David Brooks

My wife and I have been married for nine years.

And when she looks at a video of me from like 20 years ago, she says, well, I wouldn't have married that guy.

And so I think I've become a little more emotionally open and emotionally vulnerable.

And I think what's changed has not been good, as I said in my final column.

We were a more hopeful country.

We had faith in institutions that was greater.

We had faith in America's role in the world.

We had faith in our alliances.

Barack Obama could run that 2008 campaign filled with idealism and hope.

And he could run against a guy, John McCain, filled with a sense of honor.

And we've lost faith in institutions, we've lost faith in ourselves, and we've lost faith in each other.

And so, to me, one of the reasons, you know, I want to devote more of my life to academia and to teaching young and to writing longer essays is just, I think we have a spiritual and relational and moral crisis we're dealing with.

And I figured I could make some little contribution over there.

You know, I was once at a dinner that Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, had with a bunch of journalists.

And he said, every reform I initiated in my first term turned out exactly backwards from how I expected it to.

And he said, I'm an anti-reform reformer now because it never works.

And that's why I'm a conservative.

And to quote Edmund Burke, you should operate on society the way you would operate on your father.

as humbly, as incrementally, and as delicately as possible.

So I would be for reforming DHS, not tearing it down.