You're listening to the Partial Examined Life.

This is part two of our discussion on the liberal democracy and the crisis of liberal

democracy with Walter Sterling, President of St. John's College.

We just left off formulating some of the

criticisms that Patrick Deneen has in his Why Liberalism Failed Book. And we were focusing on

the particular criticisms of the sort of the thinness of the virtues of a liberal democracy. And Walter, you had commented

that the retelling of the story and the criticism of liberal democracy that he formulates

is pretty familiar in terms of where it goes in that story. And then, Wes, you were also reminding us that, you know, it's also worth noting the context

that the founding and the response of, you know, even Machiavelli and Hobbes and Locke are in

terms of proposing a new form of government that ultimately is, you know, finding

ethos and founding thinking that goes towards the American Republic.

Yeah.

There's a historical context and it includes religious war and the need for religious toleration.

And this, you know, it kind of gets left out sometimes at this kind of great books reading where it's, it's as if everything is just a dialogue between these thinkers.

But just, you know, if we want to get out these three points that he's trying to make, the first one is that the idea is that the politics will be based not on the expectation of virtuousness of citizens, which is interesting in light of what we

read from Lincoln, which where he seems to suggest that it does require a certain kind of

virtue that is inculcated in people, the respect for the law, respect for liberalism itself.

But in any case, his claim is that Machiavelli proposed grounding the political on the

assumption of human beings vices, right?

Their pride, their selfishness, their greed.

And then you set up institutions so that there's sort of an invisible hand type emergent.

He doesn't put it this way.

...