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a dot com slash doing our part. We quoted George Well many times over the years, whether it's a book, a column in the Washington Post, or something he said on one of the many talk shows that I've I've watched him on over the years. He's got a new book out called The Conservative Sensibility. I don't know if you like a good blurb on your book when you're an author, but a pretty good blurb from Jonah Goldberg, who we also really like, staggeringly good, easily one of
the best books on American conservatism ever written. And I watched the conversation between George Will and Jonah Goldberg on c SPAN the other day and it was fantastic. I highly recommend it to anybody that has any interest in it, whether you're hate conservatism, is a progressive or your conservative yourself. What a great intellectual, easy to understand conversation. And I think it's safe to say this conversation will pale badly in comparison problem, So enjoy. It's always a pleasure to
speak with George Will. How are you, sir? I thrive, I'm better than the country. Excellent. Well, given the fact that the ideas of limited government and the sacred value of the individual have died. Do you want to talk about baseball? I know more about baseball. Actually, as we talk, I've got the MLB channel on muted in my office that I turn it on at seven in the morning and I turn it off and I leave it six. I could watch baseball highlights all day long. Exactly. Yeah,
So listen. Is the way you mentioned that progressives progressive should be interested in my book because it explains something that should worry them. Nineteen sixty four podcast, My first vote for very Goldwater, to whom the book is dedicated. In nineteen sixty four of the American people said they trusted the government to do the right thing all the time, or almost all the time. Today, that's down to a
sixty point collapse in the prestige of government. Now, since everything progressors want to do depends on a strong state, and a strong government depends upon public confidence in it, they should be seriously worried about what's happened. That's not a minor change, a sixty point collapse in the way people look at government. Well, but at the same time, though, we have this enormous contempt for government, yet you know, the masses of voters want more and more of it.
That's a bit of a disconnect to me. It's called the fancy words for that is cognitive dissiplance. That's holding in your mind with equal fervor and sincerity, flatly incompatible ideas. The political scientists have long argued that the American people are rhetorically con servative and operationally liberal, that they talked like Jeffersonians that government is best to governs the least and all the rest, but they want to be governed
by Hamiltonians, and they certainly got that. Now. Well, the thing I've quoted on you on the most over the many years, because you've been saying this for a long time and it's just so true. What bothers you most is not the gridlock and the polarization and how the parties can't get along and get anything done. It's the thing they do agree on, that we should have more government than we pay for. Both parties seem to be
an agreement on that. I think the political class is far more united by class interests than it is divided by ideology. For all to talk about the discord in our country, and the Lord knows it's room enough. What terrifies me as the consensus, which is that we should have a large, omnipresent, omniprovident, ever more generous welfare state and not pay for it. The public loves this because they get the dollars worth of government and their charged
to eight cents for it. And we shove a fifth of the cost of government off on the unconsenting because unborn future taxpayers will have to service this debt. And the result is that today, under a Republican government, we're running a trillion dollar annual budget deficit at full employment and three growth. Now ask yourself this, what is going to happen when the next procession begins with a trillion dollar budget deficit. Now you may some people say, well,
we're not gonna have any more recessions. I think that if the current president had outlawed the business cycle, his native modesty would not have prevented him from mentioning it. Well, oh boy, So is this a failure of messaging by those of us of a conservative point of view at least in terms of the size and function of government? Um? Is it a just a failure of humanity that's gonna manifest itself over and over again as democracy is mature?
Is there any avoid the slide towards seeing governments as a combination of Mommy and Santa Claus. I think a reckoning is coming, and I blame the leadership class. I don't expect the American people to closely monitor government. They have children to raise, and gutters to claim in the screen door to fix, and just getting on with life. I blame a leadership class that knows that it benefits politically from this constant running of enormous deficites that makes
big government cheaper than it actually is. And the reckoning, when it comes, will not be paid by the political class. It will be paid by the people who understandably we're not paying chose attention, Well, you brought up something the other day in your conversation with Joonah Goldberg that I thought was really good about public choice theory and the way it applies to government workers in government itself. Can
you explain that to us? Yes, a public choice theory, for which James Buchanan of the University vir Ginuine a Nobel Prize as an economist, says simply this. In the private sector, we understand that people try to maximize something, usually their income their wealth. In the public sector, people don't stop behaving like normal interested, aggrandizing people. But in the public sector, instead of maximizing their income, they try
to maximize their power. Which is why government should be looked upon, not sentimentally as a disinterested group of of social scientists. Rather, government should be looked upon as an interested fact in itself. It has its own interests, and it should be treated accordingly, as as with weariness, and we should avoid the sentimentalizing about government. This is what puzzles me about the likes of Elizabeth Warren, who whose
idea content I'd rather like. I mean, I don't like her ideas, but I like the fact that she brings ideas to politics. Here's the problem, he says with some justification that the government has become the plaything of interests. The government is so deeply involved in allocating wealth and opportunity in the United States. Uh, there's another not a mystery wife. Five of the ten wealthiest counties in the United States by per capita incomer in the Washington area.
We don't have any natural resources, We don't make anything except laws and trouble. But so much money slashes through Washington and is directed by Washington that it pays for people to capture the government. And they do capture it, and it's captured by compact, intense, articulate, confident, well lawyered factions. So Elizabeth Warren's right about that. But then she says, inexplicably, what we need to do is make this difficult government bigger.
We need to get it more involved in allocating wealth and opportunity in society. George will Let George will has a brand new book out, The Conservative Sensibility, which is
getting grave reviews in many different quarters. Uh. We were talking about the homeless crisis on the West Coast, or the West Coast bomb explosion as we usually describe it, and one of our theories is that it's it's the natural result of the triumph of emotionalism over realism, the idea that if you're just kind and compassionate and give people everything they need, they will well, I don't know that they'll they'll move into apartments and go away, or
something as opposed to, you know, the more realistic, perhaps not compassionate enough past, where a compages run you out to the edge of town, say I don't know where you're gonna go, but you did, it isn't going to be here, would you agree. There's been a lot of
that on the West Coast. Well, the West Coast is first of all, it's taken progressive policies, meddling with the housing market, trying to achieve various social goals, at least the goals that these people have high density living all the rest, get people out of cars, all that stuff. As a result, you have a shortage of a four sable housing. You do have a good climate, which attracts a lot of people. But also it simply is the case that a welcoming, a well intended, compassionate policy is
going to attract some of these problems. There's a little story in my book by a man named John Cochrane, who's up at the Stanford Hoover Institution and he blogs as the Grumpy Economist. He tells the story he said, a government decided it wanted to get rid of snakes, so it put a bounty on snakes. If you brought in dead snakes, what could go wrong? Hint, He says, snakes are easy to raise, so people went into the snake raising business so they could kill the snakes and
get the bounty. Government when it starts with many of these policies, well, we'll just regulate the housing market. All of a sudden you learned what I called the fatal conceit, the business that government doesn't know as much as the market knows. You begin to realize that society is like a Caulder mobile, or you jiggle something here, and a lot of other things jiggle way over on the other side. So government should reject the progressive analysis, which is as follows.
For us to say the more complex society becomes, the more government or to try to regulate it. It's exactly the reverse. The more complex society becomes, the more government should step aside. Allow market forces to work, because all markets are our information aggregating devices. And they know more
than governments. Now, talking with George will his book The Conservative Sensibility, we're trying pretty hard to stay away from the T word um uh and and really the politics of the day, because once you started on that, people immediately go to the side. So I'd like to make this more more, a little broader in that power has been going to the presidency for several administrations now for quite a while. And and and then just the people's
view of government is the president. The president decides everything. That's the only election I care about. The only person I pay attention to in the news is are we getting the government we deserve? And that effect that you
blame the media, I mean, what's going on there. I blame the media in part and technology in part because once radio came along and made mass communication by the president possible, television wants to being sort of slave to a superficial news gathered an instrument, which the camera is. It wants to be able to appoint the camera at something, and it's easier to do it at the president than
five five members of Congress. When Roosevelt gave his first Franklin Roosevelt gave his first fireside chat on the radio. As president, his first two words were my friends. Now, we're used to this kind of talk, but back then, frankly, it was revolutionary, and people didn't used to think that a president ought to be our friend. The doesn't supposed to take care that the laws are faithfally executed and
their laws made by other people. Presidents were secondary. The presidency is Article two of the Constitution for a reason, and Congress is Article one for a reason. But there you said Congress. Congress has been transferring powers voluntarily and recklessly to presidents for several administrations. It's actually about eighty years. Goes back even further than that, Freddy Teddy Roosevelt said a president should be free to do whatever he wants,
as long as it's not explicitly forgiven. Then along comes from Woodrow Wilson, the first president to criticize the American founding, which he did thoroughly. He said, the whole separation of powers is a mistake, because now we need a government that is nimble and can be wielded by a very strong president. Well, progressive said good, we'd like progressive presidents
wielding our Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt Lyndon Johnson. I don't think they anticipated the current president occupying this, uh, this unleashed office. Hey, by the way, you you've become aware of Tim Sandifer, who is a friend of ours, personal friend of ours. He used to call into our show years ago as Tim the Lawyer and set us straight on various things, and then he became a guest. So he's terrific. He is fantastic national asset. I agree
he is, and hilariously funny too, which is underrated. For George will is on the line. So what do you say to those and this is dovetailing obviously off your previous a couple of sentences, But what do you say to those who advocate a living constitution that can move with the times. I think a living constitution is an oxymoron. I think it's a contradiction in terms. A living constitution that takes on the shape of whatever uh, cultural forces
and political winds are blowing doesn't constitute anything. A living constitution is one that is plastic to the forces of the moment. And that's the opposite of what a constitution is. Remember, our constitution is a series of prohibitions. There shall be even if Congress wants it, even if the public wants it. There shall be no law abridging freedom is the press, no unreasonable searches and seizures, no establishment of religion, no
taking a public property without proper compensation. The Constitution exists to say majority rule is fine, but majority rule is limited and constrained. George Well, the book is the conservative sensibility. I can't wait to dig into it myself, and George, you are always welcome here. It's always enjoyable and stimulating as well. Thanks for the time. I hope you guys are spreading out across the country. We need you now we're doing Thank you very much. All right, thank you.
When you're ready to ride Metro, we want you to know we're ready for you. Here are just a few of the people at Metro to tell you how we're doing our part to keep riders safe. We clean, you know, like Neville before Hot to a Great Queen. You'll found hands down at thiuns of statist no mask, no Metro needed one. We have a few extras at Metro. We're doing our part to keep the DC area moving. Find out more at well Mata dot com slash doing our part