George Will
George Will
George Frederick Willis an American newspaper columnist and political commentator. He is a Pulitzer Prize–winner known for his conservative commentary on politics. In 1986, The Wall Street Journal called him "perhaps the most powerful journalist in America," in a league with Walter Lippmann...
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth4 May 1941
fact government indeed injury minute nearly primitive tail
Big government is indeed big, and like another big creature, the sauropod dinosaur, government has a primitive nervous system: The fact of an injury to the tail could take nearly a minute to be communicated to the sauropod brain.
car darkness december great hot land might morning order primitive remember shall shouting sleeping water
I shall always remember you-slyly, touchingly, but with great shouting and confusion-pumping hot water into our sleeping car in the frosty darkness of a December morning in order that we might not know, in order that we might never realize, to how primitive a land we had come.
abbey days fact fairly primitive road sort sounds
It sounds all very sort of technical, but in fact it was very much a kind of bootlace affair. I mean, in the Abbey Road in those days was a fairly primitive place by today's standards.
alive appear billion creature life line organism primitive represents three
You see, every creature alive on the earth today represents an unbroken line of life that stretches back to the first primitive organism to appear on this planet; and that is about three billion years.
including insist prestige reading
Schools, including universities, must insist upon the prestige of reading and especially of reading old books.
amazing cannot chemistry cub explain scholars thin unique
Scholars concede but cannot explain the amazing chemistry of Cub fans' loyalty. But their unique steadfastness through thin and thin has something to do with the team's Franciscan simplicity.
envy greed sleeves
Greed is envy with its sleeves rolled up.
bolts calamities crisis driven market pearl scope stock structure timing
Some calamities - the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, 9/11 - have come like summer lightning, as bolts from the blue. The looming crisis of America's Ponzi entitlement structure is different. Driven by the demographics of an aging population, its causes, timing and scope are known.
graceful seems
Like a graceful vase, a cat, even when motionless, seems to flow.
declining dependent fewer income number paying people
There is a declining number of Americans paying income taxes, while more and more people are dependent for things that fewer and fewer people are paying for.
committee elements football violence worst
Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings.
cathartic constant hence ingredient response seems tranquil wax
Populism has had as many incarnations as it has had provocations, but its constant ingredient has been resentment, and hence whininess. Populism does not wax in tranquil times; it is a cathartic response to serious problems. But it always wanes because it never seems serious as a solution.
attribute control explain helps perpetual presidents voters whom
Political ignorance helps explain Americans' perpetual disappointment with politicians generally, and presidents especially, to whom voters unrealistically attribute abilities to control events.
ancient codes common decisions derives distilled law life opponents purpose rather respect rules unchanged
Just as the common law derives from ancient precedents - judges' decisions - rather than statutes, baseball's codes are the game's distilled mores. Their unchanged purpose is to show respect for opponents and the game. In baseball, as in the remainder of life, the most important rules are unwritten. But not unenforced.