Columnist and author George F. Will spoke to students, facultyand visitors about current issues at both a packed student forumand Tate lecture Tuesday.
Students grilled Will on everything from Social Security towhether or not Osama Bin Laden should be hunted down andkilled.
Bob Monaghan, started the serious discussion in the forum with aquestion about the deficit.
“The $51 trillion deficit in Social Security and Medicarehas nothing to do with the Republican Party. Both parties share inthe complicity of the situation,” Will said. “Everyoneknows we have to raise the age for Social Security and Medicare andto raise taxes, but no one wants to be the one to do it. This ishow a democracy acts when it is under the lash of necessity. Itputs it off until it is too late.”
“What a lot of people don’t realize,” Willsaid, “is that by Bush’s fourth year of his second termor by the fourth year of the next presidents term, all of the BabyBoomers will be on Social Security and Medicare. The average age ofthe citizens of the whole country will exceed the oldest averageage of the residents of Florida.”
Will stated that the current situation with Condoleezza Ricewould not hurt but would, on the balance of things, help Bush. Hesaid Bush will probably win his re-election bid because the safetyof the nation is everyone’s primary concern right now, andwhen the nations security is an issue, the Republicans always dowell. Will said that this nation has 2.8 million upright citizenswho can’t program their own VCR’s, but when it comes tosecurity, the people will accept that the government was messed-upbefore 9/11 so they will not have a problem with these things.
Sarah Melody, a first year student, asked about RichardClark’s statements on counter-terrorism in his new book.
“Oh, you caught that did you?” Will asked. “Wehave to be careful about looking at the past through the lens ofthe present. I feel that Clark did not make his case.”
One student asked if we should be in Iraq or not.
“We should be in Iraq as part of the ongoing disaster andother countries should feel free to join us,” Will said.”In foreign affairs, it is important to remember the mostimportant fact of all – war is part of the humanexistence,”
Students also questioned the future of bin Laden.
Will said that killing bin Laden was the only thing to do.”He was a bad man continually stirring up unrest. To say thathe was the moderate voice of Hamas is a completeoxymoron.”
The Washington Post has syndicated Will’s newspapercolumn since 1974. Today, it appears twice weekly in just under 500newspapers in the United States and Europe. In 1976, he became aregular contributing editor of Newsweek magazine, for which heprovides a bimonthly back-page essay. In 1977, he won a PulitzerPrize for commentary in his newspaper columns.
