that's prepared to follow. "

Bret Stephens

United States

World

" Censoriously asserting one's moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts. "

" Perhaps if there were less certitude about our climate future, more Americans would be interested in having a reasoned conversation about it. "

Bret Stephens

Having

Conversation

" The supposedly petty sexual harassment that so many women have to endure, from Hollywood studios to the factory floor at Ford, is a national outrage that needs to end. Period. "

" I almost never listen to radio or watch political talk shows, especially if I happen to be on them. "

" Demanding abrupt and expensive changes in public policy raises fair questions about ideological intentions. "

" My office-hour reading is fairly ad hoc: I generally read whatever seems relevant to what I'm editing, writing, or thinking about writing. "

" The more Mr. Trump traduces the old established lines of decency, the more he affirms his supporters' most shameless ideological instincts. "

Bret Stephens

Old

Decency

" Social movements rarely succeed if they violate our gut sense of decency and moral proportion. "

" 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'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. "

" I am not sorry the CIA went to the edge of the law in the aftermath of 9/11 to prevent further mass-casualty attacks on the U.S. "

" We live in a world in which data convey authority. But authority has a way of descending to certitude, and certitude begets hubris. "

" The candidacy of Donald Trump is the open sewer of American conservatism. "

" I wear two hats at the 'Wall Street Journal': one as a columnist, the other as the editor responsible for our editorial pages in Asia and Europe. "

" Movements that hector and punish rather than educate and reform have a way of inviting derision and reaction. "

" I don't read 'Vanity Fair,' whose millionaire-fashionista-liberal shtick I find repellent. "

" All societies make necessary moral distinctions between high crimes and misdemeanors, mortal and lesser sins. "

" In place of presidential addresses, stump speeches, or town halls, we have Trump's demagogic mass rallies. In place of the usual jousting between the administration and the press, we have a president who fantasizes on Twitter about physically assaulting CNN. "