Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will encouraged students who come to The Ohio State University to have their ideas challenged.
Will, one of the most influential conservative commentators of the past 50 years, spoke about conservatism and the American political tradition to an audience of more than 250 people at the Blackwell Inn Nov. 13. His conversation, “A Front Seat at the Conservative Movement,” was presented by the university’s Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society.
“It's entirely appropriate that the Chase Center host Mr. Will on the topic of the conservative movement because our mission at the Chase Center is to leaven our university’s conversation by raising questions not currently being asked and engaging answers to those questions not currently being considered,” said Chase Center Executive Director Lee Strang. “Mr. Will’s topic, and his perspective on that topic, will certainly enrich our university’s conversation.”
Will opened his speech by asking a simple question: Why do we have politics?
“It just makes everyone cranky now. It ruins everything. It’s killed late-night television. In two weeks from today, I guess it’s going to spoil a few million Thanksgiving dinners,” he said.
He said politics exists because humans are opinionated and egotistical. The first duty of politics is to keep the peace. In Will’s view, he said he wanted a version of politics that was more restrained and less obtrusive in our daily lives, but he recognizes he is disconnected from the current conservative movement.
“As a conservative today of the Reagan tradition, it’s fair to ask, what do you want to conserve? My answer is simple. I’m going to conserve the American founding. … But today, let’s face it, people like me are anachronisms,” he said. “My conservatism is a persuasion without a party. It is an orphan in a very chilly world, partly because it is modest in its aims and aspirations.”
He cautioned that as the government becomes more involved in policing culture, it can stifle speech. Will said the current trend to expand the definition of what speech is considered harmful should be resisted, and that universities like Ohio State play a role in supporting free speech.
“A young person might come to Ohio State and hear an idea he or she had not heard before and say, ‘That makes me sad. It makes me anxious. It makes me angry. It harms my equilibrium,’” he said. “Now, I happen to think that The Ohio State University … exists to harm people in that sense, to disturb their equilibrium. Why else would you pay the tuition?”
Will said Americans deserve a more cheerful and optimistic political view. He said Reagan believed that when the American people are cheerful, good things happen. They stay in school, they get married, they have children, they invest in the economy because they have a happy, welcoming view of the future, Will said.
“I think the American people still believe what the poet, Robert Frost, believed when he said, ‘I don’t want to live in a homogenized society. I want the cream to rise.’ The Ohio State University is a cream-rising mechanism,” he said.
Despite the challenges facing his preferred approach to governing, Will said he remained optimistic.
“Lincoln said, America is not about a process, majority rule. It is about a condition, liberty, and that, once upon a time, defined his party,” he said. “And if I have anything to say about it … it will again.”