Current Wisdom

“At least Nixon didn’t spend his retirement advising his party to have more Watergate scandals.” W. James Antle III, in The American Conservative, on the re-emergence of former President George W. Bush.

“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.”—Fidel Castro, September 8, 2010, interview in The Atlantic

I believe that we should pray as if it all depends on God, and work as if it all depends on us.— Morton Blackwell

“Turnout among low-income voters was down while Democratic support among the affluent seems confined to those on public-sector and university payrolls,” veteran political analyst Michael Barone

“For, unlike the ordinary entrepreneur who risks everything on the success of his or her venture, the academic can merely return to the well-salaried security of the classroom upon the failure of an endeavor.”— Jay Schalin of The Pope Center

“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

“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

“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.

“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.

“The U. S. spends more per capita on social programs than honest-to-God Scandinavian welfare states.”—author Steve Hayward in the Summer 2010 Claremont Review of Books.

“It is good because the sun will burn out, the Ohio River will flow backwards, and the cow will jump over the moon 10,000 times before any modern president’s conception is superior to that of the Founders of this nation.”—Rep. Mike Pence, R-Indiana, at Hillsdale College on September 20, 2010.

“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.