Stephen Colbert Ridicules George F. Will's "Free Market Terrarium"

The other evening Stephen Colbert had conservative political pundit George F. Will on the Colbert Report where Will, explaining his new book One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation, said that the difference between a conservative and a liberal is that conservatives want freedom—the opportunity for individual excellence unimpeded by government meddling. In contrast, a liberal wants equality—creating an even playing field by allowing government to extend its meddling tentacles into our private affairs resulting in the curtailing of our freedoms.

Will explained that liberals, unlike conservatives, have no faith in the free market to sort things out.

Looking at Will with strained credulity, Colbert raised his eye brows and casting mockery on Will’s piously blind faith in an unencumbered free market, said that Will was promoting a “free market terrarium” in which an enclosed world of diverse creatures, some bigger and stronger than the others, have free reign so that inevitably the stronger beasts prey on the weaker.

Indeed, Will’s blind faith in the free market would result in barbarism. Equally absurd on the other extreme, a society that allows government to engage in unlimited social engineering would be as barbaric and absurd as the world depicted by Kurt Vonnegut in his famous short story “Harrison Bergeron” from his short story collection Welcome to the Monkey House.

Rejecting both the free market terrarium and the government do-gooder totalitarians portrayed in Vonnegut’s story, I say we should balance freedom and equality in the light of Aristotle’s idea of the golden mean, as he describes in his Nicomachean Ethics.  

Comments

[Ed S.]

I saw that interview. If Will has any sense of humor, he certainly hid it well. I hate it when a guest takes Colbert seriously or just doesn't doesn't "get" his schtick. Will has an extreme case of stick-up-the-butt.

[Jeff McMahon]

Yeah, my friend saw Wills debate or do an interview on a college campus decades ago and he said one word came to mind: "pompous."

[Jeff McMahon]

An utter failure indeed. The worst I've seen in my lifetime.