Setting The People Free – a meeting with the author

I was delighted to spend a couple of hours today talking democracy with John Dunn, emeritus Professor of Political Theory at King’s College, Cambridge.

Professor Dunn wrote the excellent “Setting the People Free“, a book that helped me nail down my thinking on the evolution of “democracy” since the Ancient Greeks coined a term for government by the people. That learning process was an essential step for me to take in fleshing out the arguments and observations I make in Democracy Now?, the fifth and final chapter in Fraudcast News.

We talked about what he’s planning as a follow-up to the book – a text due out next year in which he intends to lay out the book’s political implications, not least for the United States.

The meeting was a great way to prepare for a Fraudcast News reading and Q+A I’m due to deliver later on Sunday in CB1 cafe in Cambridge.

For a potted take on Dunn’s thinking, this Russia Today interview from a couple years ago does a good job. That should only be as warm up to the full works presented in Setting the People Free, which I can’t recommend enough for anyone interested in the way their lives are governed.