Mansfield v. Mansfield

By Scott Horton

No, it’s not a divorce action. Earlier this week, Harvard Neocon political theorist Harvey Mansfield wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he advised us that the Rule of Law was, oh, so pre-9/11. He wrote at some length at the Machiavellian concept of uno solo,

The best source of energy turns out to be the same as the best source of reason–one man. One man, or, to use Machiavelli’s expression, uno solo, will be the greatest source of energy if he regards it as necessary to maintaining his own rule. Such a person will have the greatest incentive to be watchful, and to be both cruel and merciful in correct contrast and proportion. We are talking about Machiavelli’s prince, the man whom in apparently unguarded moments he called a tyrant.

In other words, democracy and the Rule of Law are much overrated. Wouldn’t we be so much better off under the tyrannical rule of one man – provided of course, it’s the right man? Mansfield gives us a very authentic Machiavelli, followed by a very bogus effort to infuse Alexander Hamilton with a Machiavellian soul. No. Hamilton was an Old Whig. He felt a robust executive was appropriate, but he was a committed believer in the notion that no man could be above the law, and that the executive’s use of power needed to be carefully checked.

And today the other Mansfield weighs in: Michael Mansfield, QC, writing in the Independent, picks up the banner of the American Revolution and carries it forward.

An underrecognised English political philosopher said, in 1776, in his work entitled Common Sense: “In America the Law is King. For, as in absolute Governments, the king is law, so in free countries, the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.” Thus spake Thomas Paine, echoing the words of John Locke in 1690.

Harvey’s right about one thing. America under George Bush looks more like the world of the Italian city states in which Machiavelli flourished every day: mercenaries around every corner, political assassins behind every column, Savonarolas screeching from the pulpits, and a might-makes-right attitude towards political discourse. And against this, I’ll take the vision of the Founding Fathers any day.