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" Sometimes when I listen to fellow progressives, I wonder if the only lesson we took away from the '04 elections is that politics is a word game. "

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" In the end, arguing about affirmative action in selective colleges is like arguing about the size of a spigot while ignoring the pool and the pipeline that feed it. Slots at Duke and Princeton and Cal are finite. "

" Here's a proposal, offered only partly in jest: no resident of the United States, whether born here or abroad, should get to be a citizen until age 18, at which time each such resident has to take a test. "

" The next time someone uses denial of citizenship as a weapon or brandishes the special status conferred upon him by the accident of birth, ask him this: What have you done lately to earn it? "

" Great numbers of Asian Americans do not fit the model minority or 'tiger family' stereotypes, living instead in multigenerational poverty far from the mainstream. "

" Many smart folks seem to think that if you just get your metaphors and messages right, you'll win. That if you start describing what you favor as a 'moral value' - 'affordable health care is a moral value' etc., - then you'll appeal to red-state voters. "

" Conservatives forget that citizenship is more than a thing to withhold from immigrants. Progressives forget it's more than a set of rights. "

" I know many people on the left are suspicious of words like Americanization. To them, it can sound like a cover for white privilege and warmongering. It suggests arrogance and groupthink. But these connotations are not fixed. It is in our power to reshape them by recalling the best of America. "

" You want to defend citizenship? Don't persecute or isolate those without papers. Just live like a citizen. That'd be a first-class way to be American. "

" The Boomers have modeled a set of bad habits, and one grand gesture is not going to unwind all those bad habits. "

" As it stands now, those of us who are lucky enough to be citizens by birth don't have to do much. Very little is asked of us. "

" After watching my first World Series in 1977, I wanted to be Reggie Jackson. I bought a big Reggie poster. I ate Reggie candy bars. I entered a phase during which I insisted on having the same style of glasses Reggie had: gold wire frames with the double bar across. "

" Race in America has always centered on our mutual agreement not to see each other. White or non-white. Black or non-black. Mongoloid, Hindoo. We've always bought into to the crudest, humanity-denying forms of sorting. "

" Republicans say they want citizenship to truly mean something. Let's be equal-opportunity about it and test everyone, including those very Republicans and others whose forbears came here generations ago. "

" Much of our national debate proceeds as if China and America were locked in a zero-sum game in which one's loss is precisely the other's gain. "

" America is exceptional: but because it yields the likes of Obama, not the likes of Bush. "

" Like the 'little emperors' of one-child China, too many Boomers were taught early that the world was made (or saved) for their comfort and enjoyment. They behaved accordingly, with a self-indulgence that was wholly rational, given their situation. "

" True fans of the Constitution, like true fans of the national pastime, acknowledge the critical role of human judgment in making tough calls. We don't expect flawless interpretation. We expect good faith. We demand honesty. "

" You cannot mistake Bush's clarity of purpose. He believes in a story about freedom and opportunity that makes his followers feel like they aren't just ticking their days down but are part of something larger than themselves. "

" From the right, you get demagogues shouting about brown-skinned anchor babies and clamoring to deport the undocumented. From the left, you get advocacy for the oppressed but otherwise, when it comes to national civic identity, mainly silence. "

" Why does an iPhone cost only a couple hundred dollars? Because, as the stage performer Mike Daisey depicted in an arresting one-man show called 'The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,' Apple's shiniest products are made by a shadowy company in China called Foxconn. "

" My grandfather was a general in the Nationalist Chinese Air Force during World War II, and I grew up hearing the pilot stories and seeing pictures of him in uniform. "

" Jeremy Lin is the only Asian American in the NBA today and one of the few in any professional U.S. sport. His arrival is surely leading other talented Asian American athletes this week to contemplate a pro career. "

" Throughout this country's history there have of course been systematic efforts to create an official underclass. "

" I had heard so much negative talk about our generation, that we're slackers and young fogies, that I knew wasn't true of the people I know. "

" Six decades ago, as Mao's Communists seized power, the question in Washington was, 'Who lost China?' Now, as his capitalist descendants stand astride the world stage and Washington worries about decline, it seems to be, 'Who lost America?' "

" Today, public understanding of our past and our system of government is pitifully low. "

" The Boomers will eventually have to accept that it is not possible to stay forever young or to stop aging. But it is possible, by committing to show up for others in community after community, to earn a measure of immortality. "

" In the end, a new Americanization movement can't just be about listing our privileges and immunities, which we catalog in our laws. It also has to be about reinforcing our duties, which we convey in our habits. "

" When Bryan Price taught me how to throw a changeup, he made me see myself. All my life, I've been the equivalent of a fastball pitcher - trying to use blazing speed and brute force to wow the people around me. "

" Imagine filling a college with the first 1,000 students to get perfect SATs. Whatever the racial composition of that class would be, the notion seems absurd because we know that college in America is supposed to be about creating citizens and leaders in a diverse nation. "