My favorite conservative columnist- and a refreshing rebuke to the others
As a fellow Cub fan who grew up on Chicago's South Side (where folks confuse laundry with baseball teams and quite often hate the North Side team more than they love their own laundry} and who later lived for a little more than three years in a suburb of St. Louis, I can appreciate not only the flawless judgment that implies but also the strength of character.
Will has gone on to a career as a nationally-syndicated columnist in which he has continued to demonstrate those qualities, as well as a remarkable way with words. Even in my misspent youth as a delusional Democrat, I enjoyed reading his column even if I usually didn't agree with him.
I've agreed with him a great deal more in recent years. But lately, he's become my favorite columnist because he's maintained the integrity and strength of character which made him a Cub fan in south-central Illinois back when he was a boy.
A national political analog of the more common and less evolved White Sox fan has arisen in American political journalism: the conservative columnist who hates the liberals and the Democrats more than he loves his own principles. Sensible men and women who opposed Donald Trump when he sought the Republican presidential nomination and sometimes even joined me in voting for Evan McMullin in November of 2016 have since then climbed aboard the Trump Train. When all is said and done, it seems that for them, American national security, conservative economic principles, the well-being of our economy, the moral health of the body politic, philosophical integrity, a rudimentary sense of political and rhetorical fair play, and simple good manners have become less important than defeating the left.
Will is a refreshing exception, who not only has continued to oppose the outbreak of pseudo-conservatism, nativism, and demagoguery on the American right (personified, of course, by the incumbent president), but has not been afraid to stand up for his principles even when- horror of horrors!- it might give aid and comfort to Joe Biden or even Nancy Pelosi.
How can any reasonable person, regardless of his or her politics, fail to admire the integrity, perceptiveness, and courage of a committed, consistent conservative who is willing to be a pariah on the right in order to remain true to the values so many others have betrayed?
How can any rational person do anything but extol a man of the right who unhesitatingly and courageously writes stuff as honest, clear-headed, and spot-on as this?
And he's done it again.
For a long time, folks on the left have been using a somewhat misleading label to describe a very real and very destructive phenomenon: crony capitalism. This is what happens when wealthy folks who like to pretend that they like free markets and competition and all that Adam Smith stuff actually embrace and benefit from the practice of rigging the market in their own favor. Will is quite willing to correct the mistake in nomenclature and call "crony capitalism" what it actually is: crony socialism. And he's willing to call Donald Trump out for the practical socialist he is.
It's kind of neat that one of the most widely-known journalists of the right is willing to loudly and courageously point out that the emperor's new clothes are really a streaking uniform when nearly all the others are praising him for his sartorial splendor. Donald Trump, after all, spent his entire life as an outspoken, pro-abortion, Clinton-praising, and Republican-damning liberal. That changed when he realized that his real chance for the ultimate in self-glorification- a stint in the Oval Office- necessitated his becoming or at least seeming to become a conservative Republican. Saul of Tarsus might possibly have had a more sudden, dramatic, and unexpected conversion, but not by much.
But in fact, Donald Trump is not a conservative, although he seems to have been tragically successful in remaking the Republican Party in his own image. Nor was he truly a liberal, back in the days when he was a Democrat. Donald Trump has no political philosophy other than the greater glory of Donald Trump. It seems incredible that so many conservatives and Republicans can't see something so obvious, but there it is.
I've written before about the dangers of having a narcissist in the Oval Office; since narcissists have no real principles except that what exalts their own ego is by definition good, and that whatever deflates it even with constructive intent is by definition evil, they are the most easily manipulated of all of us. You can get anything you want out of them by praising them to the skies. And as we've recently seen, it's not a good idea for a person imbued with the powers of the presidency to be let out to play with people clever enough to have risen to the top of the political pile especially in countries whose own systems lack any real ethical foul lines other than success and the will to power. First Kim Jong-Un and then Vladimir Putin have played him like a fiddle in recent weeks. Unscrupulous folks with knowledge of the psychology of narcissism always will always be willing to wrap Donald Trump around their little fingers.
But another problem with narcissists is exactly the fact that they are erratic. They have no philosophical constraints on them, so they are liable to do pretty much anything. That's why Mr. Trump can employ a protectionist trade policy despite the fact that such a thing is anathema to conservative economics and until he remade the Republican party in his own unprincipled image a thing opposed by Republicans on principle. That's why he can abandon his party's traditional and intuitive commitment to free markets and competitive trade, and sadly, drag that party along with him into viewing economics as fair game for the kind of manipulation and deck-stacking the left believes that economics is all about.
If the Republican Party had a motto these days, in economics as in so much else, it might well be the words of cartoonist Walt Kelly's possum, Pogo: "We have met the enemy, and he is us." It's a tragedy that so many Republicans and erstwhile conservatives these days are so intent, above all else, on defeating the left that to a far greater extent than they realize they have become the very thing they oppose.
Now, I want to be more honest than those who pretend to be consistent philosophical conservatives while in practice turning to the Dark Side. I am quite open about being a philosophical pragmatist. Before those who confuse blind, mindless allegiance to a set of principles and standards established by others even say a word, that simply means that my principles are my own, tailored, and nuanced by my own values, thoughts, and experiences and not bought ready-made and right off the rack.
I acknowledge that excessive government can often be a sickness worse than the disease it means to control. But that doesn't mean that government involvement can't sometimes be just what the doctor ordered. I recently read about a certain chemical that is a known carcinogen, and even a moderately dangerous one. But it is also the only effective drug for treating another type of cancer once it reaches a stage at which unless it is used death is certain. The smart doctor- or patient- will not hesitate to use that drug. Better the possibility of a bad outcome than the certainty of a worse one.
My personal political philosophy is based on equity and justice (that's my liberal side) but counterbalanced by a respect for the wisdom of the ages, and for reason (that's my conservative side). In recent years, the steady descent of Western culture into the depths of moral nihilism, brain-dead postmodernism, and compulsory unreason has caused me to identify more strongly with my conservative side. The Democratic Party and the American left have become so extreme that I am compelled to oppose them.
Theologically, I do not allow my awareness of the potential of excessive government interference for evil blind me to the fact that government is a divine institution, not a satanic one, and that it exists to protect the weak and the helpless against the strong and the predatory no less in the economic sphere than in any other. Rather than doing the fashionable thing these days and enthusiastically leaping off either the right or the left side of the tightrope that is common sense, I kind of try to keep my balance and avoid falling into absurdity in either direction. Hence, I'm afraid that I have to disagree with Mr. Will and insist that if it made the amount and quality of steel necessary to successfully wage World War II more readily available, putting steel production under the defense budget for the duration might well have been the only reasonable thing to do.
But while my own political philosophy is a bit more nuanced than George Will's (or that of most contemporary conservatives and "progressives"), and while I might disagree with him on some points (I am intensely suspicious precisely of the intellectual integrity of anyone who never wavers from the party line of any political philosophy, or follows any human leader as blindly as so many follow... well, certain leaders these days), I cannot help but respect anyone who despite intense pressure refuses to compromise his own convictions.
I admire George Will for having the intellectual and moral integrity to call Donald Trump out for what he really is when practically the entire right is following him with such willful blindness and utter disregard for principle. And I admire a kindred spirit who has also publicly renounced membership in a Republican Party that has betrayed its own principles.
It shows just the kind of intelligence and strength of character it takes to remain a loyal Cub fan while growing up in Southern Illinois.
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