without moderation. He is finally not a political man since he desires to be Roman Cor without the approval of his fellow citizens. Coriolanus does not aim to be a tyrant but by going beyond politics he, like tyrants ancient and modern, undermines the vital preconditions of political liberty. He does not know how to “put reasons and actions in common” in Aristotle’s inimitable words. Manent suggestively compares him with modern statesmen who were also “great citizen(s),” namely Lincoln and de Gaulle. These two great statesmen fully appreciated that “the test of the republic lies in the almost impossible task of joining speech to deed and deed to speech, each to each aptly and justly.” The eloquence, “rarity,” and “brevity” of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, that noble testament to those who gave “the last full measure of devotion” to a political order, “conceived in liberty,” and “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” could survive and experience a “new birth of freedom,” testifies to ‘statesmanship at the service of human freedom. De Gaulle’s lucid call on June 18, 1940, for his compatriots to rally behind him to defend the liberty, honor, and independence of France, even after the Nazi conquest of the homeland, crystallizes every sentiment of noble or honorable resistance. As Manent puts it elsewhere, authentic republican heroism depends on a “more than human blending of pride and humility.” In this weaving together of noble action and speech which rallies all the resources of the soul, in this unforced melding of “magnanimity and moderation,” lies true human greatness. Such greatness transcends democratic categories and conventions even as it elevates democracy through the sheer fact of being itself. Manent’s treatment of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is equally insightful. I will allow the reader the pleasure of making his way through both Manent’s and Shakespeare’s texts. But let me highlight a few particularly evocative points that Manent makes along the way. Manent shows how apolitical the Stoic Brutus’s virtue really is: he cares far more about appearing virtuous than in doing what is necessary to root out Caesar’s despotism and to revivify the Roman Republic. In particular, he resists Cassius’s suggestion that the conspirators kill Marc Antony, too, since his survival surely means the survival of Caesarism. Manent also respectfully but firmly resists René Girard’s suggestion that Cassius, the true “initiator” of the conspiracy against Julius Caesar, the one who “pushes against all the others,” is first and foremost a “mediator of hate.” Manent suggests that Girard’s interpretation of the play is far too apolitical and fails to recognize “that there are noble and base hatreds.” As Manent writes, “a very honorable and moral tradition, one, I must emphasize, that is Christian as well as pagan, holds that hatred for the tyrant is a noble hatred, and that it belongs to the virtue of the good citizen.” As Manent argues in his autobiographical book of interviews Seeing Things Politically, Girard is wrong to believe that “all political situations come down to the same situation.” Girard sees only undifferentiated violence where there remain meaningful moral and political distinctions. Girard’s anthropology of the human condition risks giving rise to passivity and civic indifference, all in the name of a misunderstanding of both Christianity and political life. “Mimetic desire” does not provide the key for understanding political life. “Mimetic desire” does not provide the key for understanding political life. Let us return to Patrick Deneen’s accurate evocation of the centrality of the cardinal