The Death of Politics Quotes

“Moderation does not mean that truth is always found equidistant between two extreme positions, nor does it mean that bold steps aren’t necessary to advance moral ends, nor that political actors eschew strong and principled convictions.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“Try to interact with people who have a different political perspective than you do—and when you do, listen to understand, not just to refute.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“But something happened along the way. People who in the past viewed news outlets as biased now view them as fraudulent.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“The great scholar and senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said decades ago, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“No president has ever been quite as disdainful of knowledge, as indifferent to facts, as untroubled by his benightedness. And through his words, the president is not only spreading ignorance; he is glorifying it.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“fear, as a basis for Christian politics, is our enemy, not our friend. It is not our weapon; rather it controls us and eventually can consume us.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“while human beings are rational and capable of moral excellence, they are also driven by appetites and detestations, so laws are important checks on both.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men,”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“The way to think about moderation is as a disposition, not as an ideology. Its antithesis is not conviction but intemperance.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“But we can reasonably expect from them competence, good judgment, and integrity; basic knowledge about most issues and mastery of a few; the ability to learn from mistakes; and some degree of commitment to the public interest.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“it is easier to treat issues like immigration, crime, abortion, race, welfare, and religious liberties as part of a broader ideological war than as problems to be thoughtfully addressed—but in the end, treating politics as a form of self-expression derails the serious work of governing. And that work can save millions of lives.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“we should be spurred to put a higher premium on politicians who demonstrate competence and creativity, experience and artistry, wisdom and sound judgment.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“By 2016 we reached an inflection point: only about two in ten Americans trusted the national government, while eight in ten expressed feelings of either frustration or anger with it. Many Americans, furious with the mounting failures and deeply unhappy with the “establishment” candidate (Hillary Clinton), decided it was time to overturn the apple cart. Trust had been breached for long enough. They were mad as hell and weren’t going to take it anymore.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“Freedom of opinion is a farce unless factual information is guaranteed and the facts themselves are not in dispute. In other words, factual truth informs political thought just as rational truth informs philosophical speculation.”61”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“Today there are differences in epistemology, the theory of knowledge that allows us to distinguish facts and justified belief from opinion. As a result, people are increasingly living in their own realities, creating their own facts, writing their own scripts. Facts are to be molded like Play-Doh.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“Nietzsche coined a term, perspectivism, to describe the idea that there is no objective truth, everybody gets to make up their own reality, their own script, their own set of facts, and everything is conditioned to what one’s own perspective is.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“The modus operandi of Trump World is this: If facts exist that are incriminating to Mr. Trump, dismiss the facts. Label them fake news. And go on lying.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“Without truth, a free society cannot operate. Which is why Trump’s rhetoric ought to matter to all of us, and why it is our civic duty to call out his lies in every way we can.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“Without truth, a free society cannot operate. Which is why Trump’s rhetoric ought to matter to all of us,”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“America’s most visible public figure possesses a streak of cruelty that he won’t control, which he promiscuously and proudly displays, and which is amplified by social media.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“Words are not simply descriptive; they can be aspirational. But even more than that, words can help us better understand ourselves. They bind us together. In politics they articulate for us what goals we are trying to reach, so that it is more than just a struggle for power. We reach higher truths through words.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“have in mind will require Christians to make a compelling case for social order and moral excellence, but done with a generosity of spirit, all the while offering a healing touch, especially to those who are suffering and living in the shadows of society.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“There is no authoritative theological construct in place to check, channel, and refine raw partisanship cloaked in Christian garb.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state,” Martin Luther King Jr. said. “It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“care for the sick, widows, and orphans; welcome strangers and care for outsiders; respect women; and connect to non-Christians.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“The evangelicals I have mentioned are doing more to damage the Christian witness than the so-called New Atheists ever could.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“But Jerry Falwell Sr. gave way to Jerry Falwell Jr., Billy Graham gave way to Franklin Graham, and things are now worse, not better. The Trump era has utterly discredited significant parts of the American evangelical movement.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“We believe we have worth because we are created in God’s image, he said. But even more basic is the declaration that we have value simply because God values us.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

“Every generation has to decide whether it will continue America’s noble experiment in ordered liberty or allow the foundation our ancestors built to fracture. Today we are witnessing cracks forming and spreading, due in part to a president who delights in demonization, who himself embodies an ethic of cruelty and selfishness, and whose corruptions are borderless.”
― Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump