Conservative Columnist George Will Argues for His Side and Argues for the Other Side, and Still Loses

And It’s So Easy to Win When You Get to Present Your Opponents Case

The Dismal Political Economist has commented before on the intellectual bankruptcy of highly respected (but not by him) Conservative columnist George Will.  Mr. Will has been around for over 30 years, and writes with a lot of big words so he must be smart.  That conclusion is not borne out by examination of any of his columns however.

In his latest barrage of silliness Mr. Will argues that Conservatism is right and Liberalism is wrong with respect to roll of government in the U.S. economic system.  To have this argument Mr. Will has to have someone on the side of Liberalism, as he has taken the side of Conservatism.  So, in a magnanimous gesture Mr. Will has agreed to present the side of Liberalism, so he can refute it.

Here is what Mr. Will presents as the side he argues against.

Everyone knows that all striving occurs in a social context, so all attainments are conditioned by their context. This does not, however, entail a collectivist political agenda.

Such an agenda’s premise is that individualism is a chimera, that any individual’s achievements should be considered entirely derivative from society, so the achievements need not be treated as belonging to the individual. Society is entitled to socialize — i.e., conscript — whatever portion it considers its share. It may, as an optional act of political grace, allow the individual the remainder of what is misleadingly called the individual’s possession.

Now if you are thinking that (A) that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and (B) what is comprehensible is not a position that has ever been expressed by any major political group of Progressives, then you are reading Mr. Will correctly.  Since his argument cannot defeat what those opposed to him are really saying, he has to make up things for them to supposedly have said, even though they never said or believed them.  This is known as the Rush Limbaugh school of argument.

In case you are wondering what it is that Mr. Will is railing against, it is this.  It is the proposition that since economic success is due in part to society and government providing resources like education, infrastructure, national defense, a judicial system etc, then some of that economic success should be reinvested back into that system.  Altogether not a revolutionary thought, in fact it is the philosophy of everyone except the most self-delusional and selfish.

Here is the statement, by Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren that set off Mr. Will

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. . . . You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea — God bless, keep a big hunk of it. (emphasis added) But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Not exactly the Marixist revolution is it, more like the mainstream American political philosophy. 

Mr. Will is opposed to government regulation, and so he translates what everyone else sees as a rather non-controversial statement into his own ranting interpretation.

Many members of the liberal intelligentsia, that herd of independent minds, agree that other Americans comprise a malleable, hence vulnerable, herd whose “false consciousness” is imposed by corporate America. Therefore the herd needs kindly, paternal supervision by a cohort of protective herders. This means subordination of the bovine many to a regulatory government staffed by people drawn from the clever minority not manipulated into false consciousness.

Because such tutelary government must presume the public’s incompetence, it owes minimal deference to people’s preferences. These preferences are not really “theirs,” because the preferences derive from false, meaning imposed, consciousness. This convenient theory licenses the enlightened vanguard, the political class, to exercise maximum discretion in wielding the powers of the regulatory state.

One truly wonders if Mr. Will, while he takes his FDA approved medicines, invests in SEC monitored securities, rides in his safe-by-regulation auto, drinks tap water with no concerns of illness and so forth really understands the irony of his position.  That is, if when he re-reads what he wrote he can even understand it.