Bøker av Greg Weiner

The virtue of prudence suffuses the writings of Edmund Burke and Abraham Lincoln, yet the demands of statecraft compelled both to take daring positions against long odds: Burke against the seemingly inexorable march of the French Revolution, Lincoln against disunion at a moment when the Northern situation appeared untenable. Placing their statesmanship and writings in relief helps to illuminate prudence in its full dimensions: inflected with caution but not confined to it, bound to circumstance, and finding expression in the particular but grounded in the absolute. This comparative study of two thinkers and statesmen who described themselves as "Old Whigs" argues for a recovery of prudence as the political virtue par excellence by viewing it through the eyes, words, and deeds of two of its foremost exemplars. Both statesmen who were deeply informed by the life of the mind, Burke and Lincoln illustrate prudence in its universal but also contrasting dimensions. Burke emphasized the primacy of feeling, Lincoln the axioms of logic. Burke saw British prudence emanating from the mists of ancient history; for Lincoln, America's soul lay in a discrete moment of founding in 1776. Yet both were moved by a respect for the mysterious and customary. Each maintained the virtue of compromise while adhering to immovable commitments. At a time when American politics, and American conservatism in particular, teems with a desire for boldness but also an innate resistance to schemes of social or political transformation, this book answers with a fuller and richer account of prudence as it emerges in the thought and action of two of the greatest statesmen and thinkers of modern times.

In the wake of national crises and sharp shifts in the electorate, new members of Congress march off to Washington full of intense idealism and the desire for instant changebut often lacking in any sense of proportion or patience. This drive for instant political gratification concerned one of the key Founders, James Madison, who accepted the inevitability of majority rule but worried that an inflamed majority might not rule reasonably.Greg Weiner challenges longstanding suppositions that Madison harbored misgivings about majority rule, arguing instead that he viewed constitutional institutions as delaying mechanisms to postpone decisions until after public passions had cooled and reason took hold. In effect, Madison believed that one of the Constitutions primary functions is to act as a metronome, regulating the tempo of American politics.Weiner calls this implicit doctrine temporal republicanism to emphasize both its compatibility with and its contrast to other interpretations of the Founders thought. Like civic republicanism, the temporal variety embodies a set of valuespublic-spiritedness, respect for the rights of othersbroader than the technical device of majority rule. Exploring this fundamental idea of time-seasoned majority rule across the entire range of Madisons long career, Weiner shows that it did not substantially change over the course of his life. He presents Madisons understanding of internal constitutional checks and his famous extended republic argument as different and complementary mechanisms for improving majority rule by slowing it down, not blocking it. And he reveals that the changes we see in Madisons views of majority rule arise largely from his evolving beliefs about who, exactly, was behaving impulsivelywhether abusive majorities in the 1780s, the Adams regime in the 1790s, the nullifiers in the 1820s. Yet there is no evidence that Madisons underlying beliefs about either majority rule or the distorting and transient nature of passions ever swayed.If patience was a fact of life in Madisons daya time when communication and travel were slowit surely is much harder to cultivate in the age of the Internet, 24-hour news, and politics based on instant gratification. While many of todays politicians seem to wed supreme impatience with an avowed devotion to original constitutional principles, Madisons Metronome suggests that one of our nations great luminaries would likely view that marriage with caution.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) may be best known as a statesman. He served in the administrations of presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford; was ambassador to India and the United Nations; and represented New York in the U.S. Senate for four terms. But he was also an intellectual of the first order, whose books and papers on topics ranging from welfare policy and ethnicity in American society to international law stirred debate and steered policy. Moynihan was, journalist Michael Barone remarked, "e;the nation's best thinker among politicians since Lincoln and its best politician among thinkers since Jefferson."e; He was, Greg Weiner argues, America's answer to the 18th-century Anglo-Irish scholar-statesman Edmund Burke. Both stood at the intersection of thought and action, denouncing tyranny, defending the family, championing reform. Yet while Burke is typically claimed by conservatives, Weiner calls Moynihan a "e;Burkean liberal"e; who respected both the indispensability of government and the complexity of society. And a reclamation of Moynihan's Burkean liberalism, Weiner suggests, could do wonders for the polarized politics of our day. In its incisive analysis of Moynihan's political thought, American Burke lays out the terms for such a recovery. The book traces Moynihan's development through the broad sweep of his writings and career. "e;The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society,"e; Moynihan once wrote. "e;The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself."e; In his ability to embrace both of these truths, this "e;American Burke"e; makes it bracingly clear that a wise political thinker can also be an effective political actor, and that commitments to both liberal and conservative values can coexist peaceably and productively. Weiner's work is not only a thorough and thoroughly engaging intellectual exploration of one of the most important politicians of the twentieth century; it is also a timely prescription for the healing of our broken system.