George Will Keynotes 2010 Milton Friedman Prize Dinner

it's my pleasure now to introduce our keynote speaker the future prize-winning a journalist George will George I might add won the Pulitzer for commentary back in 1977 when they were actually competition among journalists that has hadn't become an award of attrition George now writes his twice weekly column for The Washington Post which is syndicated in 450 newspapers around the country that is all the more remarkable when you consider that they're probably no more than 350 papers left in the nation George also writes a column for Newsweek for how much longer who knows he is also a regular commentator on ABC's this week which as far as I can tell is the only reason to tune in to this week unless of course you find Katrina then and hovels witty put-downs of capitalism compelling television and I don't george has authored many books on politics and political philosophy over the years including I think some seven collections of his essays it's all very compelling reading his most recent book however came out last month a reprint of his classic book men at work the craft of baseball many considered the best this is the best book ever written about baseball and the reason it can be reprinted two decades after its first came out is because while players change the nuances and subtleties of baseball do not a few understand the subtleties better than George Will for instance things like whether the pitcher is going to throw a curveball or a changeup or a fastball what the count is how fast the runner on first is how many pitches the pitchers throw on what the score the game is all determines where people take a position on the field infielders and outfielders if you understand the subtleties of baseball you enjoy the game more I've often said that if ice hockey had any subtle release it might be worth watching but it doesn't so it isn't if I could digress just a minute to talk about me instead of George I I I played a little baseball in college myself and so I know something about the game and I was pretty good I actually believe I could have been a major league baseball player were not for the fact that I'm too intelligent to hit a curveball no I'm not joking I mean you either have to have the reflexes of Ted Williams which nobody has or you have to have an IQ that renders you essentially indifferent as to whether a ball coming at your head 83 miles an hour is going to break or not I was not indifferent and that pretty much ended my career when the pitchers found that out George is a serious Cubs fan and I mean serious which means he'll never root for a team in the World Series but baseball is not why we invited George he is without doubt one of the most perceptive analysts of the political scene extant and not just bear buckled politics bare-knuckled politics but public policy and political philosophy indeed when the world gained a great journalist it lost a potential first-rate scholar that trade-off of my view George has a master's degree from Oxford University and a master's in PhD in political science from Princeton before going into journalism he taught a philosophy at Michigan State University and the University of Toronto he's lectured at Harvard smart guy among the many reasons I admire George is his support for term limits his eye for the hypocrisy of the chicken a little environmentalist and his understanding that campaign finance reform invariably boils down to incumbent protection and of course he is a craftsman with the English language a pleasure to read even on those rare occasions when you disagree with him so please welcome a true American treasure Pulitzer Prize winner George Will yes someone once said that the Chicago Cubs are to the World Series as the Tenth Amendment is to constitutional law of rare and inconsequential appearance Thank You Edie for that generous introduction that proves that not all forms of inflation are painful it put me in mind of the Renaissance Pope who used to travel about Rome being greeted by crowds with cries of dais s and de SS thou art God thou art God the Pope said it's a trifle strong but really very pleasant I want to thank all of the people in this room for making Cato and its work possible and and I want to thank a few million more people who in recent weeks of toil to demonstrate in a timely manner why k2 is necessary I refer of course to the people of Greece Milton Friedman whose name we honored tonight was honored often for his recondite and subtle scholarship but it was complemented by a sturdy common sense much in fashion nowhere now about 40 years ago he found himself in an Asian country where the government was extremely eager to show off a public works project of which it was inordinately and excessively fond it was digging a canal and they took Milton out to see this and he was astonished because there were hordes of workers but no heavy earth-moving equipment and he remarked upon this to his government guide the men said well mr. Tremont you don't understand this is a jobs program that's why we only have men with shovels to which treatment said well if it's a jobs program why don't they have spoons and Studdard shovels the the attempt to educate the world to the principles of rationality and liberty never ends it's began we in earnest for a lot of us in 1962 with the publication of capitalism and freedom in 1964 two years later we got a demonstration of how urgent it was to have that book when Lyndon Johnson campaigning for president said we're in favor of a lot of things and we're against mighty few well the man running against him at that time 1964 was of course Barry Goldwater who to the superficial observer seemed to lose because he only carried 44 states when the final votes were Cabul ated 16 years later however it was clear that he had won however it was a contingent victory in 2007 per-capita welfare state spending per capita welfare state spending adjusted for inflation was 70 percent higher than it had been when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated 27 years earlier the trend continues and the trend is ominous 51 days ago now the President signed into law the health care reform the great lunge to complete the New Deal project in the Great Society project the great lunge to make us more European at exactly the moment that this is done the European Ponzi scheme of the social welfare state has been revealed for what it is there is a difference we are not Europeans we are not in Orwell's phrase a state broken people we do not have a feudal background of subservience to the state now that is the project of the current administration it can be boiled down to learned feudalism it is a dependency agenda that I have been talking about ad nauseam two recent examples when the government took over student loans making it the case that now the two most important financial transactions of the average fan get a housing mortgage and a loan for college tuitions will now be transactions with the government they included a provision in the student loan legislation that said there will be special forgiveness of student loans for those who go into work for the government or for nonprofits one-third of the recent stimulus was devoted to preserving unionized public employees jobs in states and localities and so it goes the agenda is constant in 1965 with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act the final dissolution in some ways of the sense of restraint on the part of the federal government it was advertised as aid for the poorest of the poor ten years later in 1975 eighty percent of all school districts were participating in this it is a principle of liberal social legislation that a program for the poor is a poor program the assumption is the assumption is that middle-class Americans will not support a program aimed only for the poor that is a theory refuted by the fact that the Earned Income Tax Credit supported and expanded by Ronald Reagan is extremely popular in this country but it does reveal the fact that dependency is the agenda of the other side it is the agenda to make more and more people dependent in more and more things on the government well we can now see today and the headlines from Europe where that leads it leads to the streets of Athens where we had described by media as anti-government mobs the anti-government mobs were composed almost entirely of government employees the Greeks the Greeks into Europeans have said all along as they increase the weight of the state on in danger of suffocating the economy so far so good they kept saying so far so good minds me if everything does Center later a baseball story true story I'm 1951 Warren Spahn on the way to becoming the winningest left-handed pitcher in the history of baseball was pitching for the then Boston Braves against the then New York Giants in the then Polo Grounds and the Giants sent up to the plate of rookie who was over 12 as clear this kid would never hit big league pitch he knows some kid named Willie Mays spawn stood out on the mound 60 feet 6 inches from home plate threw the ball to Mays crushed at first hit first home run after the game the sports writers him up to spawn in the clubhouse it's bonny what happened spawns a gentlemen for the first 60 feet that was a hell of a pitch it's not good enough in baseball and it's not good enough in governance either let me give you a sense of a framework to understand this extraordinarily interesting moment in which we live I believed that today as has been the case for 100 years and as will be the case for the foreseeable future the American political argument is an argument between two Princetonian z-- James Madison of the class of 1771 and Thomas Woodrow Wilson of the class of 1879 I firmly believe that the most important decision taken anywhere in the 20th century was the decision taken us to where to locate the Princeton graduate college president of Princeton Woodrow Wilson wanted it located down on the campus other people wanted it located where it in fact is up on the golf course away from the campus when Wilson lost that he had one of his characteristic tantrums went into politics and ruined the 20th century I'm I'm simplifying a bit madison asserted that politics should take its bearings from nature from human nature and the natural rights with which we are endowed that pre-exists government Woodrow Wilson like all people who steeped in the 19th century discovery they are so they thought that history is a proper noun or the capital age that history has a mind of life of its own he argued that human nature is as malleable and changeable as history itself and that it is the job of the state to regulate and guide the evolution of human nature and the changeable nature of the rights we are owed and by the government that in his view dispensed rights Heraclitus famously said you cannot step into the same river twice meaning that the river would change the modern progressive believes that you can't step into the same river twice because you change constantly well those of us of the Madisonian persuasion believe that we take our bearings from a certain constancy not from well to coin a phrase the evolving standards of decency that marked the progress of a maturing society that has become that phrase from justice Brennan has become the standard by which the Constitution is turned into a living document a constitution that no longer can constitute a constitution has as Justice Scalia said an anti evolution purpose the very virtue of a constitution is that it is not changeable it exists to prevent change to embed certain rights so that they cannot easily be taken away Madison said rights pre-exists government Wilson said government exists to dispense whatever agenda of Rights suits it fancy and to annihilate regulate or attenuate or dilute those others Madison said the rights we are owed those that are necessary for the individual pursuit of happyness wilson and the progressive said the rights you deserve are those that will deliver material happiness to you and spare you the strain and terror of striving the result of this is now clear we see in the rampant indebtedness of our country and the european countries what someone has called a gluttonous feast on the flesh of the future we see the infantilization of publics that become inert and passive waiting for the state to take care of them one statistic 50% of all Americans 55 years old or older have less than $50,000 in savings and investment the feast on the flesh of the future is what debt is to get a sense of the size of our debt in 1916 midway in Woodrow Wilson's first term the richest man in America john d rockefeller could have written a personal check and retired the national debt today the richest man in America Bill Gates could write a personal check for all he is worth and not pay two months interest on the national debt five years from now interest debt service will consume half of all income taxes ten years from now the three main entitlements medicare medicare and social occasion Social Security plus interest will consume 93 percent of all federal revenues 20 years from now debt service interest will be the largest item in the federal budget Calvin Coolidge is the last president with whom I fully agreed once said that when you see a problem coming down the road at you relax 9 times out of 10 it will go into the ditch before it gets to you he was wrong about the one we now face we are facing the most predictable financial crisis most predictable social and political crisis of our time and all the political class can do is practice what I call the politics of assuming a ladder that's so famous story of two people walking down the road alums an economist yeah there's a normal American and they fall into a pit with very steep sides and the normal American at the bottom says good lord we can't get out the economists said not to worry we'll just assume a ladder this seems to me what is the only approach they have to the Ponzi nature of our own welfare state I think what it is time for us to understand that they make the model that we share in a somewhat attenuated form so far with Europe simply cannot worship it is that on the one hand we should tax the rich aka the investing and job-creating class yet count on spending the revenues of investment in job creation no one has explained to the political class that it is very dangerous to try to leap a chasm in two bounds we are now being told that a value-added tax is going to be required well a value-added tax would help the political class to shower benefits on those who can vote for them while taxing people who can't vote for them the beauty of the value-added taxes it taxes everybody but nobody quite notices it we are going to come now to a time when America is going to have to revisit Madison's Federalist paper 45 and his statement the powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined few and defined the cost of not facing this fact of not enforcing the doctrine in some sense of enumerated powers is that big government inevitably breeds bigger government James Q Wilson one of the great social scientists in American history put it this way once politics was about only a few things today it is about nearly everything once the legitimacy barrier has fallen political conflict takes a very different form new programs need not await the advent of a crisis of extraordinary majority because no program is any longer new it is seen rather as an extension of modification or an enlargement of something the government is already doing since there is virtually nothing the government has not tried to do there is little that it cannot be asked to do and so we have today's death spiral of the welfare state and ever larger government resting on ever smaller tax base government impeding the creation of wealth in order to enforce the redistribution of it we're not fooling however the American people The Wall Street Journal this morning announced with the sort of breathless surprise that about 80% of the American people disapprove of Congress raising a fascinating question who are the 20% it is a sign of national health that the Americans still think about Washington the way they used to talk about the old Washington Senators baseball team on this when the sane was Washington first in war first in peace and last in the American League back then they were running or senators were by man named Clark Griffith who said the fans like home runs and we have assembled a pitching staff to please our fans that is why the American people do not mind what they are instructed by their supposed betters to mind that is the so-called problem of gridlock ladies and gentlemen gridlock is not an American problem it is an American achievement when when James Madison and 54 other geniuses went to Philadelphia on the sweltering summer of 1787 they did not go there to design an efficient government the idea would have horrified them they wanted a safe government to which end they filled it with blocking mechanisms three branches of government two branches of the legislative branch veto veto overrides super majorities judicial review and yet I can think of nothing the American people have wanted intensely and protracted Lee that they did not eventually get the world understands a world most of whose people live under governments they wish were capable of gridlock that we always have more to fear from government speed than government tardiness we are told we are told that one must not be a party of no to no I say an emphatic yes for two reasons the reason that almost all improvements make matters worse is that most new ideas are false second the most beautiful five words in the English language are the first five words of the first amendment Congress shall make no law no law abridging freedom of speech no law establishing religion no law interfering or thurid right to assemble to petition for redress of grievance and the Bill of Rights goes on a litany at issue of knows no unreasonable searches and seizures no no cruel and unusual punishments and so it goes the American people are I think healthier than they are given credit for they have only one defect we have nothing to fear right now but an insufficiency of fear itself it is time for a wholesome fear of what people are trying to do we have a few out allies we don't have Hollywood we don't have academia we don't have the mainstream media but we have two things first we have a rithmetic is on our side the numbers do not add up and cannot be made to do so second we have the Cato Institute the people in this room are what the keynesian is call a multiplier and for once they are right in Athens the so called cradle of democracy the Dimas a Greek word the people have been demonstrating in recent days the degradation that attends people who become state broken to a fault who become crippled by dependency in the infantile ization that comes with it well we shall see I think America is organized around the very principle of individualism which I can best illustrate with what I promise you as the last baseball story true story Rogers Hornsby was at the plate the greatest right-handed hitter in the history of baseball and a rookie I was on the mound who was quite reasonably petrified the rookie threw three pitches that he thought were on the edge of the plate but the umpire said ball one ball two ball three the rookie got flustered and shouted in at the umpire those were strikes the Empire took off his mask looked out at the rookie and said young man when you throw a strike mr. Hornsby will let you know Hornsby had become the standard of excellence if he didn't swing it wasn't a strike we want a country in which everyone is encouraged to strive to be his own standard of excellence and have the freedom to pursue it now there are reasons for being downcast at the moment certain recent elections have not gone so well let me remind you of something again going back to 1964 in 1964 the Liberal candidate had got 90% of the electro hoods eight years later the Liberal candidate got three percent of the electoral votes this is a very changeable country I would recall the words to you of the first Republican president who two years before he became president spoke at the Wisconsin State Fair with terrible clouds of civil strife lowering over the country Lincoln told his audience the story of the Oriental despot who summoned his wise men and assigned them to go away and come back when they had devised a statement to be carved in stone to be forever in view and forever true they came back ere long and the statement they had carved in stone was this too shall pass away how consoling in times of grief said Lincoln how how chastening in times of pride and yet said Lincoln if we cultivate the moral world within us as prodigiously as we Americans cultivate the physical world around us it need not be true Lincoln understood that freedom is the basis of values it's not the alternative to a values approach to politics freedom is the prerequisite for the moral dimension to flower given freedom the American people will flower given the Cato Institute the American people will have in time secure freedom thank you very much and thank you for your help

Channel: The Cato Institute

Views: 26,371

Keywords: geoge, will, ed, crane, cato, institute, akbar, ganji, milton, friedman, prize, advancing, liberty, keynote, address

Id: jY8nJJ2GiNo

Length: 27min 43sec (1663 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 12 2010