Virtue

On this July fourth, I leave you with some words from Ryan Holiday:

“It’s July 4th, 1776. The Founding Fathers are about to make a very loud statement about freedom and independence.

They will, over the next several bloody and bleak years, give nearly everything in order to will it-and a new nation-into existence.

But just as much as they were making a statement for freedom, the founders were staking their lives on the idea of virtue.

Classical virtue. That is: Courage.

Discipline. Justice. Wisdom.

The Founders were steeped in the ideas of the ancients. […]

The American experiment-based as it was on individual liberty-was built on the necessity of virtue and honor. A people freed from the tyranny of government, they understood, still needed to be checked by their own morality, philosophy, and religion.

‘Avarice, ambition, revenge…’ John Adams said, ‘would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.’

Many years later, another American president, Dwight Eisenhower, would express it perfectly when he said that freedom was better defined as the ‘opportunity for self-discipline.’

All of which is to say that the Founders were delegating a whole hell of a lot of responsibility to the people when they freed us from the yoke of the king.

They were giving us a gift, sure, but also an immense obligation-to be good citizens, good people, good leaders of ourselves and stewards of our collective resources.

This responsibility falls on each of us today, no matter where we live or what form of government we’re under. What’s legal, what’s allowed, what everyone else is doing, what we can get away with? None of this matters.

What matters is what we should do, what virtue demands of each of us, what matters is, as Marcus Aurelius said, “good character and works for the common good.”

Today, while you’re grilling out and celebrating the holiday with friends and family, take a moment to reflect on this tension between freedom and virtue.

What does it mean to approach your life with the courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom that guided the Founding Fathers? In what ways have we as a nation perhaps fallen short of the responsibilities that come with freedom?

Let today be more than a celebration-let today be a recommitment to the virtues that make freedom possible. A recommitment to truth, to self-mastery, to taking responsibility, to work. The work of choosing virtue when it would be easier not to, of living up to the responsibilities.”

Happy fourth! 🇺🇸 Stay virtuous. Stay free.