Theres something for every cspan fan and everypurchase helps support our nonprofit operations. Shop now anytime at cspan shop. Org. Since 1979 in partnership the cable industry cspan has provided coverage of the halls of congress from house and Senate Floors to congressional hearings, party briefings and committee hearings. Cspan is you a front row seat to how issues are debated anddecided with no comment, no interruptions and completely unfiltered. Cspan your unfiltered of government. I now have the privilege of introducing the winner of this years prize for the conservative book of the year. This years winner is doctor Daniel J Mahoney for his book the statesman as thinker portraits of courage and moderation. [applause] dans book strikes the perfect theme for the weekend introducing a new generation to some of the greatest thinkers and statesmen inhistory from cicero to edmund burke , george washington, abraham lincoln, Charles De Gaulle and many more and it exemplifies how one can combine both thought and action through the virtue of prudence especially in this difficult circumstances. Dan has been involved for decades and taught in the Honors Program for over 15 years and published three books with isi in addition to writing regularly for modern and lecturing on College Campuses across the country. He is a Professor Emeritus and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and Senior Writer at liberty. He received his ba from the college of the holy cross and his na and phd from catholic mercy of america. The winner of last years prize Victor David Hanson describes his book as brilliantly written and researched and the pantheon of classically trained and thinking man of action. Dan joined along with placed honorees including Victor David Hanson, wilfredclmacaulay , andrew and many more. Join me in welcoming this years winner dan mahoney. Thank you so much johnny for this gracious work. I am going to continue developing theme that was introduced by Johnny Bertram later tonight and that is the end sensibility of gratitude. To the truly humanized and the truly civilized life. For me its a gratifying honor and genuine life to be awarded the 2023 award. For the conservative book of the year. A gratifying honor because i am have committed all my adult life to the essential in conservative past of preserving and transmitting and yes, performing and renewing noble civilizational civic inheritances that help define america. I received this honor gratefully as a sign that my efforts have borne fruit. To receive this award is also a delight because of my Long Association as johnny has mentioned with the intercollegiate studies institute, one that stretches back somewhere in the 1990s. I think my first summer Honors Program since williamsburg. I think it was like 103 degrees. Im amazed that people were jogging around colonial. And some of my fondest memories of academia as a whole are associated with isi. Summer Honors Programs at williamsburg, oxford and cambridge in the uk, thats when the dollarwas holding its own. From qucbec city to the north. That paragon of Political Correctness and post christianity. And i also remember a whole set of friends who made the experiences so rewarding and delightful. The wisdom and playfulness of the late great peter walmer was something of a isi institution of course working with such friends and aeditors at isi as mark henry, tim nelson, harvey young and dan mccarthy. And in recent years ive had the pleasure of participating in the towards washington statesmanship program. Delivering lectures on washington and lincoln, churchill and did all. Im pleased to have an article on the late jesuit political theorist, a brandnew issue of modern age. There was a man who knew the meaning of both reason and revelation to the depths of his soul. Ive joked with family and friends that i know all seven good just wits. There may be 12 or 14 but i know them all and ill tell you a quick story about him. Months before he died age of 91 i just published a book called the idol of our age, how the origin of humanity was christianity and i wrote to father tim i need your address. To send you my new book. He said nevermind, ive alreadyreviewed it. He was a 91yearold jesuit. Right to the very end. And of course lets not forget all the bright decent amiable and energetic students i came over the years. And a few that challenged the nerves but on the whole the students were just a delight. And open and hungry with the kind of wisdom that is less and less available on College Campuses today. So in a contemporary climate where education at every level combines deliberate repudiation of our estimable inheritance with ideological contentiousness which seeks to destroy what remains of it, the work of isi has become even more necessary. Im proud to stand with isi in this noble enterprise. The inheritance we defend is not of course good simply because it is old or because it is ours. But it is wisdom tried and true. As a result, it appreciates that we can never begin a new with some revolutionary year zero. Thats a reference to the fact that when the french assessed their first vision the world to. The 12 months of the year were abolished, the congregant of the sabbath so when you read the history books you learn that robespierre was killed by the convention of the ninth in sthe year two. We never had a year or two in america. It was still an odometer of course anno domini doesnt exist anymore. You see bce and all that but it says something about the differences between the two revolutions. The americans were engaged in a noble experiment to see whether people could govern themselves by reflection and choice rather than by accident as is said at the beginning of federalist number one but there was never an effort on the part of our founders to reject what we might call the continuity of simple nations in other words , classical christian wisdom, the wisdom of the moderate life that spoke to the souls and statesmanship of the american founders. The disruptive seller and ideologues of among the french revolutionaries did that displaying deadly contempt for more capacious understanding of a primordial contract that connects the living, the dead and yet to be born. As a tradition dedicated to your liberty the western tradition is of course dynamic and expensive. Yet i think with ample room for true piety. As the french political philosopher juvenile wrote so eloquently in his 1955 classic summer entity into the political good quote, every individual with a spark of imagination feels deeply indebted to mediocrity. The living and the dead, known and unknown. The wise man knows himself for dad and his actions will be inspired by a deep sense of obligation. That is not spirit. With the spirit clothing and repudiation dominates my Education Today is of course based on a complete rejection i think of that profound insight. Reason and experience alike testify that men and women become monsters when they confuse themselves with gods beholden to nothing or no one. And our times that conceit has led to utopian dreams and murderous rage. Or two petty souls who rest content with what pascal vividly called licking the earth. Try to figure out what pascal might have meant. Real human and dignity needs to be by a deep sense of obligation. Starting with our stforebears without we would not be or have anything at all. Natural piety however is not solely focused on the past. Its lips our gaze further outside ourselves to the mysterious vividness of the natural world. And finally is open to the grace that lifts our spirits and allows us to experience the presence of the living god. Only by acknowledging our considerable debts to our forebears, to a noble in tradition and for the natural and divine sources of our dignity as human beings are we rendered capable of achieving great and good things in our turn. The last phrase raising good leads me to the book from which i am being honored tonight. The statesman as thinker portraits of greatness, courage and moderation. Somebody asked me about another one of the cardinal virtues that was missing and i said of course, my whole book is a defense of prudence good titles cant be too long. So we had to leave prudence n,not forgotten but out of the title itself. Hayden i argue in the book and illustrate with seven or so examples and with ancillary questions and many more that the twin virtues of magnanimity and moderation, magnanimity is latin for the greek for greatness of soul, something aristotle talks about in the early books of the nicean ethics. Greatness of soul and a deeply felt sense of obligation to truth, liberty and conscience. They go hand in hand. The domain of action, human action guided by practical reason, what towers above and truly indoors is the admittedly rare combination of honorable ambition and self conscious self limitation where greatness and goodness coexist in relative harmony if in some tension. We know lets say the magnet pole is best articulated and defended by the Classical Wisdom and humility of course his a crisp quintessential christian virtue. Thomas aquinas says they only appear to be in contradiction but in practice its very difficult to combine honorable ambition and healthy self restraint but i think all of the figures i highlight in the book managed to do that and managed to do it in impressive and relatively unforced way. Washington was one such exemplar of noble honorable and morally serious ambition which he goes to the service of his fledgling country and to the larger cause of civilized liberty. Across the Atlantic Napoleon Bonaparte of course the short corsican famously complained its his contemporaries wanted him to be another washington, the great man willing to leave the stage and go home when his duty was done. This he would not do but the great french writer said napoleon did not know how to go home. Thats why he ended up at saint molina under british captivity guarded and not going home but not ruling anyone or anything. Alexis de toqueville who combined magnanimity sobriety in a most impressive way, he told napoleon he was as great as one could be without being good. But a new category there. A kind of informed greatness by the not so good. And without being good was napoleons achilles heel, his fatal flaw. Closer to our day the french statesman Charles De Gaulle said that or Charles De Gaulle, i feel like an npr guy whenyou start pronouncing foreign cities or names. Closer to our day Charles De Gaulle said napoleon served a severedgreatness and moderation , ma lesson that should be instructive for future generations. Again im building on de gaulles analysis and a couple of his writings about statesmanship. The great mans works of energy disallow or give rise to tragedy when they are severed from what de gaulle called the rules of classical order. Here theres a book called discord among the enemy. It was translated in english as the enemyshouse divides , a play on lincoln but its all a word that in a more civilized world, de gaulle was captured in 1960 16, he had access to a german Prison Library and he started to write a book about why germany lost world war i and he blamed it in part on the insubordination of German Military elites and especially nithe influence of nietzsche and the will to power of contempt for moderation for the rules of classical order. De gaulle said from an appreciation of the limits borne out by a human experience, common sense and the law. Truly magnanimous statesman learned and i quote de gaulle again, 34 years of age in 1924 a sense of balance, of what ispossible. Of measure which alone renders the works of energy durable and fruitful. The germans had plenty of ambition and energy but they lacked measure and a sense of moderation and restraint. Writing in 1924 de gaulle saw the severing of greatness and in measure of work in the nietzsche and military and political elites of germany. How much worse however was the contempt for decency, moderation for the moral law that informed hitlers monstrous revolution. Communism to or unrelentingly against allhuman goods, all the precious achievements of civilization. Against truth, against human liberty and dignity, against the very idea of national writing, theres a wonderful discussion near the park two of the communist manifesto where marks says i refuse to take seriously any objections raised by communism in the name of philosophy, religion or natural justice. Those are just the class pretensions of the enemy of the people. As we conservatives well know , the nazi and communist efforts to oppose what the great political philosopher eric bowman called mendacious second realities are the only human condition we know gave rise to forbes murderous tyranny here too unimaginable. Now how very sad but how instructive it is that progressives everywhere and far too many among the young still believe communism is good in theory and far from terrible in practice and i can tell you that believe that somehow communism is on the side of the angels or Harry Hopkins fdrs righthand man said the new deal in a hurry. Remember mussolini, making the trains run on time. Many young people think communism is superior in integration to the quotidian realities of liberal constitutionality as nothing very caring in their universities suggests otherwise. As a country and a civilization we must have failed miserably in passing on the lessons of the 20th century to new generations. Chief among them the great truth that ideological men as him, the routing of evil, all evil in suspect groups. The jews, the industrious peasants, religious believers , assorted class enemies or perhaps young white men today rather than in a flawed human heart, this mechanism is an invitation, nay a sure route to hell. Today nearly 25 years or so after the anise mirabilis of 1989 we are observing repetition in new forms of the ideological line. Progressives willfully see if imperfect but largely decent societies nothing but evil, injustice and exploitation. R Critical Race Theory and brokenness have replaced your attitude to our forebears and democratic self respect and new groups of people ewalleged oppressors are called loathsome selves or banished from the community. Such unrelieved contempt for fellow citizens has nothing to do with justice, social or otherwise. Quite the contrary. It makes a mockery of the shared bonds that make free civic life possible and it creates a fictive world of permanent victims and oppressors. It is light years away from the affirmation of common humanity and common citizenship. So much for the moral realism, the liberating moral realism that affirms in solicits ands famous words and i quote, that the line separating good and evil passes not through states nor police between Political Parties either but right through every human heart and through all human hearts. Faced with human nature in extremists in the soviet blog solzhenitsyn rediscovered the true central classical and biblical wisdom everything broadly held and expressed in a silver moral and political wisdom of our Founding Fathers it is impossible again im quoting to expel evil from the world in its entirety but it is possible to constricted within each person. To acknowledge this is to begin to find wisdom and selfknowledge. In contrast to woke, the coercive moral and political fanaticism at its core renew the ideological line of the 20th century. Common to both right and left wing totalitarianism in defining racial ethnic and sexual justice but they end up terrorizing the soul, polluting the publics base with insidious clichcs because they cannot begin to understand the moral drama that animates each and every human soul. Im getting a little bit ahead of my next encounter ho which is called ideological systems of the line. They only know how to negate and repudiate, to destroy precious and fragile inheritance thats been passed on to us for safekeeping. To do this we need new statesmen to arise, to be cultivated among us and pending that each of us needs to have some tincture of statesman in him or her. People often ask me how we can renew the noble tradition of statesmanship represented by cicero in antiquity and by the likes of burke, washington, lincoln, churchill closer to home. The first thing to do of course is study them. To know who they are. Nine out of 10 new yorkers cant tell youwho he is. Id say thats part of reality to. As it happens this is whatthe founders did. Cicero and the great work of moral shand political philosophy is a truly estimable work that shapes the moral and political imagination of the west well into the 19th century. As i described in my book ciceros honorable statesman is equally distant from the manipulations of the machiavelli and prints and the nietzsche and over man or superman, contentious as they are to traditional moral wisdom and an ethic of self restraint and honorable ambition but also from the immersion to legitimate toughminded exercise of authority by the contemporary humanitarian. A great french catholic poet once said the continents dont want us to have clean hands, they dont want us to have any hands at all. Statesmen need hands, they have to make tough decisions but thats not the same thing as adopting machiavelli or nietzsche. Neither hard or soft the true statesman takes his bearing from the fine, the noble, the honorable and the service of civilized liberty. Liberty and its moral recondition of purpose or statesmans load stars. Authoritative institutions and an army that trains men dedicated to honor and not to selfexpression for example. Or social engineering. This is the realistic and highminded framework of action that our theorists of repudiation so mindlessly aim to barry. Instead of legitimate authority and of norms that serve the community of citizens they see everywhere only i taxable power, oppressive selfserving and now predictably racist to the core. The secular priests see only domination where others rightly discern love, consent, community and the bonds of affection, civic and familiar. I was at a conference honoring mitch schechter rereading her memoirs which brought back a time when a prominent and influential feminist from the 70s whose insight on all Sexual Congress between men and women is a form of rape. You can build something really great on that encouraging insight. That heresy of domination takes a partial truth, the insight that authority which is a real thing can become authoritarian, domineering and turns it into a fanatical nihilistic obfuscation. The refusal to accept that power is sometimes at least benign and decent like the power of a loving parent. Or the statesman who really is moved by a love for his country and the partisans of this heresy because they reduce everything to power and power struggles, govern those social and cultural institutions, they have come to commandeer like the universities in the very manner they contend with because they cant imagine another way of humans relating to each other. As i argue in the closing pages of my book, our task is to reaffirm the real in a spirit of gratitude through what has been passed on by our forebears as a precious gift and i believe johnny burke quoted the next words only by repudiating repudiation do we have a fighting chance of again achieving the likes of the great statesman thinkers i describe in my book. That act of moral recovery and civilization renewal will demand of us an exercise of grandeur of greatness in moderation that will test our metal as civilized men and women. True moderation is not just confrontation, its a draft in a repudiation all direct and. True moderation will demand rare courage and not tepid unanimity both for the forces ofselfloathing , negation and repudiation and we like to quote burke so here i go. That is the false reptile courage edmund burke saw at work among the english whigs who wanted to make their peace. To cite the last sentence of my book, the choice is ours. There is no reason to despair because free will is a gift from on high. We are always free to act, always free not to live our lives. It is up to us to exercise free will truly, justly, courageously. That is wisely. Thank you very much. [applause] this year book tv celebrates 25 years of presentingnonfiction books and authors. Book tv is life with the library of Congress National book festival. Since 2001 book tv in partnership with the library of congress has provided uninterrupted coverage of the National Book festival teacher and hundreds of nonfiction authors and guests. Watch saturday as book tv brings you all day coverage of the National Book festival. Guests include librarian of congress carla hayden, jasmine buttigieg and rk russell, author of the yards betweenus. See our complete schedule online at booktv. Org. Library of Congress National book festival at 9 am eastern on cspan2. Healthy democracy doesnt just look like this, it looks like this where americans can see democracy at work. Where citizens are truly informed