GEORGE WILL

Opinion: Author showed us there is no true cure for character

WASHINGTON — Peter De Vries, America’s wittiest novelist, died 17 years ago but his discernment of this country’s cultural foibles still amazes. In a 1983 novel, he spotted the tendency of America’s therapeutic culture to medicalize character flaws:
“Once terms like identity doubts and midlife crisis become current,” De Vries wrote, “the reported cases of them increase by leaps and bounds.”

March 02, 2010

Opinion: More attention Palin gets, the less chance she has

WASHINGTON — The Republican presidential nominee, an Arizona senator, was a maverick, which was part of his charm. He spoke and acted impulsively, which was part of his problem. Voters thought his entertaining dimensions might be incompatible with presidential responsibilities. For example, he selected a running mate most Americans had never heard of and who had negligible experience pertinent to the presidency. This was 1964.

February 19, 2010

Opinion: Charting our way to solvency

WASHINGTON — In 2013, when President Mitch Daniels, former Indiana governor, is counting his blessings, at the top of his list will be the name of his vice president: Paul Ryan. The former congressman from Wisconsin will have come to office with ideas for steering the federal government to solvency.

February 10, 2010

Opinion: U.S. future is rooted in past

WASHINGTON — On Day One of his vow to take “meaningful steps to rein in our debt,” Barack Obama asked Congress to freeze portions of discretionary domestic spending. This would follow an astonishing permanent expansion: Republicans on the House Budget Committee say appropriations bills Obama has signed, along with his stimulus spending, have increased discretionary domestic spending 84 percent. He almost certainly will not keep his promise to veto spending bills when Congress, as it almost certainly will, largely disregards his request.

February 04, 2010

Opinion: Truly free speech feared

The Supreme Court decision that deregulates political speech provoked an edifying torrent of hyperbole. Critics’ dismay reveals their conviction: Speech about the elections that determine the government’s composition is not a constitutional right but a privilege that exists at the sufferance of government.

January 29, 2010

Opinion: Maybe president can now become a prudent grownup

WASHINGTON — Churchill’s wife said that his being turned out of office by British voters in July 1945 — the war in the Pacific still raged, and he had just returned from the Potsdam conference — might be a blessing in disguise. He replied: It is very well disguised.

January 27, 2010

Opinion: A rock lies on the health care road

WASHINGTON — Although Democrats think their health care legislation faces smooth sailing to implementation, there is a rock dead ahead — a constitutional challenge to the legislation’s core. Democrats who assume it is constitutional to make it mandatory for Americans to purchase health insurance should answer some questions:

January 14, 2010

Opinion: The pigskin piggy bank continues to fill

WASHINGTON — In 1957, Queen Elizabeth, attending a Maryland-North Carolina football game, asked Maryland’s governor, “Where do you get all those enormous players?” He replied, “Your majesty, that’s a very embarrassing question.”
Thursday night’s championship game between Alabama and Texas, featuring head coaches paid $4 million and $5.1 million, respectively, will be an occasion for more hand-wringing about the “commercialization” of college football.

By George Will , January 06, 2010

Opinion: Time-tested truth: Out of catastrophe comes renewal

WASHINGTON — Already 99.9 (and about 58 more 9s) percent of the universe — it is expanding lickety-split — is beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
Into what is it expanding? Hard to say. We can say there is lots of stuff in space: Hold up a penny at arm’s length and you block from your field of vision three galaxies — billions of stars and other things — 350 million light-years away, which is right next door in our wee corner of the universe.

By George Will , December 31, 2009

Opinion: The vacuity of double triumphs

WASHINGTON — It was serendipitous to have almost simultaneous climaxes in Copenhagen and Congress. It would have been unprecedented had the president not described the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change summit as “unprecedented,” that being the most overworked word in his hardworking vocabulary of self-celebration. Actually, the mountain beneath the summit — a mountain of manufactured hysteria, predictable cupidity, antic demagoguery and dubious science — labored mightily and gave birth to a mouselet, a 12-paragraph document committing the signatories to ... make a list. A list of the goals they have no serious intention of trying to meet.

By George Will , December 24, 2009

Opinion: When charm wears off

WASHINGTON — Rushing to lock the nation into expensive health care and climate change commitments, Democrats are in an understandable frenzy because public enthusiasm for both crusades has been inversely proportional to the time the public has had to think about them. And the president pushing this agenda has, with his incontinent hunger for attention, seen his job approval vary inversely with his ubiquity. Consider his busy December — so far.

By George Will , December 17, 2009

Opinion: Politics being played with Fed

WASHINGTON — They all laughed at Rep. Ron Paul, the 2008 presidential candidate who had the zany idea that the Federal Reserve system could become a sizzling political issue. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, knows that it is no laughing matter that Paul has 317 co-sponsors (180 Republicans, 137 Democrats) for a bill to open the Fed’s books to “audit” by the comptroller general.

By George Will , December 10, 2009

Opinion: December calamity is on its way

WASHINGTON — Another huge value-destroying hurricane is about to slam America, destroying billions of dollars of value. Another Katrina? No, another Christmas.

By George Will , December 03, 2009

Opinion: Fighting the coercion clause

PHOENIX — In 2006, long before there was an Obama administration determined to impose a command-and-control federal health care system, a young orthopedic surgeon walked into the Goldwater Institute here with an idea. The institute, America’s most potent advocate of limited government, embraced Eric Novack’s idea for protecting Arizonans from health care coercion. In 2008, Arizonans voted on Novack’s proposed amendment to the state’s Constitution:

By George Will , November 25, 2009

Opinion: Gold looking more reliable

WASHINGTON — One of the television commercials exhorting viewers to buy gold says that it is an asset whose value “has never dropped to zero,” a boast that surely sets a record for minimalism. Still, the world’s appetite for gold as an investment is intensifying.

By George Will , November 18, 2009