Two young whippersnappers interview him in this podcast. They try to make the case that conservatives need to use government to address various problems. To my ear, he absolutely destroys them.
Two young whippersnappers interview him in this podcast. They try to make the case that conservatives need to use government to address various problems. To my ear, he absolutely destroys them.
I was rather amused at the interviewers bemoaning the potential “threat” to democracy for Facebook (et. al.) to influence elections, and that “government” should intercede to thwart their “power”.
That, shortly after the interviewers also bemoaned the loss of influence of conventional newspapers. I guess newspapers and “journalists” never ever sought to influence elections.
No audio. But I looked at his book reviews for this:
The Conservative Sensibility
The founders recognized natural rights, their grea accomplishment and that implies limited government. He failed o mention the period between the Declaration and the Constitution in which the founders mostly floundered. Then we fail to understand that the Post Civil War amendments we a bit bizarre, and cause great confusion, but they have equal rating to the first ten, in fact, over rule.
Not to mention the founders left a couple of contradictions built in, like extremely large states and very tiny ones, which naturally cause violations of natural rights. Some thought the right of secession was natural.
George places too high a bet on the founders.
Just finished listening to it, I found myself agreeing with Will more often than not too. Interesting that this — whether government should have an industrial policy or subsidize newspapers or break up the big tech companies — is the debate going on in the “new right” (as the podcast interviews referred to themselves a few times). Just doesn’t sound all that conservative.
I think this is an example of the what you talked about a few days ago re: conservatives building an intellectual framework around the Trump presidency. Looking back at that post now it seems like Will said it best himself. “They call themselves conservatives, perhaps because they loathe progressives, although they seem not to remember why.”
I’ll take a stab at this. The progressives they dislike are not the progressives that Will grew up with. So they’re conservative because they aren’t into IdPol (or at least an IdPol that doesn’t make room for THEIR IdPol, in the case of the further right). Even more miserably, they hate progressives BECAUSE progressives hate them. It’s not an abstract axe to to grind with disembodied debates over the size and role of government; it’s become personal, and embodied. White male classical liberals are being scrutinized for the white male part, not the classical liberal part. This makes the act of carrying on with 20th century ideological disputes look like you’ve got your head in the sand.
And it’s interesting what this turn toward race and gender does to many of these folk: make old school materialist, political economic leftism look good in comparison. So they’ve begun to be INTO it because the modern left is OUT of it. I don’t know how much of this interest is in good faith. Are they trying to out-left the left on its own historical terms and wed woke to being a capitalist tool? Or are they genuinely having a change of opinion away from free market thought? And even then, is it because they just have contrarian personalities, and in THEIR social circles liking capitalism has become dull and routine?
No doubt Mr. Will won the debate. But if one believes Cowen/Gordon/Thiel that technological progress has slowed or stopped, then the world really is more zero-sum that Mr. Will imagines.