This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, July 5th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

For columnist and author George Will, it's no small thing that the vision of government

laid out by the founders was the correct one.

For a century he says self-described progressives have been doing a decent job of dismantling

that ideal, if not the substantive checks on government power the Constitution

provides. George Wills new book is the conservative sensibility.

You argue that what conservatives ought to be working to conserve is the American founding.

How should people who agree with that sentiment articulate it, that is make it real.

They should understand the forthrightness and the success with which progressives have attacked the founding and overthrown it for nearly a century.

And they should understand that by preserving the founding, of course do not mean preserving

America when it was 4 million people strung along the coast of the North American

continent at 80% living within 20 miles of Atlantic Tidewater.

Preserving the American founding means three things.

First, the natural rights philosophy,

which is that there is a constant human nature,

that's the second thing,

and that this is best served, preserving the rights that are natural to

creatures of our nature, requires a government structure the way Madison did it, which is to say an equilibrium between contending forces in

government, the separation of powers, in order to make sure that the government

does what the declaration second paragraph says it is

instituted for, which is to secure natural rights. That's the most important verb in the declaration and it simply establishes

...