‘Perhaps statesmanship of the noblest and truest kind has always been associated with crises of one sort or another’, Daniel Mahoney writes in ‘Ballast on the Ship of State: Statesmanship as Human Excellence‘.

In this framework, DeGaulle finds his place among Cicero, Burke, Washington, Lincoln, and Churchill. Bonaparte, to the contrary, exemplifies ‘greatness without moderation’.

Also:

One cannot promote justice on the ‘willful’ premises of Machiavellian (and Nietzschean) modernity. If one begins with nihilistic premises, if one reduces every argument to a pretense for domination and exploitation, one necessarily ends with the self-enslavement of man. A barely concealed nihilism cannot provide a foundation for common humanity, the civic common good, or mutual respect and accountability. In the end, it can only negate our civilized inheritance despite the perfectionist or utopian veneer that invariably accompanies it.