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I strongly believe that the Second Amendment creates an individual right to possess and use guns for purposes of both hunting and self-defense.
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I love The Matrix, especially the first one.
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Wikipedia works because those who know the truth are usually more numerous and committed than those who believe in a falsehood.
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The fear of loss is an engine of horrors, but also a source of the greatest forms of heroism. There's not a lot of art that puts that in bold letters. It's psychologically very interesting and acute, I think. That's not the central reading, I think, of the New Testament.
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My role in the government was not to think about narratives and consistency with narratives, but think of the human consequences of rules.
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The idea that Taylor Swift would become the giant pop icon of 2015, 2016 - she's really good, but I don't think it's written in the stars.
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A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government.
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There are some lawyers who think of themselves as basically instruments of whoever their clients are, and they pride themselves on their professional craft
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The middle class is not doing well, and trade policy might have something to do with that, and so someone who is going to be fixated on those things, who has a business background, has some appeal.
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I would reject the distinction between a Keynesian moment and a behavioral moment.
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And so it's no surprise that people who object to the death penalty on pure moral grounds also think it has no deterrent effect, and people who like the death penalty on grounds of retribution tend to think it has deterrent effects. They like that, and they believe that. I think with climate change we're seeing very much the same thing where those who deny climate change, they don't like that, and they don't believe it.
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Even though Star Wars is easily read as feminist for its time - and even for now, with Princess Leia's role - people wouldn't make a movie like that in 2016, where the guys are mostly the tough ones, and the women aren't in positions of authority.
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How do things, whether they are movies, or plays, Hamilton, or people, ideas - how do they become transformative or iconic? That is in some ways what the actual Star Wars saga gets at, with the tale of the rise and the fall of the empire and the rise and the fall of Republics.
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My own view is that institutions are a glory, and for all their imperfections, something really to be proud of. It is true that things can be a lot better than they are. It's okay to emphasize that.
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Whatever your gender, you can be a Star Wars fan. Of course I knew it from life before, but the core of enthusiastic female fans is a testimony to the non-gendered nature of the audience.
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Probably, if we looked at Da Vinci or Michelangelo with care, we'd see a historical particularity that the work is not treated as having. It's certainly true of Shakespeare.
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Liberals are sometimes defined as people who can't take their own side in an argument.
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The 'cash for clunkers' program was a big success in part because it gave people the sense that the economy was moving.
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The opening scene in A New Hope, when you see the huge ship, it goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on... that is like a joke of awesomeness.
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There is no proportional representation requirement in the Equal Protection Clause
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There is no reason to believe that in the face of statutory ambiguity, the meaning of federal law should be settled by the inclinations and predispositions of federal judges. The outcome should instead depend on the commitments and beliefs of the President and those who operate under him.
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It's fair to say that there's something retrograde about putting the leader of Star Wars rebellion in the position of "slave in a bikini." There's no question that that's a fair point. But, it is true, and it's kind of remarkable, that at this point in our history, the slave girl, for a time in the bikini, is the one who chokes her captor with her bare hands and using the chain with which he bound her. That's powerful stuff. That's more retributive feminism than I think teenaged boys had ever seen.
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I have talked to Barack Obama about Star Wars recently, in the Oval Office, and he is definitely a fan. Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution creates executive privilege, and as for government regulation and information policy, so too for Star Wars, I will not disclose discussions in private with the President of the United States.
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I think it's a very firm part of human nature that if you surround yourself with like-minded people, you'll end up thinking more extreme versions of what you thought before.