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Brunch Talk with Dr. John Lewis on "The Greek Lessons for Today's Crisis of Government"
Date: Saturday, May 9, 2009
Time: 9:00 am social time; 9:30 am breakfast buffet; 10:30 am to 12:30 pm talk
Location: West Woods Golf Club, 6655 Quaker Street in Arvada, Colorado
Dr. John Lewis on "The Greek Lessons for Today's Crisis of Government"
 The crisis of government we face today--out of control spending, non-objective law, and a ruinous foreign policy--is caused by a corruption of the ideas needed to protect individual rights under law. In the fifth century BC the people of Athens faced a similar crisis: a devastating military defeat, financial ruin, and tyranny. The nature of this crisis and how they rose to overcome it is the subject of this talk. The solution involved a renewed commitment to follow their laws and the conceptual and institutional reforms needed to constrain their democracy from acting on whim. This talk will be taken from a forthcoming article, "Constitution and Fundamental Law: The Lesson of Classical Athens," to appear next fall in the journal Social Philosophy and Policy.
John David Lewis received his PhD in Classics from the University of Cambridge. He is visiting associate professor of political science at Duke University. He has been a senior research scholar in history and classics at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, and an Anthem Fellow for Objectivist Scholarship. A writer for The Objective Standard, his books are Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens, and Early Greek Lawgivers. |