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Harvey Mansfield is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught for more than forty years. He has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships and has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center. Harvard University campus (old map) Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ...
He is the author of works on Machiavelli, constitutional government, and most recently, manliness. Detail of the portrait of Machiavelli, ca 1500, in the robes of a Florentine public official Niccolò Machiavelli (May 3, 1469—June 21, 1527) was an Italian political philosopher during the Renaissance. ...
Two Seated Men In many societies, masculinity is understood to include open displays of same-sex non-sexual affection and physical contact. ...
Recently, Mansfield has drawn controversy for an article he wrote in the Weekly Standard (January 16, 2006) defending President George W. Bush's use of domestic surveillance in the War on Terror: The Weekly Standard is an American Conservative political magazine published 48 times per year. ...
The majority of this article is about heads of states. ...
The war on terrorism or war on terror (abbreviated in U.S. policy circles as GWOT for Global War on Terror) is an effort by the governments of the United States and its principal allies to destroy groups deemed to be terrorist (primarily radical Islamist organizations such as al-Qaeda...
...[I]t is wrong to accuse President Bush of acting illegally in the surveillance of possible enemies, as if that were a crime and legality is all that matters. This is simplistic, small-r republican thinking of the kind that our Constitution surpassed when it constructed a strong executive. The Constitution took seriously a difficulty in the rule of law that the republican tradition before 1787 had slighted. The difficulty is obvious enough, but republicans tend to overlook it or minimize it because they believe, as republicans, that power is safer in the hands of many than in those of one or a few. Power is more surely in the hands of many when exercised in the form of law--"standing rules," as opposed to arbitrary decree. Republics tend to believe in the rule of law and hence to favor legislative power over executive.
Yet the rule of law is not enough to run a government. Any set of standing rules is liable to encounter an emergency requiring an exception from the rule or an improvised response when no rule exists. In Machiavelli's terms, ordinary power needs to be supplemented or corrected by the extraordinary power of a prince, using wise discretion. "Necessity knows no law" is a maxim everyone admits, and takes advantage of, when in need. Small-r republicans especially are reluctant to accept it because they see that wise discretion opens the door to unwise discretion. But there is no way to draw a line between the wise and the unwise without making a law (or something like it) and thus returning to the inflexibility of the rule of law. We need both the rule of law and the power to escape it--and that twofold need is just what the Constitution provides for. [1].
Mansfield was a guest on The Colbert Report on April 5, 2006. The Colbert Report (pronounced or coal-BEHR re-POR, with silent Ts), is an American satirical television program on Comedy Central that stars Stephen Colbert, best known previously as a correspondent for The Daily Show. ...
April 5 is the 95th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (96th in leap years). ...
2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Bibliography - Congress Against the President (1976)
- Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders : A Study of the Discourses on Livy (1979)
- The Spirit of Liberalism (1979)
- America's Constitutional Soul (1991)
- Taming the Prince : The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (1993)
- Machiavelli's Virtue (1996)
- A Student's Guide to Political Philosophy (Isi Guides to the Major Disciplines) (2001)
- Manliness (2006)
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