George Will: American Happiness and Discontents

Pulitzer Prize-winner George F. Will has been one of this country’s leading columnists since 1974 and, as The Wall Street Journal once called him, “perhaps the most powerful journalist in America.” In his new collection titled American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020, Will offers an in-depth account of a remarkably chaotic 13 years in our nation’s experience through his analysis of an impressively vast array of topics.
In this stirring examination, George Will reveals the ways in which expertise, reason and manners are continually under attack in our institutions, courts, political arenas and social venues. Will covers topics including his perspective on American socialists, anti-capitalist conservatives, drug policy, the criminal justice system, climatology and the coronavirus.
Join us as we delve into this stunning account of American politics and culture from one of the preeminent columnists and intellectuals of our time.
NOTES
Photo by Victoria Will.
SEPTEMBER 17, 2021
SPEAKERS
George F. Will
Columnist, The Washington Post; Author, American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020
In Conversation with Jonathan V. Last
Editor, The Bulwark
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[@carolweiler9899]

If the wealthiest paid in like they should instead of getting richer and richer and buying politicians, we wouldn't have a deficit and we could easily afford to meet the needs of our people. The wealthy run the government and it benefits them.

[@nathanscottshoemaker2554]

Fed Gov spending is and equal to the private surplus. No fed dept and deficit, no money in the economy. The sole issuer of statute currency has no spending limit but for real available material product resources labor and innovative intellectual property and services. Spending into tapped markets is inflationary, spending into developing or underserved markets are generative of prosperity and velocity. Of exchange. George has it inverse subsumed by freedman hypnosis. Value will is scarce not the exchange tickies. Money is produced at the vote and will preference of congress. Federal “deficit” hawking is a total distraction fallacy, wrong, self defeating we can’t-ism and a shrinking extraction of the economy subjecting in total subsumption to private usury.

[@carolweiler9899]

@@nathanscottshoemaker2554 What are your thoughts on the military-industrial complex?

[@Law_And_Society]

That was the courthouse where I took my oath of citizenship. UIUC graduate & grew up in Danville, IL. I want to go back there one day & turn it blue.

[@elaineburnett5230]

Interesting hearing from George Will...I don't agree with his viewpoint but I am right there about the importance of reading and writing...

[@evamerritt9308]

Really enjoyed this. Thank you.

[@commonwealthclubworldaffairs]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@TheEriekayaker]

I would like to ask Will what he thinks of Ronnie Rayguns deregulating the media. But I am with George all the way on his comments about adolescent males.

[@Food4CriticalThought]

America wasn’t going to get any “virtue” so we need rules and laws.

[@allanmacmillan7823]

George...I certainly hope that the late Carmen Fanzone, the flugelhorn playing backup infielder, occupies space along with Terwilliger. He may not have had the social and historical significance of Thurgood Marshall, but he could hit in the clutch.

[@phyllisneal8687]

😂😂😂 Bravo💞

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

JV "bonne motts" Last. And Jonathan, while on the subject of your way with words: you have a responsibility to edit the visual subtitles which appear alongside your audio. You need to correct, e.g. "the curiousness" when George Will says "furiousness." They're, uh, not quite the same...

[@laurentdrozin812]

So much wisdom!

[@robertbritt6134]

If people call that crap wisdom, we are doomed and the best we can do is mass suicide. Oh wait, that’s what we’re doing. Lmao at the idiots. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

That's not wisdom, Laurent, that's a very successful and long-running act of swanning around.

[@laurentdrozin812]

@@TheDavidlloydjones I happen to disagree. He says a few very insightful things in here. What touched me the most was the development around the habit of virtue. When that habit is gone, it is gone. No laws can replace the canvas of all those small habits of virtue. I found many historical parallels that show what happens when these small habits of virtue vanish. Nothing good comes out of it. This process also occurs outside the US at this very moment. I live in Sweden, and we are in the middle of a shift between one set of old habits to something else. We don't know what yet. The society is not coping well with that shift because all the institutions are designed to work with all the old habits. It is impossible to codify in laws and rules, because it is always easier to find a way around the rules than to edict the rules. The whole point is to have the people wanting to follow the rule, or just used to follow the rule. When that habit is gone, it is gone.

[@jamesbinns8528]

@@robertbritt6134 You must be a bit dim.

[@TimEngbergSongs]

Does he have a new view of Climate?

[@Law_And_Society]

Please don't blame social media for our choices. The rot is far deeper than in social media. The irony of saying that on this platform is especially strong evidence of the weakness of that argument.

[@williambardelmeier8472]

Well, George used to be a favorite but frankly. it's time to move over. Spewing the same old conservative talking points I've heard all my 68 years doesn't cut it anymore. i.e. in the 70s we couldn't expand gov. it was going to bankrupt our grandkids, not happening, my grandkids are in good shape except for the crumbling infrastructure we didn't spend the money to improve. Get real, our government controls the currency and as the current best one the world can almost spend anything they want. Modern Monetary Theory gentlemen.

[@msandrearobinson]

OMG, he's talking about potholes being a problem instead of the bigotry and insurrection. Sorry, not interested in listening to this person anymore.

[@superclaymaster]

Both can be problems

[@mm5478]

George Will: old man yells at the sky. That’s been George Will in all his newspaper columns and radio work. He strikes me as a man who wear a gray flannel suit to mow his lawn or feed his dog. Mr. Will seems lost not in 1953.

[@randallsmith5631]

Fifty years on the conservative dole & he's complaining about entitlement programs. LOL

[@jamesbinns8528]

He hasn't been on the dole. Will has earned his living.

[@lynnanderson8062]

He's just a shill.

[@lynnanderson8062]

George ,Your scathing opinion of Donald Trump is all well and good, but your adoption certain "liberal" policies would suggest a more complicated consideration of how to run an economic. Your ultra conservative friends have riven thia divide and the death of the "myth of democracy."

[@xpsxps1339]

If this is the most powerful journalist in America, we cannot be surprised we are so screwed up. G. W. has precisely the same problem as Fran Lebowitz. Both are intelligent, educated, and devoted bibliophiles. And they both are living in their ivory towers, quite torn off from the real lives of the everyday Joes and Janes they both know perhaps nothing about. Paradoxically, their education and knowledge are what separates them from other people up to some measure. Their wisdom is too academic and has almost nothing to do with real life. With everything they both know, they should lock their books and credit cards for a year and then go and live the ordinary life of some average person. Then come back "corrected" by the confrontation with real life, and their ideas could be perhaps applicable in a broader manner besides the salon debates similar to the one we just could hear.

[@wordvango7643]

^^^^^^^ THIS! ^^^^^^^^^

[@solesurvivor752]

Stupidest comment ever! Fran Lebowitz educated and wealthy? What planet are you from?

[@xpsxps1339]

@@solesurvivor752 Fran Lebowitz doesn't have formal education. As far as I know, she finished high school, but I dare to state she is a pretty famous bookworm in contrast to many people who have official higher/university education, but the last book they read perhaps was in that HS, and God only knows how they succeded to finish it. Reportedly, her estimated wealth is around 4 mil dollars, and she doesn't work for decades. Regardless of that, she can afford to live in NYC all her adult life. Is that wealth...? IDK, but I'd say poverty is defined otherwise, for sure. Cheers.