The Daily Stoic - The Courage Crisis: How YOU Can Make A Difference Today | John Avlon (PT. 2)

Episode Date: September 27, 2025

The hardest thing in life is finding the courage to do what’s right when it costs you. In this episode, Ryan continues his conversation with journalist and historian John Avlon, diving into the dangerous myths we cling to, the lessons he learned from running for office, and the warnings history has to offer. John shares why he still chooses a defiant optimism for America’s future and why you should, too.John Avlon is an American journalist and political commentator. He was a senior political analyst and anchor at CNN, and was the editor-in-chief and managing director of The Daily Beast from 2013 to 2018.📚 Grab signed copies of John Avlon’s book Lincoln and the Fight For Peace at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/👉 Follow John Avlon on Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/johnavlon/?hl=en🎥 Go to Ryan Holiday’s YouTube Channel to watch the video of him giving John Avlon book recommendations at The Painted Porch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr58MBVBSrA📚 The Four Stoic Virtues: Justice, Temperance, Wisdom, Courage, are timeless keys to living your best life. The Daily Stoic is releasing a limited collector’s edition set of all four books signed and numbered, with a title page identifying these books as part of the only printing of this series. PLUS we're including one of the notecards Ryan used while writing the series. Pre-order the Limited Edition Stoic Virtues Series Today! | https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/stoic-virtues📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ 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.

Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like The Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show, but not listen to ads. Well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you a ad-free version of Daily Stoic.

We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, completely ad-free. No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for. And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive

bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into Stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20% off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show of descriptions to make those ads go away. 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

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 So. Stoic podcast. What I've loved about the Stoics is that the Stoics didn't sit on the sidelines.

They got involved. They got engaged. It was said that Marcus Aurelius and Hadrian drag Arian and Rousticus out of their studies and into the forum, into the arena, did not allow them to be pen and ink philosophers. And, you know, it's really easy to despair about what's happening in the world. It's really easy to complain about the quality of leadership or elected officials, whatever country you live in,

whatever level you are complaining about, whether it's your town mayor or, you know, your representative to the EU. It's harder to do something about it. And not that running for office is the only way to do it, but my guest today, John Avalon,

ran for Congress in 24. He didn't win, but I think he learned a lot in the process. He put himself out there. And that must have been scary. It must have been hard. It must have been uncomfortable for someone who was a journalist. For many years, he was the managing director of the David Beast. It's been a senior political analyst and anchor at CNN. His wife, Margaret Hoover, is a journalist. He's previously a columnist at the New York Sun. But he put himself out there. And that's how we connected. He had me on his podcast during that election cycle. And we chatted about.

Stoicism and contributing to public life. And this is all secondary to what John is really, really great at, which is writing interesting books. He has two books, Washington's Farewell, and Lincoln and the Fight for Peace, that I think are very relevant to today's world. He came out, we talked about Lincoln, we talked about Washington, and then many other things. I think you're really going to like these episodes. You can follow him on social media at John Avalon, and then we ended up doing a nice walk through the Painted Porch where we talked about some of our favorite books. So let's just get into it. Here is me talking to John Avalon in Baxter, Texas. Have you read the new Eric Larson book on Sumpter? I've started the Eric Larson

book. It's weird to read another. Like Meacham's book's great. I like Larson a lot. I just thought he did a good job, which is what I wanted to talk about. He did a good job capturing with something I don't think we talk about with the Civil War enough, which is basically a minority of a minority hijacks a party and then plunges the whole country into war. And there's an analogy here, like in Texas, there's no Democrat in any statewide office. And even though the state is actually pretty purple, only 3% of people vote in the Republican primary. And so that's who decides. So you have this minority by minority picking these extreme candidates. And basically, I think he makes the point that a generation of Southerners who'd been raised not just with slavery

and the corrosive effects of like, you know, subjugating a group of people. But at some point, the sort of powers it be decide that they can't even brook an argument about the rightness or wrongness of this. And so they raise kind of this generation of like these aggressive snowflakes who can't like no criticism of slavery is allowed, no contradictory information is allowed, no, basically no free speech is allowed. And it creates this kind of this incredibly insular, almost deranged, wacko culture that honestly thinks it can win the Civil War. You know, if it plunges the nation in, Lincoln does essentially nothing to make them think

that slavery itself is threatened. This is all in their head. You know, now that famous essay about the Flight 93 election, they basically believe that premise then and then crash the plane into a fucking mountain. for no reason and create the very thing they were trying to avoid. And I know the author of that essay, and I do think as someone who lived through 9-11 up close, like that essay, the premise of it is offensive to say the least. Yes. But also really, really bad if your goal is to try to redeem American democracy. And that's where I think our challenge is today. But let's just talk

about what you just laid out. First of all, blood and soil vision of patriotism, which is nationalism, not patriotism, right? A sense of persecution that you cult cultivate so people are on a hair trigger. You use polarization. And then when violence is instigated, you convince people that the aggressor is the victim. Yeah. So the psychology is termed aggressive defensiveness. It was also used to re, you know, reclaim the South for segregationists after the Civil War and after the constitutional amendments. This is Japan and World War II. This is Germany in World War II. Exactly. Yeah. Germany, by the way, that's a form of lost cause mythology, too, very explicitly. Blood and soil nationalism, plus a victimhood, aggressive defensive

of lost cause mythology. These are dangerous forces. And I think America in particular, and this is something I believe, like marrow deep, you know, we're the first nation in the world founded on an idea, not a tribal identity. And therefore, we're really uniquely dependent on unifying stories, and tribal politics uniquely short-cirks our nation. Yes. Or short-circuits, right?

What do you do when people introduce a fundamentally false story? And they repeatedly add to it, filter information, suppress. dissenting contradictory. The South basically tells itself this story that is a lie over and over and over again that plunges them into the made-up conflict that is Fort Sumter into the war that sustains the war well after it's obviously lost and then sustains the sort of lost-cause mythology resistance of segregation for another hundred years. And I think we're kind of in this sort of that energy, that sort of dark energy I said, I think it's still with us. When I look at a DeSantis or an Abbott. I see them just using that playbook of just like, how do we,

how do we lie? How do we aggressively defend? And there's a line of spectrum from when it goes from populism to demagogism into, you know, outright violence and war. And it's hard to know where you are on that spectrum. But it's a dangerous force that you should not play with. Correct. And we are actively indulging it. And the other thing is an attempt to get democracies to consume themselves. So this goes back to actually what Washington in the farewell address and the founders, I've been giving a talk lately about how the founders warned us. And if you know, there's a reason they use the word demagogue even more than democracy in the federal's papers. There's a reason that Washington at farewell address, his number one warning is

against what we would call hyper-partisanship and polarization. That's how democracies die. And also foreign influence underpinning, which is an issue in when the founders are directly drawing on the lessons of ancient Greece and Rome and how those republics fell. You know, they look at King Philip of Macedon, pretending to be allies and undermining the integrity of a state, which Russia does to Poland while Washington is president. Or even the number of times they've referenced like Catalan. Yes. And the Catalan conspiracy. And when you have this sort of false demagogic populist who loses an election and that threatens their ego and sense of self. And what a fragile person with unlimited ambition will do in that position. They were just so scared about that. And then I guess it's

somewhat ironic that they would design a system that is still, to this day, remains vulnerable to that kind of person. But they had explicitly, here's the great thing about applied history. The founders intentionally drew on those lessons to build a system that was as impervious as possible given human nature. But that's also why they wonder. They warn, if virtue ceases to exist, democracies will collapse. We have a weakness with demagogues who rise to power on the ruins of public liberty, right? Populism that says they're defending liberty while undermining it. Yeah.

Which is why, you know, when you read that Hamilton letter to Washington that was read during one of Trump's impeachments repeatedly, it's incredibly resonant and incredibly relevant. And I think one of our challenges, like Lincoln, and that generation is the second founding, right? And it's easier to rally around them today for some folks than the first founding, which I utterly reject, but we can get into that, which we're now celebrating the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord. They did a Paul Revere write-up.

this street. That's so cool. I love that. And we need to, you know, reclaim American history. You know what I found out at this thing? Because I took my kids too, they were exciting. So this town is Bastrop, Texas. There's also Bastrop, Louisiana. It was founded by this guy, Barron de Bastrop, who was in typical American history fashion, a complete charlatan of no, of no actual European ancestry, comes here, land speculator, gets a bunch of land from the Mexican government, whatever. He runs into financial trouble. He sells his, land in Louisiana to Aaron Burr. No kidding. Yes. Oh, and that's where he was going to do the revolution. Yes. Yes. Our first traitor. That's amazing. That's amazing. There's so many plays to take that.

But I think that, you know, it's worth looking at the way the founders consciously drew on history. And we need to honor our history. I think, you know, we need a, I'm a centrist, but a liberal patriotism. We need to make sure that there are a lot of, that this is a patriotic movement to preserve our democracy that's incredibly inclusive. And to the extent that Lincoln is the second found. I do think that one of our challenges right now we need to take generationally very seriously is the idea that we need to enact a new founding era. Would you say we need a third or would you say it's the fourth? Because I would say you get a hundred, at the 100 anniversary of Appomatics, you basically have the March in Washington, you have the civil rights movement. I would include

sort of Washington and John Lewis and these other guys as a sort of a third founding. I would say we'd be fourth. But would you? I think the fourth is fair because I think between the Great Depression in the civil rights movement, an enormous amount happens. A new conception of an American. But the goal in our focus now, I deeply believe, should be strengthening American democracy for the 21st century. And it needs to be a whole of government effort that involves culture too. Teaching civics again, really inculcating it.

Really making sure we have a new vision of national service, we have shared experiences. Political reforms that can counteract the polarization, open primaries, ranked choice voting, redistricting reform. The system has to work where people aren't going to participate. And this is where the abundance agenda folks have a great point. because if you create a sclerotic system where nothing gets built, people don't believe their government can be responsive to their needs. And that sets up a situation for a demagogue who promises they can, quote, get things done. So we do need to think much more holistically and about a fourth founding and an effort after this to rebuild and strengthen American democracy for the 21st century.

That's where I think our energy needs to go. It's not a defense of the stale status quo. It's something that is patriotic, but radically. new drawing on her past. And it's about making the old stories new again, which is what you do, which is what I try to do in my books. We need to take the best of the past and reanimate it. So there's a sense of continuity and hope and building something better squarely on the best foundations of the past. I think Martin Luther King did this so well because he was so steeped in American history and then sort of Western civilization that he could take them seriously and

literally. Right? And he like, in the March and Washington, he's like, I'm here to cash a check. Right? With the Emancipation Proclamation, you made a promise. I'm here. here to cash that check. And that's, I mean, I think Thomas Jefferson would, at some level, be horrified that we took him literally, right? Like, but, but that, I think that's part of it. And I've always loved, there's a line in meditations that I think about that I think is a great example of this, because it's so funny coming from Marcus Aurelius. So Marcus Aurelius, he lists his debts and lessons. And he lists, uh, he says, through my brother Severus, It was through him that I encountered Thrasia, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, and Brutus, the great sort of stoic

opposition, the great stoic philosopher senators. And he says, and conceived of a society of equal laws governed by equality of status and speech and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else. So it's like, it's funny to hear the emperor of Rome say that. And yet he's taking the tradition of Cato and all these other stoic philosophers. He's reiterating what they said. He's saying it beautifully. and then at some level I think probably would be first to admit we're not even close to that, but the idea is that each generation we aspire to get a little bit closer to. That's it.

That's to form a more perfect union. This is not a utopian vision. America is not a utopian nation because I think the founders recognized, given the understanding of human nature, that utopian dreams always end in nightmares. You're imposing ideology on the human spirit. That's never a good deal. But what you can do is make constant progress. And each generation has its role in responsibility. And this is ours.

We're the adults right now. And we got a lot to clean up and reform, but it needs to be done in a patriotic, inclusive way. And you're right about Dr. King, you know, that is such a great example about how he consciously builds. It's a patriotic nationalism. She's not tearing down. He's saying, hey, no, no, what you believe, I believe. Exactly.

But let's make it real. I think Gandhi does this also. It's like Gandhi understands Christianity is the religion of the empire that's oppressing him. and he reflects their fundamental unchristianness back at them, and then they have to go, well, are we going to cling to this, or are we going to try to be a little bit better? And that's reconciling leadership. Yes. Gandhi harkens back to Lincoln.

MLK harkened back to Lincoln. Mandela harkens back to Lincoln. You take a divided contradictory system and you try to elevate it on the basis of shared humanity. You have to do that. And that is, Jill Lepore writes beautifully about this in one of her books. but that is the essence of reconciling leadership. And it's something that Lincoln symbolizes, and we need to rekindle, it seems to me, right now.

So last time we talked, it was right before your election. You ran for office. What did you learn running for office? Because, I mean, I think you probably identify as a journalist and as a writer and as a historian, and then you found yourself crossing that line, like entering the arena, so to speak, obviously didn't go your way. But what did you learn about that process and what advice would you have for people? I'm glad I did it.

Yeah? I got energy from it. It felt deeply purposeful. And I think for me, it was a feeling that I did not just want to talk about it. If I had been, you know, I was editor-in-chief, the Daily Beast in the first Trump election, and we were the first news organization or one of the first to get blacklisted by the campaign. I was a senior analyst and anchor at CNN during the 2020 election. And the idea of enduring a third election and just talking about it felt civically lazy to me. And it's a tough

decision. It's tough on young families. You know, it's tough to walk away from a job and a career you really love, recognizing that it's probably enough fun to suddenly be subjected to criticism and the grueling schedule. I mean, I imagine also it's not a walk in the park. It's definitely not a walk in the park, and we don't make it easy, but I will say having been a journalist in the Trump era and written a book called Wingnuts 15 years ago about the rise of all this stuff, I have a very thick skin. I'm used to being attacked baselessly by people who create characters, which is pretty funny if your general, your whole purpose is about, you know, building a vital center and like combating polarization and extremism. And I don't care if it's on the far left or the far right,

but I won't pretend those two things are equivalent in our time. Sure, sure, sure. Because they're not. Yes. You know, I work for Rudy Giuliani when he was married during 9-11, before that had been a Clinton kid. And so, yeah, I ran as a Democrat because I was also the question of, where can I do the most good right now? And my wife and I, Margaret, this is Margaret Hoover, the host of a firing line. We had long and anguished conversations around this because of the costs to our family. And ultimately, the decision was that we didn't want to tell our kids that we could have done more when it mattered most.

Yeah. That's what honestly motivated me. And for me, my grandparents were immigrants, and I have had a deep belief in America as a civic religion. Yeah. I feel, and it's not an uncommon experience for immigrant families. And so what has been happening has been torturous to my sense of America as a great force for good, not perfect, but.

There's a betrayal there, I think it feels like. I didn't think we'd do it to ourselves a second time. Yes. Only because Trump, after the last election, had tried to destroy our democracy on a back of a lie that led to an attack on our capital. And I assumed that that would be a deal breaker, if not the 1.1 million people dying during COVID. If not for any number of your journalists, you care deeply about, you know, combating lies. Or just to go to our point about the founders in virtue, it's like, let's say he was right about everything. There is no level on which he's not a shitty person.

He cheats on his wife. He cheats on his taxes. He's mean. He's vindictive. He's insecure. He's a preposterous cartoon clown. Even if he was right about everything, even if he could make you rich in America beyond its wildest dreams, I think at some level, how do you not just have the self-respect to be like, I don't want to hang out that person. I don't want them in charge. And by the way, you would never let this person coach your kids soccer team. You would never give him your life savings. And then, the ability for millions of people in some sort of collective psychosis or delusion to go, let's give him the largest nuclear arsenal in the world and the keys to the world economy and the keys, this, that, and the other. Even if you are pretty cynical, even if you are pretty good at understanding the craziness, the crazy things people have done in history, it's hard to wrap your head around.

It is. And it sets a terrible example for American democracy and democracy in the world. Yeah. You know, our autocratic adversaries want to undermine the integrity of democracy, right? And they tried to do this in the 1930s, right? Democracy is divided and decadent and dysfunctional. It can't get big things done. You need a totalitarian system led by a strong man to really deliver for the people. And ultimately, you know, we sort of said that, you know, backs to the wall, we've got more strength. Yeah. Because free men, liberty, equality, that has greater strength than a totalitarian system that rules by fear. The fact that we've done this to ourselves is, is difficult to reconcile with any vision of American exceptionalism. The people who are surprised at the chaos and cruelty and corruption right now, it's hard for me to reconcile as a former journalist. But that goes back to the Lincoln thing. It's like if it was easy to be a reconciler, if it was easy to empathize, to understand, to forgive,

it wouldn't be impressive, right? And so it is an example of when Marx Reuters writes his passage about how the obstacle is the way. He's not talking about, like, a bankruptcy or, you know, a disaster. He's talking about assholes. Like, assholes really make it hard for you. Like, people who do fucked up things make it hard for you. It's hard to be empathetic when someone is in the middle of harming you or something you love. And that's what I think makes this moment so challenging, but it's also what demands from us exactly

this set of virtues. Exactly right. My favorite apocryphal, Lincoln, quote, sadly apocryphal is I'm an optimist because I don't see the point in being anything else. Yes. And so I do think we need to be defiantly optimistic. That is sort of my default anyway, but we need to dig deep to find it. It's one of the reasons why I wanted to interview you for my podcast right before the election

because the stakes are so high for citizens. But even in a ditch like this, it now is precisely the time where you need to dig deep, to find courage, to find discipline, to find decency. And for citizens to step up, this is a time for citizens to show responsibility. And that does not mean this, this requires the deeper wisdom of Lincoln and King of confronting hate with love. Yes. Right. That's the way you defeat it.

Because otherwise, the people who want to destroy our democracy will throw sand in the gears. They want more conflict. They want more division. They want you to quit. They want you to go, fuck them. This isn't worth it. They want you to move or they want you to disengage or just go, you know what? I'm just going to focus on my business for the next four years.

That's right. And this is like Voslav Havel, one of my heroes, the power of the powerless essay, where he talks about the subtle cues that makes a green grocer to put up the workers of the world unite sign in the window. It's not that they believe it. It's that that's a way just to stay out of trouble and go about their business. But then you become part of a cog in that larger machine. And so that's where we all, I think, need to rise up with a sense of sort of, you know, straighten their civic backbones and be active citizens and feel a sense of courage and do what we can. It's the Teddy Roosevelt. Do what you can, where you are with what you got. Well, that's what I felt with this thing at the

Naval Academy. Everyone had their little bit of, hey, this is where I draw the line. This is what I'm okay with. This is what I'm not okay with. This is where what I think is right. I actually think this would all get back in the bounds of normalcy pretty quickly. Like, I think Harvard doing what it did makes a big difference. Columbia doing what it did makes a big difference the other way. You know, these, see, like, what is the point of having hundreds of billions of dollars if you're going to go sit in the, still have to sit in the front row and suck up to a guy who would destroy your business in three seconds if he had the power, who has called for you to be arrested? I'm talking about Mark Zuckerberg here. You know, what is the point of being one of the hundred most powerful people

in the world that I'm talking about every senator? And then just being like, well, the president wants it. It's like, no, you have been given a set of power and you are, you are refusing to take it. And what is the point? And so I think if everyone said, like, at this thing in the naval county, they wanted me to remove stuff from my side, I don't have the power to force myself on stage and give the talk. They have the power to say whether I can do it or not. But I have the power to not compromise. And then I have the power to not go quiet about that. I can make good trouble, as John Lewis said. And that's what I felt like I could do. Now, I don't know what this is going to mean for me exactly. I'm almost certainly not going to talk there ever again.

Like that invitation is rescinded for the time being. But, you know, in the long run, though, it is additive. In the long run, you will be invited back. You know. because you took a stand of principle. And just let's explain to people a little bit more around the context around this. The Naval Academy had been removed over, I think, 300 books from the library. They left mine comp, but they took out my Angela. Yes, right? Stacey Abrams, who I've had on this podcast, they removed her book.

So it's not this abstract thing. It's someone I know. They removed someone I know from the library. And what was the alleged sin, not like those books had actually been read. Just too woe. Just too woe. By reputation, association, right? Probably chat GPT gave them a list of woke books.

Right. This is like where like the Annola Gay was briefly erased from the history of the military because it had the word gay. They had a keyword. Yeah, exactly, right? Which is really sinister and totalitarian event. Weren't also sort of, you know, you know, laugh so you don't cry. But that stand of courage and then talking about it, right?

What they do is they say, fine, just be quiet. Yes. Right. Get in line. And the refusal to bow, the refusal to compromise. The contrary example that you just gave is all the CEO. who took the trip down to Mara Lago to kiss the ring. And, you know, Martin Amos said to say, the terrible thing is everyone's got their reasons.

Yes. And in that case, you've got the veneer of shareholder responsibility, fiduciary responsibility. I will be not doing my duty as a shareholder of representative, you know, CEO, if I don't go kiss the ring right now. Yeah. Even though experience should tell you that bullies only respect strength. My favorite quote from, one of my favorite quotes from Churchill, you know, appeasement is feeding a crocodile hoping it eats you laugh. Yeah. And as the law firms found out when they didn't have collective action at the outset, they figured, oh, this is a pretty good deal.

I was going to do pro bono work for, against anti-Semitism and four veterans anyway. Yeah. But it's never going to stop there. No, that's what Stockdale, which I talk about in the New York Times piece, he calls this extortionary environments. It's due. And so you might go, oh, look, all they're asking you to do is remove the slides because it's going to, yes, but there's a or else. And the or else isn't, hey, you're going to get audited or, hey, you're going to end up in an El Salvadorian gulag. but it was you're not going to come back.

Like there is a consequence if you don't go along. If you make trouble, like things will be removed. And I think what is tricky, and we saw like, where would we be right now if Mike Pence hadn't been the vice president on January 6th, right? So there is the problem with, you said everyone has the reasons. Some of those reasons are good. You do need good people in positions of power and influence for some critical moment in the future. I think what's delusional and super seductive is we tell ourselves that we're that person, that of course we know we could do something now, but we have to hold our fire for later

then we can do the right thing. And most of us are not that person. Our job, most of us, most of the time, need to just do the right fucking thing and not be Machiavellian or pragmatic about it. Just do what you think is right. Draw the line. Say what you think the truth. Marks through this says say what you think, right? Like, say what is true. Do what your duty demands. Don't tell yourself, oh, hey, if I do it, then I'll be replaced by someone worse. And then with the moment no, most of us, most of the time, just do the right thing. It's safer. It's easier. It's clearer. Don't get in your own head about it. I just had to go, you know what? Yes, sure. I could get up there. I could do the talk. Maybe I could sneak it in. I could be subtle about it. I could allude to this.

or, you know, later on, I want to give a better speech. I'm like, you know what, I've done that enough in my life. You know, there's been moments professionally where I was working with someone or I didn't say something. You've written about that. You've been open about that. Totally. And I was like, you know what? That time's over.

More people just need to do that thing now. This is the key thing, right? And you mentioned John McCain, who obviously served in the Hanoi Hilton, served, quote, unquote, with Admiral Stockdale. And he said, you know, doing the right thing politically is usually the right thing politically ultimately. Yes. Right?

But take that calculation out. the moment you rationalize, we're all responsible with what we say and do when we have the microphone. So the backroom conversations, the quiet rationalizations, the delay saying how many senators I've spoken to who rationalized votes for people they knew were blatantly unqualified. They would never, this is the Lincoln idea, the politics of the golden rule, treat other people like you'd like to be treated that we've totally lost in our politics for the time being. And we need to reassert. They said, well, I'll vote for these nominees now. But the rally line is going to be when the Senate parliamentarian, if we try to overrule the Senate parliamentarian on reconciliation. First of all,

ain't never going to happen. Yeah. Right? I mean, I, e. And by the way, two votes, Heggseth is not Secretary of Defense and we're not in this. One more. And Tillis had made a deal to do it and then he was scared. Look, I understand. They get threats and they say they, then I got to look out for my family. But this is where you get the larger oath. You know, the mere Pence example, the fact that he went along and did almost everything until the very end and then still was cast out with the trash. That 40 members of Trump's first term, the cabinet, secretary saying this is not a good man and cannot be trusted. The rationalization that says this time it will be different is and should be unsupportable. But the example you set, you know,

but in your way, and the members of the Senate all need to be stepping up now. If you say you believe in these virtues and these values, don't hedge, don't prevaricate, don't rationalize. Same thing with CEOs or college presidents. When the halfway is done, it does not work. Be strong, take collective action now because our democracy is on the line. And then as citizens, we need to step up and really do take that responsibility to reanimate our democracy. And they use this idea of a second founding of a strengthening American democracy for the 21st century. Let's look forward to build something, not simply destroying. But it begins with courage today. Now is the time to be courageous, not tomorrow. Yeah. And we're not senators, but we all have this in our own

individual sphere. That's right. Everyone does it in their own individual sphere. We all have little bits of power. And if we assert that power individually, collectively, it does make a large difference. And yeah, I don't know. We just need more of it. We need more of it. But each of us in our own lives, in our own conversations, can set the example. It's what Robert F. Kennedy's senior now said, you know, he said for tiny ripples of possibility. And it does have, it can change the way people think. People need those positive examples. They need to be reminded. It's why your books remind people of the virtues in story form. Yeah, McMaster points this out in his, his book on Vietnam, about how not a single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff resigned on

principle over like 30 years of Vietnam. Everyone at some level, either they thought they were more hawkish and they felt like we weren't doing enough, or they'd come to despair over the war and thought it was a lost cause. And yet, everyone said, and there's a famous quote from one of those generals where he goes, look, I know you think I should resign on principle, but what happens if I resign on principal the next day I'm just a bum who was once on the joint chiefs of staff and that makes sense individually but then you go okay 30 years nobody did anything and you're just in this slow moving car crash and by the way you're feeding 50 607 you're hundreds of thousands of people into this grinder you think about how many americans died think about how many south vietnamese died

sure about how north vietnamese died and and and to me that's why I'm so fascinated with stockdale in this moment because meanwhile Stockdale's in Stockdale and McCain both along with about 500 other POWs are there and each one of them could have just said a couple magic words and gone home or been given a nice sell to themselves and three square meals a day and they said no I'm not going to fuck over these people next to me and all along the way the people in Washington in much cushier positions they would have gotten lobbyist jobs or law firm jobs but they said yeah But see, if I say what I think here, I'm not going to be senator anymore. I'm not going to be joint chiefs anymore.

The president won't be mad at me. Or even worse, they'll say, I'll lose access to the partisan economy after I lead office. Yes. And whereas John McCain, as you say, refused early release when he had it offered. Yes. Because he didn't want to send that morale-busting message to his compatriots. So if you think about the stakes that historical figures, the stakes that they stood their ground and found their courage. And the comparatively low stakes to which we are selling out of democracy today, it is despicable, but it is also about, therefore, reminding and stealing the spine and straightening our civic back, but in realizing that it does still begin and end with us, the citizens.

Totally. And we have to engage it. We have to demand more. We cannot defer responsibility for our time. That's right. You want to go check on some books? Hell yeah. Do you know Ford's Theater? Yeah. You know the spinning thing? That's where this idea came from.

Oh, it's brilliant. Yeah. So. And by the way, this is so, if I didn't live in Sag Harbor in New York, I think we got a great local bookstore there, but you're kind of living the dream. Yeah, it's been fun. So there's, we had a bunch of Lincoln's over there. Yeah, of course.

I think this is. I love Lincoln and Gettysburg probably would want to the seas. Oh, it's incredible. like to point out that there's more pages in this book than words in the address? Oh, for my a lot. But this is what, did you read this one, biography of a writer? No, I never have. So it, like, because Lincoln wasn't a great speaker.

Like, he wasn't, he wasn't a politician in the sense he could get up and give these like two hour extemporaneous addresses. You wrote them all down. It's a really interesting look and they take a lot of the speeches and he kind of puts him in like poetry form. Did this have a different title? There was a book called Lincoln's Sword about his writing. I have that book also, but no, no, this is just, just look at him as a writer.

If you haven't read that one, you might like that one. And then I think William Lee Miller is probably my favorite. I don't know. Interesting. Have you ever been Benjamin Thomas? No. Mid-20th century kind of authoritative biographer. He's a really good writer.

So the problem I've got, I want the, like William Manchester, right? So actually, when I was writing my Lincoln intro, I was fascinated with how Manchester set up the introduction of the first last line. Yeah. So, you know, this one. Yeah. And so I read it like 10 times and I sort of diagramed it and I used that and I did you know copy a structure But I but I used that as an inspiration because I was trying to figure out why does this work? Yeah Because it shouldn't yeah, it's sort of like Dylan's Chronicles which I love too. It shouldn't work structurally, but it works really well

And anyway, so I I I the introduction of Lincoln I think I I feel like I hit it all hard and but I was definitely inspired and structurally studied the introduction to Manchester and Manchester's writing kind of elevates the game. McCullough elevates the game. You know, I wanted to have that tactile feel. I'm sure you've read Edmund Morris since you're doing... Oh, God. Yeah. Have you read his Edison biography? So I've started that one too. The backward structure... Well, I was going to think of opening lines. It's like, in the end, as in the beginning, he subsisted only on milk. Yeah. And you're just like, that's great. That's fucking weird and crazy. And it shouldn't work. And somehow it does. But Edmund Morris, like, the Dutch, his biography of Reagan Dutch was like lambasted because he had this unbelievable access and then he

kind of spurned it and I understand why the Reagan folks were like how did you yeah like but but it's genius because it's this avant-garde biography of this like really on avant-garde guy and and he had his reasons for doing it I talked to him at the time and right after because I was like a young admirer but but he does the tactile history and the yeah he's a bit transgress he's fucking with the constraints of the medium Exactly, no. Which is great, which is something I like, you know, like my favorite writers are Martin Amos and Jim Harrison, and, you know, like, you know, we should nerd out on favorite books. But, yeah, the ones who kind of push the form and kind of like just make it a little more tactile.

That's why I always like to, like, what is it like to write Thompson? Great guy. This book is incredible. He's a buddy of mine, but he is fantastic. No, he's one of the best, I think, best living writers. Speaking of your sort of project of hopeful patriotism, have you read Sharon? Yes. And what's interesting about this book is twofold.

One is I tried to sell a book. My first book was called Independent Nations, a history of centrist leaders in American politics. And it came out when I was like, I wrote when I was, I guess, 30. And I tried to sell a book to form more perfect union about sort of the forgotten, forgotten heroes of American history, which is a theme that I did a lot at The Beast. like diverse Americans and I was basically said like the the um the episodic histories don't work yeah they're very hard to pull out unless you have a huge platform already and that she did what what you've done very effectively which is use a social media platform to like um to build out so I think that's a

great example have you read the storm before the storm yes because uh you recommended it to me and it was one of my favorite podcasts listened to it was from July oh yeah we talked about Yes, you're right. That was a really big one. And I've sent that podcast, too, and then I read the book. I love that. First Principles is great. Tom Ricks is fantastic.

He was in Austin. This one is more, Jack and Rosen's book, is more the Stoics than, like, the Stoics don't really come up in Ricks's book. He does Cicero. A little bit, yeah, but not as explicitly. And that one has a lot more of the Stoics in it. It's very good. So, wait, what are your, like, all-time favorite, like, literary history?

Well, the literary, what do you mean literary? I mean, like, you know, history that's written with a sense of, you know, Carrow, I think the most recent Carrow is amazing. Yeah, I'm obviously very excited for the final one. I know. I'm nervous because the Manchester example freaks me out. Yes, yes. Although the last book is not bad. The last, like, if you told me someone would do that good of a job finishing Caro, I would take it, I guess. I think, I think you read this book? No.

Okay, take this. All right. You would not think there would even be enough stuff to write a book this good, but incredible. Great. And also very much about, like, she does a really good job placing him in his context, which is he is a politician. He's, and he has a shitty boss. His boss is Tiberius. So it's exactly, that's the timelessness of these dilemmas, right?

He's in a far-flung province, dealing with problems, unrest and difficulty. this troublemaker comes up before him and mostly what he's thinking about is how do i handle this so my boss doesn't yell at me not not what is the right thing and you could so when jesus goes you know uh i am the way i'm truth and he goes what is truth he's like he doesn't fucking care because he just doesn't want tiberius to kill him i it's funny because i gave a speech at a church during the campaign um i was asked to get up and i decided to do something pretty different and I talked about Barabbas. Yeah.

And Pilot is trying to, like, reason with the crowd. And they're like, come on. A little bit. Yes. You know, you really want... That's the thing. He knows what he's doing is wrong. He knows he's sending an innocent man.

But then he's like, well, give the people what they want. My job is to give them what they want. Exactly. And that's where the responsibility of citizens... That's the point I was trying to make in that talk was, you know, citizens have a responsibility. Like, it's not just about what vibes and what feels good at the moment. You need to think a little bit bigger. Totally.

And what I love about it is like, so Seneca writes, Seneca's letters or Seneca writing to his friend Lucilius. Lucilius is also a governor in the Roman Empire. Like they have the same job. Like, do you know, like, it's not like, he's not this, it's, it was a, there were hundreds of Pontius pilots. Like, you know what I mean? Yes.

Who just delegated the Roman authority, and then how do they use it? And, and she does a really good job comparing him to, She bounces around because there's almost no actual, like, life details that we have about Punch Five. But she's like, imagine you're the viceroy of India. Right? And Gandhi is your problem. And you go, okay, this is the timelessness of it. You worked really hard. You got advanced to this job.

But at some level, you know there's a moral problem with what you do. And you just wish this person would not be pressing repeatedly on the contradiction inherent in your position. because you at you sworn oath you have responsibilities and then how do you you manage this right and it's it's one of my all-time favorite books i think it's one of the great is all right i want to read that and i'm going to get a bunch of stuff from you because uh again like support local bookstores too but that reminds me of something i read the other day um so i guess you know this there's a a whole trend particularly silicon valley uh not just ketamine but people are sort of going on trips psychedelics yeah mid or late life psychedelic and there's a problem because these

CEOs are taking it and then they quit within like a month. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The job is bankrupt. This is meaningless. Yeah, totally. Which is a fascinating, like, unintended side effect. See, we have, uh, then, and then the, this is like one of my favorite series. So the Princeton University Prestage took little different chunks or essays from the ancients and then...

Oh, I read the election one at the start. Oh, how to stop it. Did you have to stop a conspiracy? No, I didn't. So this is about the Catalan conspiracy. Great. Also incredible. And then this is Plutarch.

So we think of Plutarch as just a biographer, but he's like the governor of this Greek city. And he's the priest at Delphi. So he's like so he's got the 360. Yeah. And so you go, okay, all of his political experience is obviously informing how he's writing about these people. And they are informing how he's leading. And the idea of it not being this line is great. And that's the way it should be right.

The way the founders are drawing on the lessons of history, my grandparents, or, you know, my ancestry is Greek. And it was interesting talking to me and my grandfather, like, Plutork was like part of the cultural, like, he's their guy. Yeah, you're like, you're like, so, you know, that was a, you know,

even though, you know, he was a doctor, like that was just part of the education. And I love that. There's, by the way, you quoted Asophocles quote the other day that I put on, um, uh, it was about, you know, you know, if you go into a tyrant's, you know, a house and, and.

Oh, willingly. Yeah. You, you, but you leave, uh, yeah, You leave a slave. You leave a slave. You leave a slave. You leave a slave. Well, okay, so this is, and then have you read this book? No.

Okay. So again, Seneca is exactly the contradiction we're talking about. Yeah. Seneca is brought back from exile by Nero's mother to tutor this kid. And he, his access is dependent on his association with this kid, who at some point ceases to be a kid and makes it very clear that he's deranged. And so, but he is, he tells himself he's indispensable and if I leave someone worse. And he's right for a period.

The first five years of near, near, they're called like quinium neuroneum. They're good because he listens, but at some point he stops listening. And I don't know if you have, but I don't know if you have the later bad years without the political capital that people helped him build with the first five good years. So that's interesting, yeah. And by the way, I should say after the campaign and, you know, you know, no one likes to come up short. We ran ahead of the top of the ticket, I should say,

but it wasn't enough. But one of the books I brought on up, my son and I took a cross-country train trip or from Seattle to Chicago. One of the books I brought and read on that trip was Liza the Stoics. Oh, amazing. Yeah.

Well, so I think, and this is one of my favorite books. Yeah, so I know the story, but there's a famous statue of Nero and Seneca, and Seneca's like trying to teach him in Nero's like all, just not interesting, like the body language is incredible. I know that statue. Yeah. So anyway.

Emerson, Lesson from Merrick and Stoernerner. Do you find that this is one of your favorites. Montaigne is a big sort of foundational centrist. He's a big character in the wisdom book that I just finished. He's like, so there's a little biography that we don't have right now because it's out of print and we're bringing it back.

But is that the one that the guy reads before he kills himself, the Second World War? Yes, Stefan Zweig. I haven't. Incredible, because Zweig understands, like, sometimes because of what he's going through he's able to be he's the first to really see montaigne not as this guy who just loves ideas but as a guy who love the world who is forced back into the world of ideas because

the world is so dysfunctional it's in the middle of the reformation in the middle of the protestant civil war and just everyone's tearing themselves to pieces and are horrible and awful and he's like i just can't do this anymore and so like he's also uh you know he's part of jewish he's a new like he realizes like oh it's not safe for me. And so if you see him as someone who's criticizing the problems of his time, just in the way that we're like, but the withdrawal, like the Stefan's-wide decision, I guess somewhat inspired by Montaigne, is to me, like, tragic and also unacceptable. But that's the arc of Montaigne, is that he publishes these essays, which has this enormous impact, and then he re-emerges

and he comes back out. How is he like an avatar for centrism as a, as a distinct philosophy, a mediating philosophy. I'll send you the, so he's the first, he's the first main character in the book that I did. I'll send you this essay. Great. But he is, he's basically like his, I mean, think about it. It's like, what do I know? That's his question. What do I know? So in a time where both sides are killing each other because they know, right? He's saying, I don't know. And then the fascinating, one of its great essays is they basically discover the new world in his lifetime, right? And so all these reports of the cannibals are coming back. and he's like, but wait, we do,

he's like, I just watched you burn someone at the steak. So we're so civilized? Yes, exactly. And so, and he's drawing, there's a famous story in Herodotus, where Herodotus, you know, is telling these Greeks about this horrible thing

that the Indians do that they eat a piece of their ancestor after they die, right? And then they're like, that's, well, these barbarians, what's wrong with them? It's a very famous story. And then Herodotus, who's this kind of open-minded traveler, a Herodotus, goes, well, watch this.

And he's like, okay, so to the Indians, he's like, this is actually people in India. Right, right, right, right. He's like, okay, so what the Greeks do is they put their father on a pile of sticks and they light them on fire. And they're like, what is wrong with you?

You know, and he's like, this is my point that everything sounds barbaric if it's not what you grew up with or you understand. And Montaigne tells that story else. That's Montane. He's like, how can you guys know this? You know, you don't know this. And so his centrism is much more rooted in intellectual humility and over-mindedness.

But that's fine. That's Benjamin Franklin, right? Like we must, you know, trust a little bit less in our own infallibility. Yeah. And it's the thing with terrorism or ideology, like I'm a big believer that sort of, you know, ideology is the enemy. And it's because it comes with crushing certainty. Yes. And so that is, I think, that's where people, like, Habel has this great line about ideology, gives you the illusion of dignity and morals while making it easier to part with them.

Yes. And I think that's perfect. Yeah. No, no. He's, I'll send you this thing because it's fantastic. Yeah, so I just finishing the wisdom book. So the main character is Montaigne, in the first part is Montaigne. Second is Elon Musk, because how do you have a brilliant person? Fascinating. Break their mind and become so not brilliant and fall for so many things. And then the third, the sort of paragon of wisdom is ultimately Lincoln.

So those are like the three main guys in the book. Fantastic. No, by the way, I should tell you that, so during the campaign, I read The Daily Stoic every day, and I ended up bonding with a really, really brilliant, tough young union leader named Ryan Stanton in part over that. Oh, lovely. And he reads your work every day, and there are a number of folks out in Suffolk County who, especially I think there's a separate recovery community that like people like when

they're needing to. There's something about the day, because it's, you know, one day at a time. I think there's something that works with the one page a day. And ultimately what you've been able to build, it's this, you know, I think when you need a book to save your life or ground you, right, you know, it acts as a life preserve. Yeah. And it's connecting with the broader wisdom so you know you're not alone.

I think that's the purpose of art and writing. And so just, you know, you have resonated in people's lives, so I'm not saying that just to blow smoke, but because it has the added advantage of being true. Well, lovely. There you go. 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 would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode. Thank you.