HERE I WILL SHOW THE STRANGENESS OF ALEXIS DE Tocqueville's account of the doctrine of interest rightly understood. He affirms that doctrine, but not for the sake of interest. He wishes to preserve the greatness and the misery of the Americans’ very intense self-consciousness, and to keep open the possibility of spiritual responses to that experience.

Federalist, No. 10, argues that human beings demand that their opinions concerning their distinctive excellence be recognized as true. This recognition, however, cannot be political. The political realm cannot do justice to the “angel” in man, and the futile attempts to secure such political recognition lead to tyranny. Where does the recognition of one's own humanity occur? The Federalist does not say. Yet it must occur somewhere for political freedom to be regarded as a human good. It is essential for the perpetuation of human freedom that the account of human nature given in The Federalist, which is comprehensive enough to secure political freedom, be supplemented by an account of the human being's transpolitical dimension. Madison provides such an account in “On Property” and in the Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments. These two sources show that political freedom is for the performance of religious duty, which is discoverable by human beings through their conscientious use of reason and should, therefore, be understood to complete American constitutional theory.

A World Beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State. By Pierre Manent. Translated by Marc LePain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. $35.00.

Has the world outgrown politics? The conviction that it has, according to the French political philosopher Pierre Manent, is what animates sophisticated European thought today. The self-understandings of the creature, the parent, and, above all, the citizen have increasingly been displaced by that of the individual. And what an individual is is determined by the individual, and whatever he or she decides for him- or herself is dignified and deserves our respect. The idea of dignity is being liberated from any particular human content, from any particular conception of human goodness or morality. That means, among other things, that the idea of human rights has been liberated from any conception of civic or national obligation. So the idea of compulsory national military service is an affront to the individual's dignity, and in the name of human dignity the Europeans increasingly seem even to believe that they can unilaterally become pro-choice on war.

This very remarkable and most timely book differs from others on Solzhenitsyn by highlighting his “critique of ideology” and his “recovery of the ‘natural world’” (p. 3). Ideology, for Solzhenitsyn, is the name for the lie characteristic of the twentieth century: Human beings, through historical transformation, can end suffering and so make virtue or the distinction between good and evil superfluous. The state and God can wither away because we will no longer be political and spiritual beings. We know that ideology could not change human nature or what Daniel Mahoney calls “the ontological structure of the world,” but it could magnify human evil to genuinely monstrous dimensions. Solzhenitsyn's contention that communist ideology was responsible for the murder of tens of millions has become much less controversial in recent years. The Black Book of Communism, Mahoney shows, provides abundant evidence for what Solzhenitsyn already knew.

Political scientists, whatever skeptical pretensions they have in theory, cannot help but believe that political knowledge is good for human beings. This belief is based on another: well-informed citizens are better citizens. Scientific enlightenment makes citizens better. Political scientists cannot help but be concerned with the education of citizens.

Consider the early survey research that seemed to show American citizens are mostly ignorant and apathetic. Its purpose was not to undermine responsible citizenship by showing that such citizenship is not possible. Instead, its purpose was to make it possible, perhaps for the first time. For some, it signaled the need for a project of citizen education to eliminate ignorance and apathy. For others, the proper conclusion was that democratic normative theory must be reformulated to make the idealism of citizens responsible and effective by locating it within the boundaries of the possible. Either way, it was clear that the significance of the research findings were not viewed as purely or even primarily theoretical. They could and were used to improve political practice, to improve the American regime in accordance with its citizens’ values.

The serious study of the best examples of American political rhetoric can be used as the foundation for the introductory course in American government. The laws of most of our states understand the purpose of political education to be the creation of good citizens. Even at the college level, it makes sense to justify political education in terms of citizenship rather than with the benefits associated with a diffuse introduction to the technical discipline of political science.

Citizenship, after all, is a quality shared by almost all human beings in our democratic regime, while only a very few of us ever will specialize in political science. The most cogent way of justifying the general requirement of study of a subject is by showing its universal utility, especially in a democracy, where utility is often the measure of worth.