Welcome to Beg to Bue to Differ, the Bullworks weekly roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation across the

political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I'm Mona

Charon, syndicated columnist and policy editor at thewark. I'm joined by our regulars

Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution and the Wall Street Journal, Damon Linker of

the Week, and Linda Chavez of the Niskanin Center. Our special guest this week, making a return visit, is the

nation's premier columnist George F. Will, who has a new book. It is called American Happiness and Discontents, the Unruly Tor in 2008 to 2020.

Welcome one and all.

George, I want to start with you.

I want to talk a little bit about your new book,

which is, as always, brimming with insight and wit

and lapidary turns a phrase.

So one of your trademarks as a columnist is your deep immersion in history,

most particularly American history.

And sometimes this is a source of, well at least for your readers, I imagine for you as well,

sometimes it's a source of inspiration and and alternatively

can be they can offer some perspective on the problems we're facing in the

current moment so I will just give an example from a column

that you wrote in April of 2017.

It's called America's Dark Home Front during World War I.

Quote, Woodrow Wilson imposed and incited extraordinary repressions.

Quote, there are citizens of the United States

born under other flags who have poured the poison of disloyalty

...