Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time tells the story of a cosmologist whose speech is interrupted by a little old lady who informs him that the universe rests on the back of a turtle. Ah, yes, madame, the scientist replies, but what does the turtle rest on? The old lady shoots back: You can't trick me, young man. It's nothing but turtles, turtles, turtles, all the way down.

The strongest continuous thread in America's political tradition is skepticism about government.

The most important business of one generation is the raising of the next generation. Nothing else you do in life will be as deeply satisfying.

Freedom is the silence of the law.

In the lexicon of the political class, the word 'sacrifice' means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it.

World War II was the last government program that really worked.

Obama entered the presidency trailing clouds of intellectual self-regard. His carefully cultivated persona was of a uniquely thoughtful, judicious, deliberative, evidence-driven man comfortable with complexity. The protracted consideration of Keystone supposedly displayed these virtues. Now, however, it is clear that his mind has always been as closed as an unshucked oyster.