There Is No Freedom Without This (or Rather, Without These)
It's July 4th, 1776.
The Founding Fathers are about to make a very loud statement about freedom and independence. And 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 Stoics believed it was only by practicing these virtues together, not separately, that we could achieved "the highest good" in the world. That's why we created the Stoic Virtues Box Set. A limited one-time collector's edition of the full four book series, culminating in the just-finished Wisdom Takes Work. Each book is signed, numbered, and includes exclusive extras like an actual notecard Ryan used to write the books, each of which demonstrates how we can all apply these classical virtues the Founders cherished to overcome our modern problems today.
As we have talked about here many times, the Founders were steeped in the ideas of the ancients. Thomas Jefferson kept a copy of Seneca on his nightstand. George Washington staged a reproduction of a play about Cato at Valley Forge in the winter of '77/'78 to inspire the troops. John Adams liked to quote from Epictetus.
You see, 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. That's why the "Think For Yourself" chapter in Wisdom Takes Work (you can now preorder here) is so vital. Because 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."
So 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 that this nation demands, of proving worthy of the liberty we've inherited. For only through this work can this great experiment in freedom, begun 249 years ago, continue.
Each book comes numbered and signed by me, and features a specially designed title page to identify these books as part of the only printing of this box set.
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