I thought I'd start with a question about the relationship between ideas and the world of affairs.

You've devoted real time in your life to studying thinkers like Hobbes, Klausowitz, Marx, others.

Why do these thinkers matter? How do these ideas matter? How are they relevant to those who want to think about the real strategic challenges that America faces and the world faces?

So I think there are a couple of reasons, and I've touched on these over the course of the past few days.

One is because we need to understand how they influence other people, because these thinkers and the various ways in which they are

interpreted and the ways that the interpretations interact really do shape the way other people

think about the world. And so it's important to be able to recognize when you are dealing

with someone who is clearly imagining himself or herself to be following in a

particular framework and to be able to recognize that framework and sometimes it can give

you a lot more insight into the rest of their thinking than you would have just based on

your conversation that can be misleading also but's helpful. But I think it's probably

more important because it's an opportunity to require us to be self-reflective and to think

hard about how we see the world, both in terms of these fundamental assumptions, but also in

terms of how we actually process it and think about it.

And I think that that is so critical and it's just not something that people think about

enough.

No one, no human being makes decisions on the basis of reality. Every human, makes decisions on the basis of reality.

Every human being makes decisions on the basis of his or her perception of reality.

That's the way we're built.

And if you don't understand the lens, the perceptual lens through which you are seeing the world,

then you don't, and of course that's impossible

to do that fully, but if you don't try, then you won't understand the biases in your own

...