WEBVTT NOTE Classical Liberal Historians 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.000 Today I'm going to be speaking on classical liberal historiography. 2 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:14.000 Now, you understand that the whole conference has been devoted to history and there's a reason for that. 3 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:23.000 Because we find from experience, we find from our own experience and people around us and society in general, 4 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:42.000 Well, history obviously has a number of important uses and functions, but among them is, one of the reasons for its importance is that people tend to derive their political views from what they think they know about history. 5 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:49.500 We've learned this in a way in the past couple of days. 6 00:00:49.500 --> 00:00:55.500 There's a crying need for unity for the centralized state. 7 00:00:55.500 --> 00:00:58.500 This is one of the great achievements of modern history. 8 00:00:58.500 --> 00:01:06.500 And we learn about the story of a centralized state basically through history. 9 00:01:06.500 --> 00:01:11.500 We learn about the glorious outcome of the so-called Civil War. 10 00:01:11.500 --> 00:01:19.580 Civil War, by the way, one of our neoconfederates once simply made this remark, and to my mind 11 00:01:19.580 --> 00:01:22.980 it is totally and instantly persuasive. 12 00:01:22.980 --> 00:01:25.740 There was no civil war in American history. 13 00:01:25.740 --> 00:01:32.020 Civil war is something as, for instance, in Spain in the 1930s, or the Russian Civil War, 14 00:01:32.020 --> 00:01:37.320 the English Civil War, that is between two contending parties, each of which wants to 15 00:01:37.320 --> 00:01:41.720 to gain control of the whole country. 16 00:01:41.720 --> 00:01:46.040 This was not the case in 1861, obviously. 17 00:01:46.040 --> 00:01:49.400 The South did not want to gain control of the whole country. 18 00:01:49.400 --> 00:01:53.600 All they wanted to do was leave the empire, 19 00:01:53.600 --> 00:01:57.040 just as the colonies wanted to leave the British Empire 20 00:01:57.040 --> 00:01:58.680 in 1776. 21 00:01:58.680 --> 00:02:01.160 In other words, it was a war of secession, 22 00:02:01.160 --> 00:02:02.600 just as the American Revolution could 23 00:02:02.600 --> 00:02:05.360 be called the War of American Secession 24 00:02:05.360 --> 00:02:06.880 from the British Empire. 25 00:02:06.880 --> 00:02:08.360 So that's a misnomer. 26 00:02:08.360 --> 00:02:11.720 But in any case, it's from history that we learn 27 00:02:11.720 --> 00:02:13.840 why we need the centralized state 28 00:02:13.840 --> 00:02:16.080 and why it becomes more and more glorious 29 00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:20.320 and we learn of the role of the sainted Lincoln. 30 00:02:20.320 --> 00:02:24.920 And I'm afraid we cannot overestimate the power of these, 31 00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:30.520 a certain interpretation of these historical episodes 32 00:02:30.520 --> 00:02:35.220 that then is literally graven in stone with these memorials. 33 00:02:36.880 --> 00:02:41.680 I've seen the Lincoln Memorial, even the Jefferson Memorial. 34 00:02:41.680 --> 00:02:49.680 It's amazing that in all the works of Jefferson that speak of reducing government, of limiting government, of cutting government down, 35 00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:55.880 that government is best which governs least, where we could be told from Washington when to reap and when to sow, 36 00:02:55.880 --> 00:02:59.280 we should soon lack bread, and on and on and on. 37 00:02:59.280 --> 00:03:04.680 The people who designed the Jefferson Memorial could not find one single statement. 38 00:03:04.680 --> 00:03:07.680 You know, there are quotations from Jefferson around the wall there. 39 00:03:07.680 --> 00:03:13.080 Not one single statement about cutting down government power. 40 00:03:13.080 --> 00:03:19.480 But these... So Jefferson is understood in New Deal terms. 41 00:03:19.480 --> 00:03:23.180 Lincoln, of course, is the great centralizer. 42 00:03:23.180 --> 00:03:30.280 And now they're sacralized, made sacred to an extent by their memorials. 43 00:03:30.280 --> 00:03:34.080 However, there is no need in my sunset years 44 00:03:34.080 --> 00:03:42.080 to torment myself by ever, ever going to see the FDR memorial. 45 00:03:42.080 --> 00:03:49.080 The closest we ever came at the Mises Institute was once holding a conference, 46 00:03:49.080 --> 00:03:53.080 a guy was there, at Warm Springs, Georgia. 47 00:03:53.080 --> 00:03:58.080 That was a conference on reassessing the presidency, the final product of which is this book. 48 00:03:58.080 --> 00:04:06.080 And we did it in honor of the man that Sam Francis, perhaps a bit cruelly, calls old rubber legs. 49 00:04:06.080 --> 00:04:19.080 However, when we held our conference there with some of the people who are here today, 50 00:04:19.080 --> 00:04:27.080 strolling through the paths of the Southern White House and seeing all the sacred relics, 51 00:04:27.080 --> 00:04:36.080 By the way, cured some of our lame people and blind people who were in our group just by touching Roosevelt's bed and so on. 52 00:04:36.080 --> 00:04:47.080 Well, anyway, walking through those pathways, the odd and reverent tourists were a bit shocked by some of the conversation which they overheard. 53 00:04:47.080 --> 00:04:53.320 But nonetheless, this Roosevelt Memorial now, you know, the little kids are going to be 54 00:04:53.320 --> 00:05:00.460 taken, six and a half or seven acres with all kinds of things, and kids for the rest 55 00:05:00.460 --> 00:05:04.320 of time are going to be brought there and shown how great Roosevelt was. 56 00:05:04.320 --> 00:05:09.880 You know, I understand why Bradford, Mel Bradford, for instance, was so annoyed by this Lincoln 57 00:05:09.880 --> 00:05:19.200 Memorial, because he was understood that the function of it was to push a certain 58 00:05:19.200 --> 00:05:24.720 interpretation of the war between the states. Now today, I'm going to be a little 59 00:05:24.720 --> 00:05:27.600 while I'll be talking about classical liberal historians, but nowadays 60 00:05:27.600 --> 00:05:34.000 historians of course tend to be overwhelmingly on the on the left and I 61 00:05:34.000 --> 00:06:04.000 I can't emphasize enough the importance of this brief essay by Robert Higgs, which you can find a download from the free market, Jeff Tucker would give us the volume and number, I think, if you ask, on America's greatest presidents, question mark, because this gives us an insight into the mentality of current day historians who, by pushing their interpretation 62 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:34.000 are also pushing their political agenda. Of course, we necessarily have to read some of these leftist historians. Many of them are very good, very competent. We learn a lot from them. There aren't too many other kinds of historians around, but then we can learn from them as long as we keep in mind their assumptions and values and discount that in what we read. In other words, get the material, the facts, the data, but don't necessarily buy the interpretation, which is based on their own leftist 63 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:40.760 assumptions. Sometimes though these leftist historians go really beyond the 64 00:06:40.760 --> 00:06:45.320 pale. I don't know if you follow this kind of thing but for instance there's 65 00:06:45.320 --> 00:06:52.160 the historian at Mount Holyoke, Joseph Ellis, who just won the Pulitzer Prize 66 00:06:52.160 --> 00:06:59.920 for one of his works and now it turns out that he has been consistently lying to 67 00:06:59.920 --> 00:07:04.320 to his students, to his colleagues, to the public, about his whole career. 68 00:07:04.320 --> 00:07:10.560 He claims he was in Vietnam, he was in combat, he was 101st Airborne, Westmoreland used him 69 00:07:10.560 --> 00:07:18.060 as an advisor, Halberstam used him as a consultant in his book on Vietnam, and it's all lies, 70 00:07:18.060 --> 00:07:19.940 he admits it now. 71 00:07:19.940 --> 00:07:26.040 Now the New York Times op-ed page featured an article explaining, it's not lies, it's 72 00:07:26.040 --> 00:07:27.040 storytelling. 73 00:07:27.040 --> 00:07:29.480 It's what historians do. 74 00:07:29.480 --> 00:07:35.480 Okay, you know, I mean, there's so much craziness in the world that it's... 75 00:07:35.480 --> 00:07:39.480 And this man won the Pulitzer Prize, okay? 76 00:07:39.480 --> 00:07:41.480 But what do we just say about Belziel? 77 00:07:41.480 --> 00:07:46.480 What's Belziel? David, what's Belziel's first name or Joe? 78 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:48.480 Michael. Michael, okay. 79 00:07:48.480 --> 00:07:54.480 A man who won the Bancroft Prize, which is the highest prize given out to American historians, 80 00:07:54.480 --> 00:07:57.480 for his book on arming America. 81 00:07:57.480 --> 00:08:03.480 His thesis, maybe you've followed this, you can follow it on the internet, there are a lot of very good articles about this. 82 00:08:03.480 --> 00:08:11.480 His thesis is that Americans weren't gun nuts before the Civil War. 83 00:08:11.480 --> 00:08:14.480 That's when people started using guns in America. 84 00:08:14.480 --> 00:08:18.480 It's ridiculous to think that in revolutionary times, in the frontier, people used guns. 85 00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:20.480 There were almost no guns. 86 00:08:20.480 --> 00:08:24.480 They didn't use guns for defense against the Indians or defense of their household. 87 00:08:24.480 --> 00:08:26.480 They didn't use guns for hunting. 88 00:08:26.480 --> 00:08:30.680 There were almost no guns, they didn't work, the ones that did exist. 89 00:08:30.680 --> 00:08:36.880 So, and he was allegedly on the basis of a lot of data from probate courts, you know, 90 00:08:36.880 --> 00:08:41.680 people never willed their guns to anybody. 91 00:08:41.680 --> 00:08:48.480 It never occurred to him that perhaps guns were so common that there was no point in bequeathing guns 92 00:08:48.480 --> 00:08:55.180 any more than bequeathing some other item, the dog, for instance. 93 00:08:55.180 --> 00:09:01.660 Nonetheless, he went, and now it's been examined, and it turns out that the man is a fraud. 94 00:09:01.660 --> 00:09:05.020 The very data that he claims supports his thesis. 95 00:09:05.020 --> 00:09:11.460 Others, Joyce Malcolm, for instance, who was an excellent historian of the issue and of 96 00:09:11.460 --> 00:09:18.580 the right to bear arms, going back to this data, it says the opposite of what he claims 97 00:09:18.580 --> 00:09:19.580 it says. 98 00:09:19.580 --> 00:09:24.640 Or, these laws that say, yeah, you can get a gun, you can't keep a gun, but you can get 99 00:09:24.640 --> 00:09:31.840 a gun from the central storage area of the town, don't mention anything about guns. 100 00:09:31.840 --> 00:09:36.880 So it's a tissue of fraud and fabrication, they're not going to take the Bancroft Prize 101 00:09:36.880 --> 00:09:44.060 away from him, and of course, you know, none of us is going to win a Bancroft Prize, Bob 102 00:09:44.060 --> 00:09:50.460 Higgs is not going to win a Bancroft Prize for Crisis and Leviathan, and when the time 103 00:09:50.460 --> 00:09:58.220 The time comes that Dr. Thomas Woods, an octogenarian, shall have completed his 27th volume. 104 00:09:58.220 --> 00:10:02.940 He's not going to win the Bancroft Prize, don't believe that. 105 00:10:02.940 --> 00:10:08.940 What I want to talk about today is the tradition of classical liberal historians. 106 00:10:08.940 --> 00:10:13.660 And here again, I don't know how these leftists get away with it. 107 00:10:13.660 --> 00:10:19.540 Here's John Dunn, professor of political theory at Cambridge, the author of 20 books, or maybe, 108 00:10:19.540 --> 00:10:24.900 And here's a quotation. He's talking about classical liberals and liberals in general. 109 00:10:24.900 --> 00:10:33.860 If the central dispositional value of liberals is tolerance, their central political value 110 00:10:33.860 --> 00:10:40.780 is perhaps a fundamental antipathy towards authority in any of its forms. Right? In other 111 00:10:40.780 --> 00:10:47.520 words, Frederic Bastiat really wasn't a Catholic. But get this, dispositionally, liberalism 112 00:10:47.520 --> 00:10:50.520 William has little regard for the past. 113 00:10:50.520 --> 00:10:52.520 He was a professor at Cambridge University. 114 00:10:52.520 --> 00:10:57.520 I mean, so much for Thomas Macaulay, the whole tradition of Whig historians, 115 00:10:57.520 --> 00:11:05.520 for Augustin Thierry, for Ippalat Tain, William Leckie, all these great 19th century historians, 116 00:11:05.520 --> 00:11:10.520 or the ones I'm going to be talking about mainly, Tocqueville and Acton. 117 00:11:10.520 --> 00:11:14.520 They had no interest in history. They had no regard for history. 118 00:11:14.520 --> 00:11:21.520 Incidentally, I just cannot understand how these celebrated leftists get away with it. 119 00:11:21.520 --> 00:11:27.800 Here's another quotation on a subject I'm going to be dealing with in a moment, 120 00:11:27.800 --> 00:11:33.040 Lord Acton, and this is from the celebrated historian of thought, Maurice Cranston. 121 00:11:33.040 --> 00:11:38.800 You maybe haven't heard of him, but believe me, very well-known author of another 20 books, 122 00:11:38.800 --> 00:11:44.020 biographer of Locke, biographer of Rousseau, and this is what he says about Lord Acton. 123 00:11:44.020 --> 00:11:51.020 Lord Acton proposed to write a history of mankind in terms of its struggle towards freedom. 124 00:11:51.020 --> 00:12:03.020 Acton seems to have meant by freedom, freedom from the constraints of nature, freedom from disease and hunger, and insecurity and ignorance and superstition. 125 00:12:03.020 --> 00:12:08.020 In other words, you know, Roosevelt's Four Freedoms. 126 00:12:08.020 --> 00:12:15.620 And Cranston calls this the progressive view of history, which culminates in our time in the welfare state. 127 00:12:15.620 --> 00:12:19.620 So, here's Lord Acton as a precursor of the welfare state. 128 00:12:19.620 --> 00:12:24.420 And I'm telling you, Cranston is a very famous and important guy. 129 00:12:24.420 --> 00:12:30.220 So, let's go back now to the early 19th century. 130 00:12:30.220 --> 00:12:36.620 And I'm going to be concentrating mainly, except for Acton, on the French tradition. 131 00:12:36.620 --> 00:12:42.020 And this is something that I like to emphasize, and I think is very important. 132 00:12:42.020 --> 00:12:52.320 Murray used to say this, Murray Rothbard, that we have a very provincial and parochial view of the history of liberal thought, liberal in our sense. 133 00:12:52.320 --> 00:12:58.720 It's all England, America a little bit, America more practice than theory, but it's basically Britain. 134 00:12:58.720 --> 00:13:05.820 And one reason is that American historians, amazingly, cannot read foreign languages. 135 00:13:05.820 --> 00:13:21.820 I know members of the Stanford History Department, who are full professors and have been for many years, who cannot read a paragraph in French, let alone, you know, German, which seems beyond any possibility for these guys. 136 00:13:21.820 --> 00:13:34.820 Of course, you know, the historian of Germany and so on can read German, but, but American academics in general just do not learn foreign languages. 137 00:13:34.820 --> 00:13:36.820 and Foreign Languages 138 00:13:36.820 --> 00:13:38.820 So, one of the men I'm going to mention now, 139 00:13:38.820 --> 00:13:40.820 one of my favorites whom Tom Woods mentioned the other day, 140 00:13:40.820 --> 00:13:42.820 Benjamin Constar 141 00:13:42.820 --> 00:13:44.820 and his name is written just like constant 142 00:13:44.820 --> 00:13:46.820 and we say Constar 143 00:13:48.820 --> 00:13:56.820 Benjamin Constar, who in my opinion is the greatest French political thinker of the 19th century 144 00:13:56.820 --> 00:14:00.820 and perhaps the greatest liberal political thinker of the 19th century altogether 145 00:14:00.820 --> 00:14:02.820 it was only a few years ago 146 00:14:02.820 --> 00:14:11.820 It was a few years ago that any of his major works was translated into English in the Cambridge text and political philosophy series. 147 00:14:11.820 --> 00:14:23.820 So the people always talked about Tocqueville, who was the one guy who was translated very early and has constantly been in print, but almost never mentioned Constanze. 148 00:14:23.820 --> 00:14:35.820 So that there is a bias in favor of anglophone historians and anglophone writers in general that we should try as much as possible to overcome. 149 00:14:35.820 --> 00:14:43.820 I mean, you know, it doesn't mean that you have to learn French, but what ought to happen is that there should be more and more translations of the important writers. 150 00:14:43.820 --> 00:14:53.820 Now, in the early 19th century, these liberals very often put their liberal philosophy in historical terms. 151 00:14:53.820 --> 00:14:59.820 In other words, not in abstract philosophical terms, in the way that Locke might, although Constanze did that also, 152 00:14:59.820 --> 00:15:05.820 and not in economic terms, the way Smith and some others might have done, 153 00:15:05.820 --> 00:15:11.820 but they put their political principles in the form of a historical narrative. 154 00:15:11.820 --> 00:15:20.820 Constanze, for instance, has two very important works, which you can find in this nice selection from Cambridge University Press. 155 00:15:20.820 --> 00:15:31.820 One on the spirit of conquest and usurpation, which Napoleon has never mentioned in it, but it's an anti-Napoleonic work. 156 00:15:31.820 --> 00:15:38.820 And here, Constanze's theory, which he develops, is that there was an age of conquest. 157 00:15:38.820 --> 00:16:08.820 There was an age when war could even pay the victor and he deals with this in medieval times and so on however in the modern world the dominant factor is commerce and no war can pay as much as it costs even Napoleon with his plundering all of Europe bankrupted France so that someone like Napoleon again who's not mentioned but any conqueror any aggressive 158 00:16:08.820 --> 00:16:13.660 is an anachronism in the modern age. So in other words he puts this liberal 159 00:16:13.660 --> 00:16:19.380 philosophy emphasizing the importance of peace into a historical framework. What 160 00:16:19.380 --> 00:16:23.300 used to be appropriate in the past, what's appropriate now. One of his great 161 00:16:23.300 --> 00:16:29.220 essays, which I think anybody interested in a liberal idea should read, is a 162 00:16:29.220 --> 00:16:35.220 speech he gave one time on the liberty of the ancients and of the moderns. 163 00:16:35.220 --> 00:16:42.220 Constant, by the way, was, as all of these guys I'm going to talk about, was a very interesting personality. 164 00:16:42.220 --> 00:16:47.220 There's just not very much time to go into their actual personality. 165 00:16:47.220 --> 00:16:53.220 Well, he was born into the lower gentry, the lower nobility, and home-schooled. 166 00:16:53.220 --> 00:16:59.220 Not by evangelical parents, however, unfortunately. 167 00:16:59.220 --> 00:17:10.220 His father was a Rouet, and that is somewhat promiscuous, and Constant, like most of the 18th people born in the 18th century, took over those mores. 168 00:17:10.220 --> 00:17:16.220 But he had a tutor at one point who played a game with him when he was about four or five. 169 00:17:16.220 --> 00:17:20.220 They were going to develop a secret language, which would be a code just between them. 170 00:17:20.220 --> 00:17:28.220 And Constant, like a kid might, was very thrilled by this and really plunged into the secret language, 171 00:17:28.220 --> 00:17:31.220 which turned out to be classical Greek. 172 00:17:37.220 --> 00:17:42.220 Now, again, I don't have time to go into a lot of interesting figures. 173 00:17:42.220 --> 00:17:47.220 Very influential on Constanze, and influential in her own right, was Madame de Stijl. 174 00:17:52.220 --> 00:17:57.220 That's not an umlaut, but it makes it pronounced as Madame de Stijl. 175 00:17:57.220 --> 00:18:02.220 A very interesting figure, and she wrote the first important history of the French Revolution. 176 00:18:02.220 --> 00:18:07.220 Her father was an important figure in the Revolution, in Necker. 177 00:18:07.220 --> 00:18:10.220 Her book is Considerations on the Revolution in France. 178 00:18:10.220 --> 00:18:15.220 And they collaborated in many different ways for a long time. 179 00:18:15.220 --> 00:18:22.220 So really, one would have to say that a number of the ideas of Constanze probably came from Madame de Stijl also. 180 00:18:22.220 --> 00:18:27.120 But this essay of his that I'm talking about, on the liberty of the ancients and the moderns, 181 00:18:27.120 --> 00:18:33.420 Max Weber, maybe you've heard, this great German sociologist, had the idea of an ideal type. 182 00:18:33.420 --> 00:18:37.920 Ideal type was a mental construct that we used to try to make sense of history. 183 00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:44.120 And he said, Constanze's distinction between ancient and modern liberal is the great ideal type. 184 00:18:44.120 --> 00:18:48.020 Because it does help, it's not necessarily true in every detail, 185 00:18:48.020 --> 00:18:53.520 But it does help us arrange the data and make sense of historical development 186 00:18:53.520 --> 00:18:56.320 And Constant said, what went wrong in the French Revolution? 187 00:18:56.320 --> 00:19:03.920 What went wrong, he thought, basically, was that drawing on Rousseau, 188 00:19:03.920 --> 00:19:08.420 Rupierre and the Jacobins, and even some of the others before him, 189 00:19:08.420 --> 00:19:11.820 attempted to revive ancient liberty 190 00:19:11.820 --> 00:19:13.220 What was ancient liberty? 191 00:19:13.220 --> 00:19:17.820 Ancient liberty meant the right to participate in politics 192 00:19:17.820 --> 00:19:29.420 However, in return for enjoying this right, the citizens gave over to the community, to the collective, total right over their property and lives. 193 00:19:29.420 --> 00:19:36.820 As you can tell, for instance, even in Athens, Socrates was put to death simply by a vote of the people. 194 00:19:36.820 --> 00:19:41.420 That was ancient liberty. They enjoyed all these great political freedoms. 195 00:19:41.420 --> 00:19:46.720 On the other hand, did not enjoy individual freedom to the extent that we understand it. 196 00:19:46.720 --> 00:19:50.080 So he said, what is the true liberty of the moderns? 197 00:19:50.080 --> 00:19:52.760 And he goes through a list. 198 00:19:52.760 --> 00:20:02.280 Not to be harassed by the law, not to be able to fill your days with your own work and pleasures and whims, 199 00:20:02.280 --> 00:20:10.060 to use your property, even to abuse your property, to speak freely, to assemble with others for common purposes, and on. 200 00:20:10.060 --> 00:20:15.760 And he says, this is what an Englishman, a Frenchman, an American understands by liberty today. 201 00:20:15.760 --> 00:20:22.900 Now, in attempting to bring in ancient liberty, these French revolutionaries found an impossible 202 00:20:22.900 --> 00:20:27.180 task since it is simply not fitted for the modern world. 203 00:20:27.180 --> 00:20:29.380 We have a totally different world now. 204 00:20:29.380 --> 00:20:36.260 We don't have the little city-states and slavery and engaged in constant warfare, one with 205 00:20:36.260 --> 00:20:37.740 the other. 206 00:20:37.740 --> 00:20:44.280 Again, the way of life of modern man is production and commerce. 207 00:20:44.280 --> 00:20:54.280 So that in order to try to implement this vision, this impossible dream, the Jacobins had, of course, to have recourse to ultimate terror. 208 00:20:54.280 --> 00:21:04.280 They had to force modern mentalities into a totally resistant framework. 209 00:21:04.280 --> 00:21:13.280 Now, Constant was a big influence on the next generation of French writers I want to talk about. 210 00:21:13.280 --> 00:21:25.280 And so was, another influence on them was another great French economist who Murray Rothbard, in his history of economic thought, considers much, much superior to Adam Smith. 211 00:21:25.280 --> 00:21:42.280 By the way, if you ever get a chance, I know some of these books are quite expensive, but Murray's two-volume history of economic thought, I consider a masterpiece and almost a college education in themselves. 212 00:21:42.280 --> 00:21:50.780 They're not in paperback yet, I don't know if they'll ever be, or in the near future, but see what you might be able to do about that. 213 00:21:50.780 --> 00:22:03.280 But this economist I have in mind, this French economist, you'll find his name in one of the holes here, together with other great freedom fighters of the past. 214 00:22:12.280 --> 00:22:15.280 What is this? Is this some insurrection? 215 00:22:20.280 --> 00:22:24.280 Okay. I'm not going to try green. I'll try this one. 216 00:22:24.280 --> 00:22:28.280 Okay. Does that satisfy you? 217 00:22:33.280 --> 00:22:36.280 Okay. Jean-Baptiste Say. 218 00:22:36.280 --> 00:22:42.280 And so I'm saying that Constanze, one influence, Say, his treatise on political economy, another. 219 00:22:42.280 --> 00:22:48.280 And these writers I'm going to talk about right now call themselves the industrialists. 220 00:22:48.280 --> 00:22:52.280 Because they came up with the philosophy they called industrialism. 221 00:22:56.280 --> 00:23:02.280 And they include Charles Comte, not the famous Auguste Comte, 222 00:23:02.280 --> 00:23:18.280 But another man, Charles de Noyer, and a man who became, they were more political philosophers and economists, but a man who became a famous historian in the 19th century, Augustin Thierry. 223 00:23:18.280 --> 00:23:25.280 Now, what these industrial writers did was come up with a general framework for history. 224 00:23:25.280 --> 00:23:36.280 According to them, history is the history of class conflict, and they listed the opposing classes in history. 225 00:23:36.280 --> 00:23:45.280 They were the conquerors who established states versus the peasants who they lived off. 226 00:23:45.280 --> 00:23:51.280 They were the feudal lords versus the merchants and workers of the towns. 227 00:23:51.280 --> 00:23:58.880 They were the kings versus the productive classes of society in modern times. 228 00:23:58.880 --> 00:24:07.080 Above all, the civilian and military bureaucrats versus anybody else in society who actually does productive work. 229 00:24:07.080 --> 00:24:13.780 So they have an idea of class conflict, and they illustrate this on again and again and again. 230 00:24:13.780 --> 00:24:16.080 So they have an idea of class conflict. 231 00:24:16.080 --> 00:24:25.080 However, the classes that are involved are quite different from the ones that we hear about so often nowadays. 232 00:24:25.080 --> 00:24:33.080 The classes that are involved, as far as the productive classes go, first you have to have production before you can have exploitation, 233 00:24:33.080 --> 00:24:40.080 are the classes that actually produce utilities, produce economic value. 234 00:24:40.080 --> 00:25:03.080 See this they get from Say. And those classes are the farmers, the artisans, other laborers, but also the merchants who increase value by marketing goods and taking goods from one place to where they're wanted more. 235 00:25:03.080 --> 00:25:10.040 Other bankers, as long as they're engaged in free banking, the capitalists in general, 236 00:25:10.040 --> 00:25:16.000 the capitalists in general who accumulate capital and make labor much more productive. 237 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:19.080 Those are the productive classes. 238 00:25:19.080 --> 00:25:25.000 The exploiting classes are the classes that use force or the threat of force to extort 239 00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.000 values from those people who produce them. 240 00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:42.500 Now, this is in a way an abstract political theory, but I'm saying that they put it in the form of historical episodes in their early career. 241 00:25:42.500 --> 00:25:51.200 Afterwards, they do other things. So the whole of history, they say, can be understood in this way. 242 00:25:51.200 --> 00:25:59.480 Now, if this seems familiar to you, there's a reason. 243 00:25:59.480 --> 00:26:09.600 I have an essay in a book that's come out already on Requiem for Marx, which the Mises 244 00:26:09.600 --> 00:26:12.600 Institute put out, talking about this. 245 00:26:12.600 --> 00:26:18.280 And Marx himself says, I did not originate the class conflict theory. 246 00:26:18.280 --> 00:26:25.880 I got it from French historians and economists and all I did was introduce the dictatorship 247 00:26:25.880 --> 00:26:29.480 of the proletariat and some other accessories. 248 00:26:29.480 --> 00:26:34.560 So the fact of the matter is that this famous, world famous Marxist interpretation of history 249 00:26:34.560 --> 00:26:40.840 has its roots in a much more defensible and a much more sensible classical liberal theory 250 00:26:40.840 --> 00:26:47.640 of class conflict based on the plundering of productive people by the state and people 251 00:26:47.640 --> 00:26:51.880 who exercise force in society. 252 00:26:51.880 --> 00:27:00.760 Now, this master interpretation, this, you could say, libertarian interpretation of history, 253 00:27:00.760 --> 00:27:05.960 was continued in France, even past Marxism, by the whole great French tradition that's 254 00:27:05.960 --> 00:27:11.720 connected with the Journal des Economistes, this great French economic journal, the Journal 255 00:27:11.720 --> 00:27:17.820 Journal of the Economists, which is, to my mind, the greatest single source of classical 256 00:27:17.820 --> 00:27:18.820 liberal thought. 257 00:27:18.820 --> 00:27:26.700 It was published for a century from the time of Bastiat in the 1840s, and it only came 258 00:27:26.700 --> 00:27:35.140 to an abrupt end when Paris was occupied in June of 1940 by forces which I dare not mention 259 00:27:35.140 --> 00:27:40.760 here because the Germans seemed to be in control of this institute more and more, but that's 260 00:27:40.760 --> 00:28:10.760 So, another whole problem, did I say Germans? I'm sorry, I meant Hawaiians, but this tradition of the predatory classes connected with the state and the victimized productive classes is continued especially in Italy and there's a clear personal connection between these French economists and then Italian economists also and this is something that 261 00:28:10.760 --> 00:28:19.760 Professor Bassani is very familiar with, and also Professor Gottfried is very familiar with and interested in also. 262 00:28:19.760 --> 00:28:30.520 Now, well, okay, so these are some of the writers who do write about history, especially Thierry afterwards. 263 00:28:30.520 --> 00:28:36.860 Now, I want to concentrate on two very famous classical liberals of the 19th century. 264 00:28:36.860 --> 00:28:52.860 Now the first is Alexis de Tocqueville. 265 00:28:52.860 --> 00:28:59.860 Now Alexis de Tocqueville is enjoying an extremely bull market. 266 00:28:59.860 --> 00:29:04.860 Everybody quotes him, except Marxists. 267 00:29:04.860 --> 00:29:15.860 Classical liberals, libertarians, communitarians, neocons, and there's a reason for that. 268 00:29:15.860 --> 00:29:21.860 Talk to me about Robert Nisbet. By the way, I don't know if you know this name, Robert Nisbet. 269 00:29:21.860 --> 00:29:25.860 He died a few years ago. He's a terrific sociologist. 270 00:29:25.860 --> 00:29:29.860 A libertarian conservative, you might describe his position as. 271 00:29:29.860 --> 00:29:38.180 And really, his books are always worth looking into. 272 00:29:38.180 --> 00:29:40.300 And Nisbet had a very interesting article 273 00:29:40.300 --> 00:29:42.780 called The Two Tocquevilles. 274 00:29:42.780 --> 00:29:44.580 And he goes through Tocquevilles' thought. 275 00:29:44.580 --> 00:29:49.020 And Tocqueville, maybe this was a part of his personality, 276 00:29:49.020 --> 00:29:51.140 tended sometimes to say this. 277 00:29:51.140 --> 00:29:55.900 And then, in a dialectical process within himself, 278 00:29:55.900 --> 00:29:58.620 you might say, then tended to bring out 279 00:29:58.620 --> 00:30:03.120 The Reservations in that statement and said this. 280 00:30:03.120 --> 00:30:07.340 So that we have what seemed to be really very often 281 00:30:07.340 --> 00:30:11.620 conflicting and almost contradictory positions 282 00:30:11.620 --> 00:30:13.500 that he takes. 283 00:30:13.500 --> 00:30:17.400 So that's one explanation of why he's so popular. 284 00:30:19.080 --> 00:30:22.120 But I wanted to mention another thing. 285 00:30:22.120 --> 00:30:25.140 I'll tell you, he wrote his greatest work 286 00:30:25.140 --> 00:30:27.560 was Democracy in America in two volumes. 287 00:30:27.560 --> 00:30:36.560 One came out in 1835 and one in 1840, and the one that came out in the first volume ends in this way. 288 00:30:36.560 --> 00:30:45.560 There are at the present time two great nations, 1834, two great nations in the world which started from different points, 289 00:30:45.560 --> 00:30:50.560 but seemed to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. 290 00:30:50.560 --> 00:30:56.560 Both of them had grown up unnoticed and while the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, 291 00:30:56.560 --> 00:31:03.080 But elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank of the nations. 292 00:31:03.080 --> 00:31:10.280 All the other nations seem nearly to have reached their natural limits. 293 00:31:10.280 --> 00:31:13.020 But the Americans and the Russians continue forward. 294 00:31:13.020 --> 00:31:18.160 The Americans struggle against the obstacles that nature opposes to him, the American. 295 00:31:18.160 --> 00:31:21.440 The adversaries of the Russian are men. 296 00:31:21.440 --> 00:31:23.880 The former combats the wilderness and savage life. 297 00:31:23.880 --> 00:31:29.320 and the latter, civilization, combat civilization with all its arms. 298 00:31:29.320 --> 00:31:36.480 The conquests of the American are therefore gained by the plowshare, those of the Russian, by the sword. 299 00:31:36.480 --> 00:31:40.120 The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest. 300 00:31:40.120 --> 00:31:45.800 The Russian centers all the authority of society in a single arm. 301 00:31:45.800 --> 00:31:51.320 The principal instrument of the American is freedom of the Russian servitude. 302 00:31:51.320 --> 00:31:55.280 The starting point is different and their courses are not the same, yet each of them 303 00:31:55.280 --> 00:32:00.440 seems marked out by the will of heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe. 304 00:32:00.440 --> 00:32:09.120 Well, you can imagine after 1945, people considered Tocqueville a prophet, right? 305 00:32:09.120 --> 00:32:14.200 More than a hundred years before, he seemed to have predicted the world situation in the 306 00:32:14.200 --> 00:32:16.760 later 19th century. 307 00:32:16.760 --> 00:32:18.920 And there are a lot of insights like that. 308 00:32:18.920 --> 00:32:26.920 There's no doubt that his great book, Democracy in America in two volumes, is still the best character study of the American people. 309 00:32:26.920 --> 00:32:35.920 A lot of it still rings true. America seems to be a joint stock company let loose on the shores of a continent. 310 00:32:35.920 --> 00:32:42.920 Americans driven by self-interest. Americans, on the other hand, the most religious of the Western people. 311 00:32:42.920 --> 00:32:45.920 And there are reasons for that also. 312 00:32:45.920 --> 00:32:53.920 Now this is the thing about Tocqueville, he's not a historian in the sense, of course he deals with data, but he's not a historian in the sense that he simply piles up one fact after another. 313 00:32:53.920 --> 00:33:03.920 What he's always looking for are the underlying psychological, social-psychological forces that are bringing about these phenomena. 314 00:33:03.920 --> 00:33:09.920 And there's still very much to be learned from him. 315 00:33:09.920 --> 00:33:17.640 Now, Tocqueville, Alexis de Tocqueville, so he came from an aristocratic family, his mother 316 00:33:17.640 --> 00:33:24.060 and father were arrested at the time of the great terror, and they were imprisoned just 317 00:33:24.060 --> 00:33:31.640 at the time when the rug spear fell, they were scheduled to be guillotined, and when 318 00:33:31.640 --> 00:33:36.160 his father came out, his father was 26 or something at the time, his hair had turned 319 00:33:36.160 --> 00:33:42.560 totally white and his mother always had a kind of melancholy in her nature although she was a very 320 00:33:42.560 --> 00:33:47.760 sweet natured and a very intelligent woman but that thing that passed on to Tocqueville also 321 00:33:48.800 --> 00:33:54.720 there was also the problem that they married his english wife never bore him any children or he 322 00:33:54.720 --> 00:34:05.440 never had any children so that also tended in that direction also when he was young he read the 18th 323 00:34:05.440 --> 00:34:24.200 He was a landowner. He had tenants. He felt it was necessary to go through the ritual. 324 00:34:24.200 --> 00:34:35.000 So he attended church. And he always insisted on the utility and also beauty and greatness 325 00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:43.160 of Christian Doctrine, but now he had a big debate in the 1840s with a young up-and-coming 326 00:34:43.160 --> 00:34:54.440 intellectual named Arthur de Gobineau, Gobineau you see was a scientist and Tocqueville a 327 00:34:54.440 --> 00:35:02.440 humanist and Gobineau said I simply go by science, what do you go by science to do to 328 00:35:02.440 --> 00:35:14.440 To prove the inequality of the human races, that was his book, his big book on the inequality of the human races, the beginning of European racism in the modern sense. 329 00:35:14.440 --> 00:35:27.440 And Tocqueville desperately rejected this kind of biological determinism that Gobineau was presenting, and opposed to it, Christianity. 330 00:35:27.440 --> 00:35:42.440 I am not a believer, but as much of an unbeliever as I am, I still admire Christianity, etc., etc. 331 00:35:57.440 --> 00:36:03.640 that he could he did not find faith and again it was you know as the saying goes 332 00:36:03.640 --> 00:36:10.520 that there's a there's a head in the gutter and the gutters running blood it's 333 00:36:10.520 --> 00:36:15.800 the fault of Voltaire it's a fault of Rousseau so the 18th century produced 334 00:36:15.800 --> 00:36:24.200 this in him but nonetheless he continued with the with the outside form now as a 335 00:36:24.200 --> 00:36:31.200 The young man, he came to the U.S. in 1831, he came with his friend, Gustave de Beaumont. 336 00:36:31.200 --> 00:36:38.200 There's no direct historical evidence for this, but my suspicion is they came mainly to meet babes, 337 00:36:38.200 --> 00:36:45.200 being young Frenchmen and so on, but, you know, we can't, let's leave that aside for the moment. 338 00:36:45.200 --> 00:36:53.200 He says that he came to study the future, that what was happening in America would be the future of Europe, 339 00:36:53.200 --> 00:36:57.880 in Europe. And what was happening in America was democracy, equality. He wanted to study 340 00:36:57.880 --> 00:37:08.880 the meaning of equality in America and the implications. And there are books on Tocqueville 341 00:37:08.880 --> 00:37:14.240 in America that describe his actual journey in democracy in America. He doesn't detail 342 00:37:14.240 --> 00:37:20.840 that very much, but it was fascinating. He came from a high family and had letters of 343 00:37:20.840 --> 00:37:22.840 of Introduction to a Lot of Famous People 344 00:37:50.840 --> 00:37:56.840 to a settlement called Detroit and to a clearing in the woods called Green Bay 345 00:37:56.840 --> 00:38:03.840 down the Mississippi and on their boat they happen to meet and totally writes home about this 346 00:38:03.840 --> 00:38:08.840 a member of the national legislature named David Crockett 347 00:38:08.840 --> 00:38:17.840 who seems to be totally illiterate, he lives in the woods, dines on the results of his own hunting 348 00:38:17.840 --> 00:38:22.840 And this is a man who makes the national laws. 349 00:38:22.840 --> 00:38:32.840 On this fateful trip down the Mississippi, he happened to come across, I think it was the Choctaws. 350 00:38:32.840 --> 00:38:38.840 They stopped at a certain point and there were all these Indians who were being transported across the Mississippi. 351 00:38:38.840 --> 00:38:40.840 This was the Trail of Tears. 352 00:38:40.840 --> 00:39:08.840 And he said, by the way, he's a beautiful stylist in everything he ever wrote, in his letters also, and he said, and I looked at them, there was not any active despair, but there was a sense of a vanishing, of a ghost coming in to take the form of what used to be human beings. 353 00:39:08.840 --> 00:39:14.840 and this race seems to be doomed in North America. 354 00:39:14.840 --> 00:39:21.840 He went to Washington and was presented to the President of the United States in 1831. 355 00:39:21.840 --> 00:39:24.840 Who was that? Anyone, anyone? 356 00:39:24.840 --> 00:39:28.840 You know, like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, anyone, anyone? 357 00:39:28.840 --> 00:39:30.840 Jackson, right. 358 00:39:30.840 --> 00:39:34.840 And so he said, and we went to the President's mansion, 359 00:39:34.840 --> 00:39:38.600 which is the mansion of a middling nobleman in Paris. 360 00:39:41.120 --> 00:39:44.160 If he has an entourage, they were not very attendant on him 361 00:39:44.160 --> 00:39:46.760 because he entered the room by himself. 362 00:39:47.980 --> 00:39:49.520 And he offered us a glass of wine 363 00:39:49.520 --> 00:39:52.520 which we accepted, calling him Monsieur. 364 00:39:54.040 --> 00:39:55.180 You understand the point. 365 00:39:55.180 --> 00:39:58.560 I mean, he was not your majesty and so on. 366 00:39:58.560 --> 00:40:01.320 He didn't have a court around him. 367 00:40:01.320 --> 00:40:04.560 This was American democracy personified. 368 00:40:04.840 --> 00:40:12.840 Okay, right? Of course he had all these secret service goons talking into their little... 369 00:40:15.840 --> 00:40:21.840 So, he found a real, a different world in America. 370 00:40:21.840 --> 00:40:25.840 And in 1835, the first volume of Democracy in America. 371 00:40:25.840 --> 00:40:32.840 In 1840, the second. And immediate successes. 372 00:40:32.840 --> 00:40:39.280 now much could be said about them I suggest that you you look into them you know there's a new 373 00:40:39.280 --> 00:40:45.200 translation by Mansfield and somebody else which is supposed to be quite good I like the revised 374 00:40:45.200 --> 00:40:51.440 old translation by Reeve from his own time it doesn't matter that much but you can get a hold 375 00:40:51.440 --> 00:40:56.720 of the volumes you don't have to read them from cover to cover but dip into them and the titles 376 00:40:56.720 --> 00:41:14.720 In the first volume, 1834, John Stuart Mill liked it very much because Tocqueville talks about the tyranny of the majority, that in democracy the majority itself can tyrannize, it's not just a question of a small clique. 377 00:41:14.720 --> 00:41:22.720 I mean there's some point to that, but I don't think that's the most insightful thing he ever said. 378 00:41:22.720 --> 00:41:33.720 The problem we have now is not so much the tyranny of the majority as the tyranny of a new aristocracy or a new clique of the political class. 379 00:41:33.720 --> 00:41:44.720 What we see in America, for instance, and in other western countries, is the imposition of the world view of this self-appointed political elite on everybody else. 380 00:41:44.720 --> 00:41:51.200 And as Professor Gottfried explained so well in his book After Liberalism, the concerted 381 00:41:51.200 --> 00:41:58.940 attack on all of the voluntary institutions and traditions of society in an attempt to 382 00:41:58.940 --> 00:42:01.320 root them out. 383 00:42:01.320 --> 00:42:05.160 So it's not the majority that's particularly at fault here. 384 00:42:05.160 --> 00:42:14.600 In the second volume, he goes more into the main theme of his works, which is the increasing 385 00:42:14.600 --> 00:42:44.600 Centralization of State Power. Now when the time comes, in 1856, for him to write The Old Regime and the Revolution, his most important historical work, the thing that surprised people is this, of course the French Revolution brought about many changes, however, brought about many fewer changes than people think, because the main result was that it accelerated the trend towards centralization that the French 386 00:42:44.600 --> 00:42:57.600 The French kings had started, so that it was not a break and a reversal, but the French kings had started to centralize, and it centralized to a great degree, as Professor Livingston explained. 387 00:42:57.600 --> 00:43:09.600 And now, the French Revolution and Napoleon consolidating the Revolution created the great model of political centralization that we have today, and all of the attendant evils on that. 388 00:43:09.600 --> 00:43:18.600 So that was the theme very often in the second volume, and especially in the old regime and the revolution. 389 00:43:18.600 --> 00:43:33.600 And here, the second volume ends with one of the most, I think, terrifying visions in political thought, 390 00:43:33.600 --> 00:43:38.600 because now he wants to talk about the future. 391 00:43:38.600 --> 00:43:48.600 I think then that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever existed before in the world. 392 00:43:48.600 --> 00:43:56.600 The thing itself is new, and since I cannot name it, I must attempt to define it. 393 00:43:56.600 --> 00:44:01.600 I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. 394 00:44:01.600 --> 00:44:16.600 The first thing that strikes one is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty, paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. 395 00:44:16.600 --> 00:44:21.600 Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest. 396 00:44:21.600 --> 00:44:32.100 He exists only in himself and for himself alone, and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country. 397 00:44:32.100 --> 00:44:34.100 And now comes this. 398 00:44:34.100 --> 00:44:43.600 Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure the gratifications to watch over their fate. 399 00:44:43.600 --> 00:44:49.600 That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. 400 00:44:49.600 --> 00:44:59.600 It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood. 401 00:44:59.600 --> 00:45:05.600 It is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. 402 00:45:05.600 --> 00:45:18.600 It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property and subdivides their inheritances. 403 00:45:18.600 --> 00:45:24.400 What Remains but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living. 404 00:45:24.400 --> 00:45:30.020 Professor Stephen Holmes at the University of Chicago mocks conservatives and libertarians 405 00:45:30.020 --> 00:45:36.520 who think this might have something to do with the welfare state. 406 00:45:36.520 --> 00:45:40.420 Well this is really just in the way of an introduction of Tocqueville and I must get 407 00:45:40.420 --> 00:45:55.660 on now to Lord Acton. Hey, John Acton. Now, Acton is one of those historians from the 408 00:45:55.660 --> 00:46:03.880 19th century, like Tocqueville, that people still go to and read. Burkhardt, Jakob Burkhardt, 409 00:46:03.880 --> 00:46:07.700 the Swiss is another one. And what I'm saying is that they're different, for instance, from 410 00:46:07.700 --> 00:46:37.700 There are some other great historians of the century, like Thomas Macaulay in England or Michelet in France, who were great in their time, still great in a way, historians read them, but people don't go to these writers to find a kind of wisdom that's supposed to come from historical reflection, and they go to people like Acton, they go to people like Tocqueville. Acton is most famous, of course, right? Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And that's a sort of emblematic 411 00:46:37.700 --> 00:46:47.700 of the wisdom that people think should be able to be distilled from history and that historians, one hopes, would give us. 412 00:46:47.700 --> 00:46:54.700 Now, unlike Tocqueville, Acton from his childhood enjoyed a serene Christian and Catholic faith. 413 00:46:54.700 --> 00:46:59.700 Once he wrote about himself, this is the way he summed up his life. 414 00:46:59.700 --> 00:47:06.700 He says, his mind is a very simple, obvious, and not interesting story. 415 00:47:06.700 --> 00:47:23.700 It is the story of a man who started in life believing himself a sincere catholic and a sincere liberal and who therefore renounced everything in catholicism which was not compatible with liberty and everything in politics which was not compatible with catholic faith. 416 00:47:23.700 --> 00:47:33.700 His guiding star was always that liberty advanced, as he says, by sanctifying freedom and consecrating it to God. 417 00:47:33.700 --> 00:47:48.700 So what we have here, the only individual in the National Biography, the great English reference work, the only individual who is referred to as a historian and moralist. 418 00:47:48.700 --> 00:48:10.700 Now, again, his career is very interesting. He was one of the most learned men of his time, even in his own time, and a time when writers, thinkers acted as if they thought all the encyclopedias would someday disappear, vanish from the shelves, so they had to know all that stuff themselves. 419 00:48:10.700 --> 00:48:40.700 and Acton read in two large books every day of his adult life and to other people who were very learned he was a phenomenon now he began by being a Catholic and also as he says also a liberal and defended the Catholic Church against rising nationalism the great enemy as he saw it was Jacobin type nationalism 420 00:48:40.700 --> 00:48:45.660 Nationalism, the kind of nationalism that Professor Livingston referred to, that sanctified 421 00:48:45.660 --> 00:48:52.940 the state, one and indivisible, as the highest value, the highest glory. They could sometimes 422 00:48:52.940 --> 00:49:01.340 use the word God, but they never meant God. They meant God as the patron of this all-encompassing 423 00:49:01.340 --> 00:49:09.940 and State. So that he had no great admiration for the French Revolution. He referred to 424 00:49:09.940 --> 00:49:17.020 the first French Republic as a republic founded on a thousand murders. He meant the September 425 00:49:17.020 --> 00:49:23.540 massacres where they went around the prisons and simply massacred prisoners. In his own 426 00:49:23.540 --> 00:49:40.540 For a long time he opposed Italian nationalism and this windbag, Mazzini, not much of a thinker, but the message was clear that the nation and the nation state is the expression of the will of the people. 427 00:49:40.540 --> 00:49:50.540 There is nothing higher than the will of the people and this is one reason why Acton thought that the Catholic Church could play a very important role. 428 00:49:50.540 --> 00:49:58.020 And again, as it had in the past, acting as a counterpoise to the state. 429 00:49:58.020 --> 00:50:04.820 As Tom Woods quoted the Constant, individuals on their own, each individual, you know, acting 430 00:50:04.820 --> 00:50:08.900 on their own, it turns out to be Ruby Rich. 431 00:50:08.900 --> 00:50:15.740 But individuals associated in institutions, which then can throw their weight around, 432 00:50:15.740 --> 00:50:22.300 can act as a buffer against the growing power of the state. 433 00:50:22.300 --> 00:50:31.300 The Catholic Church had done this in history, in the Middle Ages, in the controversy over 434 00:50:31.300 --> 00:50:38.880 the investiture of the bishops, and as I mentioned in my first lecture, in its act, and who promotes 435 00:50:38.880 --> 00:50:45.060 this idea, this fight between the papacy, between the Vatican on the one hand and the 436 00:50:45.060 --> 00:50:55.660 Emperor and the Kings of Europe on the other, this is extended over 400 years, this is what allowed these free institutions of Europe to come into existence. 437 00:50:55.660 --> 00:51:11.100 Now Acton is famous because when someone like John Stuart Mill or let's say Robert Nozick become less libertarian and less radical as time goes on, Acton became more radical as time went on. 438 00:51:11.100 --> 00:51:18.860 Because he was conversant with the new research methods that the Germans had pioneered, that is, going into the archives. 439 00:51:18.860 --> 00:51:29.100 Not just going into the archives, not just that, because the archives are basically state documents and you don't write history simply from what the state admits. 440 00:51:29.100 --> 00:51:40.340 That's why E.H. Carr, for instance, wrote the history of Soviet Russia, the most famous Sovietologist in the early 20th century, basically from Soviet documents. 441 00:51:40.340 --> 00:51:42.140 that is published Soviet documents. 442 00:51:42.140 --> 00:51:44.580 But nonetheless, you start by going into the archives. 443 00:51:44.580 --> 00:51:46.580 And then going into the Vatican archives, 444 00:51:48.380 --> 00:51:53.380 he began to find out things that troubled him very much. 445 00:51:54.260 --> 00:51:57.900 That is actual actions of particular popes, 446 00:51:57.900 --> 00:52:01.300 actual actions of men who afterwards became saints, 447 00:52:01.300 --> 00:52:02.700 became canonized, 448 00:52:04.180 --> 00:52:09.180 that the Roman Inquisition did actually kill people. 449 00:52:10.340 --> 00:52:24.340 Acton was aware that the states killed many more people than any church ever did, however, the church had a special obligation to remain ethical and morally pure. 450 00:52:24.340 --> 00:52:37.340 And by not only committing murder but sanctioning murder, the church became, as he put it, the fiend skulking behind the crucifix. 451 00:52:37.340 --> 00:52:41.900 and this changed his whole life. 452 00:52:41.900 --> 00:52:47.660 At Vatican I, he was the great lay opponent of papal infallibility. 453 00:52:47.660 --> 00:52:49.660 Because like a lot of people, he misunderstood. 454 00:52:49.660 --> 00:52:52.060 He thought that papal infallibility was then going to be, 455 00:52:52.060 --> 00:52:55.900 it's only been used twice, I think, in the whole history of the doctrine 456 00:52:55.900 --> 00:52:58.620 and things having to do with Mary. 457 00:52:58.620 --> 00:53:02.860 But he thought that papal infallibility would mean that every terrible thing 458 00:53:02.860 --> 00:53:07.020 that the pope wanted to impose on people would now become Catholic doctrine. 459 00:53:07.020 --> 00:53:14.300 Nonetheless, he fought it and they try to make it very hard for him to remain within the church. 460 00:53:15.420 --> 00:53:25.420 Here, he simply would not go along with their plan to eventually kick him out because the church was 461 00:53:25.420 --> 00:53:33.420 the keeper of the sacraments, he thought. This was too important for him so that he didn't say as much 462 00:53:33.420 --> 00:53:39.420 Afterwards, when the infallibilists won, he didn't say as much as he might have. 463 00:53:39.420 --> 00:53:46.420 But in his political views and in political interpretation, he became more and more radical. 464 00:53:46.420 --> 00:53:53.420 He had originally been more or less of a Whig historian. 465 00:53:53.420 --> 00:53:58.420 Now he says that the Whig interpretation and the Whig way of doing it in history was not enough. 466 00:53:58.420 --> 00:54:00.420 This has to be replaced by liberalism. 467 00:54:00.420 --> 00:54:08.920 And what he said, what he meant was that the idea that liberty is founded on the slow building up of tradition is true to an extent but not enough. 468 00:54:08.920 --> 00:54:16.920 And the Americans found out the true answer, that liberty is based on natural rights that come from God. 469 00:54:16.920 --> 00:54:25.420 They appealed from the laws of England to the laws of scripture and from the king of England to the king of kings. 470 00:54:25.420 --> 00:54:30.420 and they thought that was the beginning of true radical liberalism. 471 00:54:30.420 --> 00:54:38.420 Now, Acton is most famous and I'll have to be closing now, he's most famous perhaps still 472 00:54:38.420 --> 00:54:47.420 for this part of the description I mentioned before that he was not only a historian but a moralist. 473 00:54:47.420 --> 00:54:54.420 Acton finally was given an academic position in 1895. 474 00:54:54.420 --> 00:55:00.980 seven years before he died and he gave a famous inaugural lecture on the study of 475 00:55:00.980 --> 00:55:07.300 history to the assembled people there and which begins very nicely fellow 476 00:55:07.300 --> 00:55:15.060 students and he gives advice learn as much by writing as by reading and he 477 00:55:15.060 --> 00:55:19.860 says a lot of things and mentions other things that everybody will tell you then 478 00:55:19.860 --> 00:55:23.620 he says but the weight of opinion is against me when I exhort you never to 479 00:55:23.620 --> 00:55:28.780 debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude but to try 480 00:55:28.780 --> 00:55:34.300 others by the final maxim that governs your own life and to suffer no man and 481 00:55:34.300 --> 00:55:40.120 no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict 482 00:55:40.120 --> 00:55:45.780 on wrong. Now since this time very few historians have ever agreed with this 483 00:55:45.780 --> 00:55:49.560 and you can understand I mean for instance Herbert Butterfield has a 484 00:55:49.560 --> 00:55:56.840 a famous critique called the Whig Interpretation of History and you can 485 00:55:56.840 --> 00:56:02.200 understand why people might be skeptical of this what gives historian the right 486 00:56:02.200 --> 00:56:06.560 to act as a moral judge I mean what it do they really know what more about 487 00:56:06.560 --> 00:56:09.960 morality than other people but I don't think that's the way to understand it 488 00:56:09.960 --> 00:56:18.600 and the or a way to work to use Acton's advice rather this that look at it this 489 00:56:18.600 --> 00:56:24.600 Too many historians exonerate bad people in history. 490 00:56:24.600 --> 00:56:32.600 Sure, they'll say Hitler was bad and maybe Stalin did some bad things four times in his life. 491 00:56:32.600 --> 00:56:39.600 But on the other hand, Franklin Roosevelt was justified in this, Harry Truman was justified in this, and so on. 492 00:56:39.600 --> 00:56:45.600 So what Acton is saying is don't easily exonerate any of the powerful men in history. 493 00:56:45.600 --> 00:57:15.600 History. Push and push into the evidence until you find out the whole story. And I would say that a good example of a neo-actonian historian is Robert Conquest. If you know this, this writer wrote The Great Terror and The Harvest of Sorrow. Now Conquest is an excellent historian, goes by the evidence, all the evidence there is, is very careful. And it's not a question of saying that Stalin was 494 00:57:15.600 --> 00:57:29.600 It's a question, what he does is he just pushes into the evidence, lays it forth, and you can see that what's going on in his mind is, I am not going to let them get away with it. 495 00:57:29.600 --> 00:57:34.600 They will simply not get away with it. There's too much innocent blood that flows. 496 00:57:34.600 --> 00:57:39.600 So in other words, it's not a question of haranguing people with moralistic judgments. 497 00:57:39.600 --> 00:58:07.600 What dates would you put on the beginning and the end of this classical liberal period? 498 00:58:09.600 --> 00:58:30.600 Acton died in 1902, you might say around then. Of course, Murray Rothbard's four-volume history of America up to the time of the Revolution and Constitution is a great example of libertarian history. 499 00:58:30.600 --> 00:58:54.600 And there have been other historians, a man who was very good and died a few years ago, Alfred E. Kirch, who wrote Decline of American Liberalism, he meant that in our sense, and he was also a war resistor, and a free market man. 500 00:58:54.600 --> 00:59:22.600 Did the Dr. Bell also phrase the Turkish morality in America, giving a lot of the greatness of America to his Christian heritage? 501 00:59:24.600 --> 00:59:37.600 He was afraid of individualism. He used the term individualism in a bad sense, and that term, that word, individualism, for a long while had a negative connotation. 502 00:59:37.600 --> 00:59:48.600 By individualism, he meant this concern only with your own welfare, maybe the welfare of your family, but no concern about what's happening in the wider society. 503 00:59:48.600 --> 00:59:52.000 and the implication, and he even says this sometimes, 504 00:59:52.000 --> 00:59:54.320 but you should be concerned with the wider society 505 00:59:54.320 --> 00:59:57.760 because if you're not, the centralizing power 506 00:59:57.760 --> 00:59:59.280 and the government and the bureaucrats 507 00:59:59.280 --> 01:00:02.360 are working day and night to increase their power 508 01:00:02.360 --> 01:00:04.120 and take your liberty away from you. 509 01:00:04.120 --> 01:00:06.560 So if you just pay attention to your small group 510 01:00:06.560 --> 01:00:09.440 and as he says, paltry affairs, 511 01:00:09.440 --> 01:00:11.940 and don't worry about the larger society, 512 01:00:11.940 --> 01:00:15.040 ultimately we're gonna come up with despotism. 513 01:00:15.040 --> 01:00:17.920 Now, one of the things then that leads people 514 01:00:17.920 --> 01:00:20.960 to a higher view, he thinks, is religion. 515 01:00:20.960 --> 01:00:24.960 Because it says, first of all, sure, material in America. 516 01:00:24.960 --> 01:00:28.960 Sure, material gain, but only within the law. 517 01:00:28.960 --> 01:00:30.920 Only within the rules. 518 01:00:30.920 --> 01:00:35.720 Not just grabbing anything you want. 519 01:00:35.720 --> 01:00:38.820 And on the other hand, concern for your fellow man. 520 01:00:38.820 --> 01:00:42.400 He says, in America, everything is 521 01:00:42.400 --> 01:00:44.480 done by voluntary institutions. 522 01:00:44.480 --> 01:00:46.800 He meant also institutions on the local level 523 01:00:46.800 --> 01:00:50.800 In America, they get together in the town, in the township, in the county, in the village and whatever, and they do it themselves. 524 01:00:50.800 --> 01:01:00.800 In France, he says, if you want to build a schoolhouse, a bridge, a Catholic or Protestant church, because government subsidized, 525 01:01:00.800 --> 01:01:07.800 if you want anything done, you have to apply to the Department of the Interior, the Ministry of Interior. 526 01:01:07.800 --> 01:01:14.800 In America, they get together in the town, in the township, in the county, in the village and whatever, and they do it themselves. 527 01:01:14.800 --> 01:01:25.800 Every American belongs to 40 different organizations, the library association, the volunteer fire department, his church, and on and on. 528 01:01:25.800 --> 01:01:31.800 So this kind of volunteerism, he says, is the strength of American democracy. 529 01:01:31.800 --> 01:01:43.800 In Europe, there's the danger of having democracy, but only democracy in the sense of, sure, we select who's going to be in charge of the government 530 01:01:43.800 --> 01:01:46.920 and then they'll do everything else. 531 01:01:46.920 --> 01:01:49.440 And you're right, religion plays a very important role. 532 01:01:49.440 --> 01:01:51.800 Do you think that America's history is unique 533 01:01:51.800 --> 01:01:53.840 as a history professor at St. Augustine? 534 01:01:53.840 --> 01:01:56.480 Do you think America's history is unique? 535 01:01:56.480 --> 01:01:57.960 Well, but you know, you could say that 536 01:01:57.960 --> 01:01:58.800 about a lot of countries. 537 01:01:58.800 --> 01:02:01.280 I know that, but I'm just saying, 538 01:02:01.280 --> 01:02:05.280 is there anything that you consider truly distinctive 539 01:02:05.280 --> 01:02:08.080 about it if you look at the history of nations 540 01:02:08.080 --> 01:02:09.960 and the histories of all countries? 541 01:02:09.960 --> 01:02:13.280 Is there anything really truly unique to you as a historian? 542 01:02:13.800 --> 01:02:25.800 Other than, you mean in a different sense from which every country would be unique, Germany would be different from France and from Poland and so on. 543 01:02:25.800 --> 01:02:40.800 Well, the sort of things that Tocqueville talks about, that is the freedom in the modern sense coming to fruition in America. 544 01:02:40.800 --> 01:02:49.800 And by the way, with these industrialist writers and others, well, I just mentioned Acton and the American Revolution, 545 01:02:49.800 --> 01:02:56.800 America was their ideal society. And they often said, some of these writers, 546 01:02:56.800 --> 01:03:03.800 you know, if freedom dies in America, at least now, it's going to be different from what it was in past ages, 547 01:03:03.800 --> 01:03:10.080 Because we have a homeland beyond the seas, where freedom will last. 548 01:03:10.080 --> 01:03:17.080 But, you know, this is not a total cold abstraction the way it might be understood now, 549 01:03:17.080 --> 01:03:19.560 and it certainly doesn't just have to do with the right to vote. 550 01:03:19.560 --> 01:03:21.400 What was great about America? 551 01:03:21.400 --> 01:03:28.000 They make do with one-thirtieth of the number of bureaucrats that they need in France. 552 01:03:28.000 --> 01:03:31.240 By this time, you know, America is almost the size of the population, 553 01:03:31.240 --> 01:03:35.640 Actually, larger than the French population of 25 million or so. 554 01:03:35.640 --> 01:03:41.000 They have as large a population or larger, and they have one-thirtieth of the bureaucrats. 555 01:03:44.280 --> 01:03:53.400 They have less crime than England has, and their tax burden is whatever, one-fiftieth 556 01:03:53.400 --> 01:03:57.480 of the tax burden of the English. There are no taxes. 557 01:03:57.480 --> 01:04:12.480 You know, Bakunin, the anarchist, the left anarchist, communist anarchist, came to America in the 19th century when he escaped from prison and then went across Siberia and then America back to Europe, a long way around. 558 01:04:12.480 --> 01:04:25.480 And he said, tended to do things like that. And Bakunin said, they don't need anarchism in America. They don't need me to preach anarchism here. There's no government in America. 559 01:04:25.480 --> 01:04:41.480 As Thoreau said also, there's virtually no government here, and that was because what government was necessary, as Professor Livingston emphasized, was on the local level. 560 01:04:41.480 --> 01:05:03.480 Well, that was a convergence theory in the last decades of the Soviet Union, and that's another great thing that the Sovietologists gave us. 561 01:05:03.480 --> 01:05:09.480 you know there's this industry of sovietology first of all their main 562 01:05:09.480 --> 01:05:13.800 business was to apologize for the Soviet Union professor Jerry Huff of Duke 563 01:05:13.800 --> 01:05:20.820 University said Stalin might have been responsible for 10,000 deaths he's still 564 01:05:20.820 --> 01:05:27.760 a professor there and then and then that the Soviet Union is not 565 01:05:27.760 --> 01:05:32.600 totalitarian in the way that Nazi Germany was and then that this convergence 566 01:05:32.600 --> 01:05:35.820 This theory, that it was going to become more and more liberal, we were going to become 567 01:05:35.820 --> 01:05:39.920 more and more socialist, but you know that was at a certain phase and that had to do 568 01:05:39.920 --> 01:05:44.880 with the Soviet Union and not Russia, so I wouldn't say there's much to that right now. 569 01:05:44.880 --> 01:05:46.840 Well I think that's about it, thank you very much.