Great Books & Democracy Victor Hanson.flv

welcome um to this second night of our colloquium on great books and democracy presented by the MPC great books program I'm David Clemens the program founder and coordinator this colloquium was made possible by a generous Grant from the apgar foundation and is co-sponsored by the Monterey County Weekly thanks also again go to Michelle Brock Rosa aroyo George Reed and Janette Haxton please take a moment to power off your cell phones or your iPads uh I saw one in the audience um and I would remind you that the views expressed here including mine are those of the speaker uh MPC as always is committed to institutional neutrality and to being the host of ideas not their sponsor last week I suggested that the question of a relationship between great books and democracy involves three provocative questions do books and reading differ in a significant way from other forms of expression are some I'll just proceed um three provocative questions do books and reading differ in a significant way from other forms of expression are some books greater than other books and does the reading of these greater books literature in some way nurture both the individual and democracy itself we then heard the distinguished poet Robert Pinsky explain his conviction that the somatic or bodily experience of literature has a democratizing influence the medium of a poem Pinsky says is the body of the body of the one who speaks it in this regard while he was here Robert mentioned a favorite teacher of his at Rutter's Francis Ferguson in the voice of letters he describes Ferguson this way sometimes he lectured more often in his world drama class here is what he did he would gently indicate to three students disregarding matters of gender or actorly skill you please read gertrud's lines you read hamlets you read ponus lines mindes or it might be jasta edus and the messenger or Ana varia and trov so when Ferguson had us listen to the contending personi of COV or Sophocles in our own voices the actual POA the doing as requisite preliminary to the inner pathma of feeling that enables the Matha knowing or understanding any provincial or imperfect quality in the performance was functional because it dramatized and clarified and indeed embodied the process by showing that the ultimate theater is internal Pinsky affirms that quote the Athenian tragic theater confirmed or encouraged the notion of an inward place of ritual expectation where one's own individual voice participated in the imitation of great and important actions the availability of great art in the space of one's individual imagination became part of a vision simultaneously Democratic and Superior Robert closed by reciting sailing to Byzantium particularly noting yates's line nor is their singing school but studying monuments of its own magnificence that study of monuments recalls the original Core Curriculum of classic texts at Colombia the literature Humanities and contemporary civilization core arose 90 years ago from a fear that over specialization in college would produce less effective citizens not equipped to make wise decisions in public or private matters having no models no philosophy no Foundation from the past as James Burke likes to say if you don't know how you got somewhere you don't know where you are just a few days ago tonight's speaker wrote about visiting Fresno State's million volume Library only to discover that almost none of the patrons were reading he wrote then a thought came this is most definitely not quite a library for most yes its basement is a sort of Forgotten Archive of a vanquished civilization of readers but its top floors are self- glorious monuments to current sociology there is no need to burn libraries no need to burn books when no one wants to read them but if books do have a democratizing effect I must renew the same troubling question that I asked last week might it be that the fate of liberal arts is tied to the fate of liberal democracy itself that the fate of literature is entwined with the fate of the West two weeks ago at pinsky's Alma mat I'm almost done I promise two weeks ago at pinsky's Alma moer I heard presentations by all the leaders of Columbia University's current Core Curriculum which has now expanded from literature Humanities and contemporary civilization to add music Humanities art Humanities Global Humanities and frontiers of science because today's ivy league freshman arrived devoid of knowledge in all those areas now I heard professors teach from scraps and excerpts not books and I heard the head of today's contemporary civilization core a historian sarcastically say Western Civilization whatever that is he went on to characterize the West's achievements in scientific progress medicine the end of slavery the advances of civil rights and women's rights these he described as an historical accident I believe that tonight's speaker May hold a different view a less dismissive view of the West a classicist and Military historian Dr Victor Davis Hansen has emerged as a lucid and Powerful diagnostician of the ills of our age Larry AR president of Hillsdale College has said of him Victor Hansen brings to his writing a mixture of learning and reflection that is rare in in any age especially the ignorant one in which we live a prolific writer of 17 books and nearly 200 articles for Publications from The New York Times to the Wall Street Journal Dr Hansen reanimates the past in order to illuminate the present his most recent book of collected essays the father of us all war and history ancient and modern was just released this week ladies and Gentlemen please welcome Victor Davis Hansen [Applause] [Music] thank you very much for that very kind introduction I've spent most of my life as a classicist and it's a very strange profession one time I was asked to speak uh on immigration of all things to a house caucus committee and as I was beginning I was introduced as a class classicist and a young Aid to Nancy Pelosi got up and said see he's a racist Because he believes in class oppression and I said I don't believe in class oppression he said well you're a classicist you must and I tried to explain that Classics was the classicus is a Latin word meaning the study of classic things of a higher meaning they're older and more renowned we have all these misimpressions of classicist when I came home I was 25 and I got a PhD at Stanford and Classics it was a very old-fashioned philological department at that time where it was mostly Greek and Latin manuscripts and text composition I had a very witty but cynical older brother and I was came home and there were no jobs so I started farming and he said so what did you learn I said I can write the San Francisco Chronicle I can translate in Latin or Greek and he said It reminds me a quote from Samuel Johnson he goes that's very impressive it's like a dog who can walk on two legs but nobody would want to know why one would want to do that the be the ability so that's it's a very it was a very strange discipline it's almost Ended as we know it what I'd like to do today is uh tonight is talk about the great books and democracy and then give a brief introduction to where democracy came from and then G give an overview of why people on the left did not like it in Antiquity and in the present and white people on the right don't like it in Antiquity in the present and then open it up for discussion but when we say a classic or great book remember we don't really mean something that's just old classic was a term that was created in the 18th century by taking the Latin word classicus to mean something of a higher a higher value than other literature that's not politically correct today everything is supposedly equal but not originally and there's 53 million words in the Greek language should have survived and believe me we do not read artemidorus's dream book or dimas' commentary on deanes or anast tacticus I do but most sane people don't uh his Trea us on siegecraft we e sophocles's antigon and Homer's ilot they are better works now what do we mean by better what are the criteria we use if it's not age well it's Transcendence reading flow bear or reading hobs or reading Plato means that they address issues that are more important important than Marvel Comics or Tom Clancy by that I mean issues that speak to The Human Condition Life Death marriage children War peace these things and they not only speak to them they transcend time and space they do it in such a way that they don't go away and they bring up the other issue of what education is Ed du in Len to lead somebody from some place to some place else to lead somebody from ignorance into the enlightenment I wish I could say that uh we have education in the classical sense but obviously we don't especially in this I'm a teacher so I I have no qualms and it was a public teacher for saying that the California teachers are the highest paid in the nation yet we score 47 and 48th in test of uh English and math if we were to look at most of the CSU campuses where I taught you will see a dash studies leisure studies Environmental Studies ethnic studies black studies Community studies even drug studies I was on the general education committee and there was a course called leisure studies and the course that I had tried to reject was the theory of walking and I said this is not as valuable as in other cores and that was that let off a hail storm I mean hail almost everybody was Furious that I had said that but what do we mean by that well classical education simply was the ability to make sense out of the nonsense of the present through an understanding of the past so that if you if you were trying to be nice to somebody the nicer you were the meaner they got to you or you had a boyfriend and you were a young girl and the more you gave him presence than mean or he treated you or if you looked at the administration and the more talented you were as a teacher the more suspicious you didn't think that just happened to you this moment that Sophocles had written about it in the antigon that Sophocles Ajax had said live nobly or nobly die and it committed suicide over that that Achilles said basically all of the bad people get the awards like Agamemnon and all the corageous people like me get nothing I don't want anything to do with this rotten system in other words you can learn all of that without having to experiencing it that was what education is and how was it how was it delivered well it was delivered by two basic principles that are lost in the CSU the UC system today one is you had to have a body of knowledge you had to know what the Pythagorean theory was you had to have some idea of what king Le was you had to have some notion of the tripartite system of the American Constitution and then you had to have an inductive method that means that you had to look at at items facts and then through a process of induction come to a conclusion you couldn't just have knowledge and and be educated if you didn't have the inductive method you couldn't just be have the inductive method you would just be a blank blank rhetorician or blowhard if you didn't have facts and unfortunately 2500 years of Western Civilization has told us there's only a few things that can impart that knowledge philosophy biology mathematics languages but unfortunately it's it's not Dash studies those are pretty much the Contemporary world looking at it and say gee whiz there's telephone polls or there's cheers on TV or some people are not nice to other people but not going into any of these issues in depth so that's why we have I think a problem today with education in general it's not based on anything that has been proven to work in the last 2500 years moving to democracy if you ever ask yourself this if we want to continue in this Politically Incorrect fashion if I say a number of words democracy oligarchy Constitution Republic ostracism censure any of these terms are not old Swedish terms none of my ancestors knew what they were about when these things were being banded about in Greece my ancestors were with cow horns in their head nobody anything in the Swedish language was of no value we don't know it today nobody was using a mxotech language these words do not exist in Arabic they do not exist in B Babylonia what does that tell us it tells us whether you like it or not something different was going on in Greece and Rome it was not just different it was very different than the alternative and number two these words are ubiquitous in that language and so constitutional government was an intrical part of the ancient world and that's why it survives in the west today but it doesn't survive elsewhere if you're in Iraq one of the I went there on two uh tours during the uh to the front and one of the things that surprised me is when I don't understand Arabic but I do understand the Arabic attempt to say democracy in Long conversations that were translated why didn't they have an Arabic word for democracy they had to say democra they used our word every other country uses that word but it's not our word it's a Greek word and that emphasizes again the origins of of these Notions now where do we know about democracy well we it it comes from a written word and there's only about 10 or 12 really places you have to look there's Plato and Aristotle Plato's laws in Republic Aristotle's politics there are philosophical abstract speculations on governments they saw Aristotle collected 158 constitutions of different typologies we have one left the constitution of Athens there are plays where people talk ues supplements or Aristophanes comedies the WASP where they talk about democracy and kind of make fun of it or praise it scarcely praise it one play Praises it there are speeches in the assembly where people call each other all sorts of names if you read esan attack on demos he says by the the fact that your mother conducted prostitution out of an ouse has nothing to do and I won't mention it as he mentions it so we get all very close to contemporary politics we also have in addition to to that we have Herodotus and cities historians who wrote about Athenian democracy so we know a lot about ancient democracy and I want before we go into some of the uh strengths and weaknesses of it let's just uh clarify our terms I wish we use the term today have you ever noticed let me just make a parenthetical I think I'm out again but I'm going to go ahead and scream that's okay have you ever noticed how many times people say it's not a democracy they just voted Iraq's not a democracy or they'll say yeah they voted but it's not a really Dem it's not a real democracy in the West Bank or we're not a real democracy what do they mean by that what they need mean by that is what Aristotle tried to explain that nobody reads today that there's a lot of typologies and that democracy has nothing to do with a pleboy Saddam Hussein had a pleboy I was on the academic Senate Cal State Fresno I don't think it was a democracy every time I went in to vote it was 98 to1 on every issue it was worse than Saddam Hussein's pites what Aristotle said was this he used the word POA or constitutional government government by law laws that are ratified by the people and within those parameters there was a broad inclusion of people called democracy the damos or the people and there was a smaller group called The oloy the oligarchs oligarchy and everything in between and what he was trying to suggest is I'm going to give you the strength of having everybody participate and having a few participate and Plato and deases that's what they were discussing within those parameters that's what we call constitutional consensual government Europe us Australia we all have different typologies of constitutional government now where did it come from this is the most fascinating question that I think as an ancient historian I that you can comprehend somewhere around 750 bc500 city states appeared out of a past that was near Eastern the means were autocratic they were monolithic palatial cultures they were not consensual and suddenly in 750 you had constitutional government of everything uh except democracy broad participation and this went on for about 200 years it was I think I could make the argument and I did in a book called the other Greeks it was based on the protection of property owning citizens until that time nobody was given given rights to own a particular piece of property improve it and pass it on to an heir and the need to protect that and create a property owning class is the origins really of Western civilization in 507 250 years after the presence of these constitutional States something weird happened in Athens I'm basing this on the study of the great books of Herodotus who Des cribes the revolution or the rebellion and fuses who talks about it at length the Athenians decided to do something that no other city state had done they were going to extend the participation to those who did not have property and that was that doubled the number of people and then they almost immediately came up on a problem and the problem was and I think this will be very familiar to all of you if everybody can vote and participate and we want to broaden the power base and take power away from just the property owners and give it to the poor who do not own property what happens if they don't vote what happens if they're not as wealthy as as the property owner what happens if they didn't have a nice parent what happens if they have one leg and they can't walk into the assembly all the tragedies and the unfairness that make us unequal by birth Athenians tried to rectify this type of democracy was not only like nobody had ever seen in the ancient world we've only seen it in the west maybe during the times of the French Revolution or periods in American history that we see it during the Roosevelt period maybe some of you critics will say it's starting to happen with Obama you see it in Europe at various times it's an a emphasis on equality of result rather than equality of opportunity Now What Did the Athenians do then from 507 to the history of their democracies well they tried to make people equal how would you do that you'd let everybody vote on any given day no matter if they were registered no matter if they were educated you just said the first 7,000 guys that show up and penins get to vote and pretty soon in the 4th Century you can say the first 77,000 get to vote and we're going to pay you to vote the equivalent today of about $100 well people who need $100 will vote and people who don't maybe won't walk into Athens and you know what we're Al we're also going to do we're going to pay you to go to the theater so that you'll have some culture and then if we want a fleet we're going to take them the wealthy and we're going to tax them they get to put their name on the triam they get to put their little Banner but they're going to pay for the fleet and then we're going to think you know they're still too powerful so we're going to introduce something called ostracism that's sort of like saying to you guys every year America gets to vote on your laptop the guy who gets a million votes has to leave I can think of a lot of people I'd like to ostracize Donald Trump maybe Cindy Shen who knows but they ostracized every powerful person in Athens at one time or you didn't have to show cause and then if that was n enough to ensure an equality result they had what we call popular courts you maybe have read Plato's apology and seen what happened to poor old Socrates a popular court said that somebody could walk up in Athens and tap you on the shoulder said see you in court they go to a popular court there's anywhere from 200 to a, jurors there's no da there's no indictment I speak my opponent speak I try to suggest that every time I give a speech I try to suggest that my opponent has engaged in passive homosexual intercourse and he tries to suggest that I have done the same in passing or he tries to say that I've looted the treasury or I'm really illegitimate before we get down to the issue in hand and then people vote 51% and that's it there is no constitutional law now what do we learn from this we learn that for the history of constitutional government there is going to be a war in constitutional systems between Liberty the ability to be free from coercion and equality we think they're the same everybody in America is for equality everybody's for liberty no there's two different words in the Greek language elther and isomi and they're ant antithetical they're at war with each other everybody see that and Athens decided to air on the side of equality Sparta thieves landed constitutional States said no we're going to erir on the side of Liberty that issue has never been resolved in the west if we go to Europe today we look at the European EU document and Constitution you look at the French Revolution fraternity egalitarianism that's there it's not give me liberty or give me death the American Revolution the American Constitution aired on the side of Liberty if you air in the sight of Liberty you accept some inequality life's tragic if you air in the sight of equality you don't you say life's therapeutic we can change we can make people equal even if they're not so that was a great argument now here's what's ironic about it Athens because it included so many people and was so dynamic because of its inclusivity became the largest city state in this system Sparta got smaller and smaller thieves was a Backwater Corinth was impressive but never reached the levels of Athens all the critics of Athens and let me say here I can't think of a single classical author that liked democracy not Plato not Aristotle not thees not erus not the old oligarch not xenophon they all hated it they all preferred landed constitutional government and I can't think of one who didn't come to Athens to write think about that it's like saying that I used to do this in the 90s when I'd have to go see book publishers I'd say I hate going to New York God I hate New York I hate New York I hate New York and my father who lived on the farm said well why in the hell are you going then and the point was everything was happening in New York what everything was happening in Athens because it was Dem radically Democratic Maritime sea power but this is what is stunning Athenian democracy is so well documented and all the people who wrote about it were critical and it perished in 338 with the onset of Alexander the Great and we have some notable glimpses maybe they were unfairly collated but when fiddies gives us a melean dialogue about how Athenians come into the island of mos and tell the people they're going to butcher them because they're weak and they're necessary to be subjects and they don't have freedom that made a great impression and when Theus cides records the midlan debate when they vote to kill all the male members of the poity on Lesbos who are revolted and when Plato gives us kryo eopo an apology and shows us the execution of Socrates on trumped up charges people got scared of it and for the history of Western thought whether we go to ciceros De Republica or you look at lock or Hobbs democracy in the Athenian brand is a bad word until the French Enlightenment and it's only thinkers like voler rouso who believe that democracy was good other thinkers Lo montue but especially our founding fathers said you know what it was the start and it didn't work it was an evolutionary dead end this equality of result what we liked were an enlightened oligarchy and we were an oligarchy at the beginning remember it was our constitution was Li limited to Property Owners but especially a rais Pua a tripart system where you had a judicial system that checked an executive system that checked a legisl legislative system and vice versa which is from monu copied that idea from the Romans who cop copied it from The cretans Who copied it from the Spartans and that's our present system today so Athenian democracy as powerful and dynamic as it is has never been copied except in a few periods it's always been a promise of something of intellectuals who said that we can Rec capture that fervor that Parthenon that Acropolis that Sophocles that escalus but nobody's ever quite tried to do that because to do that you will have to do what the Athenians did to Socrates to the lesbians and to the melians it requires a level of coercion if people want to have their Liberty and not go along with this uh equality this one works so let me just recap democracy started in 57 BC it ended in 338 very short lifespan it was a pocket within a larger Continuum of constitutional government 750 all the way down till Caesar CL crossed the Rubicon in 44 BC where most of the ancient world thought they wanted to be constitutional but have on popular sovereignty they didn't trust the people to have absolute power and that left a legacy in western civilization of constitutional States Venice con the Swiss the French but no one really wanted to be radically Democratic and when it was tried during the French Revolution or periods some periods in American history people get very frightened of it and part of the reason is they read the great books and look at what uh admittedly aristocratic author said about Athens now what were the two great criticisms or I should say one great criticism because it includes a lot of minor ones and the one great uh Praise of ancient democracy and how do that true today well believe it or not the one great criticism was that Athens was not inclusive enough democracy doesn't include them let's take the modern version of that some of you are in your heads and you said you know this guy's sitting up here this white male guy he doesn't understand they didn't let slaves and women participate well there's 350,000 people in Attica the area around Athens and if you take away women and the 80,000 slaves and the 20,000 foreigners you only get about a third of the population participating in the most liberal state in Greece they would say to us compared to what slaves slaves are everywhere in the Mediterranean you think a Babylonian or an Egyptian has a play like Aristophanes where the slaves are the heroes you think that anybody up in Iceland has a play called Sophocles antigon the Electra the hakuba the Helen the listrada women are intrical to Athenian Society so the ancient Athenians says we're working on it we're working on it and we have plays in literature where we are critiquing and this process so well known to all of us of self-critique so when we look back at the ancient world the Athenians would say hey you guys you have 2500 years of being on someone else's shoulders history is tragedy it's not melodrama you don't go back to the past and use your little present system and then pick winners and losers look at what we were trying to do we were trying to include everybody but we have to overcome certain facts in the ancient world to get three people to survive a woman has to be pregnant 16 17 times I mean a third of the pregnancies aren't going to come to term a fourth of them are not going to result in a live birth and probably another 20 or 30% of the deliveries aren't going to the child isn't going to live past three years so if a woman is pregnant or nursing most of her life the average life expectancy was somewhere around 40 she's not going to have time to participate and nobody has vacuum cleaners electric plugs cars so somebody's going to have to be doing all the things that we take for granted and remember another thing the Athenians would say in their defense we didn't invent the idea that race had anything to do with slavery that was a later idea of the 16th century Aristotle said I'm trying to prove there's a natural slave he said I'm trying to prove because other people didn't believe him slavy was an equal opportunity oppression the reason it was not eliminated in the ancient world it was bad luck so Victor Hansen gets up one day he's driving to Monteray tonight and there's a little Siege of Watsonville and they happen to be driving through and all the people from Selenas have taken over Watsonville I just happened to be in the Watsonville City Limits and were all enslaved and that happened yearly in the ancient world and I go to work for somebody in Watsonville or Selenas excuse me until I can buy my freedom and if I say to somebody well wait a minute I have a PhD I'm the a I'm the modern equivalent of hypocrates or galin or somebody and the person who owns me paints houses I'm tutoring his kids and I say this isn't fair and the owner says to me life's not fair I never said slavery was based on inferiority I said it was based on bad luck so you're a slave and I'm free and next time don't get caught in Watsonville that was pretty much the rationale of ancient slavery that is very Insidious it's hard to eliminate when the Europeans discovered Africa in the new world they said wow these people do not are not literate these people these people are not up to European therefore we've solved Aristotle's problems we can make them slaves and then suddenly in the American South or in South America people said well wait a minute you teach an African-American how to read and he can read as well as anybody therefore he's not a natural slave and then that started the entire abolition movement it was easier to eliminate slavery once it was tied to a bankrupt Theory like racial inferiority because it was not tied to that Plato himself was supposedly a slave for two years esup was a slave we have a number of slaves who are quite brilliant but it makes it Insidious as far as women I mentioned the biological constraints but remember also the Greek male of the household voted but he didn't vote vote for himself he voted for the O cost the household so he came home and often we have scenes from menander or Aristophanes where his wife says now you're going to go to the assembly and you're going to vote this way if you don't do it in the case of Lis you're not having sex you're going to vote to end the Peloponnesian War and if you don't end vote against the war you're never going to have sex with me that's a play so we get the idea that there was influence and that women dressed there was no veils they talked candidly in a way that was not to elsewhere in the Mediterranean Athenian Society was not a Mediterranean Society it was an anti-m Mediterranean Society it was like no other Society in Egypt or in Asia Minor it was quite unique that would be their defense of slavery and women that they were working on they were evolving they had already addressed it Etc they would also what about this other criticism um from the left there's an iron law of oligarchy that even if you say people are going to vote not everybody gets to vote because of poverty their car breaks down we see this in our own society that yes people are free to vote but they don't participate therefore we should have a DMV Motor Voter Etc the Athenians would say well nobody's ever done it better than us why are we subsidizing people to vote and you're not doing it now so in their way of thinking once you set up a democracy as I said earlier then they were going to pay bribe subsidize people to participate they did it to such a degree that aristois politics wrote something quite stunning at one point he said damos means people crassi means rule rule of the people it's not the rule of the people it's the rule of the poor people if you really think about it and what he meant by that is that when you have democracies poor people run things not just people not just a majority poor people through the legislative judicial executive uh efforts to take money from some and give it to others the Athenians really did believe they could bring people up out of poverty by taking money from someone else and they were quite successful at least for a while now that's their defense of democracy what was the right-wing Harang against democracy or what is it today well the main one of course is that we're not all equal sorry that we're not all of the same IQ we're not all good-looking or we're not all ugly we're not all lame we're not all able-bodied so we start out with different abilities so the Democratic idea that if every one of you is going to get 10 acres and some olive trees in about 30 years half of you aren't going to have them because some of you aren't going to get up in the morning cuz you're lazy you're no damn good others are going to be very unlucky you're going to fall off the Olive Tree and break your leg and that's it in the ancient world others are going to think you know what I'd rather make pots and lay around all day in this city so I'm going to sell mine so inequality will begin very quickly because some will buy others out and that's what happens so why not recognize it under an oligarchy that people who have shown the initiative should be able to have more Prestige it's almost like saying if you were a right-wing oligarch and believe me I think I can be fair to an anonymous author called the old oligarch that wrote 440 BC I think I can be fair to him in how he would appraised Freddy and Fanny he would say this oh you can make up your Freddy and Fanny all you want you can lower your interest rates all you want but believe me Mr Hansen there are people by birth our attitude our culture our habit who are not up to owning property they are renters period now you can say they're homeowners and you can print a bunch of money give them a lot of low interest go uh guarantee their loans but they're going to collapse your system that's what he said basically that in other words the right-wing critique of democracy is it's a lie that when you want to radically make everybody equal when they are not it requires two things the loss of individual liberty and a degree of coercion that's not acceptable within a civilized society and that that's continually continually the critique if you read through cities he says Athens was the most powerful city state after every setback they could recuperate because they got everybody involved that's what's good about a democracy but he said they will continue to get themselves in jams because when they get into the assembly every elegant speaker every aristocratic wealthy person every skilled person will cause envy and jealousy and he will offend the mass and they will shout him down eventually and then they are fickle you meant that's a very good word in English translation of a lot of Greek words by meaning they will change from one idea to the other because they're not Guided by senior sober Statesmen and they don't follow a constitutional law and by that he meant uh one day they decide to execute the rebellious leaders on the Island of Lesbos they get up there and a speaker named Cleon says you know I think these people had it pretty good they were a tributary state but we gave them a lot of privileges they revolted I suggest we kill everybody over 16 yes yes they all vote kill kill kill so he says let's send out the tries with the desins they all go home they start that was kind of I was kind of in a bad mood today in the assembly so dius says you know what I heard a lot of guys mumbling so let's have another assembly and he gets up and says hey if we kill everybody it's kind of a bad idea I don't mind killing everybody but there might have been some guys who spoke out against it and if we kill everybody and all the other states know that if you speak out against it you're going to die too they're just going to go along and we're going to have a lot so let's let's vote again and so this time they voted and said you know that was a bad idea and then someone said well we sent the Tri out yesterday it's only 180 Mi to Lesbos they said ah let's get another Tri and pay people a bonus to roll all night so you have this wonderful description of tuties and it's you can see why he put this in his history because it's a primer on Democracy where all these poor lesbians they're not gay they're just people from Lesbos they all have their throats out and they're just about ready to be slit lining the harbor when the second Tri comes in and says wait you all get to live except the ring leaders and this is fd's description of what can happen with what he called mob Rule and finally the the right-wing critiques were so vehement they didn't use the word democracy they used ocracy mob rule rule of the olos the crowd the Rabel let me finish then um and then we can have some question what am I suggesting that the issues that we are involved in right this moment we're going to have a conservative tea party rally this week we're going to have a left-wing um immigration rally on Mayday where we had a conservative government with bush or so-called conservative we had a liberal so-called liberal with Obama all of these issues that we're fighting about we need to stop take a deep breath get away from the idea that we're the only generation that has dealt with them and understand that these are the main fissures that plagued Western Civilization through 2500 years I say plagued plagued Western Civilization they were of no interest to anybody else everybody else either was ruled by a king a tyrant or a tribe but only in the West Was there constitutional government and remember that all the other things that come out of this a dynamic military sophisticated technology sophisticated uh urban planning Monumental architecture unrivaled anywhere else that was a product of constitutional government the reason that there was not there was not a Sophocles in Peru or there was not a Plato in Norway was because they didn't have these constitutional systems but within this constitutional system the same fissures that we see today uh have already been discussed all we have to do is read the great books and transcend our own lives a bit and try to take the argument up to a little bit more abstract plane I think we'd be much better off and I'll end with this sober thought Plato was no fool Aristotle was not stupid fiddies was brilliant herodicus was no dummy the old oligarch for all his right-wing views was very very sophisticated thinker none of them supported radical democracy and when we go into the later West W tradition not only do most western philosophers critique it until the as I said the French Enlightenment but there is another strain of Bleak pessimistic neist thinkers and these are people like tacitus suetonius petronus and especially later in Germany Hegel nche that nut Oswald Spangler spingler and their critique was even more more gloomy and it was if I could be fair to the such a long line of philosophical thinkers in the great books it went something like this if you were to give people unlimited Freedom under democracy and if you were to allow them the capitalist system where they have are free to make money then that is a lethal combination because it's going to encourage a constant satisfaction of the appetites and effort to satisfy the appetites and when you have majority rule people will always want to satisy satisfy their appetites by voting themselves more and more entitlements and extending the idea of quality Plato said the problem with Athens is once they give voting to Slaves once they give voting to women they won't stop there because there's no that's the logic of equality we're going to go to the donkeys and then to the dogs and then all the animals who bark will get a vote in the assembly he said that not me and so we end up with this pessimistic appraisal all by obey it by a minority and later thought that we are trying something very unusual we're only into the third the 3D Century of democracy and we're running 11 trillion debt soon to be 20 and the more that I used to hate these thinkers the more that I'm worried that they were on to something that we in a democracy are not responsible enough to govern our own appetites and will continue to find ways to expand Freedom until it reaches what the rans call license and material appetites until it becomes what they call luxus luxury or decadence and that's something we should Ponder very very very carefully thank you very much I'll be happy to answer any [Applause] questions yes um I've always enjoyed reading you thank you but is what you said tonight an argument in support of the Electoral College that the college coms out of this idea of the rule and is it possible that if we didn't have the Electoral College in 2001 or 2000 we wouldn't have this St you know let's remember who put the Electoral College in and more importantly this present system of sen question oh can repeat the question repat the question I'm sorry oh can repeat the question uh the question was about the Electoral College and would I do I support it and did it have a role in regard to 2000 and our present debt and all all I I don't I think the debts been pretty much bipartisan uh we kind of saw under Bush that if you're a right winger you can borrow money and print it and we saw under Clinton that if you're a left Winger you can bomb the hell out of somebody without ever going to the UN or the Congress and nobody's going to say a word that's kind of way our system is Nixon can go to China you know and all of that Obama can have targeted assassinations nobody you know I don't even see Cindy Shen anymore around but that's just because one party can do the opposite of and it it always satisfied space but on the question of the Electoral College it's another item that the founders were very intent on as well as Senate seats remember the Senate seats were not a portioned by population so we got two guys up in Montana and two in Wyoming and they represent far fewer people than a burrow in Los Angeles and why is that and we had an election in 2000 we had one uh prior as well where the majority did not vote and what the founders were trying to do is air on the side of republicanism rather than Direct democracy and they're trying to suggest to us there are going to be situations where popular votes have to be ratified by constitutional mechanisms and sober and judicious people when I was a graduate student I thought boy this is so unfair every time I heard a Democratic senator speak at UC Santa Cruz and we had Alan cranon I remember him saying once I we should have Senate Senators a portion by population why does Wyoming get to kind of veto what all of New York City wants and well you can see why they do uh we want people from a variety of backgrounds as checks on popular opinion that was what the filibuster was all about there's all of these mechanisms to check popular opinion check popular opinion that's why this strange founding idea that we're going to have vetos but we're going to have overrides but we're going to have confirmation hearings on the Supreme Court but they can declare law on constitutional Etc because the founders did not trust popular opinion uh they they understood that there had to be the consent of the Govern or the system would not work but they knew that the average person was capable of some very very scary things so they were going to make some institutional protection so that the modern day Socrates was not executed or the not modern day midians were not executed then reprieved and then Etc so I think that's that that's behind those quer quirky things that the Europe when you go to Europe people just can't believe it in the parliamentary system as far as the debt I don't think it had much to do with the debt the debt is a right out of Aristophanes wasp Aristophanes in the WASP as you know says uh Hey Dad uh because you're lazy and you quit your job there's a great job down there to be a paid juror all you got to do is go find a bunch of people and say that they're anti-democratic and put them on trial and take their money so we don't have to work go to it that's the play by a right-wing nut like Aristophanes but the argument is uh that the debt is a mechanism as I see it to redistribute income from one generation to another from one class to another for the noble goal of a quality of result you whether it's Medicare Social Security uh excusing 50% of the population from paying any income tax it's a methodology and from both right and left use it to say that if we let people be free and give them personal Liberty we will not end up equal enough there's too many Goldman Sachs guys or there's too many guys that will spend their hard-earned money on snowmobiles and they won't buy a Prius or whatever it is we need to restrict personal Liberty and the accumulation of wealth in the Athenian fashion yes what do you U what do you uh predict the effect of the current status of our ation system will be well the current question is what's the current what will be the effect of the current educational system demy when I started teaching at California State University um the first thing I saw was a demonstration on campus by a group that said the Cass test was unfair because too many people of a particular group failed it and therefore to lower the standard and I thought how is that going to help people who need to be educated if the teachers are continually low the standards 35% of the group that entered 1984 was remedial that meant one of out of three of my students could not read or function uh in a a literature class same was true of MTH when I left in 2004 and retired that number was 52% but there was a funny thing happened in ' 84 we had five centers for literacy the center for literacy the center for technological innovation the center for re-entry the center for this to help people and when I left we had 21 of them and yet the uh remediation had almost doubled so we are engaged in a great therapeutic experiment in education in which we have created an entire bureaucratic class administrative class counseling class teacher Theory class educational industry class and we think that the old mechanism of literature and art and Mathematics and biology did not work and we're going to educate the masses with an end result they're going to be sensitive they're going to be non-judgmental they're going to be environmentally sophisticated and they're going to be very confident about their abilities but we don't think they really need to compute to argue to have a good vocabulary to be able to appreciate art or music and that's what we have today we have the most arrogant and ignorant generation coming out the universities we ever had and my only worry is that at what point will this start to affect us so that the plant down at Moss Landing starts to spark once in a while and I've I've already seen the infrastructure of California start to fray but at some point the core group of people who are coming out of the high schools if they are we're having 25% dropout rate and and coming out of the universities who are not educated are inheriting a sophisticated Society created by a very educated class so are they going to be able to keep that level of uh comfort and uh civilization I'm very skeptical of it I'm very very skeptical every uh I I think what's keeping us right now is we have about 10% of the population which is 30 million people that are highly educated and more educated than anybody else in the world and 30 million compared to the size of some countries is quite large so that Elite keeps the United States going I don't know how long it continued to do that because you can bump into the other nine very quickly on the average day yeah Dron at the uh at the end of car and culture you discussed the problem that some saw that a soft weak American young uh would not be able to fill out the American Military now nine years into the war we see that the I leue graduates are not joining the military military is becoming more of a family business and that uh the officer Corps primarily is aligned One Way politically yeah I was wonder what you see the impacts for both military and society as a whole lot that's a very very good question and I I've written a long essay in this new book that came out this week about that the good and bad news is that the military all 1.6 million is 19th century if I could stereotype for such a large number by that I mean they are far more patriotic they are far more likely to be religious they are far more nationalistic they are far more traditional than the population at large you're right to say they concentrate in families I looked at some statistics they send the officer core tends to be largely from rural areas or south of the Mason Dixon line and they the bad news is they are far and Far More at odds with the typology of the American citizen so and the American governing class so what we have now is we have a society that is in some ways antithetical to the military and we have a governing class that doesn't know much about it but they do know one thing that's damn good it can go into the heart of the ancient califate and take out a thug in three weeks and then have a inser blow up on it and have everybody abandon it and then come up with another strategy and take off and still implant constitutional government within four years at the price of one battle at San I mean they are very very good at what they do but the problem is that they don't represent the rest of us and we don't understand them very well we just know that for some reason we kind of think privately to each other I'm glad they're not like us or we'd be helpless but we I'm glad I'm not like them because I don't want to live like that I don't want to go to church and I don't want to salute I don't want to salute the flag I don't want to think that America's exceptional come on that's not what I learned in college let somebody else go do that and that's where we are it's very schizoph yes uh sir you mentioned the the relationship between democracy and Innovation particularly in a yes and I wonder if you talk about that just in terms of what is about uh this way of governing that leads to innovative ways of thinking yes well the Athenian Pericles in the second book talks about that and he was an aristocrat but what he's saying is that constitutional government in general includes a lot of people but the more you include the more people so you're empowering people and you're getting more Dynamic uh reactions from that now maybe they're not all equal but if you pour enough money into it and you give people opportunities you will discover Talent where you don't find it and so what I guess if I could translate that into a modern uh a modern U Parable if I go to a really stuffy little campus like I do sometimes like Dartmouth or I go speak at Brown I mean I know they have diversity and all that but I go out to the Free Speech area at Cal State Fresno it's a more Dynamic Place remember that because I have a smaller cross-section of just aristocratic people and those places but at Cal State Fresno I got the Hoy pooy out there and there it's Dynamic believe me I've seen stuff at Fresno I'll never see anywhere else and what he's trying to say is that that's good up to a point if you can control it and that's what Europe says about the United States remember that I'm not I'm trying to be as fairhand as I can because the European critique forget all about their socialism and their EU they're still a class-bound society when you go to Europe I try to go three or four times a year and every time I go over there and I do an interview question three is where did you go to school question four is did you own any land question five was who were your parents question six what college did your wife go to question seven where your children go to university I don't hear that in America mostly it's you have any money and that's what I like about America a guy can come across the border from Mexico and if he has he's a landscaper and he Corners a landscaping market in San Jose and he's making $5 million believe me San Jose State will want him on the board Europe he can never get on the board and that's the that's the that's the dynamism of democracy what we're struggling right now is we have that system but we we've got a but slow it down a little bit it's getting a little you know it's getting a little wild and uh that that's always that age-old to what degree do you empower the people before it becomes excessive without tradition and so you know we all love to go to Europe because it's quieter people are more sober and judicious they seem better educated they're more conscious about things and then you kind of Snooze and you come to the United States and it's wide open you know I get on the 101 or the the I5 and La I've seen things that I can't even describe on that freeway but I never quite see that in Europe we have couple more questions I don't know what our time is uh yes in the back to follow on the excellent military question do you think the draft uh should or will be reinstated uh the question is the draft is I understand that there's pretty much a consensus that some type of uh national service in America's past remember the draft has been quite rare in American history World War I World War II and then during a large part of the Cold War and the idea was it brings people of diverse backgrounds especially economic backgrounds and it gives them a shared experience and more importantly they write home and it's a method of communication for the population at large to understand the military so if everybody in this room had had military service we all sort of know what a brigade is we know what an M16 is we can tell we have that common experience we understand our military and that's and that's I think everybody understands that where we get into problems is the mechanics of it in a society of 300 million people because the cohort between 18 and 25 is about 30 million people and the military does not want in a postmodern sophisticated high-tech military 30 million kids to deal with so they want to self select they don't they want to self- select by saying we want people with a high school diploma who are motivated who want us and now as you know uh they have more uh applicants than they can deal with the other thing is that proponents of the draft say from the left side want an option for community service well we've seen that in Europe Europe's almost there's only three countries in Europe that still have a draft and they're getting rid of it because what happens with community service that people self- select aristocratic wealthier upper middle class better educated kids all go to the Social Service rout and they all want to engage in social engineering jobs Community organizing Etc and then the lower middle classes take the military route and it doesn't solve the problem of getting this all together so if you're going to have a draft you're going to have to get all 30 million kids together and you're going to have to convince the military that we need you know a five or six million man combat force and they were going to say to us as they've told me a number of time if I have my brother I'd rather take a raptor at 160 million than have about 300,000 Suburban kids to deal with in my you know extra each year so they've made that decision most of them don't want a draft and that's where we are I don't see it happening even though that the the Civic goals are noble and and we need some kind of unifying experience yes Dr Hans um you know on U are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader if I got you on that show do you think you could pass that test or do you know what I'm talking about I don't know what you're talking about I want to say this there's people there that are on that show and Foxworthy is I believe that's his name Jeff Foxworthy is the fellow that runs it and uh he's got some really bright people with degrees up that long and they they're not very smart so I just wondered how you'd do if I got you on the show I think it depends on what you um ask it's fifth grade and down I think yeah you know what say what saved me uh was I if I am saved rich like me uh until I was 18 I was on a farm and I and then I had this Hiatus of 4 years undergraduate and 5 years in Greece I lived 3 years two almost three years in Greece and in Stanford and I came home and I wanted to get a job teaching There Were None So for 5 years I farmed and then for another 10 to 15 I farmed and taught and I learned something quite unusual and that is the ability to take apart a transmission on a Massie Ferguson 265 was a little bit more difficult than mastering the Optive mood in Greek and I noticed that to use a you know an Echo chainsaw and do it properly and change the chain and get the motor working continually when you needed it was harder than remembering how many tributary States actually PID tribute to the Athenian Empire my point is that I had been taught as an undergraduate and a graduate that the most brilliant people got phds and yet and this I still see this argument when everybody gets mad at Wall Street and we especially as a teacher and all you teachers in the audience are prone to that are susceptible to that argument that we are teachers and therefore we must be brilliant people and these nutty guys at Goldman Sachs and these nutty trial lawyers and these nutty surgeons who make so much more than us but you know my my experience is they're really smart people and that the phds that I knew and that I worked with I hate to say it at Cal State or not so uh I I just I have a Prejudice and I'm trying to deal with it because I have 20 years of empirical I I think I've taught now at six different universities and I've spent a great deal of my time with phds and I'm just convinced that it's a negative selective process Dr H I want to tell you that your mother and father were really wonderful people in Fresno County thank you and I remember they were strong Democrats and U yeah that was the only thing wrong we have one more some books yes I would uh one more question and right here and then I'll I'll be happy that sign some books Dr H the other day I walked out of pulit and I wased by this man the clipboard with initiatives this and when I said I didn't like this one he flipped to the other one and when I said I didn't like that fli to the other one I thought you might want to comment on ISS well this is a good state to comment on it isn't it because that is a perfect example of what the cities and Plato were worried about with direct democracy they said you know what people are impulsive it's like voting to kill the people at milini so the three strikes initiative started in Fresno I thought it was a great idea and I met I went on a radio show and I just very tamely timidly suggest that we're going to have to build a lot of prisons and I'm for that just so you guys who understand that and I almost I couldn't walk in Fresno for the next week the same thing with teachers x amount of money must be on education I just timidly said I have gone to the high schools I was in a school where 60% of the kids could not speak English growing up and when the classes were 40 to 50 students I'm not convinced that putting everybody down to 20 or 12 or whatever then paying these teachers going to make any difference unless you go back to a traditional curriculum but the people had their way and so that is a danger and uh I you know we all go back and forth that when we have 51% the People Want it and it's reasonable I'm for it and of course I don't like judges overturning it but nevertheless in California a lot of our problems not all of them it's exaggerated but it's the initiative process that has locked up so much of the budget that we have no U ability either to cut things or to raise revenues and um I'll just end with this sober thought this is uh California is a canary of the Mind in the way that Greece is a canary of the EU mind they're very similar it's called a sunshine sunshine socialism and they work on a very easy principle Greece is such a beautiful country there's always going to people visit there and spend money so then they don't have to change California is such a beautiful country there's always going to be people coming in that allow us to continue what we're doing up to a point but right now we have the highest income tax rates we have the highest sales tax rates we have the highest gasoline uh rates and we have the largest deficit and yet our schools are 47th and 48th in math and science science so and our infrastructure is not competitive if go and so something is wrong fundamentally with this idea of California as we know it it's not the California we had 40 years ago so we have to and the answer I think is philosophical we were utopian in the way that the great books warned us we had we wanted to live the world as it should be rather than as it could be and we thought there were always going to be somebody else who would give us money so that we could be very fair and feel good and that somebody is leaving the state at 3500 a week thank you very much

Channel: AMP

Views: 115,396

Keywords: MPC, Great Books, English Literature, Imaginative Freedom, Classic Literature, American Ideals, American Politics, Freedom, Famous Author, Famous Authors give opinions, lecture, philosopy, ideals, American literature

Id: 2cGnzUfgfsc

Length: 70min 37sec (4237 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 12 2012