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>> As Carlyle, I can tell you I
was a friend of Emerson's, and
Emerson came to England and
visited with me and we had many
conversations in person then and
through mail.
We read each other's works, and
we had some similarities.
But, as you'll see, though we
were friends and intellectual
notables without question, we
were not by any means similar
fundamentally.
I indeed was Scottish and came
from a relatively humble
background, but very early on
was very determined to become a
writer and through my writings
an actor to transform Britain in
my time, in the 19th century,
and indeed to transform the west
overall.
My ambitions were large, and in
many ways those ambitions were
to be realized.
This is Jane Carlyle.
Jane Carlyle was my wife.
And Jane Carlyle was very
influential also.
She fundamentally ran an ongoing
salon, an intellectual salon in
which people came and talked and
debated.
I love to debate.
I love to argue.
I love to stake out
controversial positions, and I
welcomed all the controversy
that swarmed around.
One thing you need to understand
from the beginning is I'm not
nice.
I'm not like Emerson.
I'm not like a stereotypical
American.
I'm not nice by personality, but
I'm also not nice because the
situation is too severe for us
to spend a lot of time being
nice.
Not that I'm a celebrant of
meanness, but we have serious
things to address.
And so I'm prepared to do what's
necessary, and Jane, she made it
possible.
People often speculated about
Jane and myself, and they said
such things as, well, what kind
of a marriage was it and so on.
Well, obviously I know and I'm
not going to share that with
you.
But we had our disputes, but we
were also an intellectual team.
Now, my desire to argue, to
participate with other
intellectuals, which I did as
you'll see, but that was a
companion to my desire to write.
And I could only write under the
very special circumstances of
absolute silence, and I lived in
London.
It was very hard.
Finally, I had a special room
built on the top of my house
which had all the latest, for my
time, insulation installed.
It failed, of course.
It was very sad for me.
Any noise drove me nuts, quite
frankly.
But no one questions that I had
an enormous intellectual output.
And let me turn to talk a little
bit about that and about my
model about how then should we
live.
The answer I gave, of course,
about how then should we live is
that we desperately need heroes
and heroism and its necessary
companion, hero worship.
Now, this may seem strange, but
you have to understand the
situation as I perceive it in my
time and place, but please make
no mistake the necessity for
human beings in all times and
places.
For the ordering dynamic of
heroes and hero worship is
permanent.
But let me step back and talk a
little bit about why we are in
crisis in 19th century Britain,
and, therefore, why we've got to
do something to restore the kind
of order that heroes and hero
worship bring.
The first dimension of the
crisis is this: we as a people
are lost.
We are adrift.
We do not know what we believe.
We do not know if we believe.
In your terms, it might be put
this way: we are existential
crisis in Britain, in the west.
We have lost our anchor.
And the anchor, of course, is
commitment to Christian faith.
Oh, yes, there are people who
continue to have that faith in
my time, but it clearly is on
the wane.
And, of course, were I to be in
your time in Britain, I would
say I told you so.
So there's a crisis of faith and
people who are increasingly, and
going to be increasingly, lost.
And people do not fundamentally
like this.
They are not fundamentally happy
this way.
But that's not my main concern.
I'm not concerned with whether
people are happy or not happy.
I'm concerned with the truth.
And so I must affirm what I call
the everlasting no.
No, we can't go on with a
religion that is dead or dying
because we have to understand
that it simply doesn't comport
with truth anymore.
And this is a tremendous crisis,
especially as perception of this
comes.
And here, of course, you can see
my similarity with Emerson
making a similar analysis in a
similar time.
My first book, Sartor Resartus,
was devoted to this reality of
facing the fact that we are
adrift and going to be
increasingly so.
We have no mooring in values and
ultimate beliefs.
The everlasting no has to be
addressed.
We can't pretend.
And so as I put it, we have to
ask whether old clothes will
work for us.
Or whether if we're honest we
realize that old clothes have to
be discarded.
And of course they have to be
discarded.
But that doesn't mean we have to
be lost because the universe
does have truth.
Absolutely it has truth, as my
friend Emerson understood, but
that truth cannot be understood
in some set of old religious
institutions and beliefs.
There is a God.
There is the divine.
There is an absolute.
And we must be committed to
understanding it and to living
according to it.
In other words, we must commit
ourselves to the everlasting
yay, the everlasting yes to
truth that's out there.
Like Emerson, I'm not at all.
We're in a permanent existential
crisis there is no truth or we
cannot find it.
Not at all.
It's there.
But we must bravely break
through, throw away the old
clothes, and put on what I call
new clothes.
The clothes of truth as best
we're able to discern it.
But one thing I want you to
understand in the everlasting
yay, the everlasting yes, the
affirmation is that I'm not like
Emerson.
Yes, Emerson and I agree that
there is an overarching single
truth.
But so much of Emerson's
approach is going inside just to
find your portion of the truth.
I want to emphasize much more an
awareness of the universal truth
and the universal truths.
So the first aspect of the
crisis is the old clothes and
the need to put on as best we
can, and it's not going to be
easy because there's nobody
there to hold our hand.
Oh, but you see there might be.
That person might be called a
hero.
So the first thing I addressed
was a spiritual crisis, a crisis
of meaning and morality.
And here I'm not like Emerson.
I can't announce the same thing
and say, well, everything's
okay, just get out there into
nature, listen to your heart,
whistle.
Do you understand?
Emerson is a whistler.
[LAUGHTER]
He's happy whistling.
I'm not.
There's no whistling here.
We're in crisis.
Something has to be done.
So that's issue one.
But that's not all because we
don't just dwell at some
spiritual level or some level of
whether there's truth in the
universe.
Important as that is, we have to
face the fact that in the
concrete world we have a second
enormous crisis, and that crisis
is what the Industrial
Revolution has brought to
Britain and is bringing to the
west and, as you know, soon
enough was brought to the United
States.
The Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution, the
arrival of capitalism has
brought enormous disorder to
society.
It's torn it apart.
It's broken up all sorts of
established human relationships.
It's made enormous number of
people suffer horribly in
terrible industrial conditions
of long hours, low pay, poor
housing, terrible health
conditions.
I can go on and on, but it's a
disaster.
And it is only spreading.
And so we must face this.
We can't just say, well, it's
happening or it's fate.
No, we must face that as
disorder has arrived at the
spiritual level, so it has
arrived at the economic and
social level in a big way.
And as responsible moral people,
we must address this, we must
acknowledge it first and then
address it because it's a
terrible costly phenomenon in
human terms.
People are suffering but they
also are adrift because this
world breaks those established
relations.
It's frightening, and something
must be done.
That's crisis number two.
Undoubted you get the picture
that I'm pretty upset.
That's not the end.
My friends, there's yet a third
tremendous crisis that is
overwhelming us, and that of
course is the crisis of
governance, of government.
We are also lost and drifting in
the political realm.
No doubt of it.
It's a frightening thing.
And I want to make sure you
understand that so much of our
rule in fact in our time is by
the capitalists.
There's no question about it.
We have a weak state.
Do you understand?
A state that doesn't do much.
So who's governing people's
lives?
The answer is the capitalists
are.
And so this is destroying lives.
So all this talk about how we
want laissez-faire and a weak
government, like my good friend
John Stuart Mill was always
promoting, liberal policies it
was called, totally the wrong
way to go.
It leaves individuals naked and
vulnerable and adrift and ruled
by the capitalist elite.
But, of course, we have another,
in Britain, we have another
element that is trying to govern
also, though slowly but surely
it's losing its grip.
And that element, of course, is
the inherited rule of the
aristocracy of the entitled.
They're still there.
And I'm not going to get into a
discussion about whether there
was anything to be said for them
in the past because, you
understand, they're old clothes,
right?
Time has marched on, and
anything they do now is just
interfering.
Now, I'm not going to run around
and say, well, Queen Victoria
ought to abdicate.
But what I am saying is that we
can't depend upon the nobility
anymore to do anything, if we
ever could, but they're old
clothes, I'm not interested.
And believe me, these people
were rarely at my salon.
Now, unbelievably, besides the
reality of capitalist rule and
the lingering force of
aristocracy, we have some people
who think that the answer is
some kind of democratic
government.
Rule by the people.
And slowly but surely in my time
suffrage was extended in
Britain.
Of course, it was in the
United States that it was
carried to extremes, as far as I
was concerned.
But for heaven sakes, people are
lost.
The social order is in chaos.
I have no confidence in somehow
the people or that somehow they
can break through the drift and
disorder of our time to find
their Emersonian heart and all
will work out.
That's romanticism.
And you do understand that
fundamentally, as I say, Emerson
is a romantic.
A whistler.
Let's look at real people as
they are in my time, certainly.
So I'm sorry but we have a
political breakdown and it's
very serious.
We have adrift politically.
We have one socially and
economically, and we have
spiritually.
We are in crisis.
And it was the presentation of
this crisis, the calling
attention to this crisis,
emphasizing one aspect of it,
one time or another, another and
another time or another but over
and over again this threefold
crisis is crippling us.
And, quite frankly, I see myself
as a prophet of the crisis.
But remember, essential to my
prophecy is the idea that we
cannot look back.
We have to get rid of the old
clothes.
Do you understand now why I
wrote such a historic study of
the French Revolution?
The French Revolution scared me,
of course, as I looked back on
it.
But I also saw its power, its
passion, and its warning if we
do not get rid of the old
clothes by some mechanism other
than violence, then our old
clothes will go down by
violence.
So we must be very, very alert.
Now, this is our challenge.
Okay?
This is our situation.
We can't smile about it.
We can't think things will be
all right.
We can't come up with
semi-bizarre doctrines like the
universe provides compensation
for everything and so on.
This is whistling doctrine.
You understand that, don't you?
Everything will be just fine.
It will all work out.
No it won't.
And it isn't.
It's a crisis, okay?
So this is the situation.
Does anyone have any questions
about the situation?
Okay.
>> You seem to speak a lot about
the evils of capitalism, and I
was just wondering, Karl Marx is
also contemporary of yours,
right?
>> Mm-hmm.
>> Did you have a relationship
with him, and, if so, were you
influenced by his ideas?
>> Well, let me address you
second point first.
You have greatly underestimated
my ego, my friend.
[LAUGHTER]
Do you understand?
But the answer to your question
is no.
And the same question was raised
regarding my friend Emerson.
Marx, if I may step out of
character for a moment, was much
more influential by the late
19th century.
So he really, while he was,
after 1848, in Britain, he was a
nobody at this time.
But there's a lot that I...
>> Did you influence him then?
>> No.
No.
But there was a lot that I said
that Marx would agree with.
Certainly in the analysis of the
situation.
Keep in mind that for Marx there
is truth.
Not your truth but the truth.
Keep in mind that capitalism is
bad, right?
Keep in mind that the political
order was in chaos and needed to
be drastically changed.
So you can see that, yeah,
you're right, there was a lot in
common.
One major difference that comes
right to mind, I don't want to
go on too much with this, but
Marx's notion of truth is
historical and mine is divine,
and there's a major difference
there to say the least.
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> No.
I mean, I'm not a shy person as
Carlyle.
We don't have time for shyness.
I make no apologies for it.
Actually, my views were shared
by a lot of people in my time,
and one of the most famous, of
course, is Charles Dickens, my
friend.
Well, that's the situation, but
the question is, what are we
going to do about it?
All that I've said so far can be
described as the everlasting
nay.
But clearly it's time to move on
to the everlasting yay.
What can we do about this
threefold interactive crisis?
To put it another way, how then
shall we live?
And, of course, famously, my
answer was we need to find
heroes and hero worship.
Such people will bring us the
government of God.
Not 25 laws by God.
Do you understand?
But the spirit of God, the
spirit of truth.
Well, obviously, it's very
important to reach some
understanding about, well, who
is a hero and who is not?
And I will develop this, but the
overall introductory point has
to be this: that heroes who
become God's finger writing in
history, we must turn to them to
bring order.
To bring order to a world adrift
in belief in economics and
social order and politics.
As God's finger writing, they
can do this.
I'll come back to that.
Let me talk about what I'm
looking for.
You see, I wrote a book about
heroes, a very famous one.
1841.
And, yes, as you might expect
there are some standards here
because, of course, there are
false heroes.
A hero must be someone who is,
first of all, profoundly
sincere.
And by sincere, I mean a kind of
mystical personality that is
deeply committed to the realm of
truth and the discovery of this
realm and dedicated to embodying
this truth.
Do you understand?
So, sincerity is important.
In other words, they must be, in
our terms, in your terms,
authentic people.
And if they're not authentic, I
don't care what they do.
Here you see a sort of
Emersonian side of me.
I don't want the results without
the heart, the commitment.
And so they have to be sincere.
And, of course, they have to be
committed to truth itself.
Obviously.
And how are you committed to
truth?
Well, it's not that easy for me
to tell you.
There isn't a formula.
I can't say listen to your
heart.
That's democratic, small D,
naivete about truth.
Oh, it's in there.
Just step away from conformity
and it's there.
Because I think truth is so much
harder, and I think the external
chaos and disorder of various
sorts is so much more powerful,
so much more powerful than
Emerson does, that I think the
journey to truth is not easy.
That's why I'm not a small D
democrat.
And that's another reason why
I'm a believer in heroes, the
exceptional.
But they must, to be a hero you
must have what I call the deep
seeing eye.
And most of us know we don't
really have that deep seeing
eye, or if that sounds too harsh
to you, I'll sweeten it up by
saying it's very difficult for
us to get our deep seeing eye
working as deeply as it might.
So we have to be sincere.
We have to be deeply committed
to the truth.
We must, in some sense, discover
truth.
Not the whole truth, but if we
discover it, we will embody it.
That's for sure.
Which will be a wonderful thing.
And thus a hero is an actor.
There are many, many different
ways you can act, but the only
kind of hero that's worth
talking about is one that acts,
that influences the world.
That's what a hero does, and
that's what we so desperately
need now.
But, in fact, what is always
needed is a hero.
Now, one way to talk about the
need for heroes is to emphasize
the standards.
Another way is to emphasize the
realities, and the realities are
that one must have, of course,
what we would call charisma.
Charisma, again, like action,
can come in many forms.
But that genius that Emerson
talked about and celebrated,
that's integral.
To being a hero, to being an
actor, to being someone who
makes a dramatic difference to
bring order and truth to the
universe.
Yet another way to think about
heroes, we're sort of circling
around, weaving in and out,
trying to paint the picture.
There's no formula, but there
are some ideas.
But an absolutely essential
feature of heroes and of heroes
being able to be heroes is the
concept of hero worship.
And by that I mean not
necessarily literal worship, you
understand, but the very basic
point that there can be no
leaders without people who are
prepared to follow them.
And that does require an
openness to leadership.
Now, you might say, well, really
when you say heroes, Carlyle,
aren't you really just saying
leaders?
No.
Because to be a hero you must be
in touch with truth.
And right there, in my
experience, we've cut away most
so-called leaders as heroes.
Now, one other part of the
circling around this answer is
to say, well, how about some
examples of people who are
heroes because maybe that will
help.
If you don't yourself have a
deep seeing eye, and I'm not
saying that I always did or
maybe ever did, I see the
crisis, the crises, I see where
we have to go, truth and order,
but I do not claim myself in any
way to be a hero.
But who would be some examples
of heroes?
Well, two of my favorite heroes
were Dante and Shakespeare.
I hope you didn't think by
heroes I necessarily meant overt
political figures.
No, no.
World changing, deep seeing,
inspiring leaders can be found
in many, many places.
And as a sort of humanities
type, Dante and Shakespeare were
perfect examples to me.
But let me give you another one.
How about the Nordic god Odin?
What?
Who?
What?
Why?
Yes, because here is an example
of a spiritual figure.
And you say, wait a minute, why
are you picking out somebody?
Don't look for some old clothes
exclusive notion of spiritual
heroes.
Oh, no.
People with deep spiritual
insight and influence.
Or Muhammad.
Muhammad was a hero without
question.
Hero as prophet.
With a deep seeing eye and
enormous influence.
Now, you might say, well, wait a
minute, how about some of those
British politicians in your
time, significant figures like
Gladstone, Disraeli?
Well, do I need to tell you?
I mean, let's get serious.
Old clothes.
The political figure in the 19th
century that was the most
impressive, had the most
potential, was Napoleon.
Napoleon was strong.
He had enormous influence.
He sometimes brought great
order.
But he didn't make the category,
I'm sorry.
And here's why.
He was not sincere.
He didn't have a deep seeing
eye.
He did not celebrate truth.
He did not know truth.
Instead he was about power and
oppression and, in so many
cases, actually disorder rather
than somehow bringing a great
order.
Another example may help, and
that is the great Martin Luther.
Martin Luther was someone who
saw a world of old clothes in
his time, and he broke through,
bringing new clothes, a new and
enriched vision of God and God's
finger writing in history.
Now, you notice, don't you, that
many of these people, you might
say, wait a minute, look at all
the chaos that flowed out of the
protestant reformation.
Look at all of that.
Well, yes.
Old clothes have to go.
That's just the way it is.
But he brought order and he
brought truth.
You might say to me, well,
you're just a protestant,
Carlyle.
No, I'm not a protestant.
I'm not a Christian.
But I'm a believer in divine
truth, and I can see people who
stepped forward not with the
complete understanding of truth.
Heroes don't have that, do you
understand?
They have a deep seeing eye, and
that's different.
Nobody has this complete view of
truth.
So what can the hero do?
We have the crises.
We have to have an answer,
right?
Or some mechanism practically to
address these things.
And I'm sorry, but it's nice to
read Shakespeare and say, wow,
but what does that really do for
the 19th century crisis that we
have?
Well, I'm not saying
Shakespeare's a hero for our
time.
I'm saying something else.
I'm saying there have been these
heroes, and here are some
illustrations of them but we
need them now.
Shakespeare isn't the answer.
The answer is finding and being
prepared to follow heroes.
That's a very different
proposition than thinking we
have the answer.
Let me stop.
Do you have any sense of what I
mean by hero?
>> I have a question.
>> Yeah.
>> One 20th century figure comes
to mind, to me, that meets all
of your definitions of passion
and power and that's Adolf
Hitler.
[INAUDIBLE]
>> Except, that's the whole
thing.
>> But they have to find your
truth.
>> No, no.
You misunderstand.
It's not my truth; it's the
truth.
>> Okay.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Don't you dare even hint
at that.
But in a minute I'll give you
another serving.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah.
>> What about Lincoln?
>> Well, I didn't have anything
to say about him so I'm not
sure.
I can tell you some things that
I might like about Lincoln.
You're going to secede, are you?
No, you're not.
You think that we have to have
habeas corpus always preserved?
Sorry.
You think that you don't like
the fact that when Wisconsin
soldiers at the front generally
voted from 90% to 95% for
Lincoln and the republicans
voting openly in front of their
office, you don't think that's
nice?
Too bad.
We need the votes.
Lincoln could get very tough in
order to bring order.
So there might be something
there.
It's interesting.
It's an interesting proposition.
Let me go on a little bit here
and discuss it more specifically
in terms of the political
dimension.
That's why I say I'm going to
give you another helping.
Well, what would it mean to have
a hero?
Politically we don't have one,
but what could we expect from
them?
Well, obviously, you understand
we can expect vigorous
leadership in service with
truth, of course.
You see, I think my friend
Emerson is more vulnerable to
your concern than I am because
somehow there's this unified
truth, but meanwhile we just
follow our inner truths.
That leads to a lot of truths,
but not with me.
But I'll tell you, we need
leadership, and I'll tell you,
frankly, we need a strong
government.
I am not in the slightest
apologetic about a strong,
vigorous, activist government.
That's exactly what we need.
Do you realize the number of
people who are suffering, whose
lives have been torn apart by
this Industrial Revolution?
We have to do something about
this.
We absolutely have to bring
order to these people's lives,
and that means we have to
address such things as their
working conditions.
We can't have these horrible
working conditions.
We have to make sure they get a
decent wage, and government can
do these things.
Well, but many of the people
making money off this won't like
it.
Too bad.
I don't care.
Because these people do not have
the deep seeing eye.
But we're not going to be able
to do it by going up to them and
saying, would you please be
nice.
I mean, if we could, great.
Do you understand?
But I'm sorry, government must
come of it.
And make no mistake, I hope you
all understand this, surely you
do, government is always about
telling people no as well as
yes.
They're always losers every time
there are winners.
Let's not kid ourselves.
Government is about making
people do things.
So no problem with me.
I want strong government.
Absolutely do.
And that government has got to
also provide people with a
chance to work.
Jobs are essential to people's
lives.
It's part of their structure.
Part of their order.
Part of their being.
We've got to provide that, and
government can do it.
Okay?
So I wish John Stuart Mill and
all these people would disappear
so we can get on with it, but
they're interfering.
They don't have any truth so
whatever is their philosophy.
And the results are awful.
So, strong leadership and
connection with the truth with a
strong government, very strong
government, whatever is
necessary.
And yes, this will also involve
the strong government providing
a kind of basic industrial order
for people.
We hear about some societies
where before work there are
exercises, where everybody
exercises and so on together.
Great.
I have no objection to, so to
speak, industrial armies.
I'm not interested in unions
because I don't want conflict,
just like I'm not interested in
capitalists.
But leadership, a strong
government that is out there
looking after people, caring for
people, do you understand,
building a society, a community,
a world, if you will, of order.
Now, I don't want to mislead
you.
I don't want to mislead you
because, you see, my suspicion
is that most, if not all, of you
are really much more Emersonian
than you Carlyle.
Yeah, I know that because look
where you are.
Look at your culture and
civilization.
Look at your culture and
civilization, but let me tell
you, you might take a look at
your own society and see how it
is staking up according to my
analysis of 19th century
Britain.
From my perspective, of course,
the picture isn't pretty.
But I don't want to mislead you
in the sense that we are going
to deal with capitalists, we're
going to deal with aristocrats,
we're going to deal with the mob
if it is off track, as we expect
it to be, and mostly I think
it's going to work out just
fine.
But if we have problems of
serious disorder, I can get very
tough.
In the island of Jamaica a
revolt broke out.
This is post-slavery.
The British governor of Jamaica
came down hard to restore order.
Dickens, myself, and others,
with some regret, said yeah.
That's the first condition.
We've got to have basic order.
We can't proceed.
And then people like John Stuart
Mill and all of his liberal
friends said, oh, my, this is so
awful.
In other words, what they said
was let's just let it all keep
going down the drift, the
confusion, the chaos.
You know what Mill did to me,
don't you?
You don't mind me telling you
this, do you?
I wrote this fabulous book,
honored and celebrated the
French Revolution.
Well, I made a big mistake.
I let Mill have the first volume
in manuscript, and of course it
was a bit premature for your
time.
I'm afraid there was no way we
could save it.
And so one of Mill's servants
threw it in the fireplace.
Totally gone.
And I had to redo the entire
thing myself from my notes.
I don't know if there was any
symbolic meaning to that, but
obviously our relationship was
never quite the same since, even
though, of course, it wasn't
Mill's fault.
Or so he said anyway.
But yes, if necessary we can get
tough, and let's not focus on
that.
Let's focus on what real
leadership.
And I'll tell you this: if you
have a society that's broken up
into revolts and revolutions,
you know one thing, don't you?
You don't have heroic
leadership.
You may in a pinch have to
choose sides, but you're not
going to go with the governing
elite there in the end because
they are not heroic.
If they truly were, we would
have order, and we don't in such
a circumstance.
Now, to some, my views seem a
little harsh or a lot harsh
maybe.
But I wonder, society does need
direction.
Society does need good
leadership.
Society does need an active
government.
Society just can't drift.
So the soft version of me is
often really widely shared.
Okay, are there any questions at
this point?
Yeah?
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> No.
But I was opposed to slavery,
and that's not the kind of order
I have in mind.
Slavery is old clothes, really
old clothes, and is...
But no, there is no connection
that I know of, that I remember
expressing.
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> No.
From my point of view, quite
frankly, I can't find any
contemporary British heroes.
None.
And that's part of why we have
this huge crisis.
>> Would Florence Nightingale
have been a hero?
>> Florence Nightingale, there
are two reasons why she wouldn't
be, okay?
Reason number one, it's very
nice that she's working on all
of this, but she's not truly a
leader in some grand sense.
And perhaps you know the second
reason why she wouldn't be.
>> She's a woman.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Did you hear her answer?
She said she's a woman.
You see, some questions don't
require answers.
He did not visualize, nothing
per se against them, but I don't
hear any women's names
mentioned, did you?
So I didn't see any women.
But another time.
There's no inherent objection.
And I'll tell you, I'm
desperate.
So, you know.
Yeah?
>> Did he feel any loyalty at
all to the British crown and was
that loyalty...
[INAUDIBLE]
>> Well, as far as I was
concerned, Queen Victoria was
a non-entity.
Old clothes.
But I'm not going to spend a lot
of time.
Ineffective old clothes, so I'm
not going to spend a lot of time
talking about that.
Let's talk about getting a
strong government going, and
she's not going to be a factor
in that regard.
>> Was that a dangerous position
at that time?
>> To criticize her?
There were some republican,
small R, critics of the monarchy
and plenty of critics of her
because after her husband died,
she sort of disappeared for
about 30 years and wasn't on the
scene.
Though, she was very diligent in
doing government paperwork.
But no.
It's a good question.
Maybe I should have been
vigorously against the British
monarchy, but I'm much more
concerned with the British
aristocracy rather than someone
who is, even by my time,
increasingly a figurehead, the
monarch.
The French Revolution, well the
French Revolution was a failure
of leadership.
And so had the monarchy
expressed real leadership, it
never would have taken place.
But why would you think you'd
get real leadership from some
hereditary group of people?
That doesn't produce leaders
necessarily.
You might get one somewhere, but
I have not confidence that you
would necessarily, no.
Now, yeah?
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> Yeah, isn't she nice.
[LAUGHTER]
More confidence in the
average person.
Is this a joke?
[LAUGHTER]
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> Right.
They don't.
>> Where are these
heroes going to come from?
>> Heroes don't appear by some
mechanism.
They appear.
And we're not interested in a
James Madison balancing society.
That's failure.
A society that says, oh, we're
going to balance all these
different interests, they're not
in touch with truth.
If they were, we don't need
balance, we need truth.
And people say it's balance this
and it's balance that.
No, it's not.
Let's get on with rule of truth.
I don't want any balancing.
And, look, I don't want to upset
you Americans, but look, I'm not
saying people are evil.
But with all due respect to
Mr. Emerson, I'm sorry, most
people do not partake of genius.
And we all know it.
No matter what the democratic
myth, small D, says.
So I'm sorry, frankly, people
like you are part of the
problem, and if necessary...
[LAUGHTER]
No, this is absolutely serious.
They'll have to be pushed aside,
and I don't hesitate to do it.
And no hero does.
That's the way the world is.
You've got to make change.
You're either serious or you're
not.
Yeah?
>> Are people who create
technological change, can they
be leaders and heroes?
[INAUDIBLE]
His invention used appropriately
and appropriately distributed
would have really eased the
plight of many workers if the
capitalists wanted it that way.
>> I'm amused in your time to
read these articles now about
these techno philanthropists.
You do understand that these are
proto rulers.
So it's conceivable, yes, but in
my time I wanted to be, I didn't
identify such persons.
It is conceivable, but people
who make revolutions do not
necessarily make revolutions on
behalf of truth.
The great capitalists and the
inventors who made them
possible, they're not heroes to
me.
We cannot go back, but they're
not heroes to me because heroes
are committed to truth, and the
truth is that there is an order
in the universe and there's a
proper order in socioeconomic
relations and there's a proper
order politically, whatever the
particular forms you may have,
and that order is heroes.
History is the history of the
great.
And the great, the heroes, they
are the expression of God's
finger writing.
[APPLAUSE]