The columnist George F. Will spoke about American conservatism during an event promoting his new book The Conservative Sensibility at Washington, D.C.'s Politics and Prose bookstore on Tuesday.
Will highlighted what he termed the "fundamental progressive non-sequitur," which can be seen in the context of President Woodrow Wilson's disagreement with the Founders' commitment to separation of powers. The rise of industrial society demanded a change in governing principles, according to Wilson, and thus a move away from the idea of separation of powers.
Wilson's progressive worldview, Will argued, held that the complexity of the world "requires a government of strength and size capable of measuring up to the challenge of regulating a complicated industrial society." The non-sequitur lies in the fact that Wilson and other progressives claim the complexity of society necessitates a government that is "comparably large and complex."
Will favors Friedrich Hayek's view that governments "require epistemic humility" in order to avoid the "fatal conceit of believing that we can know more than we can know, and control more than we can or ought to control."
Wilson also took issue with the natural rights doctrine central to the Founders' thought because it suggested a stable human nature. On the contrary, the progressive mindset sees humans as creatures who acquire the culture in which they live, thereby opening the door for "an enormous range for government ambition to change the culture and by so doing to change the nature of human beings."
Will's characterization of progressivism is evident in the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who argued the "empirical world" needed to be remade so that "man experiences and gets used to what is really human."
Whereas American conservatism "has as its fundamental mission keeping an open society that will be forever susceptible to the dynamism of a market society and the fluidity of a market society," the progressive sensibility "has been to impose as much control as possible in the name of the scientific public administration," Will added.
He then summarized what it is that conservatives strive to conserve.
"They want to conserve the American founding, the promises about natural rights, separation of power, the stability of human nature. They want to conserve the idea that government needs an ongoing debate about the proper scope and actual competence of government, and that we particularly need to examine the myth of disinterested government," Will said.
Will also commented on the judiciary and majority rule in response to a question from the audience: "In my book I say that John Marshall is the third most important American after Lincoln and Washington because he understood that if you're going to have a written constitution and if it is going to constitute, we need judicial review where you lay the acts of the legislature, the majoritarian institution, next to the Constitution and if the former are discordant with the latter the former must go."
He acknowledged his thought has shifted on this issue, and that he used to believe America was about majority rule. On this point, he outlined Lincoln's disagreement with Stephen Douglas's advocacy of popular sovereignty as a solution to the issue of slavery in the territories. For Lincoln, America was about liberty, not majority rule.
"And when liberty is endangered by majority rule, the majorities must be disciplined. Hence, the judicial supervision of democracy," Will said.