Q&A: Kevin Williamson, roving correspondent

Home Interviews Q&A: Kevin Williamson, roving correspondent

Kevin D. Williamson is the roving correspondent for National Review. At Hillsdale, he is teaching a course as the Dow Journalism Program’s spring Pulliam Fellow. He writes on finances with special interest on the debt and deficit and its relationship to politics. Author of three books, his latest is “The End is Near and It’s Going To Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure.” Williamson directed the journalism and communications programs at George Mason University and has worked as as an adjunct professor at King’s College.

What did you learn from starting your own newspaper, The Bulletin?

I learned to not start a newspaper. It was a lot of fun, tremendously difficult, from a financial perspective, foolish, more for the investor Tom Rice. All I lost was time, and I’m not even sure I count that as lost time. It was probably time well invested for me. I learned to do a lot with very little. I learned distribution is a lot harder than editorial. The operation side of things is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I guess I learned I’d rather leave it up to someone else to take care of those things.

You came under fire on Sept. 28 when you tweeted in response to a question asking if doctors who perform abortions should be killed and if women who abort their babies should get jail time. You responded, “I have hanging more in mind.” Why did you reply with that?

This is an example of intellectual dishonesty that social media empowers. Often you hear people say people don’t really think of abortion as murder because if they did, they would view it the same way as conventional homicide cases. It is comparable to a situation where people get 20 years in prison. I meant a point of comparison, not that I think women who have abortions actually should be hanged. The people that wrote that, they’re familiar with my work and know that in most cases of capital punishment, I’m not much of a fan of it, but, of course, they wrote it as though I believe that. I’ve said if we’re going to have capital punishment, we should use hanging or firing squad rather than weird antiseptic things like lethal injections. The state should be forthright about violence. Let’s be honest about this sort of thing. Unlike most people, I’ve actually seen someone shortly after they were hanged. It was a lynching in India. If you change the order of things, it might look like I argued that when it’s not actually what I believe.

On numerous occasions, you have expressed that you do not vote. As a journalist who writes on political issues, why don’t you vote?

I think that as things currently stand, operational politics are, at a certain level, dishonorable. There’s a lot of good people doing good things, but it’s not something I want to be involved in directly. More broadly, the premise of politics as such is coercion. It’s using the state to force people into doing things you want them to do. I have some questions on the legitimacy of government as it stands. I’ve written a lot about abortion, and what that says on the relationship between the individual and the state.
I happen to be born to an unmarried, 15-year-old girl a trimester before Roe was decided. If abortion had been legal, I probably would not be here. I’m not really sure a government that doesn’t recognize my right to life and to exist is something I want to participate in directly. Voting is a small part of how things get changed. I do what I think is the humane thing to do, which is to argue with people, change their minds. I’m not a complete anarchist, but I would much rather work through persuasion than using the state to force people to do the things I want them to.

What is your interest in teaching here at Hillsdale?

I like teaching when I get the chance. It’s just not something I can do because of my travel schedule. It’s fun to talk to students who are interested in what I do. I always like being at Hillsdale. Hillsdale is like a monastery. Henri Nouwen, Catholic priest, spent some time at a monastery in upstate New York. When he went into the monastery, he thought it was a place people went to escape the “real world.” After he’d been there, he realized the monastery was the real world, and everywhere else was the place you went to escape it. Hillsdale has a reputation for being cloistered, but this is the real world, developing your life, mind, ideas, relationships, the spiritual aspect of your life. That’s a lot more real.

-Compiled by Breana Noble