Looking For Actual Scholars

The number of genuine intellectuals in academia goes down every year while the ranks of ersatz scholars grow. Thus, in compiling current wisdom quotes for our website, we find that a minority of them some from academia.

To be fair, wisdom in general is in rather short supply. In fact, 14 of our 44 yearly quote offerings in 2010 came from Ronald Reagan, so timeless is their quality.

Nevertheless, of the remaining 30 truly current current quotes, five came from professors. They were, nonetheless, rather prescient:

~“As long as ‘We the People’ revere our Constitution it cannot harm our national interest, because the Constitution is our national interest, the very content of our Exceptionalism.”—University of Pennsylvania historian Walter A. McDougall at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on July 27, 2010.

~“The Tea Party Movement, otherwise known as the Great Peasant Revolt of 2010, has been greeted by the country’s ruling class with all the sympathy that Voltaire expressed toward the Catholic Church: ‘Kill the infamous thing!’”— Dr. Marvin Folkertsma, political science professor, Grove City College.

~“I’m looking for a Ronald Reagan in 2012. I’ve lived through the 1970s.”—George Washington University professor Henry Nau at the Heritage Foundation on September 30, 2010.

~“Americans are not only against government spending in the abstract but against each particular instance of it in the last two years.”—Claremont McKenna scholar William Voegeli at Hillsdale College Capitol Hill lunch on October 1, 2010.

~“The taxes we rely on most have marginal excess rates of 40 to 50 percent.”—Duke University economist Chris Conover at the Cato Institute on October 13, 2010.

Still and all, we are left wondering, as Peggy Lee did four decades ago, Is that all there is?

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail contact@academia.org