Harvey Mansfield on TV
September 28, 2005 · By Tom Cerber
Click here to watch a 3 hour interview, and phone-in show, with Harvard political theorist Harvey Mansfield, originally broadcast on BookTV.
Click here for his most recent thoughts on why conservatives are better equipped to defend free speech than liberals are. Here’s a snippet:
Conservatism is therefore closer to the mission of the university than liberalism is. Liberals, insofar as they are progressives, believe that it is possible to eliminate prejudice from society. When prejudice is gone, truth prevails, and there is no need to reconsider the errors of the past. Progress is irrevocable, and inquiry shrinks to whatever questions remain unsettled. Conservatives, believing that it is not possible to eliminate prejudice, are more tolerant than liberals; they expect society to be, and remain, a mixture of truth and untruth.
It seems to me that the only difference between conservatism and liberalism is the direction they look: conservatives to the past, and liberals to the future.
That’s interesting. I didn’t get that impression from Mansfield’s critique of Burke and of Machiavelli. How would you describe that critique?
Lyndon: There is a kernel of truth in what you say (simple minded as it is). The future Liberals look forward to is does not contain the individuals that think differently than they do. What has happened to them? Oh, we don’t look to the past. Who are those Stalin and Hitler guys anyawy?
Moron.
The past has occured; the future has not. The past resides in memory; the future does not exist except in imagination drawn from memory.
Is it more realistic to look to the past or to the future?
Thanks for the tip.
[...] Here’s my most recent post on this. More on Mansfield here and here. [...]