Conservatism should be a reality-based philosophy, and the movement will be better off if it recognizes that facts really do matter.

It is harder to explain why free markets create wealth than it is to pander to workers who have been displaced by global competition.

For years, Republicans have effectively outsourced their thought leadership to the loudmouths at the end of the bar. But perhaps the most extreme example of that trend has been the issue of guns, where the party has ceded control to a gun lobby that has built its brand on absolutism.

During dull moments at school, I admit, I not only drew soldiers shooting one another but also tanks, bombers, fighters, and even the occasional space ship with planet-destroying powers.

Money has never been a huge inspiration for me.

The young people I teach now know they are being sold down the river before we even start studying the trends and numbers. That's the toughest part of being a high school economics teacher... being a witness when our children realize that the greatest deficit of all is a deficit of leadership.

It's easy to love yourself when you feel good enough, when you feel special enough, when you're loved enough, when you have enough money, and you're appreciated.

I myself am from a very poor background; I experienced firsthand poverty in this country, and that is not unrelated to my desire, from the moment I became president, to make a priority of poverty reduction in this country.