"Looking at societies that created prosperity all the way up to the current-day success of the United States, the same factors responsible for their successes keep coming up: When the common people are free to be creative and productive, societies prosper. Nothing more is required. And of the decline of such societies? Invariably, the rise of an intellectual class -- which critiques what the common people have created with little understanding of that process -- brings on the decline."
-from a review of Bill Greene's Common Genius

"The federal government should do only those things specifically called for in the Constitution. All others shall remain with the states or the people ... The federal government has taken on functions it was never intended to perform and which it does not perform well. There should be a planned, orderly transfer of such functions to states and communities."
-Ronald Reagan