Harvey Mansfield is now 89 and a political philosophy professor at Harvard, considered a leading authority on Tocqueville. He wrote a 60 page introduction to Democracy in America in the 2000 Chicago Press edition. The intro alone is worth the price of the book.

From Persuasion, The Conservative Case for Philosophical Liberalism, Yascha Mounk interviews Harvey Mansfield.

Mansfield: Too much democracy undermines democracy. Democracy works well when it is limited or when democratic power is forced to slow down and think and argue and deliberate, lets a certain amount of time pass, then makes a decision. Rule of the people requires that the power of the people be limited, spread out, and qualified, and argued out. This is the danger of democratization. And Trump is a danger because he attacks our norms and conventions and goes directly to the people—that’s what he does with his tweets, his rallies and with the way he conducted his presidency, forcing everyone to discuss him every day and see him every day.

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