Maybe there is something in the tea–this habit that Tea Party candidates have, on election night, of misquoting the nation’s founding fathers. Just now, in a rousing victory speech, Kentucky’s newest senator, Rand Paul, announced, “Thomas Jefferson wrote, ‘That government is best that governs least.’” Except, no. He didn’t. Henry David Thoreau did. According to [...]
At the end of her victory speech Tuesday night, Christine O’Donnell quoted Thomas Jefferson. “When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.” (See here at 12:11) You can buy that quote online on everything from bumper stickers to refrigerator magnets to hooded sweatshirts, often with [...]
Walter Russell Mead, usually a very fine foreign policy thinker, has a piece in the new issue of Foreign Policy that sort of compares Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter…and to Thomas Jefferson in his attitudes about America’s place in the world. I don’t find it very convincing. Here’s Mead’s definition of a Jeffersonian foreign policy: [...]
