And i am glad i didnt have to answer them and thank you to chris and kevin for doing that. We will reconvene in 15 minutes for a panel on civic virtue. Thank you for being here. I am a fellow here at the Stockdale Center and its a pleasure to be with peter to discuss virtue. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of numerous books and he is director of constitutional studies at the American Enterprise institute and the author of numerous books. We will start i think with peter. The thank you. It is great to be here with my panelists and thanks to ed and the Naval Academy for this opportunity. I thought it might be useful to do something unusual, for me at east to approach the panels topic of civil virtue and its decline and its reinvigoration from a somewhat autobiographical perspective. Long ago and far away when i went to college, the cutting edge topic is something we called engraved tones and the critique of liberalism. We have leading authors and books and we read a book called knowledge and politics and a kind of mad genius and i underline both words and we read the writings of Charles Taylor and we read the writings of Alastair Mcintyre and we were influenced by a book called after virtue and maybe some of you who studied political theory are familiar with this book. The core argument of the book is of great interest to those of us who are interested on the critique of liberalism where it meant the modern tradition of freedom. His core argument will be familiar to many of you especially those of you who follow debates about post liberalism. The argument 40 years ago was we have lost the ability to speak coherently about the virtues and the excellence of mind and character. We have even forgotten the contemporary men and women and we have forgotten that the virtues are central to the moral life. The culprit is liberalism and the modern tradition of freedom. According to mcintyre, Frederick Nietzsche exposed this modern tradition of freedom and he showed that it inevitably deteriorates into nihilism. But argued mcintyre somehow his criticisms didnt reach the thinking of premodern figures and most notably aristotle and that tradition. Therefore argued mcintyre our choice was stark. Frederick nietzsche and nihilism or this in the futures futures virtues. Most choose aristotle and in practice that meant this aristotle tradition which is the synthesis of aristotle and christianity. Again that outline of the history of political philosophy should sound familiar especially to those of you following contemporary debates and the views of the post liberals. Now. I want to assert and i can only be brief that mcintyres analysis was wrong and all major respects. I do say that as somebody who great the admirers Alastair Mcintyre whom i admire more than almost any other thinker but nonetheless i believe he was wrong about Frederick Nietzsche, aristotle and the modern liberal tradition. Here i can mostly only assert these claims and sketch what i think is a better view. I do hope that this will shed some light on our question, civic virtue in a liberal or rights protecting democracy. And what i say about mcintyre i think applies to the post liberal critique of liberalism. First he misrepresents the critique of philosophy. Nietzsche didnt show the specifically modern philosophy was an expression of will. And he did not believe himself to have shown that. Nietzsche believed he had accomplished something much more radical. He believed to have established that all great philosophy, plato and aristotle no less played more comfortably and was reducible to the moral intention of the philosophers themselves, and all rationalism beginning with plato down to the moment nietzsche was thinking in the middle of the 19th century, all of it culminated in nihilism. So contrary to mcintyre, nietzsches critique embraced classical and medieval philosophy. Second contrary to mcintyre, aristotelian Political Science doesnt dictate the repudiation of liberal democracy, a regime based on the premise that human beings are by nature free and equal. The aristotelian Political Science does not demand its replacement with a regime devoted to the promotion of virtue. Rather, aristotelian medical science sets forth an alternative way of understanding liberal democracy. An alternative, however, that takes the regime as it is based on the premise of natural freedom and equality devoted to protecting rights and focuses on the aristotelian Political Science, that is, focuses on the defining principles of liberal democracy. It looks for ways to preserve and improve liberal democracy. In the politics of aristotle, he describes best regime devoted to promoting virtue. He does not, however, to put it we count on its realization. More or less, he advises that if you are extremely unlikely, not just at this moment in the 21st century but in ancient greece as well, you are extremely unlikely to live in a regime devoted to the promotion of virtue. Aristotle adds you are extremely unlikely to find yourselves in a circumstance that allows you to build the best regime. The best we can reasonably hope for is an imperfect regime. Aristotle calls it quality. Its a regime in which some people, in the minority, are wealthy and the majority tends to be less wealthy. And they are balanced by a large middle class. Each class contributes distinctive virtues and vices to this mixed regime. In short, particularly if you live in a regime that recognizes the democratic freedom and equality, aristotelian Political Science recommends measures of accommodation, balance, and calibration to prevent your regime from deteriorating into something much worse. So much for nietzsche and aristotelian Political Science. Mcintyres third big error. He wrongly argues that liberalism, better to call it the modern tradition of freedom, repudiates or renders incoherent the moral virtues. So a few decades now inspired by mcintyre, i set out to write a book that more or less vindicated that thesis, that the liberal tradition repudiates or renders incoherent and account of moral virtue. Before i began writing it in earnest, i undertook to do Due Diligence so i resolved to reread some major figures in this modern tradition of freedom to make sure there were no stray mentions of virtue here and there. And that i could establish that the liberal tradition was not only repudiated the virtues, but it was intrinsically incapable of giving an account. I started with hobbs, who seemed to me the easiest case, maybe not a liberal but a proto liberal and he does talk about inalienable rights and does say governments job is to protect them. But he was known as the monster of mounds barry and he had a political theory based on a crude mechanistic understanding of nature and a hedonistic view of humanity. So of course he had no room for virtue. And then i began rereading leviathan. Right there in the introduction i thought maybe i had a misbegotten copy of it but right there in the introduction on the first page hobbs said all serious study of politics is based on the socratic maxim, know thyself. And that to engage in Political Science, one had to study ones own passions and compare those passions to the passions of others and reason from the passions. This didnt sound mechanic is mechanistic. It sound connected to why i understood to be a Political Science that appreciated the virtues and the qualities in the excellence of mind and character. So i was only slightly thrown off. And then i got to the end of chapter 15 of leviathan. It culminates through three crucial chapters in which hobbs discusses the state of nature and lays out 19 laws of nature that enable us to leave the state of nature and create political society. Its the 19 laws of nature. And at the end of chapter 15, he writes and says, the ways or means to peace are justice, gratitude, modesty, equity, mercy, and the rest of the laws of nature, which are good. That is to say moral virtues. And, yes, the science of virtue and vices moral philosophy. I set out to write a book that said this tradition knows nothing of the virtues following mcintyre and can make sense of them. Hobbs says at the end of chapter 15 that actually the laws of nature are not really laws and conclusions are theorems. More than that, they name qualities of mind and character. And with each additional thinker, i studied. I had a similar experience. I will only mention lock here. Muchmaligned taken as a kind of demonic figure by the post liberals, the turning point responsible for establishing a philosophy and obsessively focused on individual freedom but an individual freedom that really means radical emancipation from all external causes. Locke is really a postmodern. But there i am rereading john locke and i come to chapter 6 and in the middle of an account of the second treatise, a book is the origins, the extent and the aims of political power and a chapter on education in the family. And parents essential role in the preparing their children and daughters as well as funds for lives of freedom by disciplining them and teaching them the virtues. And i am then guided on a book called some thoughts concerning education. And in that book, john locke, typically presented once again as obsessed radically with freedom, provides a manual for parents on how to educate their children. What is at the heart of that kind of education . The moral virtues to enjoy freedom and maintain free institutions argues locke, children need to be raised and disciplined by their parents in a way do include a whole range of qualities of mind and character and he insisted the moral virtues were essential to a society based on freedom. And one could Say Something simpler about others in the modern tradition of freedom. To conclude, what about today . We certainly do suffer from a dearth of civic virtue and one could identified a multiplicity of causes and it could be modernity and the unraveling of family, the decline of community. But does liberal democracy itself undermined the virtues necessary to its survival as the post liberals are so found of fond of saying . Answer, yes, of course it does. But i add this important qualification. Liberal democracy undermines the virtue in which it depends by taking its principal, the principle of individual freedom, to an extreme. But the post liberals who are so fond of making this argument in the name of aristotle forget his teaching, which is also the teaching of plato. All regimes, not just liberal democracy, but all of them, undermine the virtues necessary to their survival by taking their leading principles to an extreme and this is a problem of all regimes. The proper response therefore isnt to denounce and overthrow liberal democracy especially given its great blessings with the visual freedom and equality under law, prosperity and toleration. Instead, the proper response is to revise reforms to counteract the diseases to which liberal democracies are prone. I intend the echo to the conclusion of federalist number 10. Today, what are the key virtues we should be concerned about . s it is a long topic. For starters, they depend on civility, toleration, sympathetic imagination. Prudence, moderation, courage. These are both civic virtues. The virtues connected to said decision chip and moral virtues connected to the excellence of human beings. How should liberal democracies cultivate the virtues they need . In liberal democracies, we dont rely primarily on government for the cultivation of virtues but dont make the mistake that, therefore, they are unimportant. We rely on civil society, especially the family. But the most important factor, i believe, most under our control today is education, the educational system. We need to revive a liberal education. That is an education for freedom in such an education would focus on, after literacy, reading, writing and arithmetic, the principles of american Constitutional Government and the history of america. It would focus on larger western civilizations, understanding the treasures of western civilization and preserving them. Students would also learn about other civilizations and the entire education from youth through Higher Education would ensure that students hear the other side of the argument. Because an education in which you hear the other side of the argument is one that promotes the virtues that we so desperately need. Happy to elaborate on these and other themes during the discussion. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you very much. I am going to pick up on some of the themes that peter brought out. Its a great honor to be here on a panel with him in here speaking to all of you on a crucial set of questions. When i sat down to think about what to say here, i look at the agenda and the name of the panel is just virtue. That is nice. But i needed more. I sent a note and asked what is the question we are answering here . And he wrote back to me and said the question is, how should liberal democracies cultivate the civic virtues they need . That is actually a very rich question, which i really like a lot. I will try to answer it by thinking about the question a little bit. It is a question that assumes to begin with several important premises that i think are correct. But they are worth stating explicitly. The first is a liberal democracy or a democratic republic requires certain particular virtues. I think that is true of any society. The virtues that every society requires are related to the kind of society that it is or that it wants to be. So that our society, which is a liberal democratic republic, requires certain republican and democratic virtues. And peter got into some of that and i think its a long and contested question, but maybe we can agree that as a liberal democracy, we do require some virtues like toleration, forbearance, patience, and humility. As a republic we require virtues like responsibility encourage and honesty and magnanimity and faith. Republican and liberal virtues are compatible up to a point but there is tension between them. I think those are the kind of virtues that we need to instill and cultivate to sustain our societys strengths. The second premise be on the fact that our Society Needs these kinds of virtues is that society cultivates or tends to produce certain kinds of virtues and i think that is plainly true. The way in which we live tends to shape the kind of people we are. Societies by their practices and habits and assumptions and forms and historical self understandings tend to shape particular sorts of people. So our Society Needs a certain kind of person and our society shapes that person. The question is how can those two be aligned . How can we cultivate the kind of people that we also need in order to sustain the strengths of our society . I think we have to see that this wont happen on its own by inertia, default. We have to do it explicitly and intentionally. Maybe that is especially true in a liberal democracy. I think there is no avoiding the fact that left to ourselves, we citizens of a democratic republic will often tend to ignore our obligations to one another and to a larger society. We remember our rights and duties. We remember what we are owed but not what we owe. We incline to an excessive individualism and forget the free and responsible individual is less a natural fact than a social achievement. That we have to work to sustain. I think that is true in any society. It will tend to become an excessive form of what it is fundamentally. And it will turn its virtues and vices. But in some ways because we are free, this is especially true of our kind of society. It is true we will tend to neglect the republican virtues, those essential to government by the people in which we all have to play a civic role and in which we all have to take joint responsibility. We tend to neglect the ways by which becomes possible for the citizens of a free society to understand themselves as engaged in some common effort on behalf of the common good. So to speak of our country in the first person plural as we the people as we who see certain truths to be self evident. The freedom and the polity and prosperity and sheer manic energy of a liberal society tends to make us forgetful of these virtues, even though these are all dependent on these virtues. Free societies dont coerce people to do the right thing. They can only really succeed if people generally choose to do the right thing. If what we want to do and what we ought to do or are they aligned. That requires serious attention to the formation of our desires and teaching us what you want. That kind of attention is more essential in a free society than that that isnt free. Especially in one that wants to govern itself, in a liberal democracy that is a republic. As James Madison puts it, republican government presupposes the existence of these kinds of virtues in a higher degree than any other form. And yet the dominant ethos of liberal democratic life can sometimes undermine that kind of attention to the formation of our desires and tell us whatever we want is good and it can turn our attention away from precisely the cultivation of virtues. I think theres not a way around that fact of liberal life. But that reality is not in itself an argument against liberal democracy. It cant deny the extraordinary moral achievement that is a society of free People Living together as fellow citizens despite their differences or the extraordinary balance of dynamism and prosperity and moral purpose and commitment to Human Dignity that our particular liberal democracy has achieved. The fact that the liberal ethos can undermine the preconditions of our own society isnt an argument against that society but rather an argument for working consciously and conscientiously to cultivate the ethos of our society. To push against some of the vicious tendencies of liberal democratic life and cultivate its more virtuous potentials. Can we do that . Of course we can do that. Look around you. We can do that and we do it all the time. It is too easy when we look at our country now to see the ways it is feeling the way our culture is corroding and our trust declining. It is true that all of those things are happening and they are not made up. It is essential to first see what our country is doing well so we can see how it may address realistically the many things it does poorly. Our country does a lot of this w