George Will Archives - Granite Grok

Notable Quote: Nothing lasts forever – especially monopolies

October 25, 2020October 25, 2020 Skip

Warning against “monopoly fatalism,” the Cato Institute’s Ryan Bourne says: Time was, the A&P grocery chain was the entrenched “Amazon of its day,” with almost 15,000 stores by 1935. Seen one recently? Between 1976 and 1978, the government worried that IBM might have a monopoly on the “office typewriter industry.” A November 2007 Forbes cover … Read more

Notable Quote – Society vs Government

October 12, 2020 Skip

Just as the Founders considered and created a Constitution that would guarantee the Separation of Powers, the philosophy behind it was to set up bulwarks to deny people the ability to aggregate power unto themselves and their special interests.

Notable Quote – It used to be about the Constitution

September 12, 2020 Skip

Our Founders wanted a limited Government constrained by the Constitution. But if our elected Representatives refuse to even talk about the Constitution’s limitations upon them, how can it be limited?

Notable Quote – George Will, Prof. Don Boudreaux

June 1, 2020 Skip

Can a federal government that acknowledges no limits to its scope, and that responds promiscuously to the multiplying appetites of proliferating factions, make choices that serve the society’s long-term interests? The answer, based on the avalanche of evidence from current governance, is an emphatic “no.” The evidence is in the rise of the administrative state … Read more

Notable Quote – Goerge Will

May 2, 2020May 2, 2020 Skip

The Declaration is not just chronologically prior to the Constitution, it is logically prior. As Timothy Sandefur writes, the Declaration “sets the framework for reading” the Constitution, so it is the Constitution’s “conscience”: By the terms with which the Declaration articulates the Constitution’s purpose – the purpose is to “secure” unalienable rights – the Declaration intimates … Read more

Notable Quote – George Will, Prof. Don Boudreaux

April 17, 2020 Skip

[Welfare] states presuppose economic dynamism sufficient to generate investments, job creation, corporate profits, and individuals’ incomes from which come tax revenues needed to fund entitlements. But welfare states produce in citizens an entitlement mentality and a low pain threshold. That mentality inflames appetites for more entitlements, broadly construed to include all government benefits and protections … Read more

Notable Quote – George Will

April 4, 2020April 4, 2020 Skip

Notable Quote – George Will

February 23, 2020February 23, 2020 Skip

The political class has prospered by hiding from the public the cost of the public’s appetites. By making vast deficit spending not an occasional counter-cyclical recourse but a constant governing strategy, it has made big government deceptively cheap, giving today’s public a dollar’s worth of goods and services and charging them only about 80 cents. … Read more

Notable Quotes – George Will

January 30, 2020 Skip

Note a contradiction in progressivism that has become steadily more severe in the century since [Woodrow] Wilson wrote. Progressivism has no objection to steady enlargement of the “conceptions of state duty.” Quite the contrary, such enlargement is the progressive agenda – the expansion of the central government’s supervision of society’s complexities. But as solicitous government permeates society … Read more

Notable Quote – George Will and Prof. Don Boudreaux

July 19, 2019 Skip

Modernity’s gift has been the ability and determination to sharply delineate private and public spheres, with the private being the zone of individual sovereignty. It is the realm of the household, the family, and the work that sustains both. This is the basis of the proposition that the Constitution of the first consciously modern nation, … Read more

Notable Quote – George Will

July 12, 2019 Skip

And the more things government touches, the more people will have interests in touching, and wheedling, government. Progressives purport to be scandalized by modern Washington, which is indeed an unlovely maelstrom of interest groups maneuvering to maximize their rent-seeking. This is, however, the Washington that progressives should have known they were making. But they only … Read more

Notable Quote – George Will

July 1, 2019 Skip

It is, however, an iron law: The more government does to influence the flow of money, the more money will be spent to influence elections. -George Will ( The Conservative Sensibility) (H/T: Cafe Hayek) As Government controls more resources and takes/spends more money, the stakes keep increasing. The lure to control that money flow is irresistible … Read more

Notable Quote – George Will

June 24, 2019 Skip

A progressive’s work is never done because everything is progressivism’s business. -George Will (The Conservative Sensibility) How true – they never stop in their efforts to institute top-down control because THEY don’t believe YOU can control your own life. They are, by mindset, unable to leave others alone. It’s like they think they’re royalty or sumptin…

Notable Quote – George Will

June 9, 2018January 12, 2013 Skip

And these [natural] rights are the foundation of limited government – government defined by the limited goal of securing those rights so that individuals may flourish in their free and responsible exercise of those rights. A government thus limited is not in the business of imposing its opinions about what happiness or excellence the citizens … Read more

Notable Quote – George Will: observation and advice to Progressives

September 26, 2018December 18, 2012 Skip

Many liberals who, with solemn self-congratulation, call themselves “pro-choice” become testy when the right to choose is not confined to choosing to kill unborn babies. They say the right to choose is not progressive when it enables parents to choose their children’s schools or permits workers to choose not to fund unions’ political advocacy. Democrats … Read more

Notable Quote – George Will

September 26, 2018November 19, 2012 Skip

On yesterday “This Week”, George Will had this to say in a retort to Dem stratgist Donna Brazile concerning the “Fiscal Cliff” that our “elected employees” have created for all of us with automatic spending cuts across the board, especially on the military, and Obama tax hikes (after all, if 10 year old tax cuts … Read more