What the ancient Greeks and Romans taught the Founding Fathers

Journalist Thomas Ricks discusses his new book "First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country."

Air Date: December 31, 2020 10:00 am

Journalist Thomas Ricks, author of the new book, "First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country." photo credit, Alessandro Vulcano)

The 2016 election made military journalist THOMAS RICKS wonder what America’s founding fathers had in mind when forming the new nation. He searched for answers by reading about George Washington, James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson. He also studied the Greek and Roman philosophers like Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, and Cicero, who had shaped their ideas of government and democracy. Ricks new book, First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country explores the classical wisdom that the early statesmen borrowed, how they led, and misled, our nation, and the legacy that we are living with today.

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