Harvey Mansfield: Liberal Democracy as a Mixed Regime

[Music] hi I'm Bill Kristol welcome to conversations I'm pleased to be joined again by Harvey Mansfield professor of government at Harvard University always a pleasure I'm heading to say you have to say that right and I thought we would discuss today your excellent essay which made a big impression on me when I read it when he came out when I was in graduate school liberal democracy isn't as a mixed regime its appeared in the American Spectator which was then called the alternative before it became more mainstream I guess and became the American Spectator and was republished in your excellent book for 1978 I think the spirit of liberalism some people should look at the essay but I thought it's it's not the books out of print unfortunately and this race fully really yeah terrible statement about the publishing profession that that's the case no that's Harvard Press oh yeah all right so declined at Harvard there and and the essay I happened to was reminded of it and looked at it recently and was struck by how interesting it is and since though people can look at it online it's not as accessible some of your other work so I thought worth really walking people through it we had a discussion recently about it and I thought other people also were late at a seminar at other people as you know we're very struck by the formulation so I mean mixed regime that sounds like Aristotle and classical political philosophy and liberal democracy sounds like modern liberalism so what's the the idea that title is a kind of paradox it's young I could say at the beginning that I was working from the with the advantage of the understanding of Aristotle that I got from the PhD dissertation of my late wife Deborah Winthrop whose dissertation which is called Aristotle democracy and political science has recently been published so they have so this is kind of simplified version of some of the things which she says on the basis of a much closer examination of Aristotle's text but yes mixed regime is Aristotle liberal democracy that's us and it doesn't seem to be regime which is mentioned or featured even then in Aristotle's politics so his book on politics so so what's on so I I could begin by stating a problem in our understanding our of liberal democracy which i think is and which i try to address through Aristotle so first this problem if you look at the liberal democracy which we live in right now it seems to be divided divided into people who run things and to have ambition and who desire to be outstanding in some way and people who don't sometimes known in the political science literature as ordinary voters a somewhat condescending designation ordinary voters and ordinary voters sit back and they choose the rulers who then rule them only it's not called rolling it's called representation so that the ordinary voters are supposed to be given the impression that this is their government they're in fact we're living in fire but as you look at it it isn't the people who are doing the ruling are these ambitious types I go to I teach at Harvard and I see a lot of Harvard students they're full of this ambition they like to use the word impact ugly word that's what they want to have on the world an impact on the world and that's ambition and I'm taking a course can take many different forms but they all seem to coalesce in a single type so that our liberal democracy is divided into the Liberals I'm going to call them that the ambitious ones and they are fewer than the ordinary voters many found many fewer and then the ordinary voters who are the many and who don't see the point in being ambitious they want a secure life and they don't they sort of think of themselves as in a niche they don't want to they may want to improve their standard of living but they don't seek to be on top and to run things in the way that the others do so that our liberal democracy seems to be divided between the few and the many and that's what Aristotle would say and what I think and somebody just coming to our politics and looking at it without knowing much about its principles would say - and the trouble is that it's this division between the few and the many on the basis of ambition is not the way liberal democracy looks at itself not at all and the big difference is that the Liberals the ambitious types look on themselves as Democrats they're not they they don't all belong to the Democratic Party but the Republicans - among us also think of themselves as Democrats as part of the people and who are selected by the people and not rulers over the people and you see this in American political science which is also reflects the self understanding of a liberal democracy they they refer as I said to ordinary voters and they also refer they use the word elite a very common word and everybody ever even not everybody knows that they're elites which exists where the trouble is that the elite doesn't look on itself as an elite and the elite spends a lot of its time attacking elitism as if there were kind of ISM it went with being on top that was unattractive and shameful not something you know remember the elite thank you and that's something not to be in an impression not to give so political science conveys this or you know with its notion of a causal mechanism and now we're going to get into what Oh Aristotle comes in okay yeah because I think so far one could say sociologists Marxist Machiavelli ins I mean all of them would understand that society consists of these of the many and a few more or less right I mean this sort of the either exploited a Lamarck's or young valleys case for the right yes diction of character or yeah sociologists study yeah well some of those like the Marxists do look forward to a domani totally equaled democracy way off in the future so they would still but it's true it's it's not uncommon to see this distinction between the equals and and the unequals but in such a way that the ascendancy of a unequals is not justifiable right so where's Aristotle in yours oh it's justifiable right so and then and that it's also a rule rule and not just representation now if the political science talks about these causal mechanisms which means that a thing is caused by its preceding cause that by cause precedes the effect as in the famous case of the billiard balls when you strike a billiard ball it moves according to the motion that has been given to it and it hits according to the laws of motion it's what it hits other other balls right and goes in the pocket and so that's sort of what Aristotle would call efficient causation and this is what the kind of causation that you get in modern natural science so that this political science looks at sits looks at science as natural science and it doesn't make a distinction with human things and therefore the notion of intention is lacking from its causal mechanism a thing doesn't happen because you intend it to happen that isn't what how you explain the behavior of a painting a billiard ball you don't need that but how do you understand ambition as being caused by something outside it well you just say that ambition is is it's just a thing which improves your career and your career gives you more of what our satisfaction it's a kind of quantity it gives you it gives you more and they don't want to really specify what the more is more of and so they usually don't talk about ambition but when they do it's always in the form of careerism as if it were a kind of self-promotion but if you look at an ambition ambitious person they don't understand themselves as yes I I want to be in on it but I would want to have any impact on the world remember so on that mean and that means you have it your concern is not merely even or even mainly with yourself but it's on the rest of the world and you know you want to extend yourself for the rest of the world and that's beginning to give you the idea of ruling so now let's turn to Aristotle and Aristotle when he looks at politics looks at for edit fundamentally from the standpoint of a few and the many that there is always that difference between the few who want to rule and the many who also want a role but differently and the few want to rule to justify their fewness or whatever it is and the many their many nests and this usually takes the form of money or wealth that the many represent or are the poor because it just works out that most people are poor and few a few people are wealthier that was true when Aristotle say and it seems still to be true today's an empirical fact something in nature I suppose so that this that you've got a difference then between the poor and the rich but it isn't such a great difference because what you're saying is that the poor and the rich want the same thing they both want more and they don't know what the more is well it's more money money is fungible but you're gonna do with your money what is the purpose of having wealth well it's the purpose is to have an improved life say so now you're beginning to go from more to a definition of more your per Guinea to go from a quantity to a quality and there are some of these if you want more quality then perhaps it's possible to have less of our competition or less instability because the poor as poor always want to exploit the rich and the rich as rich always want to exploit the poor and there's nothing holding them back and they would go after each other I guess they could split hammertoes right yeah no they they wouldn't be willing to split the difference because you always want more so and there's nothing in the in the slim equation simple there's nothing no limiting principle the limiting principle comes say when you look at just more life a better life or a longer life and but life is also has a kind of qualitative quantitative aspect and you mean when you say that a human life that's a human life for you a human life is at life belonging to a certain species which is really interesting aristocratic species and the rest of nature were the only species that is aware it can be aware of itself unaware of the world at which this ambition which has ambitions which has intentions which has intelligence so we're kind of aristocracy but then as humans we're kind of democracy that every human has the natural equipment of human being which includes rationality reasons you can understand you can talk you can think you can suffer feel enjoy so these are all human things those are all qualities so you can see already then too that there is a difference between certain Democratic qualities and certain and aristocratic qualities aristocrats are tough they're tense if you're ambitious you want to accomplish something you to accomplish something you have to push yourself you have to use your stress stress is a good thing if you want to be ambitious it's not a bad thing according as it is generally speaking according to modern psychology whereas the many or softer more tender more receptive you begin to see some of Aristotle's metaphysics here that the forms so that the things with more definition impose themselves invisible things impose themselves on matter which receives those forms which is there's a human matter and then there's a human form and the human form seems to be located more in the fuel and the receptivity to it in the many so that's already Aristotle sort of that a metaphysical look and those you could say represent the Liberals and the Democrats that we saw back and in in liberal democracy so we're beginning to get some sense of human dignity and of the differences between humans to that some of them have this ambition and some of sort of a much more intelligent than others we all have intelligence while humans but there's a terrific difference in in intelligence for Sur which is you could say is a kind of natural aristocracy so wealth is no longer the standard and the standard is now something not quite visible it is is that you can infer it from human behavior that there are these differences in intelligence say but what an intelligent human being is you have to define you can get examples of it but the examples are not as important as a definition which is invisible so the qualities are not visible in the same way that that that that human beings have and in the same way that behavior is all ours I say there are these kind of transitional qualities like tough tense versus soft tender which go on the way from quantitative to quality so yeah and the and these two tendencies said the poor and the rich don't have any as I say inherent motion towards a limit or a mix something which would allow them to live together in harmony so that has to be introduced by intelligence and that means by a political scientist or philosopher and Aristotle gives three different ways in which the poorer and the rich might be mixed and the first way is to just have the poor and the rich as as we began together both both they're not the poor over the ridge by Jessa and nor the rich over the poor but just there and that you could call democracy that's the kind of democratic mix because every everybody is representative him included the rich has rich and the poor has poor or and that's a thought that's so that's the Democratic make so that worry or another mix would be to find a middle position between poor and rich so the middle class and this would add a certain stability and the middle class are afraid of being poor and they're also afraid that the rich will take over from them so you're always looking from both sides like this there in the middle that's the input in between positions and that's the sort of oligarchical mix because the middle class our take on the attributes of an oligarchy defending themselves from from both sides but then there's a third mix and this is the true mix and that's a mix which transcends wealth and doesn't try merely to split the difference on the basis of wealth but goes to another thing altogether and that's virtue so virtue becomes something which transcends both poor and rich Aristotle has a list of eleven moral virtues which gives you in the Nicomachean ethics of the first two or courage and moderation I won't try to remember all the very eleven other nine but the that's that's good enough to start with those two just simply an idea of what he means so that some people are courageous and then and then to be courageous and or moderate those are especially the purchase of the body courage is the purchase it helps you deal with fears you're afraid of something always afraid that you need some courage moderation helps you with the pleasures of the bodies and that mean you could be tempted into wrong pleasures or too much pleasure or even too little you're that type kind of person who has an apple for lunch then not enough so no martini no the principle is one martini not none not two in there I don't remember that from Aristotle yeah that's our yeah that's my little Urich yeah my working working working an example of what moderation means so that such you get the idea that just because the virtue of a so virtually doesn't mean that it's ascetic or are opposed to any idea of pleasure yeah all right so those are the virtues and those virtues are ordered in a certain way in the regime and then regime calls for certain virtues and a the most famous agent polis was Sparta which was ordered for the so all for the sake of courage and in general the Greeks and the Greek cities were were much more Marshall much more dedicated to war to the necessities of war and they virtues which are needed they're displayed most in war then are ours today some frequent comparison of modern philosophers like multi-skilled a we today are devoted to Commerce and peace and they were devoted to the virtues and especially martial virtue which called for sacrifice to the common good in a way that Commerce does not so this ordering from lead in regime to the separation of powers so we have our separation of powers as explained in the Federalist yeah and those so those those powers are three faculties of the soul it's one thing to judge and be a judge another to be a legislator and a third to be an executive to run things and they each have different lives that go together with what they do so judge talks with other judges but especially lives close to the law he has to know what the law says and then to interpret the law and to find a way of understanding the law which applies to a particular case and so he usually sits and reads talks to a few people and if he if he's on a court may be a participates in a deliberation of deliberation like the Supreme Court where the legislature doesn't take the law as given because he's thinking in terms of making a new law so he looks on the present law as the status quo and the status quo doesn't have any special Authority as it does in judging so and in order to legislate he needs to talk to a lot of other people and of different kinds and so his day is spent in talking to lobbyists and and advocates and to fellow representatives or senators to see how we can get a majority together how he can represent his district we'll also do something this for everybody's good it's a lot of addition and subtraction looking for a majority have to be more much more congenial type than as a judge and then the third is Amanda the managing that an executive does he runs things though and he decides and he's much closer to what might be called just ruling to choosing a policy and seeing that it gets accomplished so he's interested in the effect the execution they're carrying out so the this is the way in which our separation powers can be understood as an ordering of the soul because those are activities of the soul judging legislating and executing and if you look at the federalist it first describes a separation of powers in terms of their separation and and the fact that they must be made equal no one of them superior to the rest and how that it's necessary to make them counteract so this that's the word which is especially is action and counter action so government is generally characterized as action and counter action those two go together and that very much comes from multi skill that all power needs to be checked by other power so bad balance of that but so that draws your attention away from the actual what the different parts are actually doing and those are maybe more difficult to define as we see in Federalist number 37 they talk about the difficulty of defining the powers of but then at they were at the end of the Federalist or the last half of it when the actual of different branches of government are discussed it comes out that they do different things and they perhaps have a different intention than merely checking one another they want to accomplish something namely good government so that Republican government is a good government but the intention or character of the powers you know the federal is to sort of backed into or hidden a little bit yes young as implied by the listen you showed that very well in your PhD dissertation I remember saying to me I mean which it's right why they don't want to say more explicitly yeah now let's come back to Aristotle and look at this situation of a mixed government now he also remarks that to get to this mix you have to have some understanding of freedom and he finds his understanding of freedom to come from the Democratic claim because you've got your soul and your body your soul decides on certain things which are rational intelligent to do but your body resists often whereas as when you do something that you know is wrong but nonetheless you go ahead and and do it so there's a certain resistance to intelligence that's characteristic of humans as well as the intelligence this is often left out by scientists when they're talking about the characteristics of of the human species they forget that yes we're intelligent but we also resist intelligence every example when somebody claims to be wise and wiser than you are it doesn't mean Hitler and necessarily going to obey what he says because he was thinking well how does that affect me how does it look to me and that's really when you say that may you're especially talking about your body the most private part of you that which you control yourself and nobody else does and to some extent therefore your body controls you and says you and your body can be understood as claiming freedom from your intelligence your wisdom or the wisdom of wise people and that the body the claims of the body are especially close to democracy because democracy means all as equal and all human bodies are much more equal or right in their in their desire each of them to be one's own to have one to have one's own and to promote that then then your soul or in which is dominated by your intelligence so the Democratic claim to freedom comes exact precisely from you might say the quantity of your body yes right yeah it's like um that comes back to the importance of the fact that we not only are have intelligence but we have so to speak anti intelligence built-in and so then to your soul there's the kind of resistance but a battle that goes on in your soul between your body and your and your smart surya intelligence and and and so this this is this is a better and fuller description it's also begins to justify democracy a little bit more than you might guess from the superiority of of intelligence so so the democracy is desired to rule freely now that you see that the democrats are no longer just poor they have a they make a certain claim to to rule and the oligarchs also make claims that the best should roll and they are pushed into by aristotle like political scientists pushed into redefining wealth as wealth of things that are good wealthy things are or what makes you good so your wealth could even be understood as your intelligence so that's your equipment there what you have either from nature or from what you've learned from your learning your education so politics then your consists of a of a competition of claims claims to justice justice the good of the commonality of the community so injustice is again an invisible quality it can be defined but it can't be seen except in certain great actions so these are our claims to justice are often expressed in the appreciation and reverence even that we give to great figures great human beings so in America George Washington and Abraham Lincoln's and people of that quality in there and we learn about how they lived and what they did that inspires us way above sort of the common or ordinary voter or the ordinary possibility or even the ordinary ambitious person way above them but still it's something that we need it's an something which is our very best that holds us together as a community and if we lost that or change that changed our appreciation for George Washington to say to somebody like a Napoleon then that would totally change the nature of our community so this mix which has an existence in the soul of the best man perhaps not even better than George Washington but somebody who understands George Washington as I said as sees all the wonderful things that he did in the circumstances that he faced but but who understands this and this understanding is reflected in George Washington's the noble deeds of the city and also in the and of worshipping are the civil religion of the city and all this amounts to are a kind of an a speculation or in of what is what is best and a-one and what is virtuous at least within the reach of of most of us so the moral virtues are a way of looking at the actions of a body which presupposes that there's a soul behind them which presupposes that you are capable voluntarily of choosing to do the right thing it doesn't prove that that soul exists but it the way we understand it suggests that we believe that there is such a soul now let's come back to liberalism applying all this modern mixed regime as opposed to Aristotle's so the modern Mets Racine says that we are all equal and to begin set from this famous state of nature of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke there is however where all we means all of us humans so there is a kind of the same superiority of human beings to the rest of the world which is non-human animal or just inanimate then human beings have this capacity to master or even conquer the nature of the nonhuman world but how is it going to do this so how how are we going to live in such a way as to show that we're all equal and at the same time to show that we're superior to our nature and the answer is through acquisition or economics or commerce acquisition that's Machiavelli the commerce say that's later that's Locke Hume Montesquieu the can economic man in other words we must over look or not talk about the soul or about intention but devote ourselves to the gaining of more without trying to define more what as Aristotle wants us to do and that means that human beings are equal because the body is primary if it's only if the body is primary that we can all understand ourselves as equal and the body can be primary only if we forget about or suppress the notion of soul which includes this notion of intention or of voluntary action that you do something freely so it's freely its freedom now understood sort of in a diluted way as released so rather than as aiming at something and having the power to aim at an intention and a goal and this means that democracy and oligarchy which are claims to rule in Aristotle become these two things of liberal democracy Democrats who lived their ordinary lives and liberals were dissatisfied with that who couldn't live unless they were outstanding or extraordinary in some way they could explain to themselves as is better so the Democrats instead of being rulers claiming freedom turned into beneficiaries of the acquisitions and wealth getting of the Liberals understanding these liberals so as as as simply the ambitious so and then there a party conflict which we have is not between Democrats and oligarchs but within the Liberals within the oligarchs so to speak because the Liberals have the as a duty or you might say the human function of assertion of self assertion of promoting themselves and they do that were the result of this is beneficial to the rest of the community so which doesn't otherwise would relax and not do anything so self of this self assertion of the oligarchs is no longer simply oligarchical but it benefits the democracy as a whole as when wealthy people get wealthy they can't do that without improving the standard of living of of of the consumers and so on so government is not a cure for souls it's not a it's not a way of mixing the qualities of one soul and this came out of the way in which liberalism got started liberalism got started as an attack on the soul because the soul it thought had been misinterpreted appropriated and abused by the priests of Christianity so that Aristotle's strange doctrine soulful doctrine had been picked up by a Christianity and the aristotelian soul had been made into a Christian soul and the Christian soul was something that could be manipulated by Christian priests because priests talked to God in a way that the rest of us don't and they tell us what God wants us to do and this is a kind of indirect form of tyranny they in fact are doing they they're the ruling but they're pretending that they are merely executing the will of God and sort of modern representative government is a kind of secularized version of this indirect government that our leaders who we can now call them leaders not rulers whom we elect tell us what to do but they say that this is what we wanted when we chose them so your your tax taxes are they take money away from you that's perfectly justified because you wanted it in when you voted for us you voted for these exactions and troubles and and all the all the thongs only and so this famous statement of Hobbes the the the criminal was the author of his own punishment all right that you get to vote them out so yeah there's a certain accountability which there isn't in the road and Christianity has suppose yes so but there is this famous division among the quote liberals unquote that I'm a word of which I'm using much more generally than it's usually use I'm using it just to mean all ambitious types in a liberal democracy but those types are divided but especially is between businessmen and intellectuals and this is a distinction which was introduced by Rousseau I think mainly it would identify the businessmen as the bourgeoisie and those are people who are not real citizens they are town dwellers and with literal meaning of bourgeois town dwellers who have their freedom because the king gave it to them and so they don't have the real freedom the real freedom is the freedom that you give to yourselves so this is this critic critique of them of the bourgeoisie was picked up and turned into a great distinction between those who are ambitious by getting wealth and those who are ambitious by getting reputation through speech intellectuals intellectuals or people who are smarter than the rest of us and he'll show it by publishing so publication is necessary to an intellectual it's not necessary to a philosopher as we know from the case of Socrates and great the greatest philosopher of all never published but an intellectual publishes so he should he advertises to the world his intellect this as a form of ruling you could say and in a businessman and then and the thing is that the two of them hate each other so the businessman looked down on this on these intellectuals as Bing snobs and and people who could never meet a payroll then I think there are these two great achievements in life you're a if you're a businessman you can run a paper hole and if your intellectual you can teach and you can run a class okay so a businessman would be as much as at a loss in a classroom as an intellectual would be in the office of a manager neither one could do the other and when the other mothers they they are share each other yeah it's that if that's really true yeah then there may be a third class of politicians okay but anyway so this is the way in which liberals are liberal democracy becomes invisible to itself that it wants to understand itself is coming out of human equality and human equality only so that inequalities have no justifiable separate status and this leads to all the problems of authority under liberal democracy there doesn't seem to be any justified way in which I should obey you you should have worth authority over me and so people get a very exaggerated notions of autonomy on the one hand and on the other hand they want to help out other people and they do that by making them beneficiaries but to make someone your beneficiary is to patronize that person take away his on his sense that he runs his own life and so you make them feel as if they don't have any standing no separate and justification things are pushed onto them so-called benefits which they don't care for and to intend to resist in this elemental resistant freedom resistance that that humans have so you get this division between licenses they don't know whole when something is wrong and lazy or idle people who are benefited but resent the benefits or the and/or and especially their benefactors their so-called they hate the lady elites that they get everything from and the elites despise so this the multitudes so this liberal mix of liberal democracy is always in this in danger of subsiding into them corruption of of lack of virtue lack of the understanding of referred show just was the business party let's say the Republicans their corruption would be to simply be oligarchs I guess and the the normal sets of oligarchs and have no sense of no no responsive upon civility and the intellectuals would become also no sense of responsibility and they would just dull which all their ideas regardless of the harm they might do thereby so it's important that each of those classes liberals if you want to call though that or elites yeah yeah has a bit of an understanding of the hole in which they operate not just that's right even and this almost on their own work yes hole that's much better explained to them by Aristotle well so they begin to see one why why there is such a thing as soul and why there is such a thing at why and why liberals tend to deny it and it do you but the Liberals you know how much are you in poor I guess I'm you're improving the kind of understanding of the mixture of liberal democracy is a mixed regime from the liberal understanding to an Aristotelian understanding that's right their way of saying yes yes yeah but that's a very they're not just willful and you're no no it's not an it oh no it's not an imposition of mine okay yeah they're saying what's there I'm telling you yeah what's there and what's there is Aristotle to use one word yes oh I'm just trying in it Aristotle understands liberalism better than liberals yeah that's what I'm saying and and the early liberals who set this all up and sort of understood it yes they understood the step they were taking because they saw better what Aristotle meant and they thought they saw what was a danger in Aristotle and no doubt that danger exists so I don't think it was unknown to Aristotle there there isn't a human life without danger the appropriation of soul for yeah the appropriation of souls or it'll kind of divine right tyranny but you think it's important to occur so to speak to Aristotle yes now because otherwise we just forget that kind of you know they're really the right way to mix these out yes until you forget what the early modern philosophers knew not just what Aristotle no so you've got you need have you forgot that you forgot the reason for original defining reason for liberal democracy which which was an attack on the soul or the need this video felt need perceived need misperceived innate may be for an attack on the soul the you need to bring the soul back now because otherwise it got it get so and this is democracy can't survive yes this includes an Aristotelian appreciation for religion so this is and I mean this is so altogether without referring our basing one's understanding on religion that would be a separate argument against art in any as an improvement over liberal democracy but on presenting the Aristotelian one and he said finally these politicians need to understand a little more than the business but in the intellectuals yes to sort of manage this right the tripartite the people the you know businessman in the intellectuals to manage that mixing properly and yeah they they have to you know they have to see the separateness of those functions but also what what they're aiming at and what they both lack which is an appreciation of virtue so its virtue that's missing its virtue of this mess along with the soul yes along with it should the pressured virtue in the soul we've walked back explicitly I guess is my final question or I mean would you recommend there aren't people politicians talk about this particularly or is this somehow to guide them but to let the businessman be businessman what the intellectuals be intellectuals and or is there a problem with just letting it all play out in a kind of in a way that's yeah yeah if you try to bring back the soul explicitly you'll encounter opposition from the intellectuals who still remember the RSA might say the origin of liberalism or have some awareness of it but maybe maybe we need to do that certainly Tocqueville at the beginning of democracy in America in the introduction refers to the degraded souls of people in this he's talking not so much in America as in Europe then that democracy with its inability to justify authority of any kind and didn't do lead to degraded souls so I I think I would give it a try and I think you couldn't look up to the kind of forms of greatness that you said earlier are so important that's right some understanding obviously that it's more than just a quantitative difference so to speak yes which between Lincoln and the rest of us and that our our science of psychology needs to make make room for the soul good well that's an ambitious undertaking for her but a very ambitious essay which I'm glad we discussed and we went I mean it is about more ultimately than I think this particular regime and this possess but intellectuals you've given us a kind of a bit of a history of political philosophy and certainly an account of Aristotle that's very and if it's relative the relevance or Aristotle I would say this unusual and helpful but it requires more thinking and work or so all right Thank You Jackson which are we and our viewers will do that's enough price yeah that was worth it another not more than enough but enough yes just amount have you passed field thank you for joining me today to discuss this excellent essay liberal democracy in a mixed regime and really beyond the essay itself and thank you for joining us in conversations

Channel: Conversations with Bill Kristol

Views: 8,249

Keywords: Political Philosophy, Harvard University, Harvey Mansfield, Aristotle, Liberal Democracy, American Political Thought, American Politics, Regimes, Political Science, Liberalism

Id: XuloPrIwBK4

Length: 55min 52sec (3352 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020