It is interesting that liberals don't mind a strong faith at all. When it's their guy with a strong faith - whether it's Jimmy Carter or Woodrow Wilson or Harry Truman - that's just great. FDR inscribing Bibles and sending them to the troops. God bless him! But when a Republican president cites Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher, as George W. Bush did on a famous occasion, then, well, the liberals cry out that [Tomás de] Torquemada is on the loose and warn gravely of the coming Inquisition.

Throughout American history our presidents have invoked our nation's founding fathers. This is particularly true of recent presidents.

I was disappointed in how [Bill] Clinton, like [Jimmy] Carter, used the founders to argue for huge expansions in federal power, clearly beyond what the founders could have ever conceived.

Reagan didn't want to wear his faith on his sleeve in a political way. Reagan thought that was egregious, and he was first turned off by it in the 1976 campaign when he thought Jimmy Carter was doing it. Reagan simply did not want ever to appear to be using faith for political purposes.

Frankly, neither president [Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter] was an inspiring figure; so, maybe their lack of inspiration by the founders shouldn't surprise us.

Many of these failures can be laid at the feet of the awful state of American higher education, and especially the way in which our secular universities have divorced their instruction from timeless truths like faith and freedom. Many of the professors at these places plainly don't respect the founders and, in particular, the religious foundation of the founders.

When Reagan was outspoken about his faith it was usually for a purpose, but never for getting votes.