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Libertarian presidential candidate André Marrou's idea is that government power is opposed to individual liberty. Must we still debate such sophomoric notions?... Besides, liberty, although very important, is not the only value.

George Will

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George Will
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: May 4
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George F. Will
George Frederick Will
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Commercial society regards people as bundles of appetites, a conception that turns human beings inside out, leaving nothing to be regarded as inherently private.
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Pettiness is the tendency of people without large purposes.
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Even the continents drift.
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We have 3,141 counties in this country. That would be 20 per county. The idea that we can't assimilate these 8-year-old criminals with their teddy bears is preposterous.
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Twenty minutes into his presidency, Donald Trump, who is always claiming to have made, or to be about to make, astonishing history, had done so. Living down to expectations, he had delivered the most dreadful inaugural address in history.
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Some calamities - the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, 9/11 - have come like summer lightning, as bolts from the blue. The looming crisis of America's Ponzi entitlement structure is different. Driven by the demographics of an aging population, its causes, timing and scope are known.
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The best use of history is as an inoculation against radical expectations, and hence against embittering disappointments.
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If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration - and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration - is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.
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Money is time made tangible - the time invested in the earning of it. Taxation is the confiscation of the earner's time. Although some taxation is necessary, all taxation diminishes freedom.
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When liberals' presidential nominees consistently fail to carry Kansas, liberals do not rush to read a book titled What's the Matter With Liberals' Nominees? No, the book they turned into a bestseller is titled What's the Matter With Kansas? Notice a pattern here?
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Today it would be progress if everyone would stop talking about values. Instead, let us talk, as the Founders did, about virtues.
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America is the only developed nation that has a 2,000-mile border with a developing nation, and the government's refusal to control that border is why there are an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona and why the nation, sensibly insisting on first things first, resists 'comprehensive' immigration reform.
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Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.
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Machiavelli, however, took his bearings from people as they are. He defined the political project as making the best of this flawed material. He knew (in words Kant would write almost three centuries later) that nothing straight would be made from the crooked timber of humanity.
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[P]rogressivism is a top-down, continent-wide tissue of taxes, mandates, and other coercions.
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