The sad, sorry decline of George F. Will

The longtime Washington Post columnist was once an intellectual force to be reckoned with. No more.

George Will
(Image credit: (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite))

When you make a purchase through links on our site, we may earn a commission

It's become a classic of political commentary: a center-left lament about the decline in the quality of conservative intellectual life. (Here's a recent example.) Where once William F. Buckley debated fellow intellectuals on Firing Line, where once richly erudite thinkers like Leo Strauss, Russell Kirk, and Milton Friedman crafted meticulous arguments in culturally literate essays, today conservatives either treat ideas as weapons to bludgeon their ideological opponents, or craft them into slogans to whip up enthusiasm at the endless populist pep rally on talk radio, partisan websites, and cable news.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.