Conservative intellectual George Will

[Music] welcome to telling the truth 2020 at the new york state writers institute at the university at albany state university of new york i'm mark koplik assistant director a symposium on politics tribalism polarization and the future of democracy telling the truth 2020 brings you conversations with major thinkers and public figures from across the political spectrum we're excited to be here with george will one of america's foremost conservative public intellectuals for nearly 50 years for many of us even those of us who disagree with his political ideas he's the living embodiment of rational dialogue between right and left his twice weekly washington post column his back page column and newsweek his countless appearances on abc's this week and nbc's meet the press have all been an essential part of america's political conversation and civics education his announcement in 2016 that he had quit the republican party over its abandonment of principles in the trump era seemed to represent a significant moment in america's struggle to define its own political identity his newest book is his magnum opus the conservative sensibility it's a celebration of the wisdom of america's founding documents the declaration of independence and the constitution it's also a reasoned defense of limited government individual liberty minority rights and curbs on executive power it's an unqualified rejection of tyranny it's also a rejection of european conservative values that he finds to be alien to the american political tradition including a glorification of throne and alter blood and soil nostalgia irrationality and tribalism you can purchase the conservative sensibility from an independent bookseller here on this page george will thanks so much for joining us i'm delighted to be with you in upstate new york we straddle the political divide between right and left our student population necessarily reflects that political diversity even so we like to think of ourselves as one big family is that important that feeling that we need to transcend our differences and come together in common purpose i think it is important and i think there are differences that are healthy and differences that are not healthy differences that are healthy include those of ideas different interpretations of how to how the history unfolds and how to think about the world the unhealthy differences are those that focus on tribes to use the phrase you've already used that is to be tribal is to first of all subsume individuality into group identities and it seems to me very much that the point of modernity and the defining feature of the modern world is to rescue individuality from being subsumed into tribes or into clusters such as the proletariat or into anything that is a passive result of the unfolding of iron laws of history it is in other words to rescue human agency from those who would uh deny it with historicism or or some other group identity so i i'd like to talk about uh tribalism i'd also like to talk about uh human agency but but first tribalism students uh often are are seeking uh belonging they seek to belong to a a group or a community and and that can be very rewarding um but as you say group identification can lead to to a terrible state of of political affairs so can you talk about how a a young person might might negotiate that uh that difference i believe i quote in my book robert frost saying uh join a nation and maybe join a university and not much else that is joining is fine again we have various associations neighborhoods families social clubs synagogues churches etc but it's one thing to join it's another thing to derive one's identity from membership in particular groups uh again i would urge young people to avoid the flight from individuality it's great very tempting to either to furnish one's mind by swallowing an orthodoxy whole and therefore you don't have to think anymore for the rest of your life or to acquire an identity young people are in the process of defining themselves through their actions and their beliefs and their affiliations and it's very tempting to get that over with to say well i am what i've decided to be i've decided to be this that sexual preference this is that ethnicity this is that race this is that victim group forged by the abuses of history again above all else resist being plied and belabored by the many doctrines that that subsume individuality into group identities so your your work is uh very much an affirmation of of free will you affirm the ability of individuals to use their freedom to change destiny and affect the world instead of feeling helpless uh in the face of historical forces um how can that message be communicated more effectively in your in your view to to young people i think it's important for them to understand that they are fortunate you in upstate new york by the way i'm no stranger to upstate new york my father was a college professor and taught several times at cornell where he got his phd and i went to spend a half a year in high school at ithaca high school so i'm familiar with upstate new york i would say that it's a common truth disputed by no one that we all are situated we are situated in a social setting we are in some extent the product of acculturation but i'm arguing in the conservative sensibility is human beings are much more than creatures who acquire culture human beings have a a human nature that's basic to the american founding and those of your students who are from the united states are in my judgment inaudibly privileged to be americans and to partake of the the philosophy of the american founding which had three primary tenets one there is such a thing as a constant human nature that is we're not just the absorbers of whatever culture we find ourselves situated in second that we have inalienable rights first come rights and then comes government government does not give us our rights government exists as the declaration of independence says in one of its most important words to secure our rights the pre-exist government and third to that end government is inherently limited in its functions and in order to keep it limited you need a constitutional architecture that we got largely from james madison and the others at the founders the purpose of which is to make government strong enough to protect our rights but not so strong that it can threaten our rights and once your your students imbibe the basic structure of thought from the american founding they have an identity as free people as citizens of a republic and they are therefore well on their way to defining themselves with a robust uh individualism the the book is in some ways an expansion of your your phd thesis on minority rights in american democracy uh can you talk a bit about that yes uh i went to princeton to get my phd intending to teach and briefly did before i swerved into politics and then journalism or as my father thought before i sank to journalism my thesis title was beyond the reach of majorities it's a phrase from the second of the supreme court's flag salute cases in 1943 in west virginia v barnett they overturned their decision or just a few years earlier in minersville gabitus versus pennsylvania the issue was could jehovah's witnesses children be compelled to salute the flag as part of a ritual in school in cobitis the supreme court said yes in west virginia barnett they said no and justice jackson in his opinion in west virginia b barnett said the very purpose of a bill of rights is to place certain things beyond the reach of majorities above the vicissitudes of politics it's a great robust defense of individual rights and the judicial supervision of uh that courts must must undertake in order to protect individual rights against majority tyranny i i just wanted to mention that justice robert h jack h jackson who delivered that decision was a graduate of our affiliate institution albany law school outstanding and uh so uh your students will know what a great man he was he was also the principal u.s officer at the 1946 nuremberg trials of the nazi war criminals so we're very proud that ualbany is one of the most diverse tier one research universities in the nation fifty percent of our students are people of color we're keenly aware that many of america's founders were slave owners how can we ask young people to celebrate the brilliance of the political ideas of madison and jefferson in in light of those terrible moral failings uh first of all one that tries to avoid what's called presentism that is judging the past by the present judging there's a certain moral vanity in the assumption that uh people seem to enjoy having these days that because they own slaves and we don't therefore we are sort of inherently morally superior the fact is that the ideas unleashed by these men including slaveholder from uh monticello jefferson and the slaveholder from montpellier madison those ideas led to the emancipation of american slaves through a bloody civil war and an emancipation proclamation that is the united states certainly didn't invent slavery which is as old as human history what the united states did do was invent organized anti-slavery politics for the first time this was this was an american creation and it turned out that the american constitution far from being a buttress of slavery was perfectly compatible as as frederick douglass came to see and and to proclaim perfectly possible being an anti-slavery document it was within the architecture institutional architecture of the constitution as construed in the bright light cast by jefferson's declaration of independence that slavery was held to be unconscious held to be incompatible with american ideals and swept away in a tide of blood so many of us have a stereotype of american conservatism as a nostalgia for an imaginary golden age of the 1950s which of course wasn't a golden age at all for for many americans your conservatism is is not that right and can you can you talk about that yes in in the phrase american conservatism the adjective american does a lot of work in modifying the noun conservatives european conservatism became self-conscious and articulate through edmund burke in particular in his reaction against the revolution in france and and burke uh pioneered a kind of conservatism that was in defense of hierarchies and against egalitarianism and anxious about the dynamics of change by the time conservatism crossed the atlantic it had become something very different american conservatism not only welcomes change it cultivates it cultivates the churning of a market society of a society of the spontaneous order of individuals acting on their own behalf or contracting together and cooperatively uh in a spontaneous order it's been said that the bible reduced to one sentence the story of the bible reduced to one sentence is god created men and women and promptly lost control of events well conservatives say that's just great because we don't want events controlled because the controller is going to be a government and government that tries to control events is inherently reactionary it is inherently predisposed to the status quo and what we want is the solvent of perpetual churning which makes for upward mobility so i'm wondering if we can talk a little bit more about that that paradox um your american conservatism is is about a willingness to embrace change and yet we associate uh conservatism uh very much with um a wish for uh say uh cultural stability family stability um is it is it paradoxical uh to be a conservative who embraces change uh not at all what we're taught what a conservative wants to conserve in the american context is the american founding and the three propositions that i that i just adam writed it is not the case however that conservatism is for willy-nilly churning of every institution it does seem to me the principal problem principle domestic problem in the united states today is to take up one of the things you just referenced is the weakening of family structure we know from abundant social science that family structure and intact family structure the the benefits of being raised in a two-parent family coincides remarkably with individual and with community flourishing the fact that uh 40 of all american first births these days are to uh unmarried mothers the fact that a majority of mothers under 30 are not living with the fathers of their children these facts are things that people are reluctant to talk about but these are facts that are absolutely germane to the problems of the intergenerational transmission of poverty and the uh the existence of uh of uh casts or class in in a society like ours but um would would you affirm uh you know in in it let's say the the freedom of an individual to pursue uh their uh right to to happiness um in in a way that uh defies um traditional definitions of of family of course but again i would conservatives are big on facing facts on being understanding things that are intractable in reality and not trying to remold society or human nature in ways that uh that defy the limits of malleability so i would i would say certainly there's a broad tolerance the drama of modern politics as opposed to the ancients going all the way back to aristotle the drama of modern politics is people disagree about the good the good in life about the proper ends of life therefore the challenge in modernity the challenge in an open society is to accommodate diverse uh aspirations and ends to tolerate these broadly and to set up an institutional structure that still maintains that people with these diverse ideas of the of the good life can still live congenially with one another that is the challenge uh as i say in my book the taxonomy of american politics is by now set and hopelessly confused in some ways this the fact is what what i'm calling a conservative is in many ways uh the legacy of classic liberalism of uh hobbes lock john stewart mill etc that is the idea that the fundamental challenge is to protect individual life while having a commodious community life many readers may find your definition of american conservatism and in the book to be more akin to libertarianism and uh why didn't you choose to call this book the libertarian sensibility well first for several reasons first of all i'm not a libertarianism carries a lot of kind of iron logic that carries it into into strange territory i'm libertarian-ish who isn't by libertarian ish i mean i believe that before the government interferes with the freedom of the individual or the freedom of two or more individuals cooperating together it ought to have a very good reason and i'll just say what it is if that that if that makes me a libertarian that makes almost every commonsensical american libertarian-ish which is fine because we are a nation as lincoln said at gettysburg conceived in liberty we are about liberty we are not about majority rule we're not about democracy democracy is a process liberty is a condition and we are about the condition not the process the process serves the condition the process is important but basically we are about liberty [Music] you've been on so many diverse political panels do you have any practical tips for students about how to go about engaging with folks who disagree with them sure first understand that disagreement is uh natural which is to say inevitable second and this is something i would hope they would learn at your institution disagreement is fun there's nothing more fun than argument if you don't like to argue you pick the wrong country because we're a country made up of people who argue about everything and isn't that wonderful but don't feel that your basic again identity or moral worth is is uh is somehow under attack and assailed or insulted when someone disagrees with you that's life if you find that too stressful then go back home go up to your bedroom pull the cover over your head and stay there because the world is full of people who don't agree with you now if you if you find that exhilarating as i do then you're going to have a good life if you find it threatening woe to you can you tell us about your own political development as a young person how you how you discovered your own political identity yeah i grew up in central illinois steeped in abraham lincoln's spirit i grew up in champaign-urbana illinois according to local lore it was in the champaign county courthouse that abraham lincoln heard about where he was a practicing lawyer traveling the circuit in illinois where he heard that illinois senator stephen a douglas had passed through the senate into law the kansas-nebraska act it said that we would solve the vexing question of what to do about the question of could slavery expand into the territories such as kansas and nebraska that we're not yet states we're still federal territory stephen a douglas and the kansas-nebraska ex solution was popular sovereignty voted up vote it down it's a matter of moral indifference to me said stephen a douglas because what's important is that democracy and majority rule prevail abraham's lincoln's assent to greatness was propelled by his recoil against this in which he said no we are not about democracy we are about liberty and the rest is uh the unfolding of his career and of history uh i went to college at trinity college in hartford and uh was a sort of normal walking around uh college kid liberal i was for jack kennedy in the 1960 presidential election but it's well to remember that jack kennedy on matters of foreign policy in the cold war was if anything to the right of nixon in that election because he was worried about insufficient uh military spending by the united states then i went to oxford for two years and then at oxford i uh saw in britain what i thought was the slow suffocation of the social energies of a great nation by excessive statism the watery socialism of the labor party and i also this was i went there in 1962 and i saw the the berlin wall before it was two years old which was a stark lesson in the stakes of modern politics i came back having read lots hayek and milton friedman and some others i came back and cast my first presidential vote in 1964 for barry goldwater and i was often running as a conservative [Music] can our political crisis uh in any way be attributed to a failure of civics education in your view most most kids have had courses in in high school and middle school on american history and government but is is that somehow not enough that's not enough no i mean civic just first of all this year facts of civics matter it would be rather nice if people knew the three branches of government and if they knew what the first amendment does and if they knew what the 14th amendment does and these other things i i don't think there's any question that our a insufficient time is spent teaching people the simple facts of american history including our constitutional history second it is unquestionably the case that the the common academic culture which today is uh adversarial toward uh the american founding and the american uh in american history is tends to teach a kind of normative uh again adversarial stance to the american premises which i've devoted my life to defending [Music] it's simply staggering the high ratio of certainty to information that a great many people particularly young people in on college campuses have these days you've said that a lightly governed society needs other institutions uh like for example religious institutions to nurture morality yet you've confessed to being an atheist yourself where can young people go apart from religious institutions to have their morality nurtured philosophy to begin with to understand that uh it manifestly is is possible to be a non-believer and be a moral person it's perfectly possible to devise codes of ethics and defensible moral systems without reference to theism without reference to the supernatural so i would i would recommend everyone studying philosophy take an ethics course understand that there's there's an enormous long pedigree of thought to the systems we have utilitarian aristotelian aquinas john stuart mill i mean they're great towering thinkers have worried about these things i know i i have a dim memory of having been young once and i know that the young tend to think that they're the first people who ever worried about some of these things they're in for a pleasant surprise do you have any advice specifically for young republicans on campus yeah don't be really unrepublican at this point again i'll go back to robert frost don't join too many things join the nation join as he said a university but not much in between i don't be in a rush to to join a political party uh look around thank you it's it's there's nothing wrong with being a free agent uh standing um not on the sidelines but in the midst of the battle but uh with your own cause finally in in this uncertain moment in american history would you like to share any reasons for optimism sure first of all no one ever got rich betting against the united states this is still a country people are fighting to get into by the by the millions for very good reason people know that this is still very much a land of opportunity second you've used the word crisis several times and let me just push back against that a little bit people say we have a constitutional crisis now we've had one constitutional crisis in this country and it occurred in the spring of 1861. seven states had seceded formally or said they did we lincolnians say they never seceded but that's another argument seven states had voted to secede before lincoln was inaugurated on march 4th 1861 that was a constitutional crisis a constitutional crisis is one where the institutions of the government cannot open the institutions the government have co perfectly well with the 45th president people have said no mr trump has posed a constitutional crisis [Music] bad president in my judgment a bad fellow and the country took a look at him and voted him out that's sort of the way it's supposed to work and the institutions did not buckle at all the book is the conservative sensibility it's available for purchase via link to the independent book house here on this screen our guest has been george will thank you so much for being here with us i've enjoyed it very much thank you

Channel: New York State Writers Institute

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Length: 30min 16sec (1816 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020