George F. Will
Latest Articles
Ridiculous confirmation fights are killing the Supreme Court
The current era of scorched-earth politics began five years after there was, according to Christine Blasey Ford, in 1982, an alcohol-soaked party in a suburban Washington home. There her 15-year-old...
Where does Kavanaugh stand on constitutional questions that divide the right?
Four decades ago, New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an intellectual Democrat, observed with amazement and regret that Republicans had become the party of ideas. Today, many of America's most...
MLB may be broken, but better not to fix it
WASHINGTON — It is a prudential axiom: If it isn't broken, don't fix it. This reflects the awareness that things can always be made worse, and the law of unintended...
Charles Krauthammer's death leaves a huge void
When he was asked how to become a columnist, Charles Krauthammer would say, with characteristic drollery, "First, you go to medical school." He did, with psychiatry as his specialty because,...
How Mitch McConnell is winning the long game
Franklin Roosevelt, afflicted by the disease at age 39, died in April 1945 at the polio recuperation facility he had created in Warm Springs, Georgia. Before then, Mitch McConnell living...
A vital glimpse into the darkest of suns
As the museum of human nature, a k a the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, marks its 25th anniversary, it continues to receive artifacts, such as a letter handwritten on...
Denying ex-cons the vote is really politicians choosing the electorate
The bumpy path of Desmond Meade’s life meandered to its current interesting point. He’s a graduate of Florida International University law school but can’t vote in his home state because...
George Will's annual opening-day baseball quiz
"There'll be two buses leaving the hotel for the park tomorrow. The 2 o'clock bus will be for those of you who need a little extra work. The empty bus...
Questioning the 'final solution' for Down Syndrome people
Iceland must be pleased that it is close to success in its program of genocide, but before congratulating that nation on its final solution to the Down syndrome problem, perhaps...
Why are we still in Afghanistan?
“The war is over.” — Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Afghanistan (April 2002) “I believe victory is closer than ever before.” — Vice President Mike Pence in Afghanistan (December...
Oregon's 'radical' step: allowing motorists to pump their own gas
Frank Lloyd Wright purportedly said, “Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.” Today, however, Oregon is the state with the strangest state...
Wince or laugh at another year of American absurdity
Tryptophan, an amino acid in turkey, is unjustly blamed for what mere gluttony does, making Americans comatose every fourth Thursday in November. But before nodding off, give thanks for another...
Pity the poor progressives for their self-inflicted angst
Life is exhausting — and daily choices are unbearably burdensome — for some Americans who are so comfortably situated that they have the time and means to make themselves morally...
Why America is falling out of love with football
Autumn, which is bearing down upon us like a menacing linebacker, is, as John Keats said, a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Actually, Keats, a...
Yale's lesson in dumbing down undergrads
WASHINGTON -- Summer brings no respite for academics committed to campus purifications, particularly at the institution that is the leader in the silliness sweepstakes, Yale. Its Committee on Art in...
The Republican Party turns grotesque
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Southern Gothic is a literary genre and, occasionally, a political style that, like the genre, blends strangeness and irony. Consider the current primary campaign to pick the...
Congress keeps shirking its duty to OK military strikes
Predictably and sensibly, a three-judge panel of the nation’s second-most important court, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, recently dismissed, unanimously, a lawsuit brought by a Yemeni...
We know the cure for poverty — but not how to apply it
The Bronx, the only one of New York City's five boroughs that is on the American mainland, once had a sociological as well as geographical distinction. In the 1930s it...
Facing the facts of America's bloody birth
PHILADELPHIA - Some American history museums belabor visitors with this message: You shall know the truth and it shall make you feel ashamed of, but oh-so-superior to, your wretched ancestors....
Saving the future in Sing-Sing
Sparkling in the sunlight that inspired 19th-century romantic painters of the Hudson River School, Sing Sing prison’s razor wire, through which inmates can see the flowing river, is almost pretty....