"World War II was the last government program that really worked"
About this Quote
Leave it to George Will to compress an entire ideology into a grenade toss. “World War II was the last government program that really worked” isn’t a history claim so much as a rhetorical trap: if you flinch at praising a war, you’re already halfway to his point about the limits of the state.
The line works because it steals the language of domestic policy - “program” - and bolts it onto total mobilization. Calling WWII a “program” is deliberately chilling, a way of reframing the New Deal-to-Great Society arc as a long slide from competence into permanent, self-justifying bureaucracy. The subtext is classic Will: government can be effective only when the mission is brutally simple, the enemy is external, and the political incentives align around scarcity and sacrifice. Peacetime governance is messier: competing constituencies, diffuse outcomes, and endless opportunities to declare partial success.
Context matters. Will writes as a conservative journalist shaped by postwar American confidence, then by Vietnam, stagflation, and Watergate-era distrust. By the time “government program” becomes a punchline in late-20th-century politics, WWII stands as the last episode where federal power looks unambiguously decisive: rapid industrial conversion, mass employment, clear metrics (ships built, planes produced), and a victory you can name on a calendar.
There’s cynicism here, too. The quip implies that the state “works” best when it can command, ration, surveil, and spend without apology - tools many conservatives reject in every other setting. Will isn’t endorsing those tools; he’s betting you’ll notice the contradiction and stop asking for government miracles.
The line works because it steals the language of domestic policy - “program” - and bolts it onto total mobilization. Calling WWII a “program” is deliberately chilling, a way of reframing the New Deal-to-Great Society arc as a long slide from competence into permanent, self-justifying bureaucracy. The subtext is classic Will: government can be effective only when the mission is brutally simple, the enemy is external, and the political incentives align around scarcity and sacrifice. Peacetime governance is messier: competing constituencies, diffuse outcomes, and endless opportunities to declare partial success.
Context matters. Will writes as a conservative journalist shaped by postwar American confidence, then by Vietnam, stagflation, and Watergate-era distrust. By the time “government program” becomes a punchline in late-20th-century politics, WWII stands as the last episode where federal power looks unambiguously decisive: rapid industrial conversion, mass employment, clear metrics (ships built, planes produced), and a victory you can name on a calendar.
There’s cynicism here, too. The quip implies that the state “works” best when it can command, ration, surveil, and spend without apology - tools many conservatives reject in every other setting. Will isn’t endorsing those tools; he’s betting you’ll notice the contradiction and stop asking for government miracles.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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