Skip to content
Who's in the Video
Harvey Mansfield
Harvey C. Mansfield, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government, studies and teaches political philosophy. He has written on Edmund Burke and the nature of political parties, on Machiavelli and[…]
Go to Profile
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Harvey Mansfield would look for the things democracy overlooks.

Question: If you had a $100 billion to give away, how would you spend it?

Harvey Mansfield: If I had a hundred billion dollars to give away, I would first remember that we live in a democracy. So I would look for the things that democracy overlooks. And those are mainly, I would say, the higher things. Not so much health, which everybody is concerned with and which the government pays lots of money for. But the . . . our high culture. I would take as an example Andrew Carnegie’s making libraries available to small towns in America. That, I think, was a very well thought contribution. Something similar to that to . . . to . . . And the arts, music and of course the intellect, but not necessarily the universities, politically correct as they are.

Recorded on: 6/13/07

 

 

Up Next
Related