Amity Shlaes

When you do something moral and upright and wander off by yourself, well, everyone doesn't always follow you, do they, right? You pat yourself on your sanctimonious back but it doesn't mean the crowd rewards you for doing what you think is right.

Grades can matter, especially for those students and parents who live for the next round of applications to graduate or professional schools. But there's a problem with the grade emphasis. Math or science graduates earn more than students majoring in the humanities.

Politicians generally act as if there is no cost to reconnecting with voters by building new New Deals. But the whole exercise of writing law out of New Deal nostalgia is a form of national narcissism. Call it New Deal narcissism.

I doubt very much that the chief executives of any of the Fortune 500 corporations can name five edible plants, five native grasses, or five migratory birds within walking distance of their homes, or name the soil series upon which their house sits. And I would contend that if you don't know where you are, you are in fact nowhere at all.