Statesman as Thinker

InThe StatesmanasThinker, Daniel J. Mahoney provides thoughtful and elegant portraits of statesmen who struggled topreservefreedomduringtimes of crisis: Cicero usingall the powers of rhetoric to preserve republican liberty in Rome against Caesars encroaching autocracy; Burke defending ordered libertyagainstJacobintyranny in revolutionary France; Tocquevilledefending liberty and human dignity against blind reaction, democratic impatience, and revolutionary fanaticism; Lincolnpreserving the American republic and puttingan end to chattel slavery; Churchill defending liberty and law and opposing Nazi and Communist despotism; de Gaulle defending the honor of Franceduring World War II; and Havel fighting Communism before 1989 and then leading the Czech Republic with dignity and grace.Mahoney makes sense of the mixture of magnanimity and moderation that defines the statesman as thinker at his or her best. That admirable mixture of greatness, courage, and moderation owes much to classical and Christian wisdom and to the nobledesire to protect the inheritance of civilization against rapacious and destructive despotic regimes and ideologies.