Helena Rosenblatt

And they designed an educational system, a liberal arts education that was supposed to cultivate these virtues, this liberality in elite boys.

But there was a lot expected of the elite as well.

So I don't think it was just mere hypocrisy.

I'm writing a book right now about Madame de Stael, a great early liberal and a woman, a powerhouse, such a fascinating woman.

Some say that it was in her salon, in her drawing room, that liberalism was ignited.

Our name appears as a very important sort of power broker and intellectual in the early 19th century and then gets dropped out.

She is endlessly frustrated by where are the good men?

We need some good men, not only to pursue the policies that we need, but to serve as examples.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

And the fact that they're elitists, liberals throughout their history have tended to be elitist, but they demanded a lot.

There were a lot of obligations and they took that extremely seriously.

There's a section in my book where I talk about Lincoln.

And they thought, you know, at that point, they thought maybe a liberal democracy would fail.

There was no real example of it lasting.

You know, would the American example of this exceptional example actually work?

And Lincoln showed that it could.

And he did it in this beautiful way that kind of made people optimistic about liberal democracy.

He was not a demagogue.

He did not talk down to people.

He raised them up.