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John Lewis
About John Lewis :
With long experience in the business world as well as in academia, John Lewis uses his knowledge of history to illuminate the most pressing issues of our own day. A passionate supporter of individual rights, his thrilling speeches have brought audiences to their feet with the kind of excitement that existed in revolutionary America. An advocate of rational health care reform, he connects the issue to the founding ideals of America, and brings his audience to understand the vital need to defend the principle of rights.
Audiences have recognized the same commitment to principle in matters of environmentalism, foreign policy, education, and local activism. His work in military history centers on the power of ideas, and the importance of goals in pursuit of victory. To live by proper principles while pursuing rational goals is the key to life.
John’s business career ended after eighteen years with Simplex Time Recorder Company, where he worked on technical and engineering levels in their Hartford, Connecticut office, and managed branch offices in Springfield, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. His years managing customers and employees in business taught him that motivation is the key to success, and that everyone can achieve their goals. His own decision to make a career change into academia—with a PhD in the difficult field of classical studies— is an example of how a person can set his own path in life and forge his own destiny.
Dr. Lewis is now visiting associate professor in the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program , Duke University. He is a senior research scholar in history and classics at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University, and an Anthem Fellow for Objectivist Scholarship. Formerly associate professor of history at Ashland University, he holds a PhD in Classics from the University of Cambridge, and a BA in History from the University of Rhode Island. He has taught at the University of London, and was a visiting scholar at Rice University and the Social Philosophy and Policy Center. His academic interests are in early political thought and political economy, military history, and their connections to the modern day.
Dr. Lewis has published in numerous academic journals, such as Polis, The Journal of Business Ethics, Social Philosophy and Policy, and Dike. He is consulting editor for The Objective Standard, and has written for Capitalism Magazine, The Huffington Post, and Real Clear Politics. He is the author of Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens (Duckworth, 2006), and Early Greek Lawgivers (Bristol Classical Press, 2007). His new book Nothing Less Than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History, demonstrates how the achievement of principled goals is the only path to freedom and peace (Princeton University Press, March, 2010).
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Speech Titles :
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Individual Rights: America’s Founding Principle
America is the first nation in history founded on a principle: that every individual has the sovereign right to pursue his own life, liberty, and happiness. This determined the purpose of government: to secure these rights. This lecture examines the nature of individual rights, demonstrates the power of this principle over history, and shows the deeper moral foundations upon which rights are based. The lecture then shows that rights to liberty have been violated today, because this founding conception has been supplanted by the idea that rights mean the satisfaction of our wishes. This energetic lecture will show the deadly conflict between the two visions of rights, and calls for a rediscovery and strengthening of the founding conception of rights.
Socialized Medicine: The Way of Death
In the midst of the health care battle being waged today, too many people have simply assumed that the solution to rising health care costs is increased government involvement in medicine. This lecture challenges this premise, and demonstrates that higher prices were caused by government interference that began in the 1960s. Nations that have adopted such systems have seen their pharmaceutical industries decline, and have used rationing to achieve the cuts in prices needed to prevent bankruptcy. But these economic problems threaten to mask the deeper reason for the failure of socialized medicine, and why it is so opposed to America’s founding principle: its immoral expropriation of the lives and fortunes of citizens, especially doctors and medical professionals. This lecture suggests several steps that could be take en to bring genuine reform to the health care industry.
Victory In Defense of Rights: The Proper Goal of War
Since 1945 the United States has engaged in numerous wars, and has lost over 100,000 dead—and has not achieved an unambiguous victory. The reason begins with a repudiation of victory itself as a goal. But the cause of this repudiation lies deeper than the post-World War II geopolitical situation. The unwillingness to defeat an enemy’s will to fight is an aspect of our unwillingness to proclaim our moral right to win a war in defense of rights. This lecture will show that the only proper purpose of a war is to defend individual rights, and that swift victory is the proper end of such a war. This lecture is drawn from Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History (Princeton, 2010).
Individual Rights: The Republic Way to Victory
Designed for an audience of political conservatives and Republicans, this lecture will ask why the Republican Party has been unable to properly defend the free market, capitalism, and liberty, and unable to prevent the growth of the welfare state over three generations. Despite the obvious material value of capitalism—and its clear superiority over every other system in raising a country’s standard of living—defenders of the market have repeatedly compromised and demanded new programs. The answer is found in an inability to defend the self-interested motive of profit that lies at the heart of capitalism. The events of 2009 show that, if Republicans stand up for the liberty of each individual to pursue his own life, the voters will respond. The choice for Republicans is: will they defend liberty on moral grounds?
Ancient Greece: The Birthplace of Civilization
This lecture brings to life the search for excellence and order that compelled the Greeks to establish the world’s first elevated, intellectual culture. From the beginnings in a Dark Age through the soaring prose of Sophocles, the Greeks demonstrate how a people, jealous of the their freedom, were able to allow their best minds to rise to the prominence. The Greek intellectual revolution was made possible by political independence, but a respect for reason and for the independence of the mind is the deeper root of this achievement. This lecture will celebrate, through poetry and prose, the greatest achievements of the Greeks, and the lessons they hold for us today.
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