"The primary political question is always which elites shall rule, not whether elites shall rule," George Will, the syndicated political columnist for Newsweek and The Washington Post, said yesterday.

In a speech before approximately 100 people in the Science Center, Will outlined his view of the future of conservatism in the United States. Its main task, he said, "is to make the welfare state more compatible with conservative values."

"The New Deal channeled the relationship of America to its government," Will said. "The United States has more than the skeleton of the welfare state," he added, "It has the meat and the muscle as well."

As a means of combining conservative philosophy with programs of the welfare state, Will cited tuition tax credits to middle-income families. Not only would this maintain government aid to education, it would also guarantee freedom of choice in education, Will said.

Another responsibility of conservatism is "to protect old liberal ideas from new liberals," Will said. Affirmative action programs threaten the old liberal belief in the color-blindness of the law by allocating rights on the basis of membership in a minority group, he added.

Will said that increased Soviet military expenditures can no longer be rationalized as necessary for purely defensive needs. He added that Soviet foreign policy is even more aggressive than it was in the early years of the Cold War.

He also said that "within a year, Carter will suffer the worst presidential defeat since Woodrow Wilson lost the League of Nations" when the SALT treaty goes to the Senate.

Will said that he does not feel American universities should sell their stock in corporations with operations in South Africa. Such actions would have little practical effect on the conditions of South African blacks, and would only serve to make the whole community more resistent to change, he said.