Current Wisdom

“History teaches us that the bigger the government, the smaller the private sector.”—U. S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn at the Free States Foundation’s fifth anniversary, October 12, 2011.

“Congress has the power to regulate commerce; but does it, as here, have the power to create commerce—i.e., to force individuals to engage in interstate commerce by purchasing health care insurance from private providers?”— Edward J. Erler, Professor of Political Science, California State University, San Bernardino, Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar on May 24, 2011, in Dallas, Texas.

“We deal with young men, trying to teach them empowerment; how to become to young men, how to sit up straight when you’re talking to someone, how to look them in the eyes; instead of saying ‘yeah,’ you can say ‘yes’ and ‘no’; about pulling your pants up.”— Darryl Barnes, co-founder of Men Aiming Higher in an interview with Ben Giles in The Washington Examiner, September 26, 2011.

“Some people may escape poverty and low incomes through education, but a problem arises when education becomes the only escape route from those conditions—because that road will very quickly become bottlenecked.”—John Marsh, assistant professor of English at Penn State

“No one is better that the Liberals at avoiding epochal events that they have played little part in.” R. Emmettt Tyrrell, Jr., in the September 2011 issue of The American Spectator.

“It seems to me, however, that we are safer with the government encouraging science teaching than with an administration getting into the humanities.”—Eva Brann, former dean of St. John’s College in Annapolis, in the Summer 2011 issue of the Claremont Review of Books.

“Gulliver (the United States) can’t get up because the Lilliputians (the government) are tying him down.”—Mike Morris, chairman and CEO, American Electric Power Company, Inc., July 19, 2011, The Atlantic forum on The New Work Era.

“Lawyers get paid a little bit more because we can quote a few phrases in Latin.”—U. S. Senator John Warner, D-VA, July 19, 2011, The Atlantic forum on The New Work Era.

“I am totally 100 percent in favor of the free market. We should try it sometime.”—

Jason S. Turner, esq., principal, Swankin & Turner, July 21, 2011.

“Maybe if our presidents had read The Iliad and The Odyssey, we wouldn’t be in Iraq.” John Sexton, president, New York University, Mike Morris, chairman and CEO, American Electric Power Company, Inc., July 19, 2011, The Atlantic forum on The New Work Era.

“Sociologists have identified an emerging new ethnic population of ‘unhyphenated Americans,’ those whites who claim an ‘American’ ancestry, or none at all.”— Brian K. Arbour, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

“The growth of the new international law is the perfect logical culmination of 50 years’ worth of bad ideas from legal academia.”—attorney Walter Olson in his book Schools For Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America.