EVOLVING IS NOT A SYNONYM FOR IMPROVING.

Here it is, the end of April, and now comes Book Review N^o. 1, George Will's The Conservative Sensibility.  It's another book I engaged with extensively, as my end-notes and underlinings indicate.  The book might better be understood as The Libertarian Sensibility, at least that's the impression I got.  The preface spells out where Mr Will intends to go, complete with his acidulous tone, e.g. (p. xvi) "We can dignify our present disputes among small persons of little learning by connecting them with great debates about fundamental things."  The libertarian case emerges at p. xxv, with "One lesson of the twentieth century is that the comprehensive politics of the integrated state promises fulfillment but delivers suffocation."  The book has a 2019 publication date: there is nothing from the past three years of fifteen days to slow the spread that would lead me to think otherwise.  At page xxxi, he notes, "Understanding the limits of the possible is a prerequisite for avoiding misplaced confidence, of which there has been an abundance in the last half century of governance."

From there, everything else is elaboration.  Although I flagged all sorts of passages reinforcing all manner of things that I have carried on about at length for years, let me limit my observations to a few.  That the conservative sensibility is in fair part libertarian is present in Mr Will's allusion, page 100, to the Tragic Vision.  "Since the New Deal, the government has become steadily more ambitious.  Americans have not, however, become more content with their government."  The Tory part of his personality surfaces at page 195 with "[D]emocracy produces unfortunate results because voters views are foolish but honored.  Often the problem is not that government is unresponsive but that it is too responsive."  That's why we have constitutions, page 200, "Although constitutions are adopted in order to enable orderly social change, their primary purpose is to conserve what should not be changed, at least not quickly and easily."  The impatient vanguardists will always be with us, and they will sound off about the expediency of the moment.

There are periodic autobiographical observations in Conservative Sensibility: not about the Cubs or American Flyer as I have on occasion teased, but did you know Mr Will is proudly atheist?

If you have a conservative or libertarian disposition, dear reader, Conservative Sensibility offers plenty to make you check your premises; if your disposition is technocratic or vanguardist, ask whether Mr Will offers evidence that might make you revise your priors.  The book packs a lot of points into its pages; this is not something to read casually on a rainy afternoon.

Cross-posted to Fifty Book Challenge.