George Will On Conservatism

A giant of DC journalism swings by the studio.

George writes a twice-weekly column on politics and foreign affairs for the Washington Post, a column he launched in 1974. He is also a regular contributor to MSNBC and NBC News. The author of 14 books, his latest is American Happiness and Discontents, but the one we primarily cover in this episode is The Conservative Sensibility — which I reviewed for the NYT.

You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on why the presidency has too much power, and the necessity of stopping Putin — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: growing up in Lincoln country; the son of a philosophy prof and an academic editor; Isaiah Berlin was a family friend; George and I both attending Magdalen College, Oxford; his meeting with Thatcher in late ’60s; how socialism is stultifying; Oakeshott; industrial policy as crony capitalism “from the start”; Milton Friedman; why “secure” is the most important word in the Constitution; just war theory; Vietnam as the “professors’ war”; collectivism vs national security; the trauma of 9/11 and the Iraq War; the China threat today; Gaza; why natcons are jealous of progressives; Elizabeth Warren; why Woodrow Wilson criticized the Founding as quaint; FDR and his fireside chats; in praise of Eisenhower; the spread of the administrative state; Caldwell’s The Age of Entitlement; Reagan and the national debt; his bad wager on the Laffer Curve; the meaning of his smile; presentism; Hume at a dinner party; Madison’s genius; George the “amiable low-voltage atheist”; Christian nationalism; evangelicals for Trump; the entitlement crunch with Boomers; “not voting is an opinion”; our disagreement on immigration; the “execrable” 1924 law; climate change as a low priority for Gen Z; why Trump is unprecedented; Biden’s age and his “stupendous act of selfishness” in running again; Gina Raimondo; DEI as the new racial discrimination; the deep distrust in media; the flailing WaPo; “happiness is overrated”; the appeal of baseball; and the reasons why America is exceptional.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Nellie Bowles on the woke revolution, Lionel Shriver on her new novel, Elizabeth Corey on Oakeshott, Tim Shipman on the UK elections, Erick Erickson on the left’s spiritual crisis, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on animal cruelty, Van Jones, and Stephen Fry! Send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

A listener reacts to last week’s episode on the cold war with China:

Whoa, sparks were flying! Is Noah Smith a Cassandra, or just cocksure? Only time will tell. It was a fun interview, at least for listeners. He had things to say that we don’t often hear. I can’t say more — too dizzy.

Another is very skeptical of the cold war turning hot:

Yes, the West is slowly waking up to the reality of a new Cold War, and Noah Smith deserves kudos for highlighting that. But the notion that China is going to ignite World War III with a surprise attack on US forces in the Pacific? Or that Taiwan is just a prelude to a global Chinese military offensive with the ultimate goal of encircling and destroying the US? Dude.

The only time I have seen Noah quantify the risk of WWIII, he went with 50 percent — pretty high for the most dire scenario imaginable. By contrast, betting markets like Metaculus put the odds of a full-scale Taiwan invasion by 2030 at 20 percent, and of a US/China war by 2035 at 10 percent. Richard Hanania recently put the odds of a Taiwan invasion at 10-15 percent by 2035.

On X, Noah has dismissed Westerners like me — who live in East Asia and lowball the risk of war — as too beholden to their Chinese business partners and girlfriends to see the situation clearly. The truth is, we civilians can only guess at what the top brass is thinking, on both sides. Noah is just as reliant on cherry-picked anecdotal data as doves like me, while ignoring all the data on the dovish side of the ledger:

• China is newly prosperous. The guy in his spotless BMW who drove me around Shenzhen last week was incredibly house-proud of its high rises, museums, malls and parks. He would not want to see all that firebombed.
• No locals I have ever spoken to in my 30 years here (and I have some pretty Tankie contacts, including my wife) have openly advocated for or predicted war, much less Chinese global military hegemony. When I bring up the risk of war with Mainland friends, they roll their eyes like I am some kind of QAnon freak.
• The Party keeps close tabs on popular opinion — that is why Zero Covid was suddenly dropped. Remember, Zero Covid stayed in place far too long largely because China was too tepid to force grandmas to vax. Plus, there is Hanania’s argument that China today is deeply risk-averse — perhaps a hangover from the living memory of famine and Cultural Revolution. It would be out of character, and perhaps exceed state capacity, to force an apocalyptic gambit onto a skeptical citizenry.
• China has for decades periodically fanned the flames of extreme nationalism when it suits them, but then always reins things back in.
• Chinese policy is not monolithic. Foreigners decry China’s mixed signals —raiding foreign-market research firms while unfurling the red carpet for Jamie Dimon and Elon Musk — but I have always taken such dissonance as a comforting sign that no one faction is calling all the shots.
• A lot of the bellicose messaging we see from China comes from their equivalent of the neocon blob. It does not necessarily represent the full spectrum of elite opinion.
• Recent military corruption scandals may have pushed any Taiwan planning out by several years.
• Per Hanania, even if there is a conflict over Taiwan, there are good reasons for it to be contained, just as Ukraine and Gaza are superpower proxy wars that have so far been contained.
• The Taiwan status quo has enormous propaganda value as an evergreen source of national mission and unity.
• An unsuccessful move on Taiwan would be an epic embarrassment and a career-ender.

Oh, and one more thing: the threat of mutually assured destruction locked the last Cold War into steady state equilibrium for almost 50 years. Alas, Noah has suggested that a superpower nuclear exchange might be no big deal.

Yes, we are embarking on Cold War II. There will be an arms race and risks for both sides. But this Cold War is as unlikely to go hot as the last one. I give it about 3 percent.

More skepticism comes from a long-time listener who is “still loving your podcast”:

I share Noah’s basic view that the US is in global competition with China and needs a real manufacturing base to be credible — you can’t book enough conference rooms to stop a determined adversary who’s prepared to fight. I was completely taken aback, though, by his casual assertion about America’s ability to shut down a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Contrary to Noah’s assertion, China would very likely defeat the US militarily in a war over Taiwan. It matters far more to China, and they would have enormous advantages. China has >4X the population of the US, an economy of approximately the same size, and ~2X the number of soldiers. Air and amphibious assault on Taiwan is a central focus of its military doctrine. Taiwan is ~100 miles from China and more than 6,000 miles from the US mainland. That’s why US war games as recently as 2018 have shown China creating catastrophic losses for the US.

How long could the US really sustain full-scale conflict with a much larger country at that distance? Ukraine has reminded people who live online that wars tend to grind on and on, and your industrial base, logistics and willingness to keep fighting tend to determine victory. China knows this, and knows that we know it.

Further, Taiwan is not providing any evidence of wanting to fight. I’ve spent a decent amount of time in Taipei for work, and the Chinese and Taiwanese economies are increasingly integrated. China is Taiwan’s largest trading partner, by far. Currently there are almost half a million Chinese nationals living in Taiwan, and about the same number of Taiwanese living in PRC China. There are several nonstop flights per day between Taipei and Shanghai.

Taiwan currently spends 2.1% of GDP on defense (about the same as France). There is no draft in Taiwan, and the average military unit is staffed at 60% of targeted strength. Does that sound like a nation prepared to do what it takes to defend itself against an existential threat?

The Taiwanese are Chinese, just under a different government. They are using US military power — without being prepared to fight themselves — to get a better deal in the effectively inevitable reunification of China. The better strategy to deal with reliance on Taiwanese chips is to repatriate production, for many reasons.

A sunnier part of my chat with Noah:

A listener pitches another guest:

I humbly recommend that you invite Peter Zeihan to provide a more thoroughly researched set of predictions in the realm of geopolitics. I’m confident that you are familiar with his work and may have possibly heard him on Sam Harris’ podcast. I made his acquaintance while living in Austin many years ago and I’ve been impressed with his thoughts and his supporting justifications. As a long-time participant in international affairs from the vantage point of the national capital region, I don’t place too much credence on academic theorizing, but Mr. Zeihan is an incredibly entertaining guest and a thought-provoking theorist.

Another rec:

I’ve loved listening to you talk to people from a wide range of perspectives. It’s cathartic for me, since my family doesn’t enjoy debate like I do! Have you considered asking John Lennox to be on your podcast? I think that could be a good follow up to your discussion with Dawkins. From his Wiki page:

John Carson Lennox is a mathematician, bioethicist, and Christian apologist originally from Northern Ireland. He has written many books on religion, ethics, the relationship between science and God, such as Has Science Buried God? and Can Science Explain Everything? He has had public debates with atheists including Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

Another wonders:

I noticed that you recently stopped mentioning at the beginning of the pod that Nellie Bowles will be coming on. Is she no longer scheduled? I’ve been looking forward to listening to you interview her. Just wondering! I love the Dishcast and that you reply so readily to your listeners.

We recorded a wonderful convo with Nellie a few weeks ago, after she had to postpone our initial taping! It wasn’t very topical so we’ve kept it in the hopper, but we’ll probably run it next week.

Next up, an immigration email from a “long-time Dish subscriber and reader — way back to my mother writing you when I came out 25 years ago (you had a few exchanges)”:

I’ve now been gay-married for almost 13 years, and we have twin 8 year olds. I have greatly valued the perspectives you bring to the Dish to help me think about things in different ways. I don’t always agree, but there is learning in the mental debate.

I’m writing today because I think the Donald Trump is getting too much credit and too much confidence with regards to being able to address illegal immigration. A few facts have seemed to disappear in the swirl of the 2020 election, Jan 6th, impeachment, etc., and they not been revisited by the media:

1. The last five months of the Trump presidency (Sept 2020-January 2021) had the most illegal immigration vs. the same months in prior years of Trump’s presidency (and even the last term of Obama’s presidency). Namely, September 2020 saw the highest southern border immigration in September for any September since at least 2013.
2. From May 2020 to January 2021, illegal immigration on the border grew steadily each month, from 23,237 in May to 78,414 in January 2021 — a 358% increase. (Yes, it went sky-high with Biden coming in and changing the policies, but was the increase all Biden’s policies, or had Trump’s policies already failed and he was saved by the bell?)

I think graphically is the best way to see this (the CBP uses the October government year, which is confusing, so I have set this chart to calendar year and built it out monthly from their older data into one line):

Sure, the big bump in 2019 had passed (been solved), but to have a new increase steadily emerge, and the last five months being the highest months in many years — that is big.

I did two other charts. The next one adds in the last 3+ years of Obama’s term (to show that the last four months of Trump were higher than for Obama — that is shown by the green cross line):

And for clarity, this is the graph with Biden’s term (through April 2024):

It has gone through the roof since Trump, and it’s a problem (as you have been highlighting in all your writing), but should we be ASSUMING that Trump’s policies will actually lower it? In 2019, he had the biggest initial spike ever seen, and it looked like it was coming back at the end of his presidency.

I have little confidence in Trump doing anything. But Biden’s record, as I note in today’s column, is damning beyond measure. A dissenting reader addresses “your incoherence on those ‘affected’ by immigration”:

I just read your column about Biden and his pandering and dangerous speech at Morehouse College. I completely agree with your take on this. I teach at a suburban Chicago school that is majority-minority, and I’m always attempting to get kids to understand their agency and how they can move themselves forward. Wallowing in the idea that you are fighting against large impersonal forces that can’t be conquered seems to lead indisputably to psychological damage and a lack of work ethic.

I also found compelling the “In the ‘Stacks” link to Cecil Grant’s piece about the Tuskegee Airmen, as it combined agency with historically informed patriotism. As a US history teacher, I can say that I heavily sympathize with the author’s thoughts on the subject.

My question is why, not use the same logic on these poor, poor nativists in America and the UK who don’t “recognize their country any more?”

Migration is a historical reality, and has been so for as long as there have been human beings. People go where they think they will have a better shot, whether we’re talking about hunter gatherers, Zionists, the partition of India, the Vietnamese “boat people,” the Great Migration in the US, the urbanization of China and the world, or Cubans fleeing Castro. It’s as unstoppable as the tides.

Has the US government dropped the ball on immigration enforcement? Absolutely. Should they do way more? Undoubtedly. Can they stop migration from Latin America and elsewhere, especially when people can make money by bringing them here? Nope. Our borders are too vast, and we live in a free society. This is cold reality.

I suspect the same is true in Britain. It is also impossible to stop cultural diffusion. The UK of today is not the UK of 50 years ago. Frankly, the same is true of China and every other nation on the planet. Boo hoo. Instead of coddling American and British nativists by saying “people don’t like to feel replaced,” wouldn’t it be better to encourage them to look at immigrants with an open mind (like your reader from New Zealand did in that awesome email), and to gain something from their presence?

After all, the immigrants aren’t going anywhere. Both you and Radley Balko agree that mass deportations are “mad” because they would cripple both nations’ economies and would cause the US specifically to drift more toward authoritarianism. There’s little doubt that all of our goods are cheaper because of immigrants. There’s little doubt that we have recovered more quickly from the Covid economy and inflation than other nations because we have so many immigrants, as Daniel Drezner has proved. Is anyone gonna acknowledge that? (We know Oren Cass won’t.)

As for the immigrants who are already in the US and UK and not likely to go anywhere, they moved to those nations because of better opportunities. Instead of pandering to the “pessimism, fatalism, and despair” from some people that are often based in race and culture, wouldn’t it be wise to take the exceptionalist route that both you and Cecil Grant advocate for when it comes to the Morehouse speech by Obama and the piece on the Tuskegee Airmen? The relative safety and economic opportunity are what draws immigrants to the US and the UK. Why not lean into that and say our ideas are what allow our nations to be safe and prosperous, so as to “assimilate new immigrants into an American identity”?

Do you think people will be assimilated if their presence is constantly questioned and diminished? Seems unlikely. If we want people to assimilate, we should make them feel like Americans!

Migration is indeed inevitable — and climate change is accelerating it. But the idea that governments have no control over who is a citizen and who isn’t seems far out there. What’s needed is a revamp of international laws that were constructed for asylum seekers from the Soviet bloc to a world where, as Biden himself just said, the entire global population would happily move to the US. But yes, of course I want a positive message to new legal immigrants. One such message would be to ensure that illegal immigrants aren’t actually treated better than the legal ones.

Here’s a reader on my latest column:

I have to say, you so perfectly and lovingly captured the essence of South Park.  And you articulated what I have been telling people for 27 years. As a 60-year-old ad guy and filmmaker, I never got the Seinfeld and Simpsons obsessions. I always return to South Park. They manage to top themselves — maybe because our society always manages to top itself.

Your readers may not know this, but South Park was the first viral sensation — back when 1/2″ video tapes being passed around from editors and production companies nationwide. It was a primitive five-minute video of Jesus vs Santa — right down to the first Kenny kill:

I still have my copy.

Anyway, I never respond to articles and these things, but you truly captured the genius of South Park. Now they should take you apart limb by limb in an episode!

Another:

Your last sentence is how I felt reading this essay: “I feel the compulsion just to send them my thanks. And undying respect.” What a beautiful essay, I’m going to start watching South Park again, and dust off my PSB vinyl.

One more fan:

I loved your latest column. I am also a huge fan of both SP and PSB. At almost 50, I still watch South Park even if my kids are not around, and I once worked as a coat-checker at Neil Tennant’s birthday party in London. Janet Street Porter was there, a few famous visual artists, and a young couple actually checked their newborn baby asleep in a carrier with me!

By the way, why is Bono so bad? I will scour the internet (or look up the SP episode).

This clip explains a lot:

A plug for another brilliant show:

In the same week that I read your piece on Trey, Matt, and PSB, I finally got around to reading David Simon’s 1991 book, Homicide. I was reminded how he, too, is devoted to his craft — police procedurals — in a similar way. The book is remarkable in its scope and insight.

We are all familiar with the shows that followed, especially Homicide and The Wire, but it’s fascinating to learn about the real-life individuals that would shape the characters who made their way to our TV screens. Much of the same fearlessness and creativity you described in your piece is present in Simon’s work. I haven’t connected with everything he’s done, but I’ve always appreciated his journalistic devotion to getting the story right while knowing (or even hoping) that not everyone will be pleased.

A reader counters another reader:

I was struck by the dissent you published on Hamas. It’s certainly a case for the defence, but it’s also casuistry. You can argue about the Nazi comparison, but the issue isn’t how many massacres Hamas have committed. It’s about a way of thinking — an ideology.

Hamas are Muslim Brotherhood by formation. The 1988 Charter makes this explicit, even if they have played it down since 2013. A key element of the thought of the MB’s founder, Hassan al Banna (an admirer of Mussolini) was shumuliyyah. This means “totalising”; MB doctrine is meant to provide a guide for everything from high politics to personal conduct. This is not the same as classical Islamic jurisprudence, which distinguished between matters of worship (which also covered personal conduct) and matters of state, which were not prescribed but subject to considerations of public interest.

Another meaning for shumuliyyah, of course, is totalitarian. The MB — and Hamas — are also essentialist, supremacist and supercessionist. The MB had many dealings with the Nazis from the mid-1930s onwards. And their attitude to Jews was conditioned by European fascism and anti-semitism: the 1988 charter reproduces all the standard tropes. There is a vast literature on this. Hamas is not the Nazis, but there is a connection.

Second, the 2017 paper that Hamas published is not a new charter. It renounces nothing in the 1988 charter but simply seeks — in my view, for bien pensant Western consumption — to tone down the vicious anti-semitism. The 1988 production is called a mithaq, which is an Islamic term meaning “covenant”. The 2017 paper is called a wathiqah, which means “document”. It does not recognise Israel. It reasserts Hamas’ claim to all the land. And it reasserts the commitment to armed struggle. The logical outcome is the removal of Jews. It changes nothing.

Hamas is not ISIS. And ISIS and other violent Islamists have indeed denounced Hamas as sell-outs for participating in elections and so forth. But Hamas too aims to create an “Islamic state” and ultimately to establish — or re-establish — the Ummah as a single effective political entity for all Muslims.

This is the standard MB position. Hassan al Banna was vague about caliphs, but he supported the caliphate movement in the 1920s onwards — and reportedly tried to interest Abdul Aziz al Saud in the position. The MB itself is intensely hierarchical, with a supreme leader (the Murshid ‘Aam) and a culture of unquestioning obedience. And the logical outcome of the MB’s thinking on legitimate Islamic leadership is … a caliph. The MB also has a theory of political violence. It was not, like the ISIS version, originally designed to be used indiscriminately as a means of terrifying the enemy into submission. It was designed — in a very Gramscian way — to be used only when it was most likely to lead to the seizure of power. It has become a matter, that is, of tactics, not principles.

Fourth, polling. Most Muslims were repelled by ISIS, particularly when they started murdering other Muslims — which was also the real turning point for groups like JAI in Egypt in the 1980s. But they still had significant support throughout the Sunni Arab world when it looked as if they were overturning colonial boundaries and giving the Shia and other infidels what they deserved. I remember the late Jamal Khashoggi making the same point to me in Bahrain seven years ago. You could go into diwaniyyahs in Kuwait in those days and find collecting boxes for ISIS in the middle of the room. They also benefitted from massive hawala flows from Qatar and elsewhere in the Gulf.

Hamas is popular throughout the region — not as a government, but as a movement doing to Israelis what ISIS did to other unbelievers. The evidence of polling over many years from highly reputable people like Khalil al Shikaki is that Hamas is normally far less popular in Gaza — where people know what they’re like — than in the West Bank. At times of conflict, support rises. But this is currently also a reflection of despair at the Palestinian Authority, a loss of faith in a political process, a desire for revenge, and a general Fanonist desire to relieve psychological pressure through extreme violence. I am not Arab, but I’ve lived in and dealt with the region for over 40 years. They might rejoice in Israel’s discomfiture, but I know no Arab Christians, Druze, Yazidis, Assyrians or non-Islamist Kurds who would welcome Hamas as a government.

It is, of course, true that Israel has committed massacres itself — extending back to 1948. So to — on a vastly greater scale — have successive Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian governments, Lebanese Hizbollah, Qaddafi, Yemeni insurgents, and of course (in response to French violence) the FLN in Algeria, whose 1955 massacre at Philippeville was the template for so many future atrocities across the region, including 7 October 2023.

Another reader flags a poll taken ahead of Pride Month:

Canada was among the first in the world to legalize same-sex marriage and provide strong protections. Their public health plan even covers trans surgeries for adults. What more do folks want? A lot, apparently, as you frequently write about. I think we can imagine why support is falling: “Poll finds declining Canadian support for LGBTQ2 rights and visibility.”

Another flags a new essay:

I hope you’re having a wonderful week. Have you read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s “We Have Been Subverted” yet? It gave me a fairly troubling realization that I’m not sure is being discussed enough, if at all. In short, over the course of our lifetime (you and I are roughly the same age), basically every institution that serves our democracy has lost its credibility: law enforcement, the judicial system, the election process, religion/the Church, the family unit, higher education, public schools, and now (inevitably) all three branches of our government — the Supreme Court being the last domino to fall.

Ali’s essay is obviously alluding to the discrediting of these essential social structures, and offers a plausible (if not convincing) argument as to why. But regardless, we must as a society truly grapple with this loss of credibility. Indeed, this loss has been so incremental that I don’t think most citizens have come to terms with the totality of what has occurred. The result is that we think Trump is the disease, when he is merely a symptom. And yes, that symptom is a blinding migraine, not simply a runny nose, but “fixing” the Trump problem does not truly address what has happened to our country — and likely the West in general.

If we keep focusing on the symptoms, we will fail to cure the disease. Is it a truly malignant cancer, as Ali describes it? Or is it a more benign result of the aging process (see Ross Douthat’s The Decadent Society)? One source calls for a radical cure; the other could be addressed through more exercise and a better diet, so to speak.

I wanted to see if you might be willing to address this, so as to promote a discussion I believe is critical to our future. The world we were born into trusted these institutions — have they all truly been corrupted? If so, how do we fix this?

Many thanks for this. I was hoping to read Ayaan’s essay this weekend. Cathy Young has written a strong critique. I’ll report back next week.

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