With conservatives losing on almost all issues, from foreign policy to the environment, George Will turns to the mainstay of “law and order” conservatism in his Sunday Outlook WaPo Op-Ed, “More Prisoners, Less Crime.” Conservatives aren’t left with much ammo these days, so Will uses the old conservative trick of painting liberals as the allies of vicious criminals. Will is responding to those who point out that we have the highest incarceration rate in the world, higher than third world countries and despotic regimes. Will sets up a strawman, arguing that liberals think that this is the result of racism. He then proceeds to argue otherwise. He cites a Manhattan Institute article that claims “the reason more blacks are disproportionately in prison, and for longer terms, is not racism but racial differences in patterns of criminal offenses.” Will seems satisfied with this answer and ignores the obvious question that entails: Why are there racial differences in crime patterns? Why does Will think minorities are predetermined to commit crimes and what can we do about it? Will doesn’t seem to care. His article only offers the “lockem’ up” strategy of policing. He claims high incarceration has caused a drop in crime, so we should incarcerate more.
Taking our cue from Will’s opening words, “Listening to political talk requires a third ear that hears what is not said,” we should look at what will did not discuss in his piece. Will completely glosses over the main incarceration issue: Why do we have the world’s highest incarceration rate? High incarceration not necessary for a low crime rate. Despite having the world’s highest incarceration rate, the US is one of the most crime-ridden developed nations. Other countries manage to have both extremely low crime rates and low incarceration rates. Will, and conservatives generally, don’t want to discuss this. Their only solution for crime is a heavier fist, and they challenge any distent on the issue by branding the opposition as criminal sympathizers.
In addition to the strawmen and omitted arguments, Will’s op-ed suffers from general poor quality. The Op-Ed centers on cut and paste excerpts from an article (which opens “The race industry and its elite enablers take it as self-evident that high black incarceration rates result from discrimination.”[credit]) written by Heather Mac Donald for the right-wing Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. Mac Donald’s article is a mash up of other research, so Will’s Op-Ed is based on nothing but third hand information passed through at least two arch-conservative filters.
Will’s other major source are quotes from James Q. Wilson, a university professor best known for a government textbook that has been criticized for doubting global warming and misrepresenting supreme court cases on school prayer. Will finishes his Op-Ed piece by quoting Wilson, “And, Wilson dryly adds, the report does not explore “whether society gets as much from universities as it does from prisons.” Will goes on to add “A good question, but not one apt to be studied in academia. “
Will, the quintessential elitist, never fails to slam what he deems to be the elite. Will, a former professor with degrees from Oxford and Princeton, likes to pretend he’s above the academic elite (which would only make him super-elite, but he fails to note this). Both Will and Wilson are qualified to undertake a research project comparing the benefits of universities to prisons, but they would rather make snide remarks than actually do work to support a point. Will, as usual, goes for the easy points scored with anti-intellectualism, which is astonishing given that he is the son of a philosophy professor and has had his own very intellectual career. Anyone familiar with Will’s work knows that this intellectual’s anti-intellectualism is really only anti-intellectual honesty; Will makes his career writing Op-Ed’s based on strawmen and fudged facts, and holds disdain for the intellectuals who produce worthwhile research.
