Politics & Power Quote by George Will

“Sacrifice” is supposed to be a morally leveling word: everyone gives up something, together, for a shared goal. George Will flips it into an accusation of class theater. His line works because it treats Washington not as an abstract institution but as a self-protective social caste with its own comforts, appetites, and euphemisms. The sarcasm is surgical: sacrifice isn’t pain, it’s paperwork. Citizens “mail” money like dutiful pen pals, while the “political class” keeps the pleasure of spending it. The verb choice drags lofty rhetoric down to the banal mechanics of extraction.

The intent is less about budgeting than about delegitimizing the language that sells it. Will is targeting the familiar moment in American politics when leaders invoke wartime-style virtue to justify higher taxes, bigger programs, or austerity “for the country” while insulating the state itself from restraint. The subtext is that public sacrifice is frequently demanded when government refuses to sacrifice: cut your household, not our commitments; tighten your belt, not our agencies; accept less, so we can keep promising more.

Context matters: Will writes from a conservative tradition wary of expanding federal power, especially in late-20th- and early-21st-century debates over deficits, entitlements, and tax policy. His punchline depends on an old populist suspicion with an elite twist: the people aren’t being asked to fund necessity, they’re being asked to preserve the pleasures of policymakers who get moral credit for “hard choices” that land in someone else’s mailbox.