A far-sighted lecture delivered by David North in October 1996, on the eve of the election of Bill Clinton and the acceleration of the growth in social inequality begun under the Reagan administration.
The lecture delved into the impact of the Enlightenment on the American and the “incomparably more radical” French Revolutions. North discusses the concepts of equality as understood by the towering figures of those times. North remarks, “Upon reviewing these extraordinary chapters in the history of human action and thought, one is both inspired and ashamed—Inspired by the grandeur, universality, and timelessness of the ideas and sentiments that animated the great liberating struggles of the eighteenth century, ideals that contributed to the founding of this country; and ashamed by the intellectual poverty and selfish insignificance of what passes for political life nowadays.”