The Daily Stoic - Adam Kinzinger on The Future of American Leadership

Episode Date: October 26, 2024

In just a couple of weeks, Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump will be named the next President of the United States of America. Former United States Representative, Adam Kinzinger, joins Ryan today to talk about how important this election is for the future of the American people, how the Republican Party has evolved, and the crucial role of self-sacrifice in democratic integrity.Adam Kinzinger is an American former politician, veteran, and senior political commentator for CNN. He served as a United States representative from Illinois from 2011 to 2023. 🎙️ Listen to Part 1 of Adam’s conversation with Ryan | Apple Podcasts & Spotify🎥 Watch Adam’s first interview on the Daily Stoic | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQKoFR1MIJo📚 Check out Adam Kinzinger’s book Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country Follow Adam on Instagram @Adam_Kinzinger and on X @RepKinzinger✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcast. I've been traveling a bunch for the tour that I'm on and I brought my kids and my wife with me when I went to Australia. When I'm going to Europe in November, I'm bringing my in-laws also. So, we're not staying in a hotel. We're staying in an Airbnb. The first Airbnb I stayed in would have been in 2010, I think. I've always loved Airbnb, that flexibility, size, location. You can find something awesome. You want to stay somewhere that other guests have had a positive experience. I love the guest favorites feature that helps you narrow down your search to the most popular, coolest houses. I've been using Airbnb forever. I like it better than hotels. So I'm excited that they're a sponsor of the show.

And if you haven't used Airbnb yet, I don't know what you're doing, but you should definitely check it out for your next family trip. We've got a bit of a commute now with the kids and their new school. And so one of the things we've been doing as a family is listening to audio books in the car.

Instead of having that be dead time, we wanna use it to have a live time. We really wanna help their imagination soar and And listening to Audible helps you do precisely that. Whether you listen to short stories, self-development, fantasy, expert advice, really any genre that you love, maybe you're into stoicism. And there's some books there that I might recommend by this one guy named Ryan. Audible has the best selection of audiobooks without exception and exclusive Audible originals all in one easy app. And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. By the way, you can grab Right Thing Right Now on Audible.

You can sign up right now for a free 30-day Audible trial and try your first audiobook for free. You can get Right Thing Right Now totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview St stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the

challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It was funny, I was telling you that my grandmother

was raving about Wednesday's guest on the show. And it's funny, I did Maria Shriver's podcast a few weeks back. I thought it was an awesome conversation. I was really honored to do that. And she was raving about Adam Kinzinger, whose book she published. He wrote this great book called Renegade.

You know, I always like when someone whose opinion you respect recommends or like someone else that you respect. So I think today's guest is just an absolutely fascinating guy. Again, this is a guy who put his ass on the line. And I happen to know other Republican politicians who didn't do that, who were afraid to do that.

They cherished their seat more than they cherished apparently this 200 plus year tradition, the peaceful transfer of power here in the United States. These are dilemmas that the stoics would have been familiar with. Certainly the founders were familiar with the fact that the stoics were familiar with it. I've recommended First Principles, one of my favorite books. I recommended Rosen's book, The Pursuit of Happiness, and all these guys, what they noticed what struck the founders the most, what they were most worried about. And I talked to Francis Ford Coppola about this.

Cataline was this looming figure for both the Romans and then the later sort of enlightenment stoics. Catiline was the demagogue who attempted to overthrow the Republic, the guy who put his personal ambition in front of his obligations, in front of the country, in front of peace and order and stability. And Cicero sort of draws on his stoicism to stop Catiline. It's a complicated story. We

don't have to get into it here. But what you saw on January 6th was Catiline in the 21st century. You had a man who lost an election who couldn't stomach losing an election for what he felt it said about him for the power that he needed that it threatened. And he unleashed a populist mob on the Capitol to attempt to thwart the will of that people. This is exactly what they talk about in the storm before the storm. This is the looming threat that all democracies and republics face.

To be able to have seen that happen, we saw it unfold live on television, and then to be able to talk to a person who stood up and said, I'm not through me, I'm not going to participate in that, and then tried to hold the members of that mob, not just the average ordinary people, but the leaders of it. And I'm talking, of course, about Congressman Adam Kinzinger. He served in the United States Congress from 2011 to 2023. And why did he stop? His political beliefs didn't change. His constituents didn't really change, but they were turned against each other by this Catalinesque figure. And he lost his political career for serving on the January 6th commission. He lost his political career for voting to impeach. And here, as we are on the eve now of

an election where that Catalan is a candidate again, something that did not happen in ancient Rome. It's just absolutely unbelievable to me. And I wanted to talk to Adam Kinzinger about this, how he struggled after January 6th, how people need to be engaged and active in their politics and about this upcoming presidential race and the responsibility that we have as stoics and as individuals. It's been so awesome to get to know Congressman Kinzinger. I think this is a great conversation. You can check out his book, Renegade, which as I said, Maria Shriver published. You can follow him on Instagram at Adam underscore Kinzinger and on Twitter rep Kinzinger.

I think this is a great conversation. I'm so glad to have two parts of it. And then I have an earlier interview with him last year that I will also link to in today's show notes. I sent a signed copy of Renegade to my dad. I hope he reads it. He lives in Nevada and will hopefully take his responsibility as a swing state voter seriously.

And I hope you do the same wherever you live. The best thing about when society like makes leaps like this, you can call them good leaps or bad leaps, but they're leaps, is you have to have discussion, I think conversation, discussion, openness, and talking about it makes a big deal. And so, I think we're now at a point when it comes to the gender issue where people feel free to talk about the confusion behind it. There are people that, you know, maybe are less sympathetic to it, that kind of kept their mouth shut, that are now talking, people more sympathetic.

And so I think we're kind of coming to a place there where it's more respected in the discussion, but like you look at racial issues in this country, the one thing you can't talk about without being scared to death of what it's gonna be is like racial issues, right? That's the thing you can't talk about without being scared to death of what it's going to be is like racial issues, right? That's the thing you never can talk about. You can never talk about it. And discussion, like good discussion, not television news discussion, that's the way for society to come along, for people to like, emote their own feelings,

to kind of come to a conclusion. You know, like with the gender issue, it's like, does it really affect you if somebody changes their gender or they want to a conclusion. You know, like with the gender issue, it's like, does it really affect you if somebody changes their gender or they wanna be, no. Like, does it affect your life? No. Now, where you can feel offended is like, if you're making me accept that reality and change everything, but these are the kinds of conversations that need to happen that just didn't.

Well, and I think what I always go to is, look, what's the historical equivalent? I read, for one of the books I was writing, I read a bunch about Muhammad Ali. And I was so fascinated with the number of people that refused to call him Muhammad Ali. They were just like, you can't just change your name. And it was funny to me to watch something

that seems so preposterous in retrospect, not just the way people had trouble with it, but the way certain people would use it as an epithet. They'd call him Cassus Clay, or they'd say, that's not your real name. And you go, oh, okay, there's some people also, they have conservativeness in the lower case, C sense of the word where they're just like, I don't change.

Like that's not who you were, so I don't accept it. And that that is just a strain of society and culture and types of people. And it passes with time, but like, when I read that, I go, okay, you don't wanna be that person. So get with the program, right? But you have to have an emotional acuity to deal with that unless some grifter or demagogue comes along and actually says, no, no, no, no, no,

that's bullshit, they're making it up. You're actually heroic for not saying it. And so there is this part of it where that energy, that resistance to change is human and timeless and real. And in some ways understandable, that's not to say it's okay, but you get it. And then there is this strand of person that says, I wanna tap into that.

Instead of, hey, I wanna help those people get from here to there, they say, no, no, no. I'm sensing they feel shame and I'm gonna tell them actually that the other side is the shameful one. Yeah, yeah. This is where leadership is so important and not political leadership necessarily, but leadership anywhere.

Everybody, you know, if you're, you could be a frontline manager at McDonald's, you could be a cashier at McDonald's, you have leadership roles. And what you see is everybody's got their own fears, they've got their own like, you know, shortcomings, things they're concerned about, shame, if you reflect that back to them and show them that they're right, you know,

by the way, that's a very powerful technique. It's a dark technique, very powerful. You can manipulate people easily with that. The question is, do you wanna be the kind of person that leads people to that dark place where maybe they follow you, maybe they listen to you, but they feel worse about themselves, they turn against society,

they hate people, or do you wanna be the person that can show like, it's okay? The best example I can use of this is after January 6th, I'm a military guy, obviously, and one of the things that really I struggled with, I had almost, not real PTS, but sort of from it, was seeing all the uniforms, or the people wearing camouflage on the steps of the Capitol that day.

Yeah, they were play acting or in some cases, they were overrepresented, sort of veterans and police officers and such. But yeah, they were stealing the iconography of certain things. And yeah, to me, it's the weaponizing of the American flag really disturbs me. You know, like I think the blue,

the blue lives matter flag or the, no, the thin blue line flag is so fucking disturbing. Like it's like, first off just, it's like, okay, so some guy was murdered by the police and we all saw it. And most of us were like, this is horrible. This shouldn't happen again. And then there was a group of people that said, I want to double down on the police. And I say this as a person whose father is a police officer.

I have no problem with the police. But I'm saying, like, if you watch that and your sympathy is with the person whose boot is literally on someone's neck, that's weird. Yeah, it is. That's a weird choice to make. But the idea that the police are this thin blue, like that the citizens are chaos,

that there's a criminal element that is almost the majority. And then there's these good people over here and the police are this line, is such a fucked up view of society. It really is. And that as a symbol, like I wanna put that on my truck, and then I think what gives the energy to that

is the underlying menace of it. Yeah. It is there, there is a Southern cultural menace, like until I moved to the South, I never saw someone put a flag on the back of their truck of any kind and drive it around. I'm getting used to that. The element of that is to intimidate.

Yeah, it is. It's not a patriotic celebration. It is, if you put a flag on your house, you're saying, I live here, this is what I'm doing. If you're driving it around, I think there's an element. It's like in your face. Yeah, and that's what they like about it. That's what's fun.

Absolutely, absolutely. And that's where, so as I saw the, like kind of the uniforms, and again, it wasn't, there wasn't a massive military presence charging the Capitol, but it burned in my head this feeling that like all veterans are insurrectionists. Right? And I'm a veteran, I know that that's not the case.

And so all of a sudden then I would have outreach from friends that, you know, I had some friends that were very sympathetic to it, but some that are like, yeah, this is awful. This misrepresents the community. You know, we've gotta be, the role of the military is to defend everybody, not to defend one side.

And it was when I would see in my own life, those people that would say those things to me, that was them not reflecting my fear back at me. That was them absorbing my fear and showing me a different side, which is like, there are people like us out there. Again, the old Bible story, and I don't even remember who it is, but he wouldn't bow the knee to Baal and then God shows him, there's 7,000 people that won't bow with you, right? You all of a sudden realize you're not on an island even if you feel like you're on an island. Yes. And what a demagogue can do is give

you that feeling even though you're on the wrong side of things. So you're the anti-vaxxer or you're the insurrectionist or you're the bigot or the person, you're the person who is shouting at the kids who are trying to integrate a school and you should be made to feel alone about that. But a grifter, a demagogue can say, no, no, no,

a lot of us are uncomfortable with this too. Here's a community. Yeah, and then let me amplify it. This is the definition of what JD Vance is doing in Ohio. It's like, look, it would be weird if 20,000 people who, and weird is the wrong word. It would be noticeable if 20,000 people of a different country and race moved to a town

that doesn't get a lot of immigration because it's smack dab in the middle of the country. So you're gonna have feelings, and we have all sorts of feelings as human beings. And part of being a mature, responsible, ethical human is sorting the dark feelings from the light feeling, like the higher self and the lower self. And Martin Luther King said, you know,

there is like this a north and south in each of us. And that we're in a constant civil war with each other. And yeah, you're right. Leadership is appealing to the better angels and to help you transcend those feelings, but that's hard and often unpopular and can cost you elections, it can cost you fans, it can cost you a lot of things.

You find immediate valence and connection if you appeal to the demons or the lowest common denominator, and that's always there. Yeah, it really is. And it's sad to me because I always, again, I always felt like, well, let's just use politics and use society as that.

I always felt like there was always an adult that was gonna come in and like- That's too far, don't you think? Who's that guy that kicked out of Congress from Iowa or whatever? Oh yeah, Steve King. Yeah, so like it was like, hey, you might not like where the line is,

but we do have a line and we do kick people out that cross the line. Yep, and I always felt like, you know, I still, I'm like, with some of the stuff going on, I'm like, somebody's gotta come in and say this is wrong. And then I realized like, I'm in the governing class of people, or at least was, that would be the guy on the white horse coming in to save the day.

And it's like, no, the guy's on the white horse and now the one's doing it. And that's where it's important for everybody here and everybody listening and watching to say, you know, look, yeah, you can sit around and say, well, we have the worst people in Washington, DC, okay? I would probably argue that probably not the worst ever, but pretty bad.

But where you can make a difference, obviously making sure you vote, but you can make a difference in your community. And every time, when you even say something that kind of throws people off like, yeah, I don't think they should be demonizing migrants, and obviously they're not eating cats and dogs. There might be people around you,

let's say you're a Republican and you say that, that are like, huh, well, thanks for saying that. You've kind of broken that stereotype to me, and it inspires, it's like a chain reaction of inspiration. You know, in your readings and your writings, if you ever feel inspired, that is such a good feeling and it's like a chain reaction, right? That leads to this, this, this, and this.

And that can start at a small community. It doesn't have to be a guy in DC doing it or a podcaster doing it. It can be you and your own community starting that chain reaction. When I think about it, it's like you see someone you know, say something that's really offensive, untrue, dangerous, or whatever, just like on social media.

Like there's the, Elon Musk says misinformation and we can't do anything about that, right? Even though he lives in this little town. Does he live there? I didn't know that. He's moved all his stuff around. I didn't know that. I don't think he lives anywhere,

but all his stuff is here now. But the point is we can get really upset with, oh, like I can't believe Kyrie Irving said this dumb thing or Elon Musk said this dumb thing or can you believe Donald Trump or insert any person across any spectrum. And then people we know say things on Facebook and we're like, well, Susie's nice.

I don't wanna get into a thing about it with her. And I'm not saying you have to get in political arguments, but like there was a person in town that said something really bigoted about someone who is on city council. And then he emailed me the next day asking for something. And I was like, bro, get the fuck out of here with this. We're not friends anymore.

Like the idea that like these larger trends should only be dealt with at like the federal level. You have to be, you can't say things like that. Don't like, I disagree. You have to be at what's less important. Yeah, it's less important these big global things and more about what you are doing in your interpersonal relationships and connections.

Yeah, and it changes how you feel. It changes the community. And like I said, I actually think, I mean, I hope I'm wrong, because it's much easier if like change came from the federal level on this, but I actually think that, because I'm long optimistic on America.

Short, a little pessimistic, long optimistic, but I think that change will have to come from the ground. Because I'm gonna tell you, like, I travel a lot, I speak a lot as you do, and I feel that there will have to come from the ground because I'm gonna tell you, like, I travel a lot, I speak a lot as you do, and I feel that there is just this like undercurrent that's ready to blow of people that are like, we need somebody to heal the system. It's gonna come from that.

And that's a decision that we make every day. It's not a decision that, you know, we've got to wait around for the next president or the congressman or whatever to say, because they're just frankly a reflection of us anyway. Yes. In early 1607, three ships carrying over 100 English settlers landed on the shores of present day Virginia, where they established a colony they named Jamestown. But from the start, factions and infighting threatened to tear the colony apart. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondry's podcast American History

Tellers. We take you to the events, times, and people that shaped America and Americans, our values, our struggles, and our dreams. In our latest series, after their arrival, English colonists in Jamestown quickly established a fort, but their pursuit of gold and glory soon put them on a collision course with Virginia's native inhabitants and the powerful Chief of Chiefs Powhatan. Before long, violence, disease, and starvation would leave the colony teetering on the brink of disaster. Follow American history tellers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season

only on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of Sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing the best idea yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bolderous takers who brought them to life. Like did you

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or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to the best idea yet early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. It's just the best idea yet. Yeah, it is weird that the idea that more people have opinions about politics than vote. That is a crazy fact. That is, yeah. That 50% of people just don't is crazy. And then those same people go,

oh, it's cause I don't like the candidates. And it's like, yeah, you don't like the candidates cause you also didn't vote in the primary. Right, yeah. Like 2%, like Texas is basically, hasn't elected a statewide Democrat in like 20 years or some crazy number. And so basically whoever votes in the Republican primary picks and like 2% of the state votes

in the Republican primary. So that's who picks the people. And so, look, I don't like, I'm actually pretty centrist, I feel, but I'm not enjoying either candidate in voting in a, you pick which party you're gonna vote in in Texas, as you know, but I'm picking, like an adult, between the horrible and less horrible, in my view,

because that's my job. Who I vote for in the general, my first job is, can I have a tiny sway over making things less bad? And that's actually where you have the biggest impact. Yes, smaller, smaller pool. That's one of the things I've tried to do like in some of the political stuff is like, we beat a really bad candidate in North Carolina

because we got Democrats to vote in a Republican primary. And it's so weird to them, like, why would I pull a Republican ballot? Why would I help them? Yeah. Yes. But it's like, well, you're going to be represented by a Republican ballot? Why would I help them? Yeah. Yes. But it's like, well, you're going to be represented by a Republican.

Let me tell you this. Now you have a choice, this guy or this guy who's really bad. And it's like, okay, well, I guess if I have to choose, it would be this guy. But that's what voting in a primary does. And by the way, then if you vote in a party that's not yours, you throw off all the political

like surveys and stuff. It's awesome. Yeah, it's awesome. yours, you throw off all the political surveys and stuff. It's awesome. Yeah, it's awesome. And then you start getting all the mail. It shakes the very predictable machine and the logic of it totally. Yep. There's a Mark Suarez writes in Meditations,

he's like, stop fooling yourself that you believe in Plato's Republic. Or he says, stop fooling yourself that you live in Plato's Republic. And it's, stop fooling yourself that you live in Plato's Republic. And it's like, we don't live in a perfect system. Sometimes you gotta make unpleasant decisions. That's what being an adult is. It's choosing between this delayed flight

and this long ass drive. Welcome to life. But then people think politics is like something different. And first off, you have to participate, which most people don't do. There was an election here, again, for city council, that was decided by two votes. That's one couple.

One couple was, didn't get up and vote, and it would have gone in a different direction. And then by the way, a huge percentage of the seats are, you know, unopposed. And so the participation is first and foremost. And then when you participate, holding your nose because that's what being an adult is. Well, I was talking about,

I was doing a newspaper and in Houston interview yesterday and I'm supporting Colin Allred in Texas. I was gonna say, you do have the lucky privilege as a new Texan to now vote against Ted Cruz, which is our great honor and obligation. That has been my dream since I was a baby, okay? By the way, Ted Cruz- Probably his mother's dream also.

Probably true. Ted Cruz and I have been like mortal enemies on TV since he came to the Senate. And I could go into it, but like, he'll attack Obama for not enforcing the red line in Syria, but that was actually Ted Cruz that led the opposition to the red line. Just so much hypocrisy.

But I was talking to, you know, to the newspaper and I said, here's the issue with Ted Cruz. When you go into the Senate or you go into a legislative body, your choice isn't, I'm gonna vote for perfect or no. Your choice is, I'm gonna vote for something that's not that great or no. That's it.

And if you want to continually be no and go home and say, well, I'm standing against for something that's not that great or no. That's it. And if you wanna continually be no and go home and say, well, I'm standing against the establishment, fine, right? You might get reelected. Maybe people know who you are. He's famous, but you're a terrible legislator. You're a shitty legislator if you never come to yes, because there is no perfect answer.

It's like in life and certainly in politics, there's never perfect. But it's also not even legislation, right? Because yes, politicians' job is to Congress and the Senate, their job is to pass legislation, which people totally don't understand how our system of government works. Like the lever of power,

the president is enforcing the law and is the final check against really bad laws, but policy is supposed to come from the legislative branches, which the legislative branches have really bad laws, but like policy is supposed to come from the legislative branches, which the legislative branches have decided not to wield. But what I thought was so interesting about Ted Cruz, and I think this is a larger leadership lesson, it's not that he fled to Cancun in the middle of a crisis.

Which he did. Yes, but it's that he said he did it because there was nothing he could do. Like, he's not just like, look, he could vote no on every single thing, but be an effective advocate for his constituents and help them access federal service. He could be, there's still a job

other than voting yes or no on laws. And what Ted Cruz thought when the state was freezing and the power grid failed and people were dying, like thousands of people cumulatively across the state died, it's just not like Katrina didn't happen in one day in one way, so like we're less aware of the magnitude of that natural disaster. He was like, well, there's nothing I can do.

Like he thought the same thing that I thought, but like that's crazy. Cause there wasn't much I could do. He can call the president, you know, there's so much he could do. And he does not understand that that's how it works. So he's just a shitty leader on top of ideologically, he's just bad at being one of a hundred people

who have certain amounts of access and relationships. Yeah, and that was the issue with him on that. By the way, just quick trivia note, I was the very last plane out of DFW when that hit. My wife and I were going to Hawaii and we connected through Dallas, Fort Worth. And I remember getting off the jet bridge and being like, this feels like Chicago

in the middle of winter. Like, this isn't good. We were literally the last plane to take off. Otherwise we would have been stranded at DFW. Thank you, God. But like with Ted, it was, it's a matter of the Cancun thing. If he'd have gone to Cancun

and then all of a sudden this thing hits and he puts out a press release, like I'm in Cancun, I shouldn't be here, I'm on my way back. It wouldn't be an issue. I've been on the phone with Washington every day for the last, every minute for the last two days, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But he doesn't believe that government does things. And so like, of course, and there's a whole strain of the Republican party, I think, that just does it, that sees government as the enemy and as having effectively no role in society. And there's a whole strain of the Republican Party, I think, that just does it, that sees government as the enemy and as having effectively no role in society, which is insane. And then for those people to get in positions of government

is bad for everyone because now there's one less person who can get the government to do things. Well, it's like chaos is the point with these folks. I mean, I served with like the ones that are now the mainstream of the GOP that used to be kind. Well, it's like chaos is the point with these folks. I mean, I served with like the ones that are now the mainstream of the GOP that used to be kind of our, we called them the exotics. And, but their whole point was chaos. And they don't see a role for the federal government

unless it's, you know, them. I mean, they love being in power, but they don't see a role for it. They tear it down in the process. And I look back at my party and say, look, the legacy of the GOP, we should be really proud of. We freed the slaves, we preserved the federal government. We actually built the infrastructure system

in this country under Eisenhower. Like, and I think even the transcontinental railroad stuff was Republican. Like if we could embrace and grasp that, but we have somehow now been, there's massive political alignment taking place right now, but now we're the anti-federal government party. It's just, it's mad.

Lincoln, I'm just writing about this now, Lincoln didn't just like preserve the federal government in the sense that he was like, no, no, no, America is one country and it's indissoluble. The Union Army at the outbreak of the Civil War was 17,000 people. That's crazy. More people died in the Union Army at the outbreak of the Civil War was 17,000 people. That's crazy. More people died in the Union Army at Antietam

in a single day. That's insane. Than the entire, so he built the federal government to support an army of nearly a million people. He passed the first income tax. He built the, we talk about alienation, he built something that could serve the enormous machine that he had to build to reassert

the like actual governance of the union. But like the number of things that didn't exist that had to exist at the end of it is incredible. And the other thing he doesn't get like any credit for that if Republicans truly understood their legacy would do, he passes the Maryland Grant Act, which is the act that gives, we talked about federal territory,

gives huge chunks of federal territory, like Cornell, A&M, all the A&M, the entire University of California university system. All of these schools are built on grants that the federal government gave to the states to give to colleges, which built us as the technological powerhouse, which Lincoln understood,

you know, he's the only president that had a patent. Going to New York. Yeah, he traveled from Illinois to New Orleans on a flatboat and they get stuck at one point. He's trying to figure out how to get the flat boat unstuck from these rocks and later invents this thing that would like float the boat up above things. Whoa, that's cool. Then he walks home.

So Lincoln just had this understanding of America and science and it's not, what people don't understand too, the main thing that Lincoln understood and a lot of the early Republicans did and I guess the't understand too, the main thing that Lincoln understood and a lot of the early Republicans did, and I guess the Whigs too, there was one party, basically the Southern party, that said, like, we just wanna own slaves,

we wanna be left alone, we don't wanna support any kind of federal infrastructure that's gonna come from our taxes. And the more Western and Eastern people in the United States were like, dude, someone's got to damn these rivers and build canals. And Lincoln was a big believer in large federal works. And that is actually the genesis of the Republican Party, which is utterly disavowed for this nonsensical kind of libertarianism, like for the Texas independent energy grid

that can't withstand storms. Like the Republicans are supposed to be a party of building and making and wielding an effective federal government. It doesn't have to be huge, but it should fucking do things. Yeah, it should. And you know, we did, so I would travel a lot as a congressman and I went to Australia, one of my last trips in Congress,

and they've basically kind of set up public-private partnerships on their ports. And it's like, that's the kind of stuff we should be thinking through, because what do they do with that? They actually make money on that port that they invest in their basically social security. Their social security is running a surplus.

And it's like, that's what what Republican should be is this kind of innovation on this stuff to get more dollars for infrastructure. Actually, so I lived a quarter of a mile from the I&M Canal, I think it stands for Illinois and Michigan Canal, which Abraham Lincoln was part of building. And it was built in the 1840s.

So he was a lawyer, I guess, at the time, or maybe he was in the state house, whichever it was. Or I think he voted for a bunch of stuff in the state house and then as a congressman, and both of these things effectively cost him reelection because there was like economic crises after and people were like, look at these politicians spending all our money. Meanwhile, the canal still exists.

It does, it does. You go to Chicago, that's it, right? Like that's the whole thing. And it's like, it's amazing to see that. And the thing I respect the most about Abraham Lincoln is I don't know if I could have like, I like to think of myself as like, I would be a stick to it of this.

He every day got the whatever, I guess, telegraph at the time of the casualties of every battle. And he sat there, I guess in the basement of the White House or the executive building, like stewing over this for four years. And I would have had advisors come to me and say, listen, let's just enter negotiations with the South. We'll do fine as a Northern country.

We'll live at peace, Canada, United States. It would have been hard for me to say no to that, right? Of course, of course. And so there's a story I tell in the new book where as Kentucky's sort of wavering, this Kentucky politician visits Lincoln and then he says, anything I should tell the people back home in Kentucky because they're worried. And Lincoln gets up, he's like six, four. And he's like, you tell him there's a man in here. I just fucking love that.

That's awesome. What he did was he had like sort of stones. He had a commitment. And then he wasn't as radical on these things as people thought maybe he should have. And there's this exchange between him and Frederick Douglas where Frederick Douglas says, you know, my problem with you is you kind of vacillate on things. And he says, look, you can say whatever you want about me,

but that is not true. He was like, I might be slower than you want in doing things, but once I decide them, I never go back on them. And so I think what Lincoln understood, even on the slavery issue was like, look, if you do it too early in the war, public support will evaporate. So he does it in this kind of iterative process.

But he understands, and Spielberg does this well in the Lincoln movie, that it's about moving forward and then not allowing any backsliding. And that he understood that as much as he wanted the war to end, if he ended it at the wrong time, he would have to undo the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation and the promise

that they made to all these black soldiers. And so I think what Lincoln had was this strong sense of right and wrong, but also an intellectual humility. So he wasn't aggressive with it, but once he got there, he was like, if this is right, I'll die on this thing. And he was willing to lose reelection. He could have sealed up reelection by negotiating sooner also, and he was willing to lose re-election. He could have sealed up re-election by negotiating sooner also, but he understood that on the other side of re-election was the 13th, 14th, and 15th

amendments. I'm excited for your book on this because I am so intrigued by him. So in Springfield, Illinois, there's the Lincoln Museum. And when you walk in, I don't know if it's still there, it was there when I was a kid, you see like a picture of Lincoln every year he was president. And you can just see the weight that comes onto him in four years. Like his first year, he actually looks youthful. It's not the Lincoln Weir's. And then the last one is the picture we always see

where his eyes are like, everything's tired. And you realize that's leadership. Like Winston Churchill, for 20 years is railing about the danger of Germany. Everybody calls him a kook. They say he's a warmonger. They say he's blah, blah, blah. I mean, the guy has a drinking problem probably because he's super depressed. And then all of a sudden there's a warmonger. They say he's, you know, blah, blah, blah. I mean, the guy has a drinking problem, probably because he's super depressed.

And then all of a sudden there's a moment where it's like, Churchill was right. And that's the leadership. I think so many people expect that it's going to be easy and fun and you're gonna get all this attention. It's actually really hard. It's misery.

And there's a reason that, you know, a lot of people fail at it. And there's a reason that not everybody wants to get into it because if you're actually gonna stand up and do what's right, man, it's an impact. And Abraham Lincoln, think about that. He finally achieves everything he wants, you know, finally. And he gets shot. It's like, dude, but he's the hero.

As America, we're like Abraham Lincoln. Yes. It's crazy. No, no, it's hero. As America, we're like Abraham Lincoln. Yes. It's crazy. No, no, it's unreal. There's a book I'll give you in the book circle called Lincoln's Melancholy. And it's about, he basically has crippling depression

his whole life. Yeah. And so they think kind, like he was just kind of at this lower tuning than everyone else. And that this was horrible for the first 50 years of his life or a slog. But then in this moment of extreme passions and despair and also exuberance, you know, this sort of oscillating, he's kind of got this kind of dysthymic even keel that allows him, he was like superhumanly incapable of losing his temper or taking things personally

or reading too much into things. There were so many moments that it looked like it was lost, but he kind of stuck. He's been miserable his whole life. Yeah, and just this sheer amount of, I mean, he buries a kid in the White House. There is this levity to it also, because he was very humorous.

And apparently as he brings the cabinet in to read them the Emancipation Proclamation, he first just reads them these like funny stories from a book he likes. And he understood that like, you had to have some kind of humor inside of it or you would break and die. That's awesome.

Yeah, one of the greatest people who ever lived is just a superhuman feat. And I think about, you know, the people that signed the declaration of independence, for instance, and I'm like 30. Yeah. And there, there were kids and I, I, I can't say guarantee, but I pretty much guarantee that none of them thought this was going to succeed. They probably thought this may be a 50 or 100 year project, we're probably gonna hang from a tree,

the Brits are gonna kill us. And like that, giving the ultimate like that, it blows me away when I think about that because there's no way we should have beat the Brits, by the way. And there's no way I would have signed this declaration. I may have fought for the colonies, but I wouldn't, I don't know

if I would have like signed this declaration. You wouldn't have bet your entire family's fortune on it. Yeah, I know. I know. Well, and then, yeah, I think so when I saw you tear up at that hearing, what I understood there, when I think of Washington resigning his commission, or I think of these, when I think of the Gettysburg Address, you think of these moments and there is an otherworldliness to them. And you think of the sacrifice and the earnestness of them. And then for people to play fast and loose with them because thrice married tax cheat

from a reality television show is too fragile to feel that he lost an election. Let's say you're just very, very pro life or very, very pro tax reform, or literally insert any issue that you would value that thing more than the most essential thing, which is that the nation lives and that the experiment continues, that you would spit in the face of that. I think the most operative moment, the most insightful moment, like Plutarch, the great biographer, looks at these little moments in these great lives of Caesar who's not all good and Cicero who's, or sorry, Caesar who's not all bad and Cicero who's not all good. He looks at these moments that give you the, that unlock the whole picture. I think Trump at Arlington, not the most recent

one, but where he said, I don't get it. What's in it for that? I actually, like people say, don't take him literally. I actually think in that moment, he doesn't get it. He literally just, it doesn't make sense to him. And that is how you, the idea of doing something for someone else, let alone the ultimate sacrifice for people you will not meet is literally incomprehensible. It is, and like, so I wear on my wrist a buddy of mine that was killed in Iraq, Andreas O'Keefe,

and it's like, when you think about it, regardless of what your spiritual view is when you die, it's the end of your earthly movie, right? You give the ultimate sacrifice, it's like, boom, it's over. Yes. And you have no idea that your sacrifice, you're not even conscious of the fact that your sacrifice will or will not have an impact.

Sure. That it's the most selfless thing anybody can do. Biologically, it makes no sense. It makes no sense, right? I mean, we're supposed to run away from that. And for Trump to say that, to say, I don't get it, you might be right. I think it wasn't some angry thing. And for Trump to say that, to say, I don't get it, you might be right, I think it wasn't some angry thing. He just was confused.

Because if you think about a narcissist, a real clinical narcissist, everything is through this. Like, yeah, we started this conversation with talking about looking at the globe. He can physically see a globe, he can't think that way. Can't think in the broader perspective. And so, yeah, it doesn't make sense. He would never give his life for the globe, he can physically see a globe, he can't think that way. Can't think in the broader perspective. And so yeah, it doesn't make sense. He would never give his life for the contrary, right?

And he shouldn't. He wouldn't give the change in his pocket. Right. You know what I mean? Like he would literally do, the idea of doing something for someone else, that is a code that doesn't- Unless he's gonna get attention for it.

Yeah, he literally does not buy into the premise that you should do something for someone else just because. And that's my concern is that attitudes like that catch fire and they shouldn't, right? Because we've, you remember after 9-11, it was, we would honor the people that would go fight for our country, whether you agreed or disagreed with the war, we would honor that.

And that is, that's the only way a society can keep its head above water, a self-governing society. Otherwise, you can have a dictator and live a life, but to self-govern, you have to have people that are willing to see the bigger picture, that are willing to sacrifice the bigger picture. Otherwise, you're just a bunch of self-interested people trying to get along instead of having a mission

or a cause as a country. Yeah, January 6th is not a problem because it was a destructive riot. It was all those things. And so when people go even like, well, what about the riots during Black Lives Matter? Which were not good. Right.

And also put aside just the what about-ism, like as if one cancels out the other. The problem was the setting and the place and the end of the thing, that the intended aim was to disrupt the most sacred of processes, that by the way, we invented, it did not exist previously.

That peaceful transfer of power in a democratic government did not exist. We invented that. I'm being a little fast and loose with it, but we invented that idea. At the scale we do it had never before existed and may never exist. It's unprecedented in the history of the world, especially in that fucking building,

to think of the smallness that it came from to get to there, that we did it peacefully during a civil war. Mm-hmm. Is to just shrug that off as whatever you wanna shrug it off with because you don't wanna have to face something is just a profound betrayal of everything

that the country's about. It is, and you could burn an entire city down, right? And democracy can survive that. You burn that capital down, or you, most importantly, take away people's basic trust that their vote counts. Yeah. Right. That's all you need for self-governance is just like, I can vote, that vote counts, the winner wins. That's it. January 6th style riot in March of 2021 is profoundly different than on January 6th, 2021, because it was a part of an overall coup.

I remember leading up to it, people would go, oh, he's undermining our faith in democracy. No, he's attempting a slow moving paperwork coup that nearly succeeded. The violence at the end was the punctuation on a series of illicit illegal acts that were condemned. There's this thing called the Catalan Conspiracy in ancient Rome. on a series of illicit illegal acts that were condemned. There's this thing called the Catiline conspiracy in ancient Rome.

There is like an ancient Roman precedent that the founders were very aware of. And that's why they set up the process to prevent that from happening. And no one else had ever done anything like it except maybe Aaron Burr and a handful of towns in the South right after the Civil War as they attempted to,

that they didn't like black people being in charge. But other than that, never happened. And so those institutions, those rituals, there's kind of a, you have to give yourself over to the sacredness of them and get a little weepy about them. So they mean more to you than literally anything else, including your own prospects, finances, and potentially physical wellbeing.

That's why we have an oath, right? The oath is all about this sacred moment. Nobody can force you to take the oath seriously. Yes. But it's that sacred moment where you say, I'm putting, I mean, in kind of a spiritual faith, taking an oath is very sacred, right? It's, you know, you take an oath to your God

and you take an oath to your country in this case. And when you start taking that not seriously, or you start putting your power above it, I don't know how a society survives that when people don't take an oath seriously. And that's where I have worries for this fall, but I think we'll get through it. Yeah, that would be my last question.

So let's say he wins the election. I go back and forth, like, what is a person to do? Cause like I've traveled all over, you travel to places with much worse leaders than him. And when I'm here, I'm like, I'm not doing enough. What should I do? What would I do if this happened? But then when I walk past, you know,

some person in insert country on the street, I'm not like, you're abdicating your moral responsibilities. You know, you just go, this is life. So in Stoicism, there's this kind of sense of like, you try to be a good person, you focus on what you control, you don't think you're the decider. And yet that's also how unjust systems, when they're talking about segregation or apartheid

or anti-Semitism, that's how they happen is people just go, yeah, I was French and then Hitler rolled in and so now it's Vichy France. How do you think about that? So when I think about, for instance, if Donald Trump wins, I think there will be real damage to the faith of the institutions. He'll put people around him that don't have the honor

that they frankly had his first administration. And so what I would say to people then, the first piece of advice is stay educated and be aware of what's happening. Because there is a chance to resist, not physically, to resist basically destruction of your institutions. So that is be aware, but don't also sit around in your darkness and be angry.

And I have to tell myself this because I angry tweet too much, right? But that doesn't benefit anybody. So you have to be aware. And I would say to people is, look, the country's not gonna end if he wins again. I don't think it's gonna end. So what you can do is begin to build what happens

in two years, in four years, and in your local elections. That's where the real guardrails are. State leaders that are willing to certify an election that they didn't agree with. People like Steven Richer in Arizona who said, no, he's a Republican, voted for Trump, here's the vote count, Joe Biden won, so be that kind of person. If, you know, where I do worry is if Donald Trump loses,

they've had a lot of time to prepare what this looks like, and I think it's gonna happen at state capitals, not at the US Capitol. And I think there is, it's essential that we be aware of that game plan, because that's the only way to stop it. If we all of a sudden, those of us that defend democracy are surprised by the game plan, we could lose it. And again, if an election is stolen legitimately, like if Donald Trump somehow goes to the Supreme Court

and wins and he lost, I mean, we can't even entertain that because that would be pretty awful. Yeah, that nearly happened. It did. It was closer than people think. It could have happened before January 6th, right? And so had that happened, what do you do when you wake up the next,

like I'm not quite clear, and I would love a book or a really important thing. I would like, what is the obligation of your ordinary person in that scenario? Well, I think if an election is legitimately stolen, and this is why Donald Trump's kind of rhetoric on it is so dangerous, then I think it's a responsibility of a citizen to ensure, you know, physically if necessary,

that that election isn't stolen, right? We have to, you know, we revolted on the basis of not having representation. And that's what's dangerous about what Donald Trump did because he convinced a significant amount of the country that an election was stolen that was not. And I mean, honestly, if it was stolen, I would have been there on the Capitol.

I mean, I was on the Capitol, but in a different capacity. And so, yeah, I mean, I think it's ensuring that you're building the local structures, you're building the state structures, and ultimately do what we have to do to defend this country. All right. I want to show you some books. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it'll see you next episode. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple

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