Thread by @oren_cass

George Will called me a "socialist" in the Washington Post today. I'm not even mad, that's amazing.

To properly honor the occasion, throughout the day I'll be posting some of my favorite quotes from his classic book, Statecraft as Soulcraft.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/natio…

"All economic arrangements, whatever the mixture of free trade and protection and subsidies and entitlements, should be discussed as expedients. They should be evaluated in terms of the contributions they make to the things we value fundamentally." -- George Will

[Those things include: "equitable material allocation" and "social cohesion."]

"An irritant to an oyster can become a pearl beyond price, and there is value to ideas which, although not denouncing the fundamental working arrangements of a commercial republic, nevertheless cast a cool eye on the long-term effects of those arrangements." -- George Will

"My purpose here is only to sample the range of possible uses of assertive government to achieve conservative goals... Can conservatives come to terms with a social reality more complex than their slogans?" -- George Will

"It is peculiar to speak as though laissez-faire policies amounted to government's 'doing nothing.' ... A 'free-market' economic system is a system; it is a public product, a creation of government... that government must nurture and sustain." -- George Will

"Conservatives must come to terms with the public's assumption that private economic decisions often are permeated with a public interest and hence are legitimate subjects of political debate and intervention." -- George Will

A brief interlude, from an interview with PBS: "Everyone in America talks the language of Jefferson while living in Hamilton’s country. This is the country Alexander Hamilton described in the [presumably "socialist"?] Report on Manufactures." -- George Will

"An economic order represents a political choice, and is a government product. We are all in it together, as citizens." -- George Will

"[Conservatives] argue just as fatuously that 'only people produce wealth; government does not.' Government produces the infrastructure of society--legal, physical, educational, from highways through skills--that is a precondition for the production of wealth." -- George Will

OK, last one.

“Tax deductions and tax exemptions are not alternatives to social programs. They are social programs. And unlike many such, they often achieve their intended effects. They alter behavior on a large scale for the advancement of chosen goals." -- George Will