The Hoover Institution hosted "America's Regime and Its Citizens: The Lifelong Debates of Harry Jaffa and Walter Berns" on Thursday, July 13, 2017 from 12:00pm - 2:00pm EST.
The Hoover Institution proudly invites you to a discussion of two giants of American constitutionalism in the 20th Century: Harry Jaffa and Walter Berns.
What did the Framers attempt to accomplish with the Constitution, and how should we vindicate them today? Harry Jaffa and Walter Berns spent their lives grappling with these questions-and, intellectually, with each other. Jaffa and Berns were both students of Leo Strauss, and their debates reflected major divisions among many of Strauss's students, exemplified by the spirited debates that marked their lifetimes, up to their deaths on the same day in 2015.
Author Steve Hayward's new book, Patriotism Is Not Enough, paints a portrait of both of these intellectual giants, together. "Jaffa and Berns can be seen as two sides of the same coin," Hayward writes. "For all of their sometimes bitter differences, their work complements each other's because of the reciprocal problem of regime and citizen."
Hayward will discuss these themes at the Hoover Institution's Johnson Center in Washington.
Steven F. Hayward is the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University's Graduate School of Public Policy. He is the author of the two-volume political biography The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964-1980, and The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counter-Revolution, 1980-1989, and he writes for many publications.
He will be interviewed by Adam J. White, a Hoover Institution research fellow.
