"Harvey Mansfield has always taken the long view. As he sees it, the way to approach
an American topic is to ask first what the Founding Fathers said about it, then
see what Tocqueville added. In the same way, his approach to any European issue
starts out with a word from Plato and Aristotle, then moves along through Augustine
and Aquinas to the opinions of Machiavelli and Edmund Burke. In this sense
he’s just like the Catholic Church, which has always specialized in taking the long
view, while trying to avoid being paralyzed by the weight of tradition. Taking the
long view means being aware of oneself as part of an extended historical process,
of being indebted to the insights of earlier generations, without being blind to those
generations’ limitations. It usually guards against provincialism of time and place
steers us away from utopianism, while helping us to see sensible ways forward."(...
