Thank you. I'm Bill Crystal.

I'm Bill Crystal.

Welcome to Conversations and I'm very pleased to be joined today by Harvey Mansfield.

My pleasure.

And we're going to discuss one thinker. by Harvey Mansfield. My pleasure.

And we're going to discuss one thinker, Alexis to Tocville, about whom you've written a fair

amount, especially in recent years, and of course you in double Winthrop translated his great democracy in America

and you have a long introduction to that and then you wrote a very, as you, this series,

a very short introduction to Tugville which is a very fine

fine book and everyone should read it but I guess I've been struck reading you

on talk well this seems to be more you seem to admire talk, to admirer.

I'm sure all these great thinkers,

but maybe there's a little more of a personal admiration

for Tocful, is that right?

I like the French, for one thing.

And especially, uh, especially Tocquevville. Such a brilliant stylist and such a wonderful thinker,

such a concealed thinker. He's always telling you what he thinks, but he never sums it up.

Right.

So when you read you have to do your own thinking and your own summing up to find his position.

For example, he says he's bringing a new political science for a new world, meaning the new

world of democracy, because the new world's an idea, not just a piece of geography.

So you need a new political science for it.

...