The Conservative Sensibility

by George F. Will

The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist's "astonishing" and "enthralling" New York Times bestseller and Notable Book about how the Founders' belief in natural rights created a great American political tradition ( Booklist ) -- "easily one of the best books on American Conservatism ever written" (Jonah Goldberg).



For more than four decades, George F. Will has attempted to discern the principles of the Western political tradition and apply them to America's civic life. Today, the stakes could hardly be higher. Vital questions about the nature of man, of rights, of equality, of majority rule are bubbling just beneath the surface of daily events in America.

The Founders' vision, articulated first in the Declaration of Independence and carried out in the Constitution, gave the new republic a framework for government unique in world history. Their beliefs in natural rights, limited government, religious freedom, and in human virtue and dignity ushered in two centuries of American prosperity. Now, as Will shows, conservatism is under threat -- both from progressives and elements inside the Republican Party. America has become an administrative state, while destructive trends have overtaken family life and higher education. Semi-autonomous executive agencies wield essentially unaccountable power. Congress has failed in its duty to exercise its legislative powers. And the executive branch has slipped the Constitution's leash.

In the intellectual battle between the vision of Founding Fathers like James Madison, who advanced the notion of natural rights that pre-exist government, and the progressivism advanced by Woodrow Wilson, the Founders have been losing. It's time to reverse America's political fortunes.

Expansive, intellectually thrilling, and written with the erudite wit that has made Will beloved by millions of readers, The Conservative Sensibility is an extraordinary new book from one of America's most celebrated political writers.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, History, Political Science, American History, Economics

640 pages, Hardcover

First published June 4, 2019

About the author

George Frederick Will is an American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winner best known for his conservative commentary on politics. By the mid 1980s the Wall Street Journal reported he was "perhaps the most powerful journalist in America," in a league with Walter Lippmann (1899–1975).

Will served as an editor for National Review from 1972 to 1978. He joined the Washington Post Writers Group in 1974, writing a syndicated biweekly column, which became widely circulated among newspapers across the country and continues today. His column is syndicated to 450 newspapers. In 1976 he became a contributing editor for Newsweek, writing a biweekly backpage column until 2011.

Will won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "distinguished commentary on a variety of topics" in 1977.[6] Often combining factual reporting with conservative commentary, Will's columns are known for their erudite vocabulary, allusions to political philosophers, and frequent references to baseball.

Will has also written two bestselling books on the game of baseball, three books on political philosophy, and has published eleven compilations of his columns for the Washington Post and Newsweek and of various book reviews and lectures.

Will was also a news analyst for ABC since the early 1980s and was a founding member on the panel of ABC's This Week with David Brinkley in 1981, now titled This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Will was also a regular panelist on television's Agronsky & Company from 1977 through 1984 and on NBC's Meet the Press in the mid-to-late 1970s. He left ABC to join Fox News in early October 2013.

Reviews

[David Wineberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there is anyone on Earth who can rationally explain the conservative movement in the USA, it is George Will. Highly principled, extraordinarily erudite and calmly eloquent, Will has taken on this job/love in The Conservative Sensibility. There is an enormous amount of thought and analysis here. Will deconstructs sentences, picks out individual words for scrutiny, and when necessary, looks at greater context. Numerous paragraphs revolve around a single word from something someone said or wrote. In some ways, it resembles the universe; both barely perceptible particles and also gigantic conceptions. Will loves things and people to be properly organized and labeled. Every player in the book seems to have his or (rarely) her label, mostly progressive (bad) or conservative (good). Liberal swings both ways and needs further elaboration. It is a monumental work if only because it keeps the reader’s interest for 500 pages.

The central point of it all is that the Founders decided there were a number of natural rights that needed embedding in the Constitution. Government was to be forever inferior to individual rights. And if we today could only appreciate that they already understood everything back then, and if we would simply stick with them, it would be a happier, wealthier, better country. His thoughts on it cover most everything: religion, speech, education, the universe, capitalism, the New Deal, the Great Society, war and imperialism, even briefly touching on race.

In the red corner, Will has (Founder) James Madison; in the blue corner, Woodrow Wilson. For Will, Wilson was the first Progressive corruption of Madison’s pure thoughts on liberty and government. But Woodrow Wilson was a garden variety racist, whose first book studied the governments of the Aryan races, of which there were none. He does not represent anyone’s views, and his actions are suspect.

Nonetheless, Will scores lots of points. The Constitution does not list what government will do for you, but what it cannot do to you, he points out. He cites Randy Barnett, a Constitutional lawyer, that there are two Constitutions, the Democratic Constitution and the Republican Constitution. The Democrat thinks “We the people” means government comes before individual rights and the Republican puts individual rights before government, despite the “we”. It’s a constant battle. Will enjoys the jousting: “Americans who find perpetual arguing stressful or otherwise unsatisfying should find another country,” he says in the lightest moment in the book.



But then the fault lines start cracking open. Without recognizing the irony, Will states bluntly that the most destructive social problem facing the USA is the disintegration of the family. “No one understands what opaque tangle of factors has caused this,” he claims. He says in the 1950s, 4% were born out of wedlock, while today 40% are - and no one knows why. Similarly, no one has any solutions. This is the only thing Will says he is unsure of, and he repeats it. The irony comes when he acknowledges it even applies to black families, which have long suffered this way.

In a word: poverty. Over and over, endlessly, poverty, both absolute and relative has been shown to reduce brain function, language manipulation, school achievements, parenting and family values. There is far more involvement with the justice system, and more family breakups. It’s what blacks have suffered since the Civil War. But Will insists no one knows. He even cites studies that show it clearly and unambiguously, but he uses them instead to show that public (government) schools don’t fix the problem. Precarity plays no role. Discrimination plays no role. Personal debt plays no role.

This is so absurd as to be laughable. The precarity of the workforce leads to less marriage, fewer homes purchased, and more abandonment. That working class kids graduate school in massive debt sets the stage. That 40% of jobs are minimum wage or less, with no job security or benefits cements it in place. That 30% of car payments are 90 days late raises tensions. Individual natural rights are meaningless in resolving these issues or creating any level of satisfaction, let alone the pursuit of happiness. Will shows himself such an elitist he cannot place himself in anyone’s shoes who is not a multimillionaire. It remains a mystery.

On racism, he says “America then was often barbaric. It is not anymore. “ He completely ignores the hundreds of blacks killed for no reason by both police and civilians, and used as slave labor in prisons for the crime of being unable to make bail on trivial crimes whites don’t get nailed for. He glowingly cites Founder John Adams claiming America was “not a conquered, but a discovered country,” totally ignoring the fifty million natives who lived there.

There follows an insane analysis of income taxes that is totally divorced from reality. Will says the reason the poor don’t save money is that they pay no tax. It discourages them from saving. Overbearing government is the reason we need taxes; government is in competition with the rich for wealth, so it raises taxes. Government actually wants to supplant markets for itself. Progressive taxation, like free public education, has wormed its way into the economy and become accepted, when it is clearly distorting natural rights in the Constitution. The poor and middle classes are jealous of the rich, and that drives the imposition of progressive taxation. The experts he quotes validate these positions with sarcasm. It is the absolutely typical irrational American hatred of the poor on display.

From there, Will decides that racist idiotic Supreme Court decisions somehow represent the will of the tyrannical progressive majority, while fair decisions represent Republican values. The conservative sensibility unravels.

He spends a lot of time on human nature, arguing that if human nature were mutable, society would collapse and government would be impossible. But it won’t change, ever. That is why these natural rights are forever needed and sacrosanct. On the other hand, it is precisely because human nature is unchanging that we need regulation to control its excesses. But Will doesn’t admit to that.

On education, he says we are too forward looking. We need to look backward, starting right at birth, inculcating the history of the USA and its enumerated Constitutional rights. For higher education, he says we need to teach three things: “how to praise“ (and that most things are not praiseworthy), “a lively sense of historical contingencies,” and a “talent for pessimism.” Pessimism, it transpires, is the mark of a true conservative, who lives in lifelong fear his rights are disappearing, if only because nothing lasts forever. “Most new ideas are false; hence most ‘improvements’ make things worse,” is his mantra.

He decries multiculturalism in universities. He hates that everything has become interpretation and facts have become fungible. Well guess what: that is a function of the free market. If there is demand for feminist studies, or for black studies, the market will force the sellers of those services to adapt or be bypassed. When the student is the customer, focusing on the constitutional history of the USA loses its domination. Be careful what you wish for.

He keeps coming back to trust in government, that Americans used to appreciate and trust government. Since the Reagan era, that trust has steadily eroded to where it is at its lowest point, and is still falling. Will attributes this to the ever-growing size of government, and how Americans hate that. But it’s not true at all. What Americans hate is that government doesn’t work, because lawmakers keep chopping funding, making mandated functions impossible. Crippling lawful programs and agencies cannot possibly result in higher public satisfaction. It has nothing to do with progressives; it is intellectual dishonesty. This is straight out of the Republican playbook. First, lower taxes. Second, run a huge deficit because of smaller receipts. Third, cut back programs so the deficit isn’t as unwieldy. Fourth, repeat. “Conservatives hunt for a governmental cause for every problem,“ he cites journalist Jonathan Rauch saying.

He also harps on majority rule. He says in modern democracies, where majorities rule…. But nowhere does the majority rule. If it did, the USA would not keep starting new wars. Tax cuts would not go to the rich, healthcare would be a right, not a privilege of the rich. Legislatures would not pass laws the electorate despises.

He uses the large OECD figure of American men 25-54 outside the labor force (ahead only of Italy in last place) to show that government spending has made American men lazy. But, he acknowledges, all the other OECD countries are far more progressive and interventionist than the USA, with more male participation. So what has he proven?

The conservative sensibility that Will espouses is black or white. There is no gray. If you don’t like his stance, you are for overbearing government and against the Constitution. There’s no wiggle room for those who disagree. It is either natural rights or tyrannical majority rule. There is no possibility, say, of having health benefits or preferring that the country stop trying to spread democracy by war, while also believing in individual rights.

Stunningly absent is any discussion of the 2nd amendment in the Bill of Rights. Gun-lovers say it is their God-given Constitutional right. But not a word from George Will. There is nothing on the outrage of corporations achieving constitutional natural rights of persons, which has an enormously rich trial history. And nothing on the Trump administration.

The Conservative Sensibility is a wonderful challenge to read, but it’s camouflage for faulty reasoning.

David Wineberg

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 4 out of 5]

With Sulla in the White House and his reactionary sycophants doing battle with Elagabalan purveyors of perfumed degeneracy over the spoils of a fraying Republic, George Will figures as a lonely Polybius, a conservative forced into exile by a populist derangement that has cast aside his movement’s tradition of Constitutional deference and epistemological modesty with astonishing haste. Even in the throes of electoral victory, the American right displays less cohesion of identity and purpose today than at any point since the tussle between Goldwater and Rockefeller Republicans in 1964. As Goldwater suffered a crushing electoral defeat but prefigured the Reagan revolution, so Pat Buchanan’s once-marginal platform of economic nationalism and cultural revanchism has reached its political efflorescence in Trumpism. The Conservative Sensibility, a catechism of the Constitutional order reflecting a lifetime of political thought, is a reminder for Americans of what American conservatism, at least until recently, has sought to conserve.

What American conservatism has sought to conserve, according to Will, are the natural rights of men as articulated by Lockean classical liberalism and given institutional form by the Framers of the American Constitution. The fundamental, individual right to be secure in one’s person and property, to have a zone of autonomy over one’s personal affairs, and to direct oneself in the pursuit of happiness as one understands it, are universal and timeless, and thus precede the establishment of governments. Governments are instituted not to provide these rights but to secure them; Will believes “secure” is the most consequentially overlooked word in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional preamble. The role of government is to preserve the “spontaneous order” of free individuals and their contractual arrangements and to enforce a legal regime that guarantees individual autonomy.

American nationhood stems not from some historical process of cultural sedimentation or from the rootedness of an ethnos in blood and soil, but from the credal affirmation of natural rights under natural law. Americans, like Locke, are a creationistic people; formed in accordance with abstract reason under a universal and unalterable law and set loose upon a virgin landscape like the patriarchs of Genesis. Their solidarity comes from mutual adherence to an ideal, and that ideal was distilled by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights. Will follows Lincoln’s formulation on the relationship between the ideal of the Declaration and the structure of the Constitution: the Constitution (and the Union it established) is the “picture of silver” framing the “apple of gold”. The purpose of the Constitutional frame is to accentuate and adorn the Lockean apple.

It is a commonplace among conservatives to assert that the Framers were critical of democracy and designed the Constitution as a bulwark against majoritarian tyranny, but Will amends this picture slightly. Madison’s aim was not to stave off majoritarianism, but rather stemmed from a pragmatic understanding that political majorities will advance their interests and priorities over the rest of the population regardless of the constitution under which they live. The genius of the Framers was not to suppress the popular will but to channel it through the legal tributaries of the Constitution. The raw democracy of the House of Representatives was to be tempered by the more wise and learned counsel of the Senate (senators were originally appointed by their respective state legislatures), the veto power of a President who is elected not by popular vote but by slates of electors from each state, and the power of the courts to review the legality of legislation and overturn it when necessary.

Unsurprisingly, Will laments the rise of Progressivism in the early twentieth century and its consequential tampering with the Constitutional order. Seeing the mediating institutions established by the Constitution only as barriers to popular sovereignty, Progressives sought to use the power of government to bring about collective goods and to mitigate, as far as possible, the deleterious effects rendered on one’s life by the circumstances of one’s birth with regards to financial status, race, sex, disability status, sexual orientation, and so on. Progressives rightly recognized that individual lives are shaped by a wide array of social, cultural, and historical contingencies; but their fatal flaw, according to Will, was to believe in the capability of human institutions—namely a series of federal agencies staffed by “experts” in the social sciences—to master these contingencies and dispense perfect justice and equity to everyone. Progressives do not believe in a fixity of human nature and are thus goaded by their own best-laid schemes to astonishing degrees of hubris; a hubris consistently frustrated by an American political regime predicated on the timelessness of human vanity and ambition and thus designed to be unconducive to the centralization of power. The current crop of Democratic presidential candidates attests to this well.

Though I don’t agree with all of Will’s positions—particularly his uncritical celebration of unregulated economic “dynamism”, his lack of concern for how private interests influence the conduct of our publicly-owned government, and his assertion that social welfare policies always breed a spirit of dependency and are to blame for the lion’s share of our social problems—and I find a lot of merit in both classical Marxist and post-liberal conservative critiques of the classical liberal tradition, The Conservative Sensibility will remain a valuable articulation of a mode of conservative thought that has been crowded out of our political discourse by vulgar and petty people.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here's the link to the original: https://artsfuse.org/191913/book-revi...

George Will is a one of the few left on the right who still fits the rapidly dwindling coterie of bow-tied, high-toned, Ivy League conservative thinky types. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize, widely published, he’s been sought out as a commentator on topics like the Presidency and baseball. Will tends to be pretty even-tempered in person and on the page, which is a relief, given the constant ire from most Fox News types and the nonstop ressentiment of talk radio. Lately Will’s done some encouraging things like withdrawing his formal registration as a Republican and publicly called out the GOP as a “cult of personality.” Unlike most of those who have been getting traction on the right since at least the nineties, Will’s got a droll sense of humor, impressive erudition, and is an atheist. But the jury is out on whether or not it will be enough to make a dent in those he clearly wants to persuade.

Will’s new five hundred-plus page doorstopper seems like an attempt at a magnum opus and is grandly entitled The Conservative Sensibility. Note the slightly overambitious tone—Will’s clear goal here is to offer a definitive statement about what conservatism really means. It’s THE conservative sensibility, not A conservative sensibility. Will has stated that he intends for this book to be used as a guideline for what future conservativism will look like. But when you push aside the frilly lace curtains of Will’s scholarliness and calls for prudence it becomes clear that his ideas about what true conservatism really means are actually both more predictable and more irrelevant than he assumes. Will’s plea for a more measured sensibility from the right has been consistently trampled over by those leading the rightward charge, who clearly don’t feel the need to slow down and take moral inventory anytime soon. Moderation and governmental restraint are for losers and wimps.

Will bases some of his arguments for a return to a more cautious style of governance on the Constitutional example set by the founders, which is reasonable enough. It’s quite true that Madison, for one, worried deeply about the tendency for democracies to surrender to charismatic demagogues and that We The People just can’t always be relied on to do what is in their best interests. The government was designed to be a system of checks and balances for a reason, and a very good one, even if it can be extremely frustrating to watch in real time. The problem is that in many cases, especially these days, the arguments over getting various legislation initiatives passed aren’t being conducted in good faith, if they ever were. As a longtime admirer of Barry Goldwater, who opposed segregation because it made the Constitution cry, Will should recognize how morally and politically limited strictly literal interpretations of the constitution really are.
Will rightfully points out that the founders hoped that competing partisan interests would be made to check each other’s ambitions, but instead we’ve seen how one party has gamed the system and effectively denied the existence of the reality that can be mutually discussed. It’s good to be reminded that the founders were at loggerheads half the time, as Will only passively notes, with Hamilton the hustler lobbying for city-slicker stuff like establishing a national bank and Jefferson pushing for an agrarian economy that would leave you-know-who to toil away in those verdant fields. For all their genius, sentimentalizing the philosophical disinterestedness of the founding fathers is a mug’s game.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that the Constitution was (and is) a revolutionary document born from a literally revolutionary act, and those wigged property-holding old white men had openly demanded, and in many cases literally shed blood for, a radical overthrowing of the established order of kings and colonies, which ought to be a useful reminder that America’s founding principles have always had a deeply revolutionary potential. We’re more critical of the blind spots and hypocrisies of the founders now, as we should be, since they were all-too-human in their hypocrisy about slavery and sexism, etc., which Will only gingerly touches on. But America’s grand philosophical reach-- “all men are created equal,” the Bill of Rights, and all the rest of it—has always in reality eluded its grasp. We are now, and have been, perpetually failing to live up to an almost impossible vision for the country and pursuing more moderation in government isn’t going to get us closer to it anytime soon.

When it comes to economics, Will offers the typical conservative bugaboos about government interference in the free market. There are endless reasons why free market economics is bunk, but Will seems almost shockingly naïve when he says that “capitalism requires, and therefore develops, a society in which economic dealings are lubricated by the disposition and ability to trust strangers.” For example, says Will, when you walk into a store, the first question you’re asked is how can I help you? A commercial society will naturally be more sociable, he suggests, because it will instill industrious virtues into the populace. He scoffs at FDR’s New Deal call for a second bill of economic rights and makes fun of his perfectly reasonable statement that “necessitous men are not free men.” Will not only takes this way out of context—this was a jittery, starving, post-Depression America Roosevelt was addressing—but he grumbles obtusely about the absurdity of government addressing “necessity” and “meaning.”

Well, this will be news to any of the millions of people who has to fight with their private insurer to cover some life-saving but expensive medicine or surgery, or who got laid off from the plant after thirty years because it was more profitable for their company to move overseas, or who lost their credit rating to predatory lending practices, and those just examples taken from people I know personally. Will’s using a figure of speech, but he has an elitist naivety about the true nature of customer service—store employees don’t ask if they can help you because they care about serving you, it’s because they are at the mercy of the customer’s whims in order to survive. Which, as anyone who has worked in retail or for tips knows, when these service-based jobs aren’t enough to pay the bills, that obsequy turns into rage down the line.

There are positive aspects of a commercial society, certainly, but it also instills a Darwinistically nihilist mentality that will gradually imbue all human interactions into transactions, which ultimately turns communities into hordes of amateur salesmen always hustling to find the next sucker to rip off or to find someone who will buy whatever they can sell. Will devotes a slightly reserved chapter to the idea that we really shouldn’t be mad or envious at the 1% having mind-boggling amounts of wealth, since that’s just the breaks, which may be true in a certain way, very hard sell for pretty much anybody who understands the elemental point that many other people’s sweat went into those fortunes.

Recently, when Will has been asked why there’s no mention of Trump in the book he scoffs and says with a slightly performative gruffness, “for the same reason that I don’t mention Doris Day!” Well, the quip is amusing in a way, but at the same time he’s missing something extremely important and problematic. There’s a hulking orange shadow cast over all these thoroughly footnoted, thoughtfully argued pages. Conservative voters have had plenty of chances to vote for moderation and they decided they’d rather scapegoat, talk trash, and whine about losing their cultural and ethnic supremacy.

While our semi-elected President continually hacks away at our institutions, it’s ironic to notice how things have swung in the opposite direction. In the ‘60’s and ‘70’s it was the uptight conservative types who shuddered at the left’s vulgarity, trash-talking, and throwing over social norms. Now history’s wrecking ball is swinging on the opposite side; it’s the left who are sticking up for the validity of our institutions and trying to establish new social mores while the hoodlum right sneers with glee over the damage done to “the system” by the “elites.” Despite what Will wants to believe, it’s not at all hard to see these days that there isn’t really much that carefully articulated arguments can do when they’re not just ignored but being crumpled up and ripped into confetti by a crude, paranoid, autocratic demagogue and his minions.

Almost adorably, Will wants to make a plea for a return to normalcy, modesty, and a return to first principles. Would that it could be so. But after observing a single session in Congress, filling a Supreme Court seat, or checking the latest poll numbers in red states, it’s easy to see that the very people that Will is trying to appeal to are evidently quite happy to be drunk on the power that their brutishness has created. Whether Trump is President or not, the rage and spite that elected him in the first place still wants to be fed and isn’t shy about doing whatever it takes to get what it wants. Instead of refined debates over the proper proportions of sense and sensibility, they’ve chosen the bread and circuses.

[Leftbanker · Rating 1 out of 5]

“On February 22, 1842, the 110th anniversary of George Washington’s birthday, Abraham Lincoln….blah, blah blah,”

And so begins another bloviated, mind-numbingly boring treatise by George Will, or the man who has so many inconsistencies in his thinking that he reminds one of those dual masks that people wear with a smile and a frown. He opposes federal dollars to support NPR, or the arts in general, then he gushes over the Ken Burns series, The Civil War. No big deal, it’s only a TV program, but he's made some huge mistakes in his career for which he has never acknowledged. See below.

I think Will has a Microsoft program for writing his columns that all begin with some trenchant historical analogy that underlines his point, yet he almost never has a point but rather drifts off like someone with narcolepsy.

The problem is that Will has been wrong about nearly everything in his bloated career of conservative America’s attempt at presenting a new version of William F. Buckley, another guy who mostly got it all wrong. Just the fact that he wears a bow tie should be enough to disqualify him from public discourse.

Simply on the merit on how wrong Will got GW Bush’s wars, he should be shamed to go into hiding for the rest of his life and shut the fuck up about politics. He’s for the wars, he’s against the wars. Wow, that was only the biggest foreign policy decision in modern times, and he got it all wrong…until he changed his mind completely. I got it right the first time around. The same with health care and Social Security, public transportation, local city planning, and public education, all of the evils of big government that Will vilified as a hack for the Right.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was probably the single greatest book on politics I have ever read. The writing was amazing and it was packed with information. You learn in one book as much as reading 4 or 5 books on politics & history.

I'm not a fan or hater of Mr Will, I"m slightly conservative but enjoy reading about everything. The book was not polemical. It's not like reading a book by Ann Colter or Rush Limbaugh. It's about political philosophy and history. It's not about convincing you to vote for so and so or believe in some policy like Universal health care.

It is packed with aphorisms and references to philosophers, poets and historians. There is a lot of quotable passages. The reason I was so happy to read this book was Mr Will's ability to so easily elucidate historical and political concepts. It isn't dry. Mr Will's explanations are like watching an artist paint a picture. It was fun to read.

... to fill in more details later

[Brian Eshleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

To travel with George Will is to be decidedly better off. His voice is erudite, calm, penetrating, edifying. He reads the signs of the times and connects them, like The New Yorker, with preceding occurrences of the same issues and with evidence of future trends.

[Jeff Raymond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best book on conservatism and conservative politics/beliefs I've read in over a decade. Deserves to be in the overall canon alongside Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative and Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed as a great resource about what conservatism is in light of how Trump's last four years have cast a shadow over the movement.

[NICK · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well written, presented in a civil and conscise manner. Still wrong.

[Drtaxsacto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Will's book is a magnum opus - long and with a complex set of arguments. He begins with a recitation on what made America exceptional. For a good part of the last several decades the progressives have tried to dispel the idea of exceptionalism but Will responds that ours is the only credal nation. Unlike the Magna Carta which was imposed by a king to his people; our system was built on a set of ideas which came from the bottom up and overthrew the established order. The country was based on philosophy not history. The key idea with the Founders was an understanding that government is created with limits - what government can't do (which are many things) rather than what it can. Federalist #51 is key here.

He then sketches the development of progressive thought - which is based on the notion that the human character is malleable and perfectible. It further supposes that as Herbert Croyly and Hegel that once a person enters the bureaucracy, self interest is checked at the door. But as we have seen since the development of this open ended vision as government increases so do interest groups and so do pleas for government to do more. He describes government as something with limited capacity and unlimited optimism. Unfortunately as this "servile" state tries to offer more and more, respect for it diminishes.

He does not leave some conservatives out of his criticism - he is skeptical of the argument by some conservatives that one can starve the beast to reduce the demands of government. In the end, because of some artifices of congressional process ultimately log rolling and deficits prevail over modest choices. He also highlights parallels between some conservatives (Notably HW and W Bush) and Wilson - both believed in the government's ability to perfect humans including a vision that they could eliminate war with the right set of institutions.

He does a chapter on whether the US is a Christian nation. He argues that as an atheist that he believes it is not. And indeed he goes on an extended discussion of the Diest tendencies of the founders. Where I think his argument is flawed is the subtlety of the Founder's support for religion. Clearly, the US was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. At the same time saw the real risks of tying religion into government - from examples in their own times. They believed in providential forces which helped to guide us.

He worries that saturation journalism tends to focus on allocation issues in government (who gets what) rather than can versus should views.

The last chapter is one of the best. He argues, that despite the last couple of "conservative" presidents that leaders can begin to bring us back to founding principles.

This is one of those books that I expect to go back to again, there are lots of good ideas and discussion.

[Michael]

I thought about picking this up, but the reviews and Will's interviews about the book are making me question that. I've read plenty of conservative arguments lately that anti-majoritarian political institutions protect society from a reckless majority empowering an intrusive administrative state. The biggest problem with this is that it is not only government that can restrict liberty. Private wealth can and does lead to power that limits peoples' ability to pursue happiness. The news is now replete with instances of how it is private players who are now using intrusive and coercive means to manipulate the public. What institution checks aristocratic, private power? The notion that unresponsive and dysfunctional political institutions are ok in order to maintain order and liberty is absurd. It is the unresponsiveness and dysfunction that breed radicalism and jeopardize the whole thing. Will's political philosophy is based on a reductive and hopeless view of humanity. It is the very antithesis of the notion of civilization in which we create institutions to address certain problems that can only be addressed collectively. You don't need to be utopian to want to at least make things a little better. Will has no positive agenda for the world. We need better ideas than that.

[Jeff Grundman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Longer than it need to be. It also suffered from the typical pitfalls of the genre: The conservative viewpoint was painted in an aspirational light, presented as it ought to be, while the progressive view point was largely presented in straw-man caricature of worst-case examples. Neither presentation was entirely wrong, but keep a healthy supply of grains of salt handy while reading.

[Mark E · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK

Will throws the kitchen sink at us...gratuitous citation after citation, like he needs to remind us of every book he’s ever read.

[Ted · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to hear George Will’s thoughts on conservatism. I still do, actually, but I couldn’t push my way through it.

The book is not well written. It does not seem to have been composed with the intent of ensuring the reader’s understanding. It’s fine to have a large vocabulary and use it. It’s fine to show that you can construct complex sentences. It’s fine to know and cite the works of people from history. However, Mr. Will does all of these things, paragraph after paragraph, in great (and sometimes obscure) detail. It becomes a real trudge to fight through heavy writing to find the meaning. To me, the book has a pompous air to it.

I believe a good editor with lots of time on their hands could reduce the volume of words and drastically improve the flow. No meaning would be lost but many more readers would have access to Mr. Will’s thoughts.

After trying for 106 pages, this book ends up on my did-not-finish shelf. Mr. Will, if you publish a follow-up synopsis of under 100 pages, let me know -- I’d be interested to see it.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review title: The last living liberal?

George Will is a long-time conservative media commentator who, unlike the loud-mouth zealots on either side of the political aisle who dominate commentary in the CNN/Fox News era, is an actual thinker and student of American history and political philosophy. This latest book is his summa theologica of the conservative approach to life and government that Will identifies as sensibility in the title. It is 535 pages of reasoned, reasonable, and readable argument so let's dive in.

The principal of natural rights in the Declaration means that individuals precede government and that therefore those rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness precede or can not be taken by the government, only controlled under the governed's consent to allow a more perfect union. "Natural rights are affirmed by the Declaration. Majority rule, circumscribed and modulated, is constructed by the Constitution. And a properly engaged judiciary is duty-bound to declare majority acts invalid when they abridge natural rights." (p. 160)

Progressives, starting from German historicism (the notion that great events trump great men, and that society and the state precede the individual) in the 19th century and embodied in Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson put government before the rights of men as the guarantor of rights. This drives to the administrative state, the expansion of Presidential power, and efforts to limit the individual preferences of individual citizens and those pesky "natural rights" they want to exercise. Wilson wrote that democracy 'rests[s] at bottom on the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members.. Limits to the wisdom and convenience to the public control there may be: limits of principle there are, upon strict analysis, none.' (Emphasis added)(P. 82)

"With presidential leaders speaking to, through, and for--all those prepositions apply--the nation, Congress, in Wilson's analysis (and aspiration) is marginalized and reduced to giving only the most general directives to the real government." (P. 89) Congress is just a public opinion polling mechanism! And, Will continues in the next chapter, the principle of judicial deference to legislative acts (since they enact the majority opinion) as constitutional as long as they allow due process put the Supreme Court at the service of the progressive agenda.

So here we are in 2019 where differences of opinion on government and policy seem intractable and reasoned discussions on our differences seem impossible. Will reminds us that Hamilton and Madison, who collaborated on the Federalist Papers that provided the political and philosophical foundations in favor of the Constitution, were "at daggers drawn"after its ratification over Congress's right to establish a national bank. He concludes from this: "Americans who find perpetual arguing stressful or otherwise unsatisfying should consider finding another country" (p. 178). He also suggests a way to settle constitutional disagreements, using the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision striking down legislated school segregation as an example:

No acceptable theory for construing the Constitution can invalidate the court's conclusion In Brown; the conclusion invalidates any theory that rejects it. If a theory of constitutional interpretation cannot find in the document's text, when the text is construed to serve the document's purpose of framing a government that secures natural rights, grounds for striking down racial segregation in schools, a practice facially inimical to equal enjoyment of the blessings of liberty, then this theory must be discarded. The phrase "the blessings of liberty" is of course from the Constitution's Preamble. But the Preamble is not a mere decorative filagree on the Constitution. It is a statement of the objective of all that follows. (p. 180)

This dense argument give priority to the ends of the Declaration, the preservation of the natural rights of all men equally, over the means of the Constitution: the package of legislative adoption, presidential execution, and judicial review that enables majority rule in a government of laws of, by, and for we the Individuals who both constitute the government and own the rights of the Declaration. If the means of the Constitution do not achieve the ends of the Declaration, then we the people retain the power to change it. The Constitution enables, it is not enthroned, a term that resonated with the Americans who fought for freedom from royalty, a resonance muted but in need of remembrance today.

As Will argues for a return to this "classic liberalism" as a necessary condition for understanding and addressing the state of America government and politics today, I wonder if he is the last living liberal? Or the last living conservative? It is why Will and I no longer call ourselves Republicans (see for example this story from June 2019)

The problem of political ignorance: given the tiny incremental culpability of an individual's vote in the outcome of the vote, it is rational but problematic: the aggregated votes of an ignorant populace elects national politicians who make decisions on an ever larger scope of public life. "There is so much more about which to be uninformed. A better ameliorative strategy would be to reduce the risks of ignorance by reducing governments consequences--its size, complexity, and intrusiveness." (p. 198). Given the absolute certainty that this won't happen, judicial review remains the last best hope of protecting an ignorant voting populace from the bad effects of its voting. And judicial review is not anti-majoritarian, it is rather "preferring a previous and privileged majority, that of the generation that framed and ratified the Constitution, to a current and secondary one." (p. 202)

Postmodernism claims that "the meaning all communications is radically indeterminate" and that "any supposedly disinterested deliberation actually is merely self-interest disguised (p. 376).

These ideas subvert civilization by denying that truth is found by conscientious attempts to portray accurately a reality that exists independently of our perceptions, attitudes, or other attributes such as race, ethnicity, sex, or class. Once a foundation of realism is denied, the foundation of a society based on persuasion crumbles. All arguments necessarily become ad hominem. They become arguments about the characteristics of the person presenting the thought, not about the thought. (p. 377)

This explains much about our political discourse today, from President Trump's "fake news" to the scorched-earth political attacks from both left and right. In extensive chapters on culture and education, Will spends much time talking about the effects of these virtues (Will's term) on politics in a democracy; what I have often called the voting qualification of wisdom, Will calls "the tension between self-assertion and self-control" (p. 361). Our culture and education leave us sorely lacking in both components of wisdom and the results are readily apparent in the daily headlines.

Will, who identifies himself as an "amiable, low-voltage atheist" (p. 479), devotes a chapter to debunking conservative Christian claims for the fundamentalism of the Founding Father's and the Christian core of the Declaration and the Constitution.

It is false, and politically ruinous, for conservatives to assert that conservatism requires a shared religion or even ubiquitous religiosity. The assertion that particular virtues depend, or that virtue generally depends, on religion is an empirical claim, and demonstrably false. There are many virtuous unbelievers, and many virtues with no religious provenance, and many religious people who are not virtuous. (p. 481)

It may be false, and ruinous, but perhaps explains the circling of the Republican Party wagons around its core Christian constituency, which given the declining percentages of self-identified Protestant Christians cited by Will spells future trouble for the Republicans. But look at the title of this book: Will is intentionally talking about the "conservative sensibility" of classical liberalism, not about the Republican Party or about the neo-conservatism of the last century, both of which Will describe as willing participants in the progressivism that has distorted the American experiment in liberty.

How to restore the proper pessimism about the positive effects of a powerful government and the proper wisdom required from the voters who constitute it: "The restraints requisite for limited government, and hence requisite for the virtues that republican government presupposes, will come only from thoughtful reverence for the nation's founding, a reverence that not only honors the memory of the Founders but is conscientious in understanding their principles." (p. 522-523) Will prefaces his argument with the example of Lincoln's insistence at the time of the 1858 debates with his opponent Douglas (see Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America) that the citizens of Kansas could not choose to have slaves, based on the serious and restraining guiding principles of the Declaration.

This return to the conservative sensibility will require leadership with "the ability to persuade a majority to consent to things they are not disposed to desire." (p. 523) it will require not just proper pessimism but exhilarating energy in regathering fellow citizens to the task of returning rights to their proper place--natural, individual, pre-government--so we as voters can apply this newly-remembered wisdom to the task of restraining government to its properly powerful role of conserving those rights.

[Carol Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have discovered in reading “A Conservative Sensibility” that I am not a progressive. My reverence of James Madison and individual rights does not make me a progressive. Hmmm. Although, after reading this book, I am not a conservative either. Like many Americans, I’m an amalgamation of both – a mutt, which are the most genetically sound dogs. I disagreed with many things said in the book, but there were many things I agreed with. Both are in this review.

The book had a lot about “natural rights”. The problem is that the book doesn’t describe these natural rights. He wrote about them like everyone knows them. Well, I don’t. Maybe it’s my science background. My idea of natural rights are food, water, shelter, and opportunity to reproduce. After much internet searching, what I found is that natural rights are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. I also found it telling that the author was going on and on about the Founders and natural rights when he and the Founders were the one group (white men) that could exercise natural rights where the Declaration of Independence was written.

There are quotes from the books below with my reaction (disagree and agree):
“Eugenics was one manifestation of progressivism’s repudiation of the Founders’ individualism, which asserted the natural equality of human beings in their capacity to reason and their right to choose and pursue their interests.” I do not condone eugenics in any way shape or form, but there are some human beings that do not have a capacity for reason. My mentally handicapped cousin is in an institution for a reason.
“Progressive taxation is a flimsy lever with which to try to reshape a society, many of whose problems are driven by family disintegration.” I read this to my co-worker, and she was surprised I didn’t throw the book across the train car. I believe this man needs to spend some time in Scandinavia and talking to a wide variety of Scandinavians.
“The richest American cannot purchase better antibiotics than the average American can.” To me a more pertinent question is can the average American afford the better antibiotics. Every American has the freedom to buy a Lexus, but can every American afford it?

“In 1960, an average of 455,000 workers were receiving disability payments; in 2011, 8.6 million were. This was more than four times the number of persons receiving basic welfare benefits under Temporary Assistance for Needy Family. Nearly half of the 8.6 million were ‘disabled’ because of ‘mood disorders’ or ailments of the ‘musculoskeletal system and the connective tissue.’ It is, says Eberstadt, essentially impossible to disprove a person’s claim to be suffering from sadness or back pain. The current administration may not like NPR, but they did an excellent explanation of this issue here: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/490/...

“In the fifteen year ending in December 2011, the United States added 8.8 million nonfarm private sector jobs - and 4.1 million workers went on the disability rolls.” But were those jobs ones the people on disability could do or were qualified for or were in their part of the country? I refer you to the NPR article above. They talked to a woman with a bad back who would be happy to work a desk job, but there were none available for her.

“In 1965, even high school dropouts were more likely to be in the workforce than is the twenty-five- to fifty-four-year-old male today” In 1965, a high school dropout could get a good union job in a factory that could support a family. Where can a high school dropout get that good of a job today?

“The collapse has coincided with a retreat from marriage (‘the proportion of never-married men was over three times higher in 2015 than 1965’) I refer you to Hanna Rosin’s “The End of Men”. Women don’t want to marry men who are unemployed or under-employed and still won’t do at least half of the housework. I’ve heard more than one woman refer to their husband as an extra child that they have to take care of. Women are expecting more of men, and many men are not stepping up to the plate.

“Multiculturalism attacks individualism by defining people as mere manifestation of groups (racial, ethnic, sexual) rather than as self-defining participants in a free society.” So your group identity can’t be part of your individual identity?

“This explains the multiculturalists’ attempts to politicize and purge higher education curriculums” My heart bleeds for the downgrading of Western Civilization curriculum and adding topics to remind students that there is more to the world than the U.S. and Western Europe.

“But education is too serious a matter to become a game of Let’s pretend, a ritual of pretending that enduring works of the humanities are evenly distributed throughout the world’s cultures.” Oh,goodness, the closemindedness of this statement. Education is for the broadening of horizons. Explore different cultures. Our culture is not 100% good and other cultures are not 100% bad.

“Freedom is not defined the same way everywhere, let alone valued the same way relative to other political goods such as equality, security, social cohesion, and piety.” What!? Really that is all I can say about this.

“When Blair said that freedom as we understand it, and democracy and the rule of law as we administer them, are ‘The universal values of the human spirit,’ he was not speaking as America’s Founders did when they spoke of ‘self-evident’ truths. So there are subtle differences between freedom and liberty, but I was quite confused when a few pages later He wrote this: “It is that the American Revolution unleashed the most potent force surging through the last two centuries, the passion for freedom grounded in respect for natural rights.” The revolution unleashed a passion for freedom, but the Founders supported liberty over freedom? Oh my head. I got a good grade in Philosophy, but that doesn’t mean is was good at it.

“For two centuries progressives have been explaining the obsolescence of war – their explanations often hard to hear over the roar of cannon – in terms of the spread of democracy.” I’m so confused. The author had said that members of the G.W. Bush administration were being progressive in their start of a war to spread democracy to Iraq.

“Does the tendency of modern politics to take on more and more tasks in order to ameliorate the human condition tend to mute religion’s message about reconciling us to that condition?” Has George Will never heard of the Prosperity Gospel?

“Hence citizens who want limited government should be friendly to the cause of American religion, even if they are not believers themselves.” I am friendly to believers except to those who want to make laws that restrict my natural rights because of their religious beliefs.

“So it would be an act of fidelity to the Founders to revive the idea of states’ rights – and states’ responsibilities” So, would states’ responsibilities include selling a gun to a person who can’t buy a gun in Colorado, but can in Iowa? Or make sure the marijuana being bought in Colorado is not going to Iowa?

“They (the Founders) meant education, broadly understood to include not just education by schools but also by all the institutions of a civil society that explain freedom and equip citizens with the virtues freedom requires. These virtues include industriousness, self-control, moderation, and responsibility, virtues that reinforce the rationality essential to human happiness.” I keep thinking of the current Republican president and how he differs from the last Democratic president in regards to this.

“Surely honor should flow to individuals because of their attainments of intellectual and moral excellence, not merely because of any membership in any group.” That should also include children of a university’s alumni

“The consequences of growing intolerance are enumerated by Tom Nichols, who says that our devices and social media are producing people who confuse “Internet grazing” with research and equate this faux research with higher education.” Anti-vaxxers, I’m looking at you

“It would help if people would put their electronic devices away from the center of their existences and pick up a book” As I read this book on my iPad.

“Two centuries on, however, the challenge of American statecraft is, and for at least eight decades has been, to make prudent departures from Adams’ ideal. Prudence, however, has been scarce.” So true

Robespierre: “The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that is suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. No one loves armed missionaries.” So true

“Not since the medieval church baptized, as it were, Aristotle as some sort of early church father has there been an intellectual hijacking as audacious as the attempt to present America’s most important Founders as devout Christians”. – AMEN!

“So, religious is helpful and important, but is not essential.” I say again, AMEN!

“The truly conservative sensibility is always alert to the fact that time is, as Cervantes said, the ‘devourer and destroyer of all things,’” Now if “conservatives” would remember that we have moved on from the societal norms of the 1950’s.

“It is very American to worry about whether the kind of government created by the Founders might ’perish from the Earth.’ It also is prudent.” And remember that people who don’t look like you having natural rights will not destroy our country.

“Conservatism’s task today is to demonstrate that the dignity of constitutional government depends on restraints of a sort that do not come easily to conservatives or any other Americans.” So true. Many “conservatives” need to learn to conserve more than the status quo.

“Religion has played a large role in nurturing the virtues that republican government presupposes, particularly micro self-government – the individual’s governance of his or her self.” This quote made me wonder how our government may have ended up if the majority of the population at the founding were Roman Catholic instead of Protestant. As compared to my Methodist upbringing, Roman Catholics had a lot more rules to follow.

Thus ends my thoughts on “A Conservative Sensibility”. I enjoyed the book, but it took a bit longer to read as I kept arguing with the author (in my head). I would truly enjoy sitting down with Mr. Will and discussing this book, but alas, I don’t see that ever happening.

[Mike Horne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a longtime George Will reader. I think this is the best thing he has written.

George Will’s last book The Conservative Sensibility (2019) is his magnum opus, his book on political philosophy. He is not an original thinker, but he weaves together his 60+ years of education and experience to present a good conservative tome. Here are some quotations and thoughts about them.

“ . . . America's Founders did not suppose that freedom can thrive, or even survive, without appropriate education and other nourishments of character. They meant education, broadly understood to include not just education by schools but also by all the institutions of civil society that explain freedom and equip citizens with the virtues freedom requires. These virtues include industriousness, self control, moderation, and responsibility, virtues that reinforce the rationality essential to human happiness.” (p. 21)

American conservatives take the words of our founders seriously. And they take the idea of the virtues seriously also. The virtues that Will presents are the virtues of Ben Franklin–industriousness, self control, moderation, and responsibility. Children of the very poor are often not inculcated with these habits. And our schools don’t (or perhaps can’t) bring about the education needed without those virtues. So do Americans have equality of opportunity? Not really says George Will, but he does not have a solution.


“The question is: Is the Constitution's primary purpose the creation of a governmental architecture that ensures, as much as possible, the protection of natural rights? Or is its primary purpose merely the creation of a government that facilitates effective majority rule?” (p. 202)

Do conservatives believe in “natural rights” and progressives don’t? That is what he seems to say.

“Compassion is a passion, and passions are, the Founders agreed, problems to be coped with. Compassion is not, strictly speaking, a virtue. As a passion, it is disconnected from reason and often at odds with it. Hence compassion is an unreliable guide to justice, which must be defined by reason. Compassion may be put to the service of virtue; it may prompt virtuous action. But this is a contingent, not a necessary, relation. And when compassion is elevated to a principle of political philosophy, it is incompatible with a conservatism of limited government.” (p. 524)
This is a great quotation to understand conservatives.

I was not convinced by his atheist conservative argument. But I wonder about natural rights.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grateful for the recommendation of a good friend for this book. I immediately placed it on hold and was able to listen to it as I ran each morning. I was truly shocked by its length, however I still found myself going back to listen to it even when I returned home. I am sure if anyone saw me shaking my head yes over and over in agreement, likely thought I was having some serious running issues.

I can only imagine the Founding Fathers thoughts right now if they were to see where we are today in our political landscape. Pretty sure they are rolling over in their graves because today is NOT what they had in mind. Unfortunately, I am not sold at this time that we will ever get back to what Will was discussing today as both political parties only seem to know how to go to the bitter extremes and somehow are the ones we seem to be voting into office. Maybe it's because our news media is bored by what the majority of the United States is hoping for, so going with the extremes provides better ratings.

On the other hand, hearing how the government was started as such a small entity and now it is a total monstrosity is appalling. When Will was discussing the income tax conundrum that is in our United States today, it was very disturbing. I am not sure that it was a shock to me, but I have a feeling that if the general population truly understood the reality of who pays taxes and who doesn't, it might get real. Then again, for all those folks that are or have been on unemployment during COVID-19, it is OBVIOUS why so many people don't want to go back to work. They are making MORE money sitting on the behinds! When Will talked about the gaming of the system by so many people, duh, COVID is just further proof the gaming is on. I'm not totally sure how to get out of the current system, but maybe a flat tax for ALL would be a start. That way, no one can complain about being cheated because everyone is the same. Then again, that's likely wishful thinking. We will just continue to grow our government.

[Karl-O · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Conservative Sensibility by George Will provides a ten-chapter framework for understanding conservative ideology. At the core of Will's argument is the belief that human nature is fixed (e.g. war will always be with us), and that this fixed nature informs conservative thought. This perspective emphasizes tradition, the limitations of human progress, and individual responsibility. However, it ignores the complexity of human nature and the possibility of positive change over time, and the viability of incentives that bring out the best in us.

Will offers a critique of government expansion and bureaucracy, particularly under the presidencies of Wilson and FDR. He argues that government debt is a threat to American freedom (can't imagine what he would think of the post covid US debt, this being published in 2019) and that reducing the size and scope of government is necessary. Will highlights the importance of the judiciary in protecting individual liberty but suggests that it has been recently failing in this role to check the growth of the administrative state.

In what is perhaps the best chapter in the book on American business and entrepreneurship, Will asserts that America's business is business, and that big government is the opposite of business. He emphasizes the importance of social mores and habits, arguing that these are critical to maintaining a healthy society AND a vibrant economy.

Will notes the destruction of American culture and suggests that education should cultivate critical thinking and intellectual independence, rather than ideological conformity. He presents education in its ideal form, as a tool to cultivate active pessimism, an appreciation for the limitations of human nature, and an understanding of the importance of independence and moderation. He argues that nations hostile to the American way of life will always be present, and that America must be prepared to use force to protect its interests. He also suggests that American military strength is essential for maintaining global stability.

Finally, Will argues that religion is not necessary for conservative sensibility, and that a secular view is actually conducive to it. By cultivating a sense of wonder for the unfolding of the universe and the change that it entails for individuals, nations and peoples, a conservative will be happy to lay back and watch it all come to pass, rather than like progressives try to control the course of history through the growth of the administrative state.

Overall, while The Conservative Sensibility offers valuable insights into conservative thought and critiques of government expansion, it falls short in providing nuanced analyses of complex issues, like the reduced incidence of war, the improved lot of children, women and ethnic minorities in the US, and the role of widely available education and healthcare, many of which being underpinned by government agencies.

Will's tendency to oversimplify key topics while using a baroque language laden with distracting quotes and anecdotes, and his overemphasis on the fixed nature of human nature limited the book's appeal to me. I found that it engaged only with the strawman that progressives think there is no such thing as human nature, ignoring the moderate position that human nature is complex, and actual progress lies in bringing out the best in us.

Nonetheless, the book serves as an important resource for those interested in understanding conservative ideology and its implications for American society.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was revelatory and frustrating. It's the most illuminating thing I've read about American conservatism (which Will describes as a "sensibility" rather than a "philosophy" or "ideology.") It is also a sharp critique of progressivism, and effectively raises many of the contradictions of that sensibility, mostly around how entrusting government with power creates the potential for abuse. This is a real issue, and isn't necessarily partisan. Will's opposition to executive power is essentially the opposite stance of American conservatism as practiced today.

That gets of one of the main reasons this book is so frustrating. Will's conservatism isn't really a driving force in American politics. It does serve as the rhetorical underpinning of some Republican political speech, but it's what they don't stick to in practice. As Will himself writes, his conservatism is a "persuasion without a party." If you want to understand the right in America today, Will isn't necessarily a useful place to turn.

The more frustrating thing, though, is that Will refuses to grapple with the idea that the seeds of the current brand of the American right were present in the conservative sensibility that he celebrates. American conservatism has nothing to do with "blood and soil" conservatism popular in Europe, he writes. Fine, but it has ended up there.

While revering the constitution as the secular scripture of American government, he also doesn't bother to examine how it ended up endorsing slavery, or how apartheid was the ruling legal structure here for nearly 200 years. Black people are free Americans now, he writes, and we wouldn't have had a country if the founders had tried to get rid of slavery at first. So, it all worked out in the end. Infuriatingly, he does this while cherry picking examples showing how progressive ideas led to racially unjust outcomes.

This book provides a fascinating window into how conservatives see their own project, and is a damning at times history of how the progressive project falls short. It's a shame Will couldn't turn his view back at conservatism itself and ask why it hasn't provided what he claims it is all about.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Conservatives do you want to be uncomfortable? That's what I think George Will should actually ask (perhaps only half jokingly) in the opening of this magnum opus on what the American conservative sensibility. Instead he poses simply: "What is it you seek to conserve?"

The answer(s) should come no surprise, as long-time readers of Will know the answers almost always lie in the American founding, our rather young, short history as a nation and where so much of that sensibility has been neglected, if not abandoned in our major institutions.

First the easy part: Progressives are in for their usual (and justly earned) drubbing. Everything from the activist (vs an "engaged") judiciary to rapid mushrooming growth of the executive branch cabinet agencies since the Wilson administration to rampant social engineering treating humanity as plastic in the labs of the academy is eloquently excoriated here.

So far so good right? Well...not exactly. Then there's the uncomfortable part. Neocons, paleocons, religious fundamentalist and even some of the nakedly flawed thinking of the Reagan Revolution comes in for serious scrutiny. Will spares no one and is distinct in defining the conservative sensibility in a very American context. The Neocons prove too much the interventionists. The paleocons prove too closed to the world around them. The religious fundamentalists too religious for Will's taste, with plenty of evidence for a secular-minded conservative sensibility that will have the reader taking careful stock as to where even conservatives went wrong (spoiler: a lot of it has to do with the role of government in the state of affairs).

The temptation might be write Will off, were it not for his ability to cite both our voluminous history and laws as evidence of where we as a society have careened off the truly conservative path. Most importantly, Will notes the ability to persuade others with this evidence, is what we need most now and he is keenly aware the proverbial tides are against on both the Left and the Right. This is worth the time of anyone who can feel this sensibility either lacking or absent in American life.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, it was a bit of a slog at times, but really I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is Will's grand opus, the distillation of a lifetime of observing politics in Washington and (apparently) reading thousands of books. It is a call to pessimism, or at least to skepticism, about government power. As an explanation of historic conservatism, it stands with Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind and is occasionally at odds with that book. And of course, it is Will, so it is well-written throughout. There are at least a hundred aphoristic statements that deserve to be quoted frequently.

I should add that Will, in his attempt to rise above the heated combats of the moment, never even alludes to our current president directly. This is a book about large ideas, not about taking partisan potshots.

Will's chapter on religion (where he tries to answer the question, can one believe in innate rights without believing in God . . . Will calls himself a low-voltage atheist) was in my opinion the weakest. He rehearsed many familiar arguments for skepticism about a creator God, but never really answered the question about innate rights, rights with which we are born, and that should not be infringed upon. Nevertheless, it's a fine testament, and one that I expect to go back to and reread someday.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of this book was excellent.

The chapter on atheism was the weakest. Mr. Will's atheism seems to come cheaply and without the intellectual rigor of the rest of the book. "Without divine revelations, what difference does the answer - 'was made' or 'just happened' - really make?"(p. 457). It turns out quite a bit. And Mr. Will's failure to recognize that is a significant flaw.

A utilitarian argument for the exceptional "natural" rights Americans enjoy (freedom of speech, religion, assembly, etc.) isn't ultimately a moral argument at all. In fact, it's just borrowing the intellectual and moral capital from a Christian worldview while suppressing the foundation from which it comes. This is what the Bible calls "suppressing the truth in unrighteousness" (Romans 1:18). It's a foundational error of the book and may turn out to be the foundational error of America.

Still, "amiable, low-voltage" atheists (p. 479) of Mr. Will's stripe make great neighbors, Americans, and writers. This is the first of his books I've read and I look forward to picking up more soon.

[Andrew Pratley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This excellent book is a big & thoughtful one. George Will is a wonderful writer & his arguments & observations are beautifully presented. This is not, though, a book by a reactionary it is a work of a Conservative. The author is a first rate thinker who believes as Conservatives should that you should study the past understand the present & think about the future. As a result there is much in the book about the ideas & principles of the "Founders". There is also discussion of the ideas of Thomas Locke who was their main inspiration. Will believes that human nature is immutable. This central human quality can't & should not be manipulated by government. He also believes in limited government.This belief should not be confused with the idea of small government. He addresses also, at length, the conundrum of trying to seek the optimum balance between the role of government in our lives & our roles as individuals. In sum, this is a very thought provoking book that should be required reading for anyone interested in politics especially of the American variety.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book. I’m always fascinated when people write books like this. I try to imagine the process, the organization and the huge amount of research and thinking involved. Of course, since it aligns with my views, it’s easy to agree. But then, I agreed with Fukuyama’s books too and they didn’t completely align with my biases. I’m on the Sid that thinks government has gone too far and is trying to do things it wasn’t intended to do and that it has repeatedly shown it is incapable of doing. It is like kudzu. The more it promises the more people want, and the more it grows. Sadly it keeps failing to deliver. I don’t think government is supposed to meet everyone’s wants or to protect everyone from harm (especially from the harm of being offended) I think people collect entitlements and then view them as rights. That’s unsustainable. I know that a large part of the country wants government to be involved in almost everything. I sure hope that doesn’t happen.

[Nick Ertz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, he didn't turn me into a Conservative - but it's a close call. This is a book that should be read by everyone with an interest in politics regardless of one's orientation. It is especially important for liberals and progressives to read so they know what they are up against. If more Republicans were true to this ideal, there would be more for people to attach to. The sensibility is plain: simple government, responsible jurists, and a Congress who doesn't abdicate their responsibility. There would be a lot fewer laws if Congress had to write them all. Conservatives (G F Will at least) believe in humanity.

[Linda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Zzzzzzzzzzzz!
Oops! I'm sorry. I must've dozed off.
I like big words, but I think that's all Will uses in this book. I lost count of how many times he used chimeral and ameliorate.
To say this is not what I expected is a liotes. It didn't help that the narrator spoke as a Brahmin. I could visualize the pince-nez on his face. (Probably had a cup of tea, too.)
I truly was hoping to learn something about why "the other side" thinks the way they do. This book went further back in history than I was expecting. Might be a good text for use in a Ph.D. class.
I just was NOT going to DNF this one. I didn't. But I got a lot of other things done while listening.

[Feng Ouyang · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a manifesto by the conservative columnist George F. Will. The term “sensibility” in the title means a general attitude or principle, or a world view. Therefore, this book focuses on the foundation of conservatism, by which Will means the world views of the American founding fathers.
The first three chapters describe in detail the conservative (Chapter 1) and progressive (Chapters 2 and 3) views. The conservative view, campaigned by the founding fathers (especially Washington, Jefferson, and Madison), stems from the political philosophy of John Locke. According to Locke, people have natural rights, such as life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. A government is formed to protect these natural rights. Therefore, the power of a government is limited to what is necessary for such a function. Notably, a government cannot infringe on people’s natural rights, even when mandated by edict or by majority vote. Such is the ideal expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Furthermore, conservatives believe that these natural rights are parts of permanent human nature. They do not change with time or circumstances.
The progressive view, represented by Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, is based on Thomas Hobbes’ political view. Hobbes believes that without governments, people will descend into chaos and self-destruction. Therefore, the government exists to “give” people rights. Governments can “shape” society by mandating how people should behave and work together. The boundary of government power, as well as people’s rights, change with time and circumstances. Therefore, political designers can “optimize” how a society is organized to provide the people with maximum happiness, however it is defined and measured.
The next two chapters (4 and 5) goes into more on government operations to illustrate the difference. On the role of the judicial branch (Chapter 4), Will says that conservative sensibility mandates a stable and active judicial institution. Since human natures are permanent, so should the fundamental laws. Therefore, the duty of the judicial branch (primarily the Supreme Court) is to preserve the laws, especially the Constitution, in its original form. The judicial branch must be “anti-democratic,” not swayed by majority view at the time. Will speaks against the notion of “judiciary moderation, which says the judicial branch should give deference to the congress. Will argues that the majority rule should have its limit lest people’s natural rights are in danger. Will also notes that presidential power has increased over the centuries, as its power base shifted from the elite (the electoral college) to the populace. Modern presidents also communicate directly with the public, rather than through Congress. Therefore, the tension between the president and Congress, which the founding fathers designed to be a check of power, is weakened in modern America. This development makes judicial independence and judicial activism all the more critical. On the other hand, the progressives believe that laws exist to serve the need of contemporary politics. Therefore, laws should be changed or reinterpreted according to the current public opinion. Such view subjects the judicial branch to the same democratic process as the other branches and does not agree with the founding father’s vision of government.
On the topic of political economy (Chapter 5), Will discussed the government’s role of redistribution. He argues that the government should ensure everyone’s natural rights, including the pursuit of happiness. However, the government should not guarantee that everyone is actually happy. Therefore, he is against the government’s engaging in wealth redistribution beyond the basic safety net. He believes that the market is the best entity to allocate resources and wealth, and a government should not foster dependency.
In the next few chapters (6 to 9), Wills discusses some other topics and shows how conservative sensibility is applied to these practical issues.
• On culture, he is against cultural relativism. Since there is permanent human nature, there is a permanent value system that conservatives adhere to.
• On education, he advocates exposing students to rigorous debates in search of truth instead of protecting their “sensitivity” by suppressing unpopular views in the classroom. He also believes that history does not follow a preset “law of progress.” Instead, it is driven by random events. Therefore, a later time is not necessarily better than an earlier one. Such a historical view should be reflected in education.
• On foreign policies, he is against cultural relativism and believes that American values should be upheld. On the other hand, he follows the founding fathers in opposing excessive involvement in foreign affairs. He is against the progressive approach of shaping the path of other countries by war or coercion. Will is especially against “nation-building,” for a nation requires a common identity, which cannot be imposed without.
• On religion, Will states that conservatives can be atheists because human nature does not necessarily come from God. For example, it can be the result of evolution. However, religious institutions are essential to a conservative country like U.S. because they provide the moral underpinning necessary for proper democratic operation. If a people does not share a common moral belief, it cannot form an effective nation.
The last chapter (10) is the conclusion.
The book is pleasant to read if you focus on individual passages. It is scholarly and articulate. However, the overall structure is difficult for me to follow, for three reasons. First, there are no clear threads of reasoning. It seems the same points are stated over and over, to the extent that if I start reading at a random location, I won’t be able to tell whether I have read it before. Secondly, there are no clear transitions between topics, neither are introductions and summaries for each point made in the discourse. There are titles and subtitles, but they are cryptic. Therefore, it is difficult to identify the current topic at the discussion and the author’s view on the topic. This is especially true from Chapter 4 on, where each chapter contains many, many topics. Thirdly, a large portion of the book is constructed as dialogues between conservative and progressive voices (often with author’s paraphrases). This is an effective narration technique, except that it is often difficult for me to tell which side a particular voice is on. The quotations may jump over decades in time frame, and are from many people that I am not familiar with. Even for well-known figures such as President George W. Bush, they may be placed in a conservative camp for one topic and progressive camp for another. It is also difficult to tell whether the author is paraphrasing a position that he does not agree with, or he is stating his own opinion. For all these reasons, I feel that I got only about 1/4 of the points that the author tries to impart.
It should be noted that I went through this book by listening to the audio version. Perhaps I would be able to understand better if I actually read it so that I could go back and forth on the passages. However, while I agree with the primary ideas of the book and find the author's presentation of the conservative views enlightening, I don’t feel that this book contains enough information to warrant the effort of revisiting.

[Neil Krasnoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

George Will pulled off the remarkable...making the case for American Conservatism without even a mention of Donald J. Trump. The crisis for the American Conservatism movement brought about by the rise of Trump has produced other noteworthy books, especially Trumpocalypse by David Frum, but it is Will, who makes the case for the relevance of Conservative ideas in American politics most effectively. Will's conservatism must not to be confused with the messy populism of the 45th President, though for much of the American public, Trumpism is synonymous with Conservatism. That is the reason this book is so important.

I won't summarize all of the book, but I see 4 key points that readers should take away.

1. Conservatives should be grounded in the idea of the founders intentions for America: producing the key conditions for a commercial republic (that is capitalism) where conditions for individual human thriving are actively maintained in a climate of limited government.

2. American History's major warts (slavery, betrayal and near extermination of Native Americans, lynching and Jim Crow, etc) are not at all compatible with constitutional conservatism. Rather these horrible national moments were acts of heresy, ultimate rejection of the fundamental constitutional order based on the natural rights of all people.

3. Belief in Religion is entirely optional to the conservative movement. Although Christian ideals had positive influence in the founding and future direction of America, no one should suppose that evangelical Christianity in its current form, represents American Conservatism. Originalism (the supposedly desired judicial philosophy of Evangelicals) has little to do with Abortion, but much more to do with undoing the proliferation of big government which limits rights of people.

4. Restoring the balance of powers means increasing the power of Congress in order to limit the near automatic expansion of the Federal Government in its role in the economy and communities via the regulatory state.

This is not in anyway a summary, but merely my key takeaways.

My review is 4 stars because I do think this book was too lengthy and repetitive. Also, I do feel that Will's treatment of Race is incomplete and somewhat unsatisfying. It's strengths include: the inclusion of many fascinating historical episodes of progressive excess, which provide the argument for limited government conservatism. I strongly recommend it for its intellectually coherent, non-reactionary or populist, non-racist message. It is a brand of Conservatisms firmly grounded in genuine American ideals that could win the future with the right political leaders coming to the forefront.

[Timothy A Becker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read The Conservative Sensibility three times since it was first published in June 2019. It is the best book I've read on political philosophy. I have been reading George Will's columns for nearly 40 years and eagerly anticipating The Conservative Sensibility. I believe Will is the most astute political observer in Washington DC. George Will has written several others books on politics, but those books have been narrowly focused on specific topics, such as term limits. The Conservative Sensibility lays out George Will's complete political philosophy. Will covers the political waterfront, with chapters on education, economics, foreign policy, the judiciary, and culture. He even devotes an entire chapter to the interaction of government/politics and religion.

Those who know and like George Will will not be disappointed. He is hard-hitting and insightful in his analysis of past and present politics. However, be warned: The Conservative Sensibility is dense and lengthy. As with Will's columns, you will need a dictionary at the ready. However, Will's wit, especially his gift for turning a phrase, shine through.

Will's central thesis is that conservatism is about conserving the principles of the nation's Founders as laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Will convincingly argues that many of America's myriad current problems stem from divergence from the Founders' principles. He explains how this divergence occurred and what remedies are needed to get the country back on its constitutional track. This requires that the Congress and Supreme Court protect and exercise their constitutional prerogatives. And it requires redoubling our nation's commitment to securing and maximizing liberty, which was the clearly stated intent of the Declaration. This commitment to liberty necessitates limited and circumscribed government, which was established by the US Constitution.

[Rosa Angelone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Everytime he would get to an interesting thought (how time made what seemed like a leap forward old fashioned in discrimination cases like Separate but Equal ) he would careen off to say some thread bare canard like "The kids got trophies for everything".

He touches on why he wants judicial activism but doesn't really dive into the dark stuff like how his man Thomas wants to get rid of birthright citizenship.

He worships the idea of Madison (all the while mocking any hopeful religious adjacent language anyone else uses) without mentioning his presidency or founding fathers like Gouverneur Morris who wrote the Preamble and much of the structure of the Constitution.

He bemoans the falling away of Americans joining groups and communities (the ol' bowling alone from the 90s) but is offended that people would organize and socialize as a group like being a woman in Law or black man in medicine.

He whines that 'The Canon' is gone but wants people to understand the failings of our American past. (how do you think that happens George?) but is sure everything was solved when he was a young man.

He says education is the lifeblood of a Republic , spends pages talking about how poor (read black) kids are behind even before 1st grade and then with no explanation other than it is gov't funded slams the door on programs like Head Start or preschool for all.

It feels like he made up his mind in 1975 and never grew past that.

I read this book because my father is reading it so we can argue about it. I figure George Will can at least appreciate that.