#87 Political Commentator George Will: Insights on American Government Today

What this episode is about

Political commentator George Will discusses the significant shifts in American governance, particularly the progressive challenge to foundational principles, which he argues has roots extending back a century. Highlighting the philosophical departure from the belief in natural rights, Will critiques how this evolution has reshaped political discourse and the role of government in securing individual freedoms.

Key takeaways

• Conservatism in America is less about hierarchy and more about preserving the ideals of the Founding Fathers.
• Progressive ideology has gradually eroded foundational American principles, replacing them with identity politics and power struggles.
• Capitalism isn't just an economy; it's the best information system we have for coordinating complex societies.
• Socialism fails not just due to inefficiency, but because it overlooks the vast knowledge dispersed among individuals.
• Understanding capitalism as a 'market society' reframes the debate, emphasizing collaboration over government intervention.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Lynn Tomlin (Host) · 11 min speaking
• George Will (Guest) · 25 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: American Happiness and Discontents, Edmund Burke
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Donald Trump, Public Choice Theory
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Donald Trump
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Donald Trump
5. 25:00 – 30:00: Robert Taft

Notable quotes from "#87 Political Commentator George Will: Insights on American Government Today"

• Member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lyn toen welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with George will he's a columnist…

  about Lynn Tomlin · at 0:18

• Began in Europe and became self-conscious and articulate particularly with Edmund Burke and his reaction against the French Revolution so European conservatism has always been…

  about Edmund Burke · at 3:05

• Experts would produce disinterested government to me that's an oxymoron I think if people would just study public Choice Theory we'd all be better off public Choice Theory…

  about Public Choice Theory · at 7:12

• Substantial portion of its voters is a funny political party and not a happy party why do you think 10 million more people voted for President Trump in 2020 than 2016 do you…

  about Donald Trump · at 9:01

• Rule and the problem the challenge of democracy is to get people to consent to worthy Elites Robert Taft senator from Ohio was Mr Republican for many years until he died early…

  about Robert Taft · at 26:47

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Lynn Tomlin — Person · Host · 2 mentions
  Introduces the show and guides the interview, prompting Will on conservatism, governance, parties, and national trends.
• Donald Trump — Person · Referenced political figure · 6 mentions · first at 9:09
  Used as a central example in Will’s critique of the GOP’s personalization of politics and deficit spending; discussed as a driver of performative political style.
• Edmund Burke — Person · Referenced political philosopher · 1 mention · first at 3:09
  Cited as a foundational figure in European conservatism, used to contrast European conservatism with American conservatism rooted in the founding.
• Robert Taft — Person · Referenced political figure · 1 mention · first at 26:52
  Used as an example of an ‘exemplary’ elite in democratic leadership and as a contrast to contemporary anti-elitism/populist rhetoric.
• William Dean Howells — Person · Referenced author · 2 mentions
  Mentioned as Twain’s companion in the anecdote that illustrates Will’s point about crises ending over time.
  William Dean Howells said to Twain do you think it will stop...

Books & papers

• American Happiness and Discontents — Book · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at 0:46
  George Will's latest book, an anthology of his columns, discussed in the context of his views on American governance.
  The conservative movement he's won numerous Awards including a Pulitzer Prize he recently released his 16th book an anthology of his columns titled American happiness and…

Concepts & topics

• Public Choice Theory — Concept · Framework · 1 mention · first at 7:18
  Mentioned as a theory that critiques the romantic view of government as disinterested.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 welcome to the three takeaways podcast which features short memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers Business Leaders writers politicians scientists and other newsmakers each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lyn toen welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with George will he's a columnist for the Washington Post and is known for his independent thought and insights and his contributions to the conservative movement he's won numerous Awards including a Pulitzer Prize he recently released his 16th book an anthology of his columns titled American happiness and discontents I'm looking forward to his insights on America today its governance and what it means to be a conservative or a republican George welcome and

0:59 thanks so much for our conversation today I'm glad to be with you it is indeed a pleasure you are one of the most knowledgeable Scholars of America and American history how has the country changed in the last 10 or so years well something that began a hundred years ago has accelerated and that is the progressive repudiation which has been remarkably forthright and candid of basic American premises woodr Wilson was the first president to criticize the American founding which he did not do peripherally but root and Branch he said first of all he sort of shared the progressive inclination to say there's no such thing as human nature that basically we acquire the impress of whatever culture we're situated in therefore there's no point in organizing a poity around the idea of natural rights that is rights essential for the flourishing of creatures with our nature therefore the idea of a government

1:58 strong enough to secure our rights to use the language of the Declaration which said first come rights and then comes government that that's all wrong woodro Wilson said basically rights are spaces of autonomy the government grants by majority rule and of course these can be revoked so this has accelerated in recent years with a kind of racial essentialism now has entered the mix that we are whatever racial or ethnic or gender group that we are immersed in that is our identity and the Society is a constant power struggle between these identity groups and that the world is always divided between oppressors and oppressed and this biological struggle defines life I think that's what critical race Theory and the new ingredient in this hundredy old Progressive view of the world is applying this to a kind of today's racial obsessions what does being a conservative mean today in the phrase American conservatives the adjective

3:02 American does a lot of work conservatism began in Europe and became self-conscious and articulate particularly with Edmund Burke and his reaction against the French Revolution so European conservatism has always been largely about the defense of order and hierarchy and therefore it has been tainted I would say by Blood and soil thrown and alar kind of preoccupations that don't translate across the Atlantic well into the American context in America to be a conservative is to want to conserve the American founding the three principles of which I just listed in terms of the progressive again forthright and candid overthrow of them human nature natural rights and a madisonian architecture to limited government so that has not changed for conservatives it's just become a little more urgent because a number of people who f themselves conservatives or locate themselves on the rightward wing of the

4:04 political Spectrum are not interested in any more than the progressives are in this classic conservative agenda as I say in my 15th book the conservative sensibility conservatives in America are the Lees of classic liberalism as it's understood in England from Hobbs to lock to Adam Smith David Hume so it's a little late in the day to sort out the terminological confusions of American political discourse but again I think American conservatives are largely the inheritors of the classic liberal tradition how important is capitalism to conservatism capitalism and conservatism are inseparable capitalism stresses the spontaneous order of society of individuals collaborating with one another capitalism is a a Reliance on markets What markets are and this is really all they are are information generating devices and as Society becomes more complex there's a lot more to know and a lot less that government

5:11 can know which is why socialism always everywhere fails because socialism ignores the imperative of epistemic humility epistemology is the field of philosophy that thinks about how we know things and what it means to know things and what capitalism does is disperses decision making disperses information what socialism does or statism and government directions of the economy but all that always Founders on is government's inability to organize and master the information that's one of the reasons socialism Founders the other is that government intervention is always on behalf of the strong the established the big battalions in society which means you get a kind of sclerotic Defense of of the status quo but capitalism of course was named by its enemies Marx and others which is why I prefer to talk about capitalism in terms of a market society in which markets and the collaboration of free individuals

6:14 allocates wealth and opportunity rather than wealth and opportunity being allocated by government which is politics straight through and basically what you're clearly saying is that a market-based approach is a many ways a more humble approach than a government directed approach where one is more heavily reliant on the perspective or knowledge of government to select directions for the economy precisely progressivism began at a time when science was in the air literally in the air Marone the wght brothers Henry Ford Edison and WRA Wilson who was an early president of the American political science Association and an early acolyte of an advocate of the science of public administration thought as progressives are want to do that government staffed by disinterested experts would produce disinterested government to me that's an oxymoron I think if people would just study public Choice Theory we'd all be better off

7:22 public Choice Theory punctures the romantic view of government as disinterested and says simply that in the private sector people try to maximize their profits in the public sector people try to maximize their power and basically the activity of maximizing profits is a lot less dangerous than the activity of maximizing power in government what does the Republican Party stand for today do you see it as being conservative and standing for limited government and markets well to put it politely I guess you'd say and perhaps optimistic the Republican party is schizophrenic today there's a traditional conservative skepticism of the build back better Bill and spending in these trillion dollar trenches all of which are designed to increase dependent constituencies to produce equality understood as equal dependence of more and more people on the government for their material well-being and there's a

8:22 conservative resistance to this a conservative understanding of the role of Judiciary in supervising the excesses of democracy and all the rest but this is less important today and less garish than the Republican parties I'm not going to say loyalty to Trump because loyalty implies some kind of affection and no one likes Mr Trump even those who profess to don't they're terrified of him because they think and they're not necessarily wrong that one dyspeptic tweet from Mar Lago can end their careers which doesn't make for a happy party a party that is terrified of a substantial portion of its voters is a funny political party and not a happy party why do you think 10 million more people voted for President Trump in 2020 than 2016 do you think people were attracted to his style his theatrics if you will or to his policies I think the style is the point I think his Persona is his message his naughtiness his

9:28 disregard of standards of Truth and politeness and Congeniality and everything else people like that same reason people like professional wrestling with which by the way Donald Trump has been connected in the past Mary Kempton a great columnist who my idol when I first got interested in colniza that American politics is like professional wrestling in the absence of sincere emotion and I think Donald Trump carried this to perhaps its logical conclusion or extreme and that it's hard to know what Donald Trump cares about other than Donald Trump he doesn't care about reforming entitlements for example he doesn't care about the rule of law he doesn't care about most of the things conservatives talk about he cares about Donald Trump and when a political party becomes preoccupied with Devotion to a person rather than a program there's a sense in which it leaves politics and becomes a performative kind of arena for virtue

10:29 signaling and striking poses and giving disaffected people the catharsis of themselves voting for naughtiness it's not an edifying spectacle how do you see the Democratic party the Democratic party is also dominated by a tail that Wags the bigger dog and that is the progressive Wing is in the saddle writing Poor Joe Biden in the Democratic contest for the 2020 nomination only onethird of those who participated in the nominating process voted for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren so progressives are at most a third of the democratic party but they are 90% of what turns out to be Joe Biden's agenda now one of the mysteries of 2021 is that Joe Biden who was clearly elected to bring normality and temperateness and realism and adult supervision back to government has disappointed a lot of people who voted for him this is why his poll numbers are depressing to Democrats it's one of the great squandered

11:37 opportunities of modern politics what he's done as I say in a column that he's taken a silk purse and made a sa ear out of it with this promiscuous spending and this sense that the Democratic party with is going to disobey Jefferson's admonition do not undertake large departures on Slender majorities they've taken the their slender majorities in both houses of Congress as an incitement that they have to hurry because these are up to be perishable majorities they have to get everything done in two years before the 2022 offe elections and that makes for hmill excess can you give some examples of that from the build back better bill for example there are so many my favorite is the subsidy for electric bicycles please if people want electric bicycles bless their hearts go out and buy an electric bicycle but it's not a federal policy also in the bill there are Untold billions for electric charging stations for electric cars

12:42 question in 1920 there were 8 million automobiles in the United States the end of that decade there were 20 million exploded across the landscape every one of them found gas stations not one of which was built by the government how' that work well the market worked and Entrepreneurship worked and price signals worked but we don't do that anymore nothing happens unless Washington gives a subsidy or a tax credit or a mandate for it it's just a whole view of the world that I find unhistorical and productive of colossal waste another example journalists fancy themselves rugged individualists Skeptics independent all that stuff all that sort of front page bla well in the billback better bill there's tax credits for local newspapers and I suppose other journalistic entities for the journalists they hire the build back better makes media dependent on government now how journalists Square this with their jawed chest pounding

13:49 Independence I do not know how do you see national government in the US today overstretched the government is doing so much is into so many aspects of life that Congress which has had 435 members for more than a century whereas what Congress is involved in has increased probably 50 fold since 1921 therefore Congress doesn't so much pass laws anymore as it passes VES passes aspirations it says we should have a quality education for everybody you guys over in the education department you def quality education and write the rules and so most of the legislating is done by the federal bureaucracy which is if the Supreme Court would enforce the non-delegation doctrine which is as John Lock said legislatures can make laws but not other legislators it would say congress just can't do this it has to legislate it can't just hurl big dollops of discretion at the federal bureaucracy it would require the government to be more

14:58 part ponus with its energies and its attentions you have said that the political class today is more united by class interest than it is divided by ideology can you explain that sure from Elizabeth Warren on the left to Ted Cruz on the right the political class is United by a constant powerful imperative for deficit spending give the American people a dollars worth of government goods and services charg them only 75 cents for it the Public's happy this terrific fob a quarter of the cost of our consumption of goods and services off on the unconsenting because unborn future Americans we used to borrow money for the future we fought Wars for the future we built roads highways Bridges tunnels Harbors for the future now we're borrowing again to finance our own current consumption of goods and services if that isn't decadent and immoral I don't know what is but that's why for all the talk about the Discord

16:00 in America today and Lord knows the discords really enough I'm more alarmed by the consensus in Washington which is that this is perfectly all right remember Donald Trump a republican of sorts ran a trillion doll deficit before the pandemic with 2% economic growth a trillion dollars and Republicans went right along with it when Donald Trump secured the nomination by winning the Indiana primary he came back to Washington and Paul Ryan knowledgeable cheerful intelligent policy oriented was given the task of briefing Mr Trump on the unsustainability of various entitlement programs as they're currently configured Social Security Medicare Etc he was given 20 minutes of course that's four times longer than Donald Trump's attention span so after five minutes Trump says okay you guys you deal with this later I understand that they're unsustainable able but when the crisis comes I won't be here that

17:02 gives you a fair idea of the political class today the Electoral cycle will rescue them from the consequences of their behavior and you believe that that is not limited to Donald Trump oh certainly not no no no we're storing up big problems with our public Fisk and arithmetic at the end of the day is going to impose its truths on us that we can't continue like this and every day we delay coming to terms with this it's going to make the eventual crisis all the more wrenching but no one wants to take the lead how do you see the presidency and executive power the swollen presidency is to my mind the most alarming aspect of modern politics it's not just the dislocation of the madisonian equilibrium Madison assumed as he said in Federalist 51 we see throughout our our system of government the policy of supplying by opposite and rival interests the defect of better motives he thought the house

18:05 should be the Rival of the Senate the Senate the Rival of the house the Congress the Rival of the executive branch and that this wholesome rivalry would produce equilibrium problem is something happened in the 1790s that was neither desired nor anticipated by those who wrote the Constitution in the late 1780s that is the emergence of parties and today Party Loyalty trumps if you'll forgive the expression loyalty to your institutions and people tend to think of themselves in Congress as team players and the captain of the team is the president of their party so the madisonian Assumption of a wholesome rivalry has been short circuited by this and as a result we have this odd presidential fixation in the country which is I think a sign of national immature when Frank and Roosevelt taking advantage of radio which I think more than the internet more than television it was radio that began the

19:09 transformation of our politics as a technology when Franken Roosevelt began his first fireside chat after becoming president March 4th 1933 first words and these do not appear on the transcript that they have in the library at H Park his first words to the nation were my friends we're so used to this kind of clo intimacy that we have with presidents who are in our living room daily on television that we don't think anything of it try to imagine George Washington addressing the American people my friends inconceivable and I don't think we want presidents to be our friends I think we want presidents to take care that the laws are Faithfully executed that's pretty much what article two of the Constitution says therefore they are not Consolers in Chief when Michael Jackson dies presidents really don't have to talk about it they go about their business the idea that presidents have to orchestrate the nation's emotional

20:10 life is again it's childish how do you see Congress and congressional power well I'm a congressional supremacist I think Congress is article one for a reason article two says the president shall take care that the laws are Faithfully executed well he EXE Utes what Congress does with the clear exception of foreign policy where presidents ought to be dominant but Congress has to get back to doing certain basic things like appropriating they never obey the law which tells them when the 12 Appropriations bills are supposed to be passed get back to what is euphemistically called regular order which isn't regular anymore hasn't been for decades but again when government grows to its current dimensions the idea of Congress controlling it having meaningful oversight becomes more and more attenuated so we've talked about the presidency and Congress the third branch of government the justice department we haven't yet talked about

21:14 how do you see the justice system now and is it effectively curbing the expansion of Presidential Power no but it might I'm sometimes asked I've been writing columns for almost 50 years now what have you changed your mind about and my answer is I've changed 180 degrees about the role of the Judiciary and the supervision of democracy I was for a while when I came to Washington in 1970 I was as many conservatives were back then an advocate of judicial restraint judicial deference to the elected branches of government because I was in reaction against some of the more freewheeling jurist Prudence of the Warren court but if you are a majoritarian then you believe as Oliver wend Holmes a pure majoritarian said if the American people want to go to hell I will help them it's my job well I don't think that is the job of the Judiciary if I can give you a little autobiographical swoop here I grew up in

22:16 Central Illinois champagne Orana where my father was a professor at the University of Illinois according to local lore it was in the Champagne County Courthouse that Abraham Lincoln at the time in 1854 a prosperous traveling railroad lawyer learned that Illinois Senator Steven Douglas had passed through the Senate and Congress the Kansas Nebraska Act the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 set out to solve a problem the problem was what to do about the question of slavery expanding into the territories slavery was in the States was the state's business the consensus was the Federal Government couldn't do anything about that but it was in federal government was in charge of the territories therefore it had to answer questions of could slaves be brought into the territories could there be slavery could the territories exclude slavery the Kansas Nebraska acts solution Steven Douglas's solution was

23:12 popular sovereignty vote slavery up vote slavery down it's a matter of moral indifference to Stephen Douglas what was morally important to him was majorities should rule Lincoln's Ascent to Greatness began with his implacable canny recoil against this he said no America is not about a process majority rule America is about a condition Liberty my view is that the Judiciary has an ever expanding legitimate role in curbing majority threats to Liberty I mean the founders had a catechism they said what's the worst outcome of politics tyranny to what form of tyranny is democracy prey tyranny of the majority and it's up to the Judiciary to superintend the excesses of majorities when in 1943 in case West Virginia V Barnett the Supreme Court reversed itself from just a few years earlier and said actually States cannot compel Jehovah's witness's children to slute the flag at the beginning of school day

24:15 because it goes against their conscience Justice Jackson former Attorney General future head of the judicial delegation from the United States at the nberg war crimes trials Justice Jackson said in his opinion the very purpose of a Bill of Rights is to place certain things beyond the reach of majorities above the vicisitudes of politics just the Bill of Rights that's the Constitution Constitution is a counter majoritarian device the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law respecting establishment of religion even if majorities want it sorry can't have it you've decided that can't a bridge freedom of the press even if a majority wants to can't do it sorry took that off the table I think that's judicial review and an Engaged Judiciary have an increasing role to play we've talked about governance at a national level what do you see as far as governance of America's major cities well to the extent that they can

25:15 be said to be governed right now I'm thinking of the flash mobs looting luxury stores in downtown San Francisco I'm thinking of Walgreens closing drugstores in San San Francisco because people go in with impunity and steal up to $950 worth of goods up to that point it's a misdemeanor in San Francisco well we saw the mayor of San Francisco I think yesterday said enough of this let's not defund the police let's fund the police if you look at the educational system in our major cities that is so conspicuously failing people trying to get on the bottom rungs of the ladder of opportunity in the United States if you look at again policing Law and Order the spike in homicides and crime right now blue America runs most of our cities and they are not shall we say conspicuously well-governed let me quote you can a nation so thoroughly committed to equality cultivate and celebrate Excellence which distinguishes

26:23 the few from the many well it's a good question since it's mine exactly yeah all the thoughtful people have been worrying about this for a very long time the rancid awful vocabulary of populism criticism of Elites and elitism good Heavens I mean the question for grown-ups is not whether Elites shall rule it what kind of Elites are going to rule and the problem the challenge of democracy is to get people to consent to worthy Elites Robert Taft senator from Ohio was Mr Republican for many years until he died early in the Eisenhower Administration and uh someone once asked P's wife if he was a common man she said good God no he's not a common man he was first in his class of Yale first in his class at law school people of Ohio don't want a common man they want an exemplary man' be hard to imagine someone saying that nowadays but it's true I don't think people actually when they go into the polling booths and let me find a

27:28 real mediocrity here someone without a taint of elitism somebody said no elitism means people think they're better than others well some people are better than others at governing they're better than others at writing novels directing plays hitting a baseball we want America to be a meritocracy in which Elites are identified and rewarded Robert Frost poet once said I do not want to live in homogenized Society I want the cream to rise we spend gobs of money on universities to try and get the cream to rise what do you think the biggest Trends and challenges facing America are one is to follow on from what I just said is the revolt against meritocracy what they're going to replace meritocracy with I do not know but there is a move driven by Envy and resentment Envy it is worth noting is the only one of the seven deadly sins that doesn't give the sinner even momentary pleasure it's a kind of

28:29 curdling nagging disagreeable frame of mind that's part of it another is we're spending all this money on educating people and we don't know what education's for but I will not tell you the point of education is to learn how to praise most people think no no no education means critical thinking and criticism means tearing down not true learning to praise is learning to say this book or that movie or this person measures up to high standards and therefore learning to praise is learning to identify and affirm high standards that's what I would like to see modern America be more praising and more praiseworthy and other challenges that you see aside from as I say restraining our appetite for spending money we don't have it seems to me we need a continent wide deep breath we need someone to come along and say as a president or a presidential candidate and say everyone relax unclench your fist unfurrow your

29:34 brow UNP purse your lips lighten up because as Lincoln said at the close of his great first inaugural we are not enemies we must not be enemies I tend to think that The Fever we're in nowadays will as fevers generally do fevers don't generally kill their house they burn out I think people are exhausted they're tired of being angry most Americans aren't angry there are 331 million people in this country and at any given time 325 million of them are not listening to talk radio not watching cable television they're going about their lives and getting along with one another perfectly well but the tone of society is set by Angry compact articulate minorities and we'll get over this partly because it's boring the great human capacity for boredom is going to save us because just to take today's racial obsessions when everything is seen through a lens about race it's deeply boring the New York Times sports page almost always has

30:39 something about race I remember not long ago they had something Fring about the absence of racial diversity in snowboarding I said well what next well what came next was a story about the absence of racial diversity in surfing re questions well me skip the time sports page because it's not about sports many people believe in a life cycle of Nations the countries rise and then decline how do you see the US position in the world compared for example to China I think China is dangerous but overrated China has enormous problems China's demographic Destiny is ominous for China by about 2026 about 5 years from now it will no longer be the most populous nation India is going to pass it because of the long lingering echo of the obscene one child policy that the Chinese Communist Party imposed on the country China is going to go gray before it becomes rich it's going to have an enormous population of the elderly

31:44 supported by not enough young people and it's going to be a real problem it's going to confront What's called the middle income trap that is it's gone from a manufacturer providing the world with cheap goods made by cheap labor to a midlane country producing goods made by no longer cheap labor therefore Goods no longer competitive Goods now they're going to be made in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and Vietnam and elsewhere so I think China although dangerous is in part dangerous because it can see some problems coming down the road and a window of Supremacy closing and how do you see the US I think that the United States is still the nation where people are risking and losing their lives in attempts to get in people want to come here and work people aren't trying to come in here so they can get on welfare they want jobs two or more jobs one of our great strengths is that we know how to assimilate immigrants something China

32:48 can't do of course no one's fighting to get into China anyway something that most other nations can't do as long as we understand the Great American strength which is immigration and relatively light governance that leaves ample room for the spontaneous order I was praising earlier I think the United States is this can be another American Century wonderful to hear before I ask for the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today is there anything else you'd like to mention that you haven't already touched upon no I've aired most of my grievances in our 45 minutes I'm I'm content what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with first although everyone's boted by the New Media I still believe that books are the primary carriers of ideas so when you're not reading a book you're wasting your time probably so keep reading second the American Constitution is the

33:50 most successful instrument of governance ever devised and make sure you understand where it comes from and what its premises are and third remember that nothing lasts Roman Empire didn't last the Ottoman Empire carolingian empire hburg of nothing less but the United States has doing pretty well and when I say nothing less the current distemper won't last either Mark Twain once was staying in a hotel with his friend the novelist William Dean HS and they decided to go for a walk in the morning they stepped out on the hotel's porch and saw it was raining and a deluge and William Dean how said to Twain do you think it will stop and Twain said well you know it always has and I think uh Weller remember that little story George thank you so much for our conversation today and thank you also for your 16 books so far and all of your columns well thank you it's amazing to be paid to have as much fun as I have writing

34:52 them if you enjoy today's episode and would like to receive the show notes or get new Fresh weekly episodes be sure to sign up for our newsletter at 3 takeaways

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "#87 Political Commentator George Will: Insights on American Government Today"?

Lynn Tomlin (Host), George Will (Guest).

What is "#87 Political Commentator George Will: Insights on American Government Today" about?

Political commentator George Will discusses the significant shifts in American governance, particularly the progressive challenge to foundational principles, which he argues has roots extending back a century. Highlighting the philosophical departure from the belief in natural rights, Will critiques how this evolution has reshaped political discourse and the role of government in securing…

What is mentioned in this 3 Takeaways episode?

7 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Lynn Tomlin, Donald Trump, American Happiness and Discontents, Public Choice Theory, Edmund Burke, Robert Taft. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "#87 Political Commentator George Will: Insights on American Government Today"?

The episode runs 35 min; the transcript is about 5,260 words in 34 timestamped sections.

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