In Memoriam: John David Lewis, 1955-2012

By on January 5, 2012 in Featured

It is with great sadness that the Ayn Rand Institute announces the death on January 3, 2012, of Dr. John David Lewis after an extended battle with cancer.

At the time of his death, Dr. Lewis was visiting associate professor in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program at Duke University, a position funded by the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship and by the BB&T Charitable Foundation. He was also adjunct associate professor of business at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After a 25-year career in business, he changed direction and earned his PhD in classics in 2001 at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England.

Dr. Lewis lectured internationally and was well known and respected by his colleagues at Duke. Dr. Lewis authored three books—Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History (Princeton University Press, 2010); Early Greek Lawgivers (Bristol Classical Press, 2007); and Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens (Duckworth Press, 2006)—as well as many other publications in academia and in the popular press. He was a frequent lecturer at Objectivist and non-Objectivist conferences throughout his career.

Dr. Lewis drew personal inspiration from Ayn Rand’s philosophy—and his work and life reflected his beliefs. He had a unique talent for conveying his knowledge and views, whether in delivering a lecture, writing a book, or in discussion with those around him.

Dr. Lewis’s wife Casey is planning a private memorial service later in 2012. She has requested that anyone wishing to contact her to please do so via email at: JohnDavidLewisMemorial@yahoo.com.

It was Dr. Lewis’s wish that in lieu of customary gestures of condolence, those wishing to honor his memory should send contributions to the John David Lewis Memorial Fund at the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship and/or the John David Lewis Memorial Fund at the Ayn Rand Institute. ARI’s Kathy Cross will assist those who wish to contribute to either of these funds. Please contact her at 732-242-9408 or by email at kcross@aynrand.org.

In the passing of Dr. Lewis, the Objectivist movement has lost a true fighter. From all of us fortunate enough to have known him—and John had many personal friends at the Institute—thank you, John, for all your work, for your tireless devotion to the ideas you knew were right, and, most of all, for the inspiring way you lived your life. You are dearly missed.

Ayn Rand Institute

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Upcoming Events

By on May 10, 2011 in Articles

Now that teaching is over for the summer, I can get back to reading, writing, and speaking. On the last note, here is what I will be up to for the next few weeks:

May 13: Private lecture to the Leadership Program of the Rockies, “The Defense of American Rights: Principles, not Pragmatism.” This talk advocates a principled foreign policy, rather that the pragmatic stew we now find ourselves simmering in.
Learn about the program at http://www.leadershipprogram.org/

May 14: Private to the Front Range Objectivist Supper Talks in Denver. This one is on health care reform–properly understood–which starts properly with a proper conception of life, and what is needed to maintain it in the company of others. Check them out on Facebook.

May 19-21: Private Conference, The Liberty Fund. This conference of invited academics and businessmen–which I initiated and first organized–will deal with the Treatise on Political Economy by Jean-Baptiste Say, and its meaning for liberty today. Check out the Liberty Fund. Most of all, go to their on-line “Library of Liberty,” for hundreds of books on liberty.

May 24: Lecture in Chicago for The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. The lecture will be live-streamed and available on the net; check out the ARC here for the lecture. Click her for the Ayn Rand Center.

June 1-2: An invited conference at the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. Here I will speaking on health care reform and individual rights.

July 1-11: The OCon Conference, organized annually by the Ayn Rand Institute. This year I’ll do a general lecture on “Individual Rights and Health Care Reform: A Patient’s Perspective,” a hard-hitting discussion of why Government-run medicine is the deepest attack on life itself. I will also do a three-day course on Greece in the early fourth-century. In the decades after the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, what happened? How did Athens return to power and influence, while Sparta suffered her worst defeat ever.Check it out here–and sign up!

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Reviews and Comments about “Nothing Less than Victory”

By on March 2, 2011 in Academic Publications, Uncategorized

A number of publications have seen it fit to review, or to comment about Nothing Less than Victory.

The Wall Street Journal noted my concern with how wars end, not only with the causes of wars (“Winning is the Only thing,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 3, 2011, A13). “What distinguishes the latest volumes,” they write of my book and two others, “is their agreement that decisive military victory has become an increasingly discredited aim. . . . Where today’s writers disagree is about why this has happened. For Mr. Lewis, a classicist and a philosopher, this consensus reflects a willful misreading of the historical record and a misunderstanding of how victory shapes a lasting peace.” With this assessment I agree.

In Military Officer, the official magazine of the Military Officers Association of America (October 2010, p.23), William D. Bushnell writes:

“Soldiers and statesmen have long argued over how to both win a war and provide a lasting peace afterward. Historian John David Lewis offers a provocative answer–launch an aggressive offense focused on the enemy’s will to fight, not his capability.

“In this thoughtful and well-presented book, Lewis claims a defensive strategy only prolongs the carnage and results in stalemate and greater instability.”

Here are some other reviews of Nothing Less than Victory:

Michigan War Studies Review

US News and World Report, Washington Book Club

The Objective Standard

Five Books (5 Books on War and Foreign Policy: Interview)

Voices for Reason, The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

The Page 99 Test

National Review On-Line (Podcast)

Campaign for the American Reader

Times Higher Education

The Liberal Institute (Interview)


Learn about the magnificent drawing on the cover!

Read an excerpt (the Introduction)

Order Nothing Less than Victory from Amazon


More about Nothing Less than Victory

“John David Lewis has offered a superb appraisal of how ancient and modern wars start and finish. This chronicle of some 2,500 years of Western history is replete with a philosophical analysis of why nations fight, win—and lose. His insights and conclusions are original and fearless—as well as timely and welcome in the confused war-making of the present age.”

—Victor Davis Hanson, author of Carnage and Culture

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Some New Work

By on January 28, 2011 in Academic Publications

OK, I am winning the war on cancer! So I am now focused on getting some writing done. In addition to two courses at Duke and one at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I am trying to keep the ink flowing (or the electrons as it were). Here are some of my latest efforts. As always, you can see a more complete picture by going to my CV (follow the tab above).

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You’ll need a university library for these two articles:

“Constitution and Fundamental Law: The Lesson of Ancient Athens,” Social Philosophy and Policy 28.1 (2011).

“Xenophon’s Poroi and the Foundations of Political Economy,” Polis 26.2 (2010).

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Here are two recent reviews, in the on-line journal Bryn Mawr Classical Review:

T. Rood, American Anabasis: Xenophon and the Idea of America from the Mexican War to Iraq (London: Duckworth, 2010), for Bryn Mawr Classical Review , 2011.01.33.

J. R. Hale, Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy (NY: Penguin, 2009), for Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2010.01 57.

Follow this link for all of my BMCR reviews, published under John Lewis as well as John David Lewis (just scroll down to my name):

http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/by_reviewerL.html

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On January 21 I did a lecture at Duke on “The Moral Character of Exchange in the Ancient World.” This is available as a podcast (audio only) in the post immediately before this one. Or, follow this link to the website of the venerable Professor Michael Munger:

http://michaelmunger.com/Lewis1-21-11.mp3

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You may also look forward to an essay in the forthcoming volume “Ayn Rand: A Companion to her Work and Thought (Blackwell), as well as to a chapter in a forthcoming second edition of the textbook Medical Ethics, edited by M. Baylon titled “There is No ‘Right’ to Health Care.” I am also working on Xenophon’s political tract “Ways and Means” (or, “Poroi,” also translated as “On Revenues”) with a view to its praise of productiveness–and capital investment–as the key to prosperity and success. This is unique in the ancient world, and not well understood today–if current government policy is any guide.
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I am keeping myself busy at conferences as well. I have organized a conference on Values at Duke University. I will also be gracing other conferences with my presence, including UNC-Chapel Hill (on political authority), Wake Forest University (on the Fed), Christopher Newport University (on the classics and America), the Association for Private Enterprise Education (my presentation is on Rand’s We the Living), the Liberty Fund (a conference I initiated on the economist Jean-Baptiste Say), and of course at OCon 2011 (in Florida).

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Audio Lecture: The Morality of Exchange in the Ancient World

By on January 22, 2011 in Uncategorized

On Friday, January 12, 2011 I gave a lecture for the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program at Duke University.

“The Morality of Exchange in the Ancient World.”

I thank Professor Michael Munger for his kind invitation.

I especially thank the Thomas W. Smith Foundation for the support that made this possible.

HEAR THE LECTURE NOW! via podcast (about 50 minutes long, audio only) thanks to Professor Munger’s awesome mastery of technology:

http://michaelmunger.com/Lewis1-21-11.mp3

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Who Did the Drawing on the Cover of “Nothing Less than Victory”?

By on October 27, 2010 in Academic Publications, Featured, Uncategorized

Where did the cover of “Nothing Less than Victory” come from? Who did this wonderful drawing?

The answer is: William Tecumseh Sherman, When he was an 18 year-old cadet at West Point Military Academy.
“Theseus Killing the Centaur” is preserved in the West Point Military Museum, West Point, New York.
I appreciate their assistance! Here is the drawing, as found in the museum:

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Upcoming Event: The Tucson Tea Party

By on October 6, 2010 in Speaking Events, Tea Party Speeches

On Saturday, October 9, I will speak at the Tucson Tea Party, in Tucson, Arizona. Last year some 8,000 people flocked to this important event. This year let’s shoot for twice that number! I will give a main-stage talk on why Individual Rights is the only proper principle to be embraced by the Tea Parties, because it is America’s founding principle. I will be selling books both before and after, profit-minded American that I am.

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Seminar on Health Care Reform and Individual Rights

By on October 6, 2010 in Health Care Reform, Speaking Events

On October 4 I chaired a seminar, for first-year medical students at Duke University, on Health Care Reform and Individual Rights. My contention is that any meaningful, proper proposal for health-care reform must recognize and defend the rights of doctors to practice medicine as they deem fit, in voluntary, contractual agreement with their employers and patients. Students (and the public) rarely hear this point of view–it was almost entirely missing from the debates over the passage of Obamacare. It should not be surprising that such a defense is entirely missing from the bill, and that the bill massively undermines such rights.

For a sample of the ideas at the forefront of this seminar, see a lecture I gave in 2009 to Duke medical students:

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University of Minnesota Lecture: Israel’s Moral Right to Self-Defense

By on October 6, 2010 in Speaking Events

On September 29 I had the pleasure of visiting friends and colleagues at the University of Minnesota, and offering a lecture on Israel’s Moral Right to Self-Defense–and to Exist. What does it mean for a nation to have the moral right to exist? was the opening salvo. But I laced this argument with experiences I had while traveling through Israel–where in Tel Aviv I met women in Muslim dress, saw a mosque under renovations, and bought fruit from Arabs selling at an outdoor market. I reflected on the rejection, by Arab leadership, of the “two-state” partition agreement in November 1947, and the state of war declared against Israel on its founding in 1948. There was some push-back from a few members of the audience, who did not wish to grasp what it means to live under such a declared state of war, and who failed to condemn the suicide bombing of Mike’s place or indoctrination of preschool-aged Palestinian children into jihad. I was amazed at those who claimed that Israel was wrong because so few of its people have died in wars–as if an attack on a sovereign nation should be understood by counting bodies.  But the evening was enlightening to me, and energizing, since I was always learn something from such exchanges, even from (or at times especially from) adversaries. Two and a half fruitful hours at the podium.

The day after I toured a steel processing plant and a defense contractor’s research and development labs, had lunch on the banks fo the Mississippi River, and took a boat ride on one of the state’s beautiful lakes. Thanks to everyone in Minnesota for making this possible!

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Buy a “Nothing Less than Victory” t-shirt!!!!

By on October 4, 2010 in Health Care Reform

For sale now, professionally embroidered (stitched, not pressed-on)
t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Nothing Less than Victory”.


John, released from the hospital, Dec. 30, 2009

On patrol at Duke Medical Center, achieving a medical victory!

These shirts are professionally embroidered (they arenot “iron-ons”). They come in dark blue, with white and yellow letters, and in sizes S, M, L, and XL. Note: they are short-sleeved only (long-sleeved in photos not available).
Price: $40.00 each (includes shipping)
Specify size: S, M, L or XL.
Shipping: USPS (please provide a shipping address)

To order, send an email to johndavidlewis@ymail.com

Please allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery.

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