"Will" is a four letter word.

George Will, that is. His op-ed yesterday praises the Supreme Court for striking down Vermont's fair elections law, but attacks the court for not going far enough. Several members of the Court were in favor of overturning Buckley entirely - and scrapping all regulations of campaign finance in the process. Will supports Thomas's contention that an incredibly complicated decision like in the Vermont case only opens up room for more cases. As such, Will believes that we should apply Occam's razor and entirely dispose of campaign finance regulations.

I will admit to one thing. It certainly would be simpler. Much easier to have no regulations on campaign finance than the delicate balancing act of free speech with political equality.

But I will go Will one or two further. If simplicity is our goal, why mess around? Why not apply his scalpel of policy simplicity to a few other issues? It would be far simpler to eliminate environmental regulations than to weigh individual property rights vs. the public interest. Why not ban women from the workplace so we don't have to come up with alternative child-rearing arrangements? Hell, wouldn't it be much more straightforward to eliminate the bill of rights altogether than to manage the conflict between public order and private liberty? And while we're cleaning up all these bothersome little messes, let's just appoint an absolute dynastic monarch rather than deal with all these tiresome debates?

Of course Will would say that I'm going to far, that he's not in favor of any of those things. Of course he's not. Nothing he or his favorite political party is tending in any of those directions, are they? No way.

Sorry George, but life is complicated. ]He chooses to focus on the narrowest definition of corruption (ignoring the rampant sleaziness on his side of the aisle) and ignore the broader problem of our present wealth test for office. He ignores the problem of political equality because...well... he doesn't believe in equality at all.