George Will:
Conservatives are not against ameliorative government.
Conservatives do think we need to have a constant argument about the proper scope and actual competence of government. In 1964, 77 percent of the American people said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing all the time or almost all the time. Today, the figure is 17 percent, 60-point collapse in the prestige of government, as government's activism has risen.
I would think my progressive friends would be intensely interested in this, because everything they want to do depends on strong government. And strong government at the end of the day depends upon confidence in government.
Conservatives have no problem with Social Security. Government identifies an eligible cohort, the elderly, and writes them checks and mails them. It's good at that.
What government is not so good at is what it began to undertake in the 1960s, model cities. We don't know how to build model cities. There's a sense in which that is as futile an enterprise as nation-building, which is as futile an enterprise as orchid-building.
Cities, like nations, like orchids, are organic things. And they are not built by governments.
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