With a Happy Eye But . . .; America and the World, 1997--2002

by George F. Will

• ISBN13: 9780684838212
• ISBN10: 0684838214
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-03
• Publisher: Free Press

Summary

In the introduction to this, the seventh collection ofthe newspaper and magazine columns, book reviews, speeches, and occasional writings of George Will, he notes the bemusement with which some may react to his choice of title. W. H. Auden wrote his poem The Horatians from which the following lines are taken: We can only do what it seems to us we were made for, look at this world with a happy eye but from a sober perspective. The poem was written in 1968. It was a year notable in the United States for assassination, riot, war, and political violence unseen for the preceeding 100 years. If humanity could be instructed to view that world with a happy eye, can America today do any less, faced with the clearest and most coherent expression of national unity since the Second World War? With a Happy Eye But . . . is both a clear description of the attitude that informs these collected pieces (and the attitude of their creator) and an admonition to Americans.

Author Biography

GEORGE F. WILL is a columnist for the Washington Post Writer¹s Group and a contributing editor of Newsweek. He appears weekly on the ABC-TV program This Week. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, he lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Overture	p. 7
To the "Gallant Girls" (Just Kidding) of National Cathedral School	p. 9
Chicks with Sticks	p. 13
Marines, Rough and Polished	p. 15
A Summons to Gratitude	p. 17
In Praise of Fierce Patriotism	p. 19
The Unabomber and American Squeamishness	p. 21
The Unabomber's Sanity	p. 23
The Black-Lung Disease of the Intelligentsia	p. 24
Minibars and Family Values in Vegas	p. 27
The Anthropology of Latte Towns	p. 28
Et Tu, Brooks Brothers?	p. 30
Secrecy and the Mother of Stupidity	p. 32
The Triumph of "Perceptions"	p. 34
Rodney King Revisited	p. 36
Victimhood as an Equal Opportunity Condition	p. 39
The Census and Tiger Woods	p. 40
Making Uniforms into Billboards	p. 42
Oh, Swell. New York Wins Again	p. 44
Nykesha Sales Misses the Point	p. 46
1951 Diminished	p. 48
Fifty-one Two-Bit Solutions	p. 50
Santa and His 214,200 Reindeer	p. 52
NASA and the Meaning, if Any, of Life	p. 54
1997: Year of Living Dangerously	p. 56
1998: Not in Good Taste	p. 58
1999: Satisfactory, Sort Of	p. 60
2000: The Most Interesting Year of the Millennium, So Far	p. 62
2001: Ring the Bells Backward	p. 64
The World	p. 67
War Beyond the World of Westphalia	p. 69
The Relevance of General Sherman	p. 71
The Healthy Aspect of War	p. 73
Next, Weapons of Mass Disruption?	p. 74
Scary Scenarios from a Decorous Cassandra	p. 77
Arms Control by F-16	p. 79
The End of Human Nature, Not History	p. 81
New Consequences for Old Ideas	p. 83
Disintegration	p. 85
Language and the Logic of Events	p. 87
Kosovo and America's Identity	p. 88
Russia's Long Crawl Up from Communism	p. 90
Italy's Fifty-ninth Postwar Try	p. 92
Cheddar Man and the Abolition of Britain	p. 94
The European Union's Lawlessness	p. 96
Denmark and Goliath	p. 98
The Currency of Cultural Blandness	p. 100
The Rape of Nanking Remembered	p. 102
Arafat, Castro, and the Liberal Mind	p. 104
The Hijacking of the Holocaust	p. 106
Germany: Unending Self-Examination	p. 108
July 10, 1941, in Jedwabne	p. 110
Israel at Fifty	p. 112
Justice and Injustice	p. 115
"Do Not Iron Clothes on Body"	p. 117
Microgovernment and the Law of Litigation	p. 119
Hate Crimes: The Criminal Law as Moral Pork Barrel	p. 121
Punishing States of Mind	p. 123
"Bigotry" and the Boy Scouts	p. 124
Privacy and the Boy Scouts	p. 126
The Privacy of the Unencumbered Self	p. 128
Prison, Procreation, and FedEx	p. 130
Stem Cells and Human Flourishing	p. 132
Peter Singer Comes to Princeton	p. 134
The Right to a Dead Baby	p. 138
Infanticide: Ho-Hum	p. 140
A Sacrament in the Church of "Choice"	p. 142
Fetuses and Carolinians	p. 144
Protecting Viewers from Something "A Little Too Vivid"	p. 146
Solemnity at Texas High School Football Games	p. 148
Coping with the--Well, Some of the--Ten Commandments	p. 150
Censoring Zachary	p. 152
Good News for Zachary	p. 154
School Choice and the "Hecklers' Veto"	p. 156
The Supreme Court and the "Essence" of Golf	p. 158
Reasonable Doubts	p. 161
Worrying Rationally	p. 163
Increasing Speed--and Safety: A Cautionary Tale	p. 164
What Did We Know, and When Did We Know It, About Smoking?	p. 166
Supersized Americans	p. 168
Boys Will Be Boys. So Drug Them	p. 170
The Mask of Masculinity	p. 172
Rethinking Puberty, and High School	p. 174
The Death of School Discipline	p. 176
Disorder on Campus	p. 178
Education and the 9/91 Factor	p. 180
Multiplying Knowledge at Monterey Bay	p. 182
"Barkis Is Willin'": An Address at Princeton's Sesquicentennial	p. 184
Virtues Versus Values: Commencement Address at Lafayette College	p. 194
Rule by Microrules: Commencement Address at Washington University in Saint Louis	p. 197
"Recognition" in San Francisco	p. 202
Sustainable San Francisco	p. 204
Making America Safe--and Profitable--for Eminem	p. 206
Walker Percy, Richard Petty, Whatever	p. 208
Karen Finley's Major Tragedy	p. 210
Contingencies Large and Small	p. 213
History and Contingency	p. 215
... The Iceberg Too	p. 216
Neurologically Wired to Wall Street	p. 218
What Began with Jim Clark's Boat	p. 220
Capitalism Is a Government Project	p. 222
America's Long-Term Leveling	p. 224
The "Strip Mall Socialism" of Government	p. 226
Hillary Clinton's Insouciant Insincerity	p. 228
Friendship	p. 229
The Silence of the Law and "the Silent Artillery of Time"	p. 231
Closing the Lewinsky Parenthesis	p. 233
Sorry About That	p. 235
Clinton's Legacy: An Adjective	p. 237
A College Education	p. 239
435 May Be 565 Too Few	p. 241
What the Remorseless Improvers Have Wrought	p. 242
A Free-Love Nominating System	p. 244
FDR Pays His Taxes	p. 246
A Democrat Learns to Love Trickle-Down Economics	p. 248
Conservatism: Freedom Plus	p. 250
Relearning the Lessons of "the Most Important Law"	p. 252
A GI Bill for Mothers	p. 254
In Need of Another Moses	p. 256
Congress's "Nuremberg Defense"	p. 258
The Appendix of the Body Politic	p. 260
The Politics of Pathos	p. 262
Listening to Politics with a Third Ear	p. 264
"Let Us ..." No, Let's Not	p. 266
Missing Coolidge	p. 269
Al Sharpton's Parricide	p. 271
Regulating Campaigning: The Many Misadventures of Reform	p. 273
The "Latin Americanization" of Campaign Finance Law	p. 275
One-Third of the Senate Versus the First Amendment	p. 277
The McCarthyism of the "Progressives"	p. 279
A 100 Percent Tax on Political Speech?	p. 281
Congress and the "Misuse" of Political Speech	p. 283
A (Speech) Policeman's Lot Is Not Easy	p. 285
The Speech Police Find "Offending Passages"	p. 287
Minnesota Takes Exception to the First Amendment	p. 289
The Scandal the Media Are Missing	p. 291
Surprise!	p. 292
Virtue at Last! (In Ten Months)	p. 294
The Next Mess Reformers Will Make of the Last Mess They Have Made	p. 297
People	p. 299
The Forfeiture of Princess Noor	p. 301
Princess Diana and the Law of Inverse Ratio Rhetoric	p. 302
Princess Diana, Conjurer	p. 305
Magic in Broad Daylight	p. 306
Hitler and Epistemological Optimism	p. 308
The "Ah!" of Avery Dulles	p. 310
Francis Cardinal George, Unenthralled	p. 312
C. S. Lewis's Cult of the Ordinary	p. 314
P.D. James, in Earnest	p. 315
Rough Rider in Green Bay	p. 317
Joe DiMaggio's Seamless Life	p. 319
Gentlemen in Spikes	p. 321
Don Zimmer: The Face of Baseball	p. 323
John Adams, Popular at Last	p. 328
James Madison, the Subtlest Founder	p. 330
Barry Goldwater, Cheerful Malcontent	p. 332
Robert Kennedy, Conservative?	p. 334
The Nutritiousness of Pat Moynihan	p. 337
Patrick O'Brian's Sense and Sensibility	p. 339
Holden Caulfield Turns Fifty	p. 341
Sara Jane Olson and Terrorism Chic	p. 343
Daniel Johnson, Without Regrets	p. 345
Meg Greenfield's Potent Measuredness	p. 347
The Columnist at Sixty	p. 351
Frederick L. Will's Angle of Repose	p. 352
Index	p. 355
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