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A half-century of George Will

OPINION

SAMPLE GEORGE F. WILL’S COLUMNS ACROSS HALF A CENTURY

TRENCHANT INSIGHTS ABOUT EVERYTHING FROM PRESIDENTS AND THE SUPREME COURT TO
BASEBALL AND ROCK-AND-ROLL.

37 min
278
Skip to main content
1. Baseball
2. Conservatism
3. Higher education
4. GFW birthdays
5. Historic moments
6. Rock-and-roll
7. Presidents
8. Sex
9. The Supreme Court
10. The Cold War
11. The Constitution
12. Writers

Baseball

By George F. Will
November 23, 2024 at 9:58 a.m. EST

BASEBALL

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To be a 1970s Cubs fan

March 13, 1977

The sight of the first crocus, the song of spring’s first robin are harbingers
of the lighter and brighter side of life. But for Cubs fans, they are omens of
hideous clarity — signs that the happy stagnation of winter is over and the
season of suffering is beginning. Spring is the winter of the Cubs fan’s soul.

Galactic baseball

April 2, 1978

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If you moved the stands, the field of play would extend forever through 360
degrees. The republic, the planet, the universe would be an extended baseball
field. What a jolly thought!

Huggers

April 6, 1980

As an athlete, I was a diligent underachiever. I was one of those people a coach
calls “huggers”: bench-warmers you keep around “so you can hug ’em after you
win, instead of having to hug the guys who play and sweat.”

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To be a 1980s Cubs fan

March 28, 1982

Where is Trotsky, now that we really need him?

I have been done hideous injury by a malefactor of great wealth, a capitalist
pest called CC Assets Distribution Corp. That is the clanking, officious name
for what until recently was called, melodically, the Chicago National League
Ball Club.

Divine providence

April 7, 1983

God gave us baseball so that we should not have to think about missiles or the
money supply all the time.

Ain’t it grand?

Oct. 13, 1983

Not all distractions are created equal. Some numb the mind (alcohol, the Iowa
caucuses); others engage the mind (baseball) ….

It is said that baseball is “only a game.” Yes, and the Grand Canyon is only a
hole in Arizona.

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Aquinas whiffed

April 6, 1986

When Thomas Aquinas was ginning up proofs of God’s existence, he neglected to
mention the ash tree. It is the source of the Louisville Slugger, and hence is
conclusive evidence that a kindly Mind superintends the universe.

No bull

July 14, 1988

What is this summer’s most entertaining [film] for grownups … about? Everything.
“Bull Durham” is about baseball and love, and what else is there?

First pitch at newly built Camden Yards

April 5, 1992

[The stadium] has already been the scene of one small ceremony. Late one
afternoon last August, before the sod was down, at the place where home plate
now is, I proposed marriage to the Orioles fan who now is Mrs. Will. Hey, call
me romantic, but I wanted Mari to know that in my heart she ranks right up there
with baseball.

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Roid rage

Dec. 8, 2004

Professional athletes stand at an apex of achievement because they have paid a
price in disciplined exertion — a manifestation of good character. Drugs that
make sport exotic drain it of its exemplary power by making it a display of
chemistry rather than character — actually, a display of chemistry and bad
character.

The pitch clock — hallelujah

May 7, 2023

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to
day”? Not in ballparks in 2023. Fans, rescued from a creeping pace, can, unlike
sourpuss Macbeth, cheerfully anticipate briskly played games tomorrow and
tomorrow and tomorrow.

CONSERVATISM

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“Big” government isn’t the problem

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Jan. 8, 1981

Every encounter with power pulls American conservatism toward maturity. [Dwight
D.] Eisenhower’s conservatism ended the conservatives’ pretense that the New
Deal’s steps toward a welfare state were steps along “the road to serfdom,” and
reversible. Eisenhower knew those steps reflected realities common to all
developed nations — broad acceptance of the ethic of common provision, and the
majority’s desire to purchase some things, such as certain pension and health
services, collectively.

Beginning Jan. 20, [Ronald] Reagan’s experiences may continue the maturation of
conservatism by ending the sterile practice of defining conservatism simply as
opposition to “big government.” Besides, the problem is not “bigness,” it is
unreasonable intrusiveness, which is a function of (bad) policy, not size.

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Populism ≠ conservatism

May 30, 1985

“Populist conservatism” is the wave of the future, this week. Populism
historically involves impatience with complexity, suspicion of big institutions
and big people, and reverence for whatever “the people” are thought to believe
this week. So “populist conservatism” is an oxymoron.

Treasury Secretary James Baker recently told an audience that tax reform is
rooted in populism, which is “opposed to elitism, opposed to excessive
concentrations of power and oriented toward fairness.” Baker’s call to
egalitarianism was well received by his audience, the Houston Chamber of
Commerce, which peered under the tables and behind the potted plants to make
sure no elites were lurking.

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Grimness vs. cheerfulness

Dec. 5, 1985

Because conservatism is realism about mankind’s limitations, it does not lend
itself to the flattering of the species. Conservatives are healthily disposed to
detect signs that the clock of time is running down and things are going to
wrack and ruin. This disposition frequently gives them a certain grimness.
[William F. Buckley’s] singular achievement has been a compatible marriage
between conservatism and cheerfulness.

Sentimental conservatism

Nov. 25, 2007

“We have a responsibility,” [President George W. Bush] said on Labor Day 2003,
“that when somebody hurts, government has got to move.” That is less a
compassionate thought than a flaunting of sentiment to avoid thinking about
government’s limited capacities and unlimited confidence.

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Conservatism is a political philosophy concerned with collective aspirations and
actions. But conservatism teaches that benevolent government is not always a
benefactor. Conservatism’s task is to distinguish between what government can
and cannot do, and between what it can do but should not.

HIGHER EDUCATION

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Et tu, brew bro?

May 1, 1983

Certainly we want lots of American engineers who can run rings around the
competition in whatever high-tech tomorrow is coming at us. But even more than
we need persons conversant with new technologies, we need a citizenry acquainted
with the ancient patrimony of our civilization. That patrimony is a renewable
resource, but it will not regenerate spontaneously. It needs urgent attention
when a California college student asks a professor of English if Julius Caesar
resented Shakespeare’s portrayal of him.

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College indignation-and-intimidation culture

Feb. 21, 1985

There are many Americans … in whom the flame of thought flickers so weakly that
they only feel vital and engaged with history when they are indignant. America’s
indignation industry makes neither shoes nor butter nor poetry. Rather, it makes
mandatory blandness by practicing moral intimidation. Its intimidation works on
people who can be intimidated by the denial of the honor, such as it is, of a
degree.

Fads and hysteria on the quad

Sept. 13, 2018

The beginning of another academic year brings the certainty of campus episodes
illustrating what Daniel Patrick Moynihan, distinguished professor and venerated
politician, called “the leakage of reality from American life.” Colleges and
universities are increasingly susceptible to intellectual fads and political
hysteria, partly because the institutions employ so many people whose talents,
such as they are, are extraneous to the institutions’ core mission: scholarship.

GFW BIRTHDAYS

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On turning 50

May 5, 1991

Boil my experience down and the residue that remains in the pan is this: To be
paid for the privilege of writing about the American pageant is bliss. As Henry
James lay dying, his hand made writing motions across the sheet that covered
him. I hope that will be true of me, but not soon.

On turning 60

May 3, 2001

Perhaps it is just the result of immersion in journalism, which is the opposite
of literature, which is writing that deserves to be read twice. Perhaps it is a
consequence of living in an obsessively political city, where last week’s
world-shaking events are forgotten, and epochal figures are forever rising
without a trace. For whatever reason, being 60 in Washington sometimes feels
like having had one year’s experience 60 times.

On turning 70

May 8, 2011

The Bible, with the thumping certitude for which it is famous and sometimes
tiresome, asserts that “the days of our years are threescore years and ten.” If
so, after turning 70, one has, ever after, the pleasure of playing, as it were,
with house money. For what, exactly, would one now give up red meat and dry
martinis?

On turning 80

May 9, 2021

To be 80 years old in this republic is to have lived through almost exactly
one-third of its life. And to have seen so many ephemeral excitements come and
go that one knows how few events are memorable beyond their day. … This makes an
American 80-year-old’s finishing sprint especially fun, because it can be
focused on this fact: To live a long life braided with the life of a nation
conceived in liberty and dedicated to an imperishable proposition is simply
delightful.

HISTORIC MOMENTS

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Iran’s release of American hostages

Feb. 1, 1981

The movable feast of celebration about the hostages has abated a bit, so perhaps
it will not seem intolerably churlish to ask what, precisely, people have been
celebrating. Clearly, more is involved than just gratification about the
hostages’ deliverance. At the risk of seeming stone‑hearted, I suggest this:

The crisis that began because of weakness, and was prolonged by confusion, and
ended in extortion, has been followed by a national hysteria of self‑deception
symbolized by a sign carried by a celebrator: “America 52, Iran 0.” When
calamity is translated into the idiom of sport and christened a victory, when
victims are called heroes and turned into props for telegenic celebrations of
triumph, then it is time to recall George Orwell’s axiom that the great enemy of
clear language is insincerity.

Bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building

April 25, 1995

Today when the fevered minds of marginal men produce an outrage like the
Oklahoma City bombing, some people rush to explain the outrage as an effect of
this or that prominent feature of the social environment. They talk as though it
is a simple task to trace a straight line from some social prompting, through
the labyrinth of an individual’s dementia, to that individual’s action. …

It is well to remember that the paranoid impulse was present in the first armed
action by Americans against the new federal government. During the Whiskey
Rebellion 200 years ago a preacher declared:

“The present day is unfolding a design the most extensive, flagitious and
diabolical, that human art and malice have ever invented. … If accomplished, the
earth can be nothing better than a sink of impurities.”

It is reassuring to remember that paranoiacs have always been with us, but have
never defined us.

9/11

Sept. 12, 2001

Terrorism is usually a compound of the tangible and the intangible — of physical
violence and political symbolism. The terrorists’ targets on Tuesday were
symbols not just of American power, but also its virtues. The twin towers of the
World Trade Center are, like Manhattan itself, architectural expressions of the
vigor of American civilization. The Pentagon is a symbol of America’s ability
and determination to project and defend democratic values. These targets have
drawn, like gathered lightning, the anger of the enemies of civilization. Those
enemies are always out there.

Jan. 6 heartbreak

Jan. 7, 2021

The three repulsive architects of Wednesday’s heartbreaking spectacle — mobs
desecrating the Republic’s noblest building and preventing the completion of a
constitutional process — must be named and forevermore shunned. They are Donald
Trump, and Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz ….

The Trump-Hawley-Cruz insurrection against constitutional government will be an
indelible stain on the nation.

ROCK-AND-ROLL

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Elvis in Vegas

March 25, 1975

The orchestra surges into Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra” and —
Shazam! — Elvis shambles on to the stage.

Zarathustra is 40 now, and 40 pounds overweight, with a shape not unlike Henry
Kissinger’s. …

Wrap him in yellow and orange sequins, bathe him in red and blue lights, back
him with flutes and violins, his animal energies still overwhelm even Vegas
versions of refinement. He is still Tupelo and Memphis, chartreuse Styrofoam
dice dangling from the rearview mirror. …

Between songs a sideman drapes pastel scarves around the beefy Presley neck.
With his I’m‑cool‑about‑being‑late‑for‑study‑hall saunter, the rolling gait of
manchild in the high school corridor, he ambles to the front of the stage, dabs
his sweaty brow with a scarf, and awards it to one of the groupies planted front
and center ….

Elvis is for the war babies what the madeleine was for Proust. One nibble lets
loose a flood of remembrances of adolescence past — not the most pleasant
remembrances, perhaps, but the most vivid ones they have.

A Rolling Stones bombardment

Sept. 28, 1989

The Stones are nothing if not shrewd, and they obviously know how hard it is for
even music, even rock music, to hold the light, thin, attenuated attentions of
their audiences (which, judging by the Washington concerts, have an average age
of thirtysomething). So the deafening music is — what shall we say? “leavened”?
— leavened by explosions, blinding flashing lights, clouds of smoke, inflated
women 55 feet tall.

It is a sensory blitzkrieg: “I am bombarded, therefore I am.” It is, strictly
speaking, infantile pre-(post?)-verbal stimulation.

But the Stones, binding the generations, linger in the air, the incense in the
children’s private church. It is an interesting experience driving down broad
suburban streets, listening to two 8-year-old girls in the back seat singing
along with the radio — it is tuned to one of the “classic rock” stations — their
clear, bird-like voices, as sweet as swallows, singing, “I can’t get no
satisfaction.”

National asset: Bruce Springsteen

Sept. 13, 1984

Today, “values” are all the rage, with political candidates claiming to have
backpacks stuffed full of them. Springsteen’s fans say his message affirms the
right values. Certainly his manner does.

Many of his fans regarded me as exotic fauna at the concert (a bow tie and
double-breasted blazer is not the dress code) and undertook to instruct me. A
typical tutorial went like this:

Me: “What do you like about him?”

Male fan: “He sings about faith and traditional values.”

Male fan’s female friend, dryly: “And cars and girls.”

Male fan: “No, no, it’s about community and roots and perseverance and family.”

She: “And cars and girls.”

Let’s not quibble. Cars and girls are American values, and this lyric surely
expresses some elemental American sentiment: “Now mister the day my number comes
in I ain’t never gonna ride in no used car again.” …

If all Americans — in labor and management, who make steel or cars or shoes or
textiles — made their products with as much energy and confidence as Springsteen
and his merry band make music, there would be no need for Congress to be
thinking about protectionism. No “domestic content” legislation is needed in the
music industry. The British and other invasions have been met and matched.

In an age of lackadaisical effort and slipshod products, anyone who does
anything — anything legal — conspicuously well and with zest is a national
asset.

PRESIDENTS

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Richard M. Nixon, ex-president

Aug. 9, 1974

As in all true tragedy, we see in Mr. Nixon’s ruination the ravages of a failing
to which all men are prey. Mr. Nixon’s sin, like all sin, was a failure of
restraint. It was the immoderate craving for that which, desired moderately, is
a noble goal.

It is a terrible curse to want anything as much as Mr. Nixon wanted power. He
wanted it more than he wanted friends. Indeed, he wanted it with a consuming
passion that left no room for friendship.

And when, in his final extremity, he looked around for friends to grabble to his
soul with hoops of steel, there were no friends there.

But, then, friends could not have helped, once Mr. Nixon was weighed down with
scandal. Once the deeds were done, he was done, because the American system
works.

Caretaker in chief Gerald Ford

Dec. 17, 1975

Mr. Ford is a doubly accidental president … [he] not only became President by
accident, but has only prospered as President by fortuities — by having an easy
act to follow, and by having an easy war to win (the war against Cambodian
shipnapping [of the U.S.-registered cargo ship Mayaguez]). There is, then,
something sadly symbolic about Mr. Ford’s proneness to personal accidents,
regarding which, consider the following.

On a recent television show, Rich Little, the comedian, was doing his familiar
impressions of politicians …. But in his impression of Mr. Ford, Little did not
speak. He just backed up five paces, then strode forward until he stumbled smack
into the microphone. That brought the house down. …

After 500 days in office Mr. Ford is widely regarded as a caretaker. And in
presidential politics, a synonym for “caretaker” is “lame duck.”

Jimmy Carter’s feckless burlesque

Oct. 26, 1980

In the final weeks of his final campaign, Jimmy Carter has taken to telling
audiences that the decision about reelecting him is “one of the most important
decisions to be made in political history.” Megalomania is, up to a point,
amusing, as is his description of the election:

“It’s more important than the level of your income. It’s more important than the
quality of the house that you have … ”

Carter cannot be blamed for begging people not to dwell on what has become of
their economic conditions and prospects. …

The president who last week called Ronald Reagan “naïve” is the fellow whose
burlesque of government has included the use of Ramsey Clark, Billy Carter and
Muhammad Ali as diplomats. The president who says Reagan might be reckless is
the fellow who, in January, speaking to a joint session of Congress, threatened
the Soviet Union with war, and who in April, in one of the most feckless uses of
military power in U.S. history — a fiasco comparable to the Bay of Pigs — made
“Desert One” [the failed rescue of U.S. hostages in Iran] a symbol of America’s
decline.

An invisible but colossal monument to Ronald Reagan

June 6, 2004

One measure of a leader’s greatness is this: By the time he dies the dangers
that summoned him to greatness have been so thoroughly defeated, in no small
measure by what he did, it is difficult to recall the magnitude of those dangers
or of his achievements. So if you seek Ronald Reagan’s monument, look around and
consider what you do not see:

The Iron Curtain that scarred a continent is gone, as is the Evil Empire
responsible for it. The feeling of foreboding — the sense of shrunken
possibilities — that afflicted Americans 20 years ago has been banished by a new
birth of the American belief in perpetually expanding horizons.

In the uninterrupted flatness of the Midwest, where Reagan matured, the horizon
beckons to those who would be travelers. He traveled far, had a grand time all
the way, and his cheerfulness was contagious. … He understood that when
Americans have a happy stance toward life, confidence flows and good things
happen.

The genuine pathos of George H.W. Bush

July 29, 1992

There is a bitter joke making the rounds among Republicans. What is the
difference between John Gotti and George Bush? Answer: Gotti has at least one
conviction. Actually, Bush has one. It is that he should be president. He is by
now a figure of genuine pathos because he is bewildered by the fact that more is
expected of him than what has hitherto sufficed — his belief that people like
him should administer things.

For Republicans, the grim paradox is that the reason he should not run [for
reelection] is the reason he will. He should not because he has no reason to,
other than an ambition eerily disconnected from any agenda. But he will run
because he regards a public purpose as ornamental, as a mere filigree on a quest
for office.

That is why the Bush campaign, like Bush himself, uses words not to convey
meaning but as audible confetti.

Bill Clinton, recipient of the Chester Arthur award for inconsequentiality

Jan. 11, 2001

Because of his political monomania, and because he is a perpetual preener who
can strut even while sitting down, Bill Clinton relished being president. The
pomp, the cameras, the microphones make that office a narcissist’s delight. But
other than by soiling the office, he was a remarkably inconsequential president,
like a person who walks across a field of snow and leaves no footprints.

It is axiomatic: Some people want public office in order to do something, others
in order to be something. Clinton was the latter sort. …

Serious historians probably will rate Clinton as perhaps more consequential than
Chester Arthur … but much less consequential than, say, Lyndon Johnson or
Richard Nixon.

Reelect George W. Bush. Seriously.

Oct. 31, 2004

This column has expressed abundant skepticism about the grandiosity of George W.
Bush’s foreign policy. And about his passivity about spending (he has vetoed
nothing), his enlargement of the welfare state (the prescription drug
entitlement), his expansion of inappropriate federal responsibilities
(concerning education from kindergarten through 12th grade, through the No Child
Left Behind Act) and his complicity in vandalizing the Constitution (he signed
the McCain-Feingold bill, which rations political speech). Still, this column
prefers Bush.

Reasonable people can question the feasibility of Bush’s nation-building and
democracy-spreading ambitions. However, having taken up that burden, America
cannot prudently, or decently, put it down. The question is: Which candidate
will most tenaciously and single-mindedly pursue victory? The answer is: Not
John Kerry, who is multiple-minded about most matters.

Barack Obama and the GOP’s 2010 midterm romp

Nov. 4, 2010

Today’s president from Illinois, a chronic campaigner and incontinent complainer
who is uninhibited by considerations of presidential dignity, has blamed his
difficulties on:

George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, the Supreme Court, a Cincinnati
congressman (John Boehner), Karl Rove, Americans for Prosperity and other
“groups with harmless-sounding names” (Hillary Clinton’s “vast right-wing
conspiracy” redux), “shadowy third-party groups” (they are as shadowy as steam
calliopes), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and, finally, the American people. They
have deeply disappointed him by being impervious to “facts and science and
argument.”

Actually … he should feel ratified by Tuesday’s repudiation. The point of
progressivism is that the people must progress up from their backwardness. They
cannot do so unless they are pulled toward the light by a government composed of
the enlightened.

Joe Biden

July 9, 2024

The compassion owed to someone apparently in the cruel grip of an inexorably
advancing disease that destroys selfhood should not obscure this fact: Biden’s
malady is not robbing the nation of either an impressive political talent or a
singularly public-spirited official. Biden was a mediocrity in his 1980s prime,
when his first lunge for the presidency quickly collapsed, as his second would
in 2008, and as his third almost did after he finished fifth in New Hampshire’s
primary in 2020. In the office he eventually attained, he has chosen his
defining legacy: the self-absorption of his refusal to leave the public stage
gracefully.

Post-script, July 23, 2024: After Biden’s most epic pratfall (plagiarizing, in
1987, a British politician’s autobiography), he said, clairvoyantly, “I’ve done
some dumb things, and I’ll do dumb things again.” Perhaps his latest was clever
dumbness — vengeance of Shakespearean subtlety. To the many Democrats — former
colleagues — who forced his withdrawal, he proffers [Kamala] Harris’s candidacy,
giving it whatever momentum his endorsement imparts. He could be saying: “You
ingrates deserve this.”

Through the years with Donald Trump

Nov. 26, 1987: Trump is a tall, glamorous, egomaniacal 41-year-old casino-owning
zillionaire landlord vulgarian (whose car, plane, yacht, penthouse, house, you
name it, is, if he does say so himself, the greatest). He seems interested in
the presidency, but only as a stepping stone.

Oct. 14, 1999: [Reform Party founder Ross Perot] may like Pat Buchanan primarily
because Perot dislikes the idea of a [Jesse] Ventura-backed candidate — enter
Donald Trump, on a trapeze with Oprah Winfrey.

Aug. 13, 2015: In every town large enough to have two traffic lights there is a
bar at the back of which sits the local Donald Trump, nursing his fifth beer and
innumerable delusions. Because the actual Donald Trump is wealthy, he can turn
himself into an unprecedentedly and incorrigibly vulgar presidential candidate.

May 1, 2016: Donald Trump’s damage to the Republican Party, although already
extensive, has barely begun. Republican quislings will multiply, slinking into
support of the most anti-conservative presidential aspirant in their party’s
history.

Jan. 20, 2017: Twenty minutes into his presidency, Donald Trump, who is always
claiming to have made, or to be about to make, astonishing history, had done so.
Living down to expectations, he had delivered the most dreadful inaugural
address in history.

March 8, 2018: The one constant in the jumble of quarter-baked and discordant
prejudices that pass for his ideas has been hostility to free trade. It
perfectly expresses his adolescent delight in executive swagger, the objectives
of which are of negligible importance to him; all that is important is that the
spotlight follows where his impulses propel him.

Oct. 22, 2020: A practitioner of crybaby conservatism — no one, he thinks, has
suffered so much since Job lost his camels and acquired boils — and ever a
weakling, Trump will end his presidency as he began it: whining.

Nov. 6, 2024: Trump’s scatterbrained approach to almost everything makes it
likely that he will fail to do much of what he has vowed to do. Then, in 2028,
Americans get to do this all over again. That is the good and bad news.

SEX

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“The Joy of Sex” on the menu

Jan. 29, 1974

Modeled on “The Joy of Cooking,” a standard wedding present, this new “Joy” book
urges happy couples to satisfy every conceivable appetite.

“Chef-grade cooking doesn’t happen naturally …. It’s hard to make mayonnaise by
trial and error, for instance. Cordon Bleu sex, as we define it, is exactly the
same situation.” Exactly. No damned nonsense about untutored trysts in the age
of textbooks. …

It is no longer enough to be lusty. One must be a sexual gourmet. If you think
this is harmless, consider another depressing food analogy.

Many people enjoyed plain meat-and-potatoes until some sadist gave them a
gourmet cookbook. Now they still eat meat-and-potatoes, but they feel a little
guilty. And oddly unsatisfied. A lot more gourmet cookbooks are sold than there
are gourmet meals cooked.

Repellent shark

Feb. 17, 1977

Today’s pornographers do not slight the life of the mind. Hugh Hefner of Playboy
dabbles in metaphysics. And Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler, has a
sociological flair. He explains his magazine’s success in terms of the American
psyche, as revealed in the public’s enthusiasm for the film “Jaws”: “The shark
wasn’t repressed. The American people don’t like repression.”

It is impossible to describe Hustler — even to report what is printed on the
cover — without becoming a collaborator in its assault on sensibility. Suffice
it to say that Flynt has been a pathbreaker in the accelerating movement to
elevate human sexuality to resemble that of sharks and other unrepressed
creatures.

The world’s oldest obsession

April 12, 1979

A California academic … argues that sex education has become a “movement,” the
focus of which is less biological than political. Its prime movers are mainly
psychologists, sociologists, and “health educators” concerned less with the
physiology of procreation than with “value clarification.” It seems that being a
sex educator is like being ambassador to the United Nations: A person eager for
the job is apt to be exactly the kind of person who should be kept far away from
it.

On visiting Hef

May 29, 2003

Asked how it feels to have won, Hugh Hefner pauses, looks down and almost
whispers, “Wonderful.” Then he says: “I guess if you live long enough … ”

The magazine, the mere mention of which used to produce pursings of lips and
sharp intakes of breaths, is still Hefner’s preoccupation, but has been
overtaken by the libertarian revolution he helped to foment. In 1953 Playboy
magazine was pushing the parameters of the permissible, but it is hard to remain
iconoclastic when standing waist-deep in the shards of smashed icons. …

Recently, dressed in his black pajamas and merlot-colored smoking jacket — it
was 1 p.m. — he looked a bit tuckered, but he had been living what Teddy
Roosevelt called “the strenuous life,” although not as TR envisioned it.
Hefner’s recent 77th birthday party had rambled on for more than a week. … As F.
Scott Fitzgerald, writing of Jay Gatsby, suggested, “personality is an unbroken
series of successful gestures.”

THE SUPREME COURT

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Capital punishment: Unconstitutional

Dec. 6, 1974

The most famous arguments against capital punishment turn, as Albert Camus’
justly famous “Reflections on the Guillotine” turned, on impassioned appeals
against the shattering ugliness of executions.

These arguments are really more than arguments. They are literary acts, deriving
some of their effectiveness from their power to evoke from the community a
revulsion against the very idea of a state killing, methodically and
dispassionately. …

Today, the Court’s duty — owed to the Framers, and to us — is to measure our
practices, and especially the irrevocable practice of capital punishment,
against the wisest contemporary understanding of the concept of cruelty. Camus
and the Constitution, read together by reflective Justices, will rid us of
capital punishment.

Adrift since 1973

June 19, 1983

In Baltimore, a pregnant drug abuser has been placed under court jurisdiction to
protect the health of the fetus. She may not injure the fetus with drugs. Of
course, she retains a right to kill it with an abortion.

In Maryland, a fetus has a right to inherit property if the fetus is conceived
before the death of the person from whom the property will be inherited. …

Fetuses, it seems, have various rights — but no right to life.

Cut adrift by its 1973 decision from constitutional and bio-medical realism, the
court manufactures ever finer distinctions from never relevant categories. The
justices should pray — not in a public building, of course — for Sen. Orrin
Hatch’s amendment. (“A right to abortion is not secured by this Constitution.”)
That would restore the status quo ante 1973, thereby restoring to the states
responsibility for dealing with an issue that clearly is beyond the court’s
competence.

Nine Supreme Court justices walk into a restaurant …

May 1, 1986

There is a naughty joke going around:

The justices (says the joke) decide to restore their frayed collegial feelings
by going out to lunch together. A chivalrous waiter takes the lady justice’s
order first. She says: “I’ll have the veal.” The waiter then asks her: “What
about the vegetables?” And she says: “They’ll order for themselves.”

Antonin Scalia (1936-2016)

Feb. 15, 2016

Antonin Scalia, who combined a zest for intellectual combat with a vast talent
for friendship, was a Roman candle of sparkling jurisprudential theories
leavened by acerbic witticisms. The serrated edges of his most passionate
dissents sometimes strained the court’s comity and occasionally limited his
ability to proclaim what the late Justice William Brennan called the most
important word in the court’s lexicon: “Five.” Scalia was, however, one of the
most formidable thinkers among the 112 justices who have served on the court,
and he often dissented in the hope of shaping a future replete with majorities
steeped in principles he honed while in the minority.

On Merrick Garland, a preposterous GOP tossed salad

March 20, 2016

The Republican Party’s incoherent response to the Supreme Court vacancy is a
partisan reflex in search of a justifying principle. The multiplicity of
Republican rationalizations for their refusal to even consider Merrick B.
Garland radiates insincerity.

Republicans instantly responded to Antonin Scalia’s death by proclaiming that no
nominee, however admirable in temperament, intellect and experience, would be
accorded a hearing. …

In their tossed salad of situational ethics, the Republicans’ most contradictory
and least conservative self-justification is: The court’s supposedly fragile
legitimacy is endangered unless the electorate speaks before a vacancy is
filled. The preposterous premise is that the court will be “politicized” unless
vacancies are left vacant until a political campaign registers public opinion.

THE COLD WAR

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Fidel Castro’s fashion choices

March 10, 1977

Castro always has understood that Western society contains many leftists whose
hatred of dictatorship is less constant than their hunger for political heroes.

And he has mastered the symbols of heroism. The years have not dealt lightly
with the hero’s midriff, but at least it still is swathed in the green fatigues
he wore in the heroic fight to replace the old dictator.

The fatigues are like Jimmy Carter’s jeans and cardigans, a symbol of romantic
origins. Wearing them conspicuously is the sort of gesture of humility that only
the powerful can make, it is an assertion of the prerogative to disregard
conventions.

On the trial and sentencing of Soviet dissident Yuri Orlov

May 21, 1978

Since Nov. 8, 1917, every assumption adopted, every premise clung to, by people
eager to rationalize a policy of accommodation toward the Soviet Union has been
shredded by events. Today, the Soviet regime is so grotesquely ignorant and
arrogant, so boorish and bullying, that its cruelty and recklessness may awaken
Americans from their dogmatic slumber.

The Cold War ain’t over till it’s over

Sept. 30, 1979

The autumn of 1979 is somewhat satisfying to those of us who desire not a
“return” to the Cold War but a return to reality about the Cold War that did not
end when the United States, allowing its wish to be the father of its thought,
declared it over. It is impossible to pinpoint when that declaration occurred.
But on Oct. 7, 1966, President Johnson announced that the United States was
moving from “the narrow concept of coexistence to the broader vision of peaceful
engagement.” Nixon spoke of moving “from an era of confrontation to an era of
negotiation.”

It is impossible to say when the emptiness of these formulations became too
glaring to ignore. But reality slowly took a toll, and it is altogether
gratifying that in autumn 1978 the debate about the SALT II arms-control
agreement has become a debate about rearmament.

THE CONSTITUTION

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America, the Tall Ship

July 4, 1976

The Founders’ constitutional handiwork is frequently and reasonably described as
the application to politics of Newtonian physics, the precise balancing of
mutually checking forces. But it also is true that the Founders represented a
seafaring nation that was mostly coasts and ports — Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston. The Constitution embodies a sailing
people’s sense of equilibrium, an instinct for balanced tension in the rigging.
It involves the prudent accommodation of government to the turbulent nature of
citizens.

Sorry, flag-burning is not speech

June 14, 1990

The Founders, sharing Aristotle’s definition of man as a language-using animal,
specified protection of “speech.” They did so because speech is intrinsically
connected with reason, the distinctive human capacity by which individuals
govern themselves and communities achieve self-government.

But after many years of miseducation (in part by earlier Supreme Courts) the
court is convinced of, and hence the country is committed to, this proposition:
the Constitution mandates protection of any behavior that “expresses” a
politically tinged attitude. Today’s court cannot fathom that the Founders who
wrote the First Amendment used language with a precision — a precision born of
philosophic clarity and subtlety — that is foreign to the court.

Repeal the embarrassing Second Amendment

March 21, 1991

Two staggering facts about today’s America are the carnage that is a consequence
of virtually uncontrolled private ownership of guns and Americans’ toleration of
that carnage. …

The Bill of Rights should be modified only with extreme reluctance, but America
has an extreme crisis of gunfire. And impatience to deal with it can cause less
than scrupulous readings of the Constitution.

Whatever right the Second Amendment protects is not as important as it was 200
years ago, when the requirements of self-defense and food-gathering made gun
ownership almost universal. But whatever the right is, there it is.

The National Rifle Association is perhaps correct and certainly is plausible in
its “strong” reading of the Second Amendment protection of private gun
ownership. Therefore gun control advocates who want to square their policy
preferences with the Constitution should squarely face the need to
deconstitutionalize the subject by repealing the embarrassing amendment.

The American soul

Jan. 19, 1995

“Each generation of Americans,” said [President Bill] Clinton on Jan. 20, 1993,
“must define what it means to be an American.” No, the Founders did that for us.
We are a creedal, not a tribal nation, defined with some permanency by a few
philosophic affirmations. Our creed of limited government securing natural
rights — and the corollary vision of human capacities and of the life worth
living — is part of the formative inheritance that makes the American soul.

Secure the blessings

April 17, 2014

In a 2006 interview, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said the Constitution
is “basically about” one word — “democracy” — that appears in neither that
document nor the Declaration of Independence. Democracy is America’s way of
allocating political power. The Constitution, however, was adopted to confine
that power in order to “secure the blessings of” that which simultaneously
justifies and limits democratic government — natural liberty.

The fundamental division in U.S. politics is between those who take their
bearings from the individual’s right to a capacious, indeed indefinite, realm of
freedom, and those whose fundamental value is the right of the majority to have
its way in making rules about which specified liberties shall be respected.

WRITERS

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P.G. Wodehouse

Oct. 12, 1974

In an age when craftsmanship seems to be a depleted cultural resource, he has
worked with words the way a silversmith works with his metal, and has brought
pleasure to scores of millions ….

The purity of Wodehouse fun is never spoiled by the rude intrusion of serious
ideas, and this purity offends some somber moderns. The bleak utilitarianism of
the modern age leads to the disparagement of Wodehouse’s works as “escapist.”
The strange thing is that anyone would be so fond of the cares and conditions of
the modern world as to deplore literature that helps people escape to the
Blandings Castles of their minds.

Peter De Vries

May 20, 1976

Peter De Vries, America’s wittiest author since Mark Twain … could sue American
life for plagiarism: For 25 years, it has imitated his satiric art. …

He is an anthropologist of intellectual faddishness, the instability of a
society tolerant of all ideas except old ones. And he has a nice sense of the
origin of such tolerance: “When man was thought to be a little lower than the
angels he was quickly censored for the slightest offense. Now everything about
him is regarded as a cesspool but nothing is deplored.”

But De Vries’s message is rarely that obtrusive, and he is always fun.

Murray Kempton

May 5, 1985

The usual business of this column — issuing edicts to a world too naughty to
obey — is today suspended so that I can celebrate the Pulitzer Prize awarded, at
long last, to columnist Murray Kempton, the class of our class.

In 1957 Kempton, a craftsman, watched another, Edward Bennett Williams, the
lawyer, defend Jimmy Hoffa, and Kempton wrote: “To watch Williams and then to
watch a Department of Justice lawyer contending with him is to understand the
essential superiority of free enterprise to government ownership.” The
superiority of Kempton to the rest of us is a pleasure to proclaim. The man who
wrote, “It is hard for a man who has enjoyed both the taste of our beer and the
flavor of our politics to say which of these national glories has gone flatter
in his lifetime,” has given contemporary journalism some of its tang.

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