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Harvey C. Mansfield, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government, studies and teaches political philosophy. He has written on Edmund Burke and the nature of political parties, on Machiavelli and[…]

Harvey Mansfield would look for the things democracy overlooks.

Question: If you had a $100 billion to give away, how would you spend it?

Harvey Mansfield: If I had a hundred billion dollars to give away, I would first remember that we live in a democracy. So I would look for the things that democracy overlooks. And those are mainly, I would say, the higher things. Not so much health, which everybody is concerned with and which the government pays lots of money for. But the . . . our high culture. I would take as an example Andrew Carnegie’s making libraries available to small towns in America. That, I think, was a very well thought contribution. Something similar to that to . . . to . . . And the arts, music and of course the intellect, but not necessarily the universities, politically correct as they are.

Recorded on: 6/13/07

 

 


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