The serendipitously named Harvey Mansfield, besides being just about the only real man at Harvard, ( see his "Manliness") is also a very sophisticated defender of classical values. For example, in a recent review of a book on Plato's conception of courage(a virtue much in need nowadays: America is truly up against a terrifying foe) , he maliciously highlights the discomfort this manly virtue evokes in America's twittering liberal intelligentsia:
"Contemporary theorists of liberal democracy chicken out completely, for even when it is their declared business to consider liberal virtues, they do not consider this one. Whether we think of gain in the terms of economics, or of esteem in the language of psychology, the self is a kind of deity and our theorists are its theologians. They seem to be afraid of courage."
From whatever angle these theorists view courage, it troubles them. On the one hand, courage entails sacrifice of the self(as the brave soldiers in Iraq who dying to keep us safe and free):
"Our individualism prizes the self, but courage deliberately endangers the self for the sake of--what? It seems that the answer would have to be that we value something more than our selves, more than our principle of individualism, and this would be uncomfortable to confront."
This unease is compounded by another aspect of courage, alien to many intellectuals, - its manly assertiveness:
"If liberal society is to focus on the self, its main anxiety has to be the exaggeration of the self when in conflict with other selves. The enemy is testy pride nourished by courage, and the solution is toleration in the active and positive sense of "civic engagement." Liberals who deplore the trend toward "bowling alone" never think of overcoming the lack with martial virtue, such as courage seems to be."
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