100 Years On; The Lessons Israel and the West Can Learn from Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch

On November 8th, 1923, in an attempt to overthrow the Weimar government, Adolf Hitler and 2,000 Nazi supporters marched on the Feldhernhalle in Munich. After a catastrophic brawl with the Bavarian Police, some 16 Nazi supporters and 4 police officers lay dead. Hitler and his supporters were arrested and charged with treason.

Perhaps in another timeline, this is where German fascism died, strangled in its crib by an effective police force and the implementation of the rule of law (a pesky force always standing in the way of would-be Caesar’s ambitions). Alas, this was not the case. Hitler gained sympathy from the judges and was released only 9 months into his sentence. Later, when German politics were at their most divided and no party could win an outright majority in the Reichstag, Hitler was appointed Chancellor by President Hindenburg.

In 1936, when Hitler violated the Versailles Treaty by invading the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone within Germany, he was met with no response from the Western powers. Again in 1938 when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia he was met with mere finger-waving by the Allies. It was only in 1939 and the invasion of Poland that Hitler was rebuffed by the Allies, but by this point, Hitler had been allowed to strengthen his forces, and the putrid scourge of fascism, along with the lie that the Jews were to blame for society’s ailments, had become firmly entrenched in Europe. Uprooting this dreadful anti-semitic malady took 6 years and cost as many as 20 million people their lives.
Hitler was always clear about what he wanted, he never tiptoed around his anti-semitism or his disdain for Western democratic values. The reason he was allowed to grow into an existential threat to liberalism and democracy was because of war-weary westerners, willing to appease Der Führer in his most dreadful tendencies.

In 2023 we are faced with this same problem. On October 7th, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, the Middle East’s only multi-ethnic democracy, killing over 1,500 Jews. Mothers and Fathers watched their children be slaughtered before themselves being slaughtered. Women were raped by Hamas terrorists. Infants were decapitated and burned. Hamas openly calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews. In their 1988 Charter they say;

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.”

While American President Joe Biden has promised aid to Israel, many in the West are apologizing for and openly supporting Hamas. In the U.S. and other Western countries, there have been widespread anti-Israel protests in the streets. Members of Congress like Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) have both spread false information with respect to Israel’s alleged bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, which the Israelis and Americans have confirmed using video and audio evidence was caused by a failed rocket launch from inside Gaza. Western cities have heard chants of “gas the Jews” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a genocidal call for the destruction of the state of Israel à la Hamas.

Those who apologize for terrorists should not be allowed to speak for those of us who still believe in the enlightenment values of liberalism and tolerance. Those who hide behind children and the elderly while using violence to advance their political and religious agenda are cowards. If one side is attacked by terrorists and responds in an attempt to destroy those terrorists, and if the terrorists deliberately hide behind civilians, the moral culpability for the deaths of those civilians lies with the terrorists alone.

We in the West have an obligation to stand up against theocratic thugs and their apologists in the media. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, the West presented a unified front. Ukrainian flags adorned porches and flagpoles from London to Los Angeles. Protests against Russia’s illegal invasion were widespread. Most importantly, Western allies have supplied and continue to supply Ukraine with the provisions it needs to prosecute the war against Russia; this strategy has worked. Bullies rely on fear and intimidation to foment their ends, but when presented with real strength and determination they crumble.

Putin has thus far been stymied in what he assumed would be a quick and easy operation in Ukraine; will we provide similar support to the world’s sole Jewish state and the Middle East’s only democracy?

The answer is no. Not in the long term at least, if the West fails to stand up for its own values. Learn the lesson of Hitler’s march on Munich and his eventual slow accrual of power: stand up to bullies in the here and now. Stand up for Western liberalism today. Tomorrow you may not be able to.

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life” — Winston Churchill

Debunking the Lost Cause Myth: Slavery was the Chief Cause of the American Civil War

Historical revisionism is on the rise in the United States. Many people no longer view history as a purely academic field, dedicated to uncovering the mysteries of the past. Instead, a litany of modern historians try to spin history to suit their personal agendas, and this tactic works exceedingly well for them, to paraphrase George Orwell “he who controls the past controls the future.” Some, like the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, deny the veracity of major world events like the moon landing and the Holocaust, while others like Nikole Hannah-Jones and her 1619 Project attempt to paint the American Revolution and the founding of the United States as having been merely tools for the preservation and expansion of slavery. No historical revision has been quite so successful as the so-called “lost cause” myth, which posits that the American Civil War was not fought primarily over the issue of slavery, but rather for state’s rights and southern heritage. This myth is so prevalent that a full 41% of Americans deny that slavery was the central cause of the war, according to The Washington Post. These numbers are staggering considering the popularity of other revisionist interpretations of history, for example, the aforementioned 1619 Project got severe blowback from academics writing for liberal publications like The Washington Post and Politico, to say nothing of convincing nearly half of the U.S. population of its claims.

It should be said that I am a proud son of the state of North Carolina, having lived here for my entire life, and that I love living in the South. Many who view the Civil War as having been primarily fought over state’s rights or tariffs feel as though their love of hearth and home is under assault from those who argue that the Civil War was fought over slavery: this is not the case insofar as this article is concerned. Historical accuracy is of paramount importance, and so I will explicate the relevant historical texts as well as the writings of Confederate soldiers, generals, and politicians in order to see what the Confederates themselves believed their cause to be.

What is the Lost Cause Myth?

When the guns fell silent following the surrender signed at Appomattox Courthouse in mid-1865, the northern United States felt a sense of bittersweet jubilation in their victory over the South. The North had lost a great many men to disease and injury on the battlefield, but they preserved the Union and also struck great blows for liberty on the political, military, and moral fronts. The South, on the other hand, had been humiliated, defeated, and had many of her largest cities laid low and burned to the ground. The era of reconstruction had begun, and white southerners had to adjust to a new status quo in which men who had once been owned were free, could serve in offices of public trust, and eventually vote. Some Southerners adapted to the changing times and embraced reconstruction. Men like James Longstreet, a Confederate general and the best man at U.S. Grant’s wedding before the war, exemplified this sort of southerner, dubbed by bitter opponents as a “scalawag.” Longstreet and his ilk openly embraced reconstruction and the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery except as a punishment for a crime. While the news of Southerners embracing reconstruction and emancipation was certainly a positive development, it by no means constituted a majority of Southerners’ opinions about reconstruction and especially about emancipation.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy were responsible for the erection of hundreds of Confederate monuments and memorials in the early 20th Century.

The South felt dejected, and the immense casualties they suffered during the war seemed pointless. Many in the South felt put upon and villainized, and so they sought a new history that would reframe much of the history of the antebellum period and of the war itself, and they found just that with the 1867 publication of Edward A. Pollard’s book The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates. The text established many of the central tropes of the lost cause myth: that the war was not caused by slavery, that African slavery had been a noble and gentle institution in which slaves were happy and treated well, and that the Confederates had only been defeated by the overwhelming numbers of Union manpower, inter alia. The idea that American slavery was a kind or noble institution is ridiculous on its face, and beyond films like Gone with the Wind, it is rare to see full-throated defenses of that claim and so this essay will not attempt to debunk it further than it has already been. Additionally, the claim that the Union was only successful in the war due to overwhelming manpower is one best left to a military historian, the YouTube channel Atun-Shei Films has an excellent series called Checkmate Lincolnites which delves into immense detail about the campaigns of 1861–65 and so for more information in that vein, visit his channel. The lost cause interpretation is a myth because it argues that slavery was not the primary cause of the American Civil War, a falsehood that the remainder of this essay will attempt to deconstruct.

Slavery in the Constitution

When the United States was founded in 1776, it floundered for a number of years under the weak and ineffectual Articles of Confederation, which formed a loose union of states that a citizen of today’s mighty federal republic would hardly recognize. The Articles of Confederation was no model for a functioning government: it could not raise revenue from the states through taxes, instead it was merely allowed to request funds to be raised voluntarily, the Articles also failed at the central function of government, protecting the people, during Shays Rebellion. Following America’s miraculous victory in the revolutionary war, a new structure for the federal government was immediately the topic du jour. Federalists, pointing out the weaknesses inherent in the Articles of Confederation, argued for a strong federal government and a tighter union between the states while Anti-Federalists argued for the opposite, a weaker central government, and a greater focus on autonomy for each state to pursue its own destiny.

The Constitutional Convention of 1787 dealt with many fundamental issues, perhaps the principle among them was slavery.

The issue which was the most vitriolic, however, was slavery. Southern states had a clear economic incentive to continue the practice, while northern states had been slowly abolishing the institution over many years. The nation may not have endured an intense fight over slavery this early in its history, as the Gilder Lehrman Institute puts it, “The framers of the Constitution believed that concessions on slavery were the price for the support of southern delegates for a strong central government. They were convinced that if the Constitution restricted the slave trade, South Carolina and Georgia would refuse to join the Union.” When reading the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, produced during this tumultuous period of American history, the conflict between these two diametrically opposed camps is palpable. The word “slave” did not appear even once in the Constitution until the passage of the 13th Amendment which abolished African slavery. Instead, slavery is simply alluded to a number of times, and the institution is heavily regulated by the Constitution of 1787. The 3/5ths compromise allowed the southern states to count 3/5ths of the population of enslaved people when counting for congressional districting in order to add political power to the south by bolstering their numbers, Article 4 of the Constitution allowed for the recovery of slaves who had escaped their masters, and the importation of new African slaves would not be banned until 1808. This period in American history produced one of the finest documents in the history of man, but in so doing it also set the stage for the conflicts to come, both political and military. Even with the concessions made by the North, however, many Southerners still disliked many of the impositions on their states made by the new constitution. It took men like Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to convince them that this new deal was better than nothing, saying that “We have obtained a right to recover our slaves in whatever part of America they may take refuge, which is a right we had not before.” Northerners would also harbor negative sentiments against the document, in the 1840s and 50s abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison called the Constitution “a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell” and burned copies of the Constitution in protest.

The Compromise of 1820 & Mr. Polk’s War

After the ratification of the U.S. Constitution and the War of 1812, the nation enjoyed a long period of growth and prosperity often labeled the “era of good feelings.” 10 years before this epoch, the Jefferson administration purchased the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon at clearance prices and sent explorers, trappers, and other adventurous citizens into the unknown to begin westward expansion. A key hub for these pioneers was the city of St. Louis, which quickly became the so-called “gateway to the West.” In 1820, the constitutionally mandated census determined that some 66,586 souls called the Missouri Territory home, and the people there were clamoring for statehood. Many predicted that the admittance of the 24th state into the Union would be routine, but intense debates in Congress stalled the process and led to a Constitutional crisis. This crisis was only alleviated when a compromise was reached. Legislation was passed that would admit Missouri into the Union as a slave state while restricting any state above the 36th parallel from legalizing the practice and by breaking what is now the state of Maine away from Massachusetts and admitting it as a free state. The importance of this period in American history is in the formation of sectarian lines clearly separating the North from the South that would define the next 50 years of American history and cost more than 600,000 men their lives.

Following the accession of Missouri and Maine into the Union, more states were admitted, and the country continued to expand westward. However, westward expansion was not a certainty for the United States, as American pioneers blazed the trail westward, they were met with violent conflict with native tribes and with the government of Mexico. Mexico had only declared its independence from Spain in 1821, and the nascent country sought to strengthen its hold on the northern territories of Texas and Alta California. This would not pan out for Mexico, however, as its northernmost territories were sparsely populated, Texas, for example, had a population of 3,500 Mexican citizens. In an attempt to increase the population of Texas, Mexico rescinded the ban on foreign immigration and allowed English-speaking Americans to enter the territory. Most of the new denizens of Mexico’s wild northern province were from the American south, and so held proslavery sentiments. By 1835, the population of Anglo-Texans dwarfed the number of Mexican Tejanos, and so these Texans sought their independence from Mexico. What ensued was a 6-month war that formed the independent Republic of Texas. Some years later, in 1846, Texas sought accession to the Union and claimed the Rio Grande as the boundary between Texas and Mexico while the Mexicans claimed that the true border should be the Nueces River, some 150 miles north of Texas’ claim.

In the election of 1844, Democrat James K. Polk ran on a platform of hawkish expansion, he promised and would deliver a resolution to the conflict with Mexico over Texas, and the conflict with Britain over the Oregon Territory. His hawkishness on the issue coupled with his desire to see the institution of slavery expanded made war with Mexico inevitable, and on April 25th, 1846 the conflict then-lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant dubbed “Mr. Polk’s War” began. Northern Whigs opposed the war, seeing it as an excuse to create a new slave state and increase the power of the pro-slavery coalition in Congress. Then Congressman Abraham Lincoln was counted among those in opposition to the Mexican War. Though Lincoln and his allies in Congress fought hard for their beliefs, the war was won relatively quickly, though with high casualties on both sides. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended hostilities between the United States and Mexico and set the boundary between the two nations as the Rio Grande River. Additionally, in 1848 Mexico ceded land to the U.S. that today makes up parts of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, free to become free or slave states. The Compromise of 1820 had set the battle lines between North and South in the east of the continent, the Mexican war had allowed for unchecked expansion of slavery into the West.

13,283 Americans died fighting in the Mexican-American War, mostly from disease.

Bleeding Kansas, Harper’s Ferry, and Secession

California was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1850. This admission worried many Southerners that the coalition of free states would soon overpower the slave states in Congress and so a compromise was sought. A series of legislation known collectively as the Compromise of 1850 sought to address this issue through mutual concessions. The South agreed to the admittance of California as a free state but also introduced a new fugitive slave act that would essentially destroy the distinction between free and slave states. This new fugitive slave act required state and local law enforcement in every state of the Union to arrest suspected fugitive slaves and also allowed the government to fine and imprison any person found to have aided escaped slaves. This made northern anti-slavery Whigs and abolitionists feel as though they were now complicit in slavery and in so doing it made conflict between the two camps nearly inevitable. Similar legislation in 1854 introduced by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas to build a railroad through the new Nebraska territory left it up to the states to decide whether or not to allow slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 so enflamed tensions over slavery that some historians consider it the true start of hostilities in the American Civil War. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces clashed on the streets and killed each other in droves. In 1856, an anti-slavery zealot named John Brown killed some 5 pro-slavery advocates in response to the sacking of the anti-slavery hub in the territory, Lawrence, Kansas by pro-slavery forces. This event became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre.

Brown was not content with his actions at Kansas, he wanted to become a key instigator in the downfall of slavery. In this effort, Brown and a gang of his children and some freed slaves attacked the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Though this attack failed to accomplish its aim of catalyzing a wide-scale slave revolt across the South, it served as the point of no return for the Civil War to begin in earnest. Everyone across the nation had to choose whether or not Brown had been justified in his anger at the system of slavery. This ratcheted up the already sky-high tensions in the country. Before his hanging in 1859, Brown famously argued that he “now [was] quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away, but with Blood. I had… vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done.” John Brown would prove prophetic in this regard.

John Brown: a hero to many and to many others a terrorist.

In 1860, a thin and monstrously tall former Congressman named Abraham won the nomination of the nascent Republican party and went on to carry the general election that autumn to win the White House. This proved to be too much for the southern states who felt that Mr. Lincoln’s election would prove to be the final nail in slavery’s coffin, and so they began to tear apart the fabric of the Union during the secession winter of 1860–61. In the preamble to its Confederate Constitution, South Carolina argued that “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery… [and] the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.” In a speech now referred to as the Cornerstone Speech, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens argued that:

The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution of African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted.

Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens argued that the cornerstone of the new Confederacy was what he called the “great truth” that the “negro is not equal to the white man.”

Confederate soldiers themselves argued during the war that their purpose was to defend slavery. As William Nugent of the 28th Mississippi Infantry said in September of 1863 “This country without slave labor would be completely worthless. We can only live and exist by that species of labor: and hence I am willing to fight to the last.” Or in another letter written in November of 1860 by William Grimball of the 1st South Carolina Artillery, “A stand must be made for African Slavery or it is forever lost.”

The causes of grand conflicts are always multivariate in nature. It is certain that many men of the South fought for lofty goals like state pride and unity. They also fought for a sense of manly pride and to feel as though they were protecting their homes. However, as the Confederates themselves argued before their crushing defeat in 1865, slavery was by far and away the most poignant issue that caused the conflict. In arguing that the Civil War was not caused primarily by slavery, then, proponents of the lost cause myth actively disagree with the Confederates they claim to support. Their legal documents, the writings of their leaders, and letters and writings from Confederate soldiers and citizens all show a similar desire to uphold African slavery, and to maintain the rigid caste of the antebellum racial hierarchy. The Southern apologists who wrote much of the history of the war that undergirds the modern “lost cause” interpretation have clouded Americans’ views on the conflict and its bitter, sectarian causes. This revisionism is anti-truth and anti-American, as it seeks to support the largest rebellion in American history, fought to keep some 4 million Americans in bondage, and left more than 360,000 American troops dead.

Stoic Failings and What They Can Teach Us About the Art of Living

Most of the articles and books written about the history of Stoic philosophers focus on their success stories; rightfully so, as there are many of them to tell. We read about the slave made freer than his master through self-discipline, the lone senator who fought against tyranny and who, though defeated, was never conquered, and finally about the philosopher king who led his country through civil strife, foreign wars, and a deadly plague. The Stoic school, like any other philosophical school, was made up of human beings: Men and women with passions, desires, temptations, and fears that they spent their lives trying to tame. What, if anything, can we learn from the examples of Stoic failure? Principally, we can learn humility. For if even these masters of self-control could fail, so too can we. More broadly, we can recount their errors in the hope that they will allow us to see that which was obscured from these Stoics by passion and fear in their own time.

Seneca: The Embers of the Fire that Consumed Rome

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was one of the greatest Stoic philosophers of all time. Even today, 2,000 years after his death, Seneca’s works are popular among those seeking inner peace and self-control. Yet, for all his brilliance, self-mastery, and steadfast ability to endure the great hardships of disease and exile, his political legacy, and indeed his demise, would be defined by his worst student: Nero.

Seneca was an erudite youth. Born far from Rome in the distant backwater of Hispania, his future as a legal and political powerhouse was nonetheless virtually assured as he climbed the ranks of mos maiorum; the stepladder of Roman politics which all aspiring political actors had to climb. However, sometime around 20 AD Seneca would be forced to leave Rome so that his aunt could treat his illness, probably tuberculosis, in Egypt. He would live away from the hustle and bustle of the eternal city for 10 years, while his aunt treated his symptoms, and though he would eventually heal and return to Rome, his illness would harry him for the rest of his life. Sometime after his return to Rome, he would again have to leave, this time for political reasons. The new emperor of Rome, Claudius, was convinced by his wife Messalina that Seneca had committed adultery with a woman named Julia Livilla and he was exiled to the island of Corsica.

While on Corsica, we can see the seeds of Seneca’s greatest failure sprouting: his inability to stand up to vile and corrupt emperors. In the hopes of being recalled from his exile on Corsica, Seneca penned a work entitled Consolation to Polybius, which made several blandishments to the emperor aimed at receiving an official recall to the capital. It worked. In 49 AD, Agrippina, Nero’s mother, asked Claudius to recall Seneca from exile so that he might tutor her son; the emperor approved. Upon his return to Rome, Seneca spent several years tutoring the boy, hoping to make some appreciable impact on the affairs of state through him.

He failed. Seneca tried as best he could to live life on a knife’s edge, balancing his Stoicism which admonished those who sought political power above all else, and his personal-political ambition to serve in positions of immense power. He was, to be entirely fair, not hired to teach the young boy philosophy per se. Seneca was chosen by Agrippina because of his famed oratory prowess, a skill that nearly saw him executed years earlier by emperor Caligula. The ability to make grand speeches would not make Nero a good emperor. If anything, it made the petulant boy-king more effective at forcing his hedonistic will on the people of Rome.

Despite being placed in a difficult situation, Seneca failed in taming the boy, which would have disastrous consequences for Rome. Seneca’s essays written on morality and addressed to the emperor, though well thought-out and powerful in their own right, were hollow platitudes when compared to the strict, no-bullshit message Nero needed. Later Stoics, like Junius Rusticus (who appears in this article for his own failings), would not hesitate to be blunt, even when teaching emperors. This weakness in Seneca would help to breed a killer and a tyrant.

Nero was indeed a monster. He ordered the killing of his own mother, killed his political opponents (including Gaius Rubellius Plautus, a Stoic philosopher and a good man), and plunged the empire into economic ruin. While it is probably not true that Nero played the fiddle as Rome burned, as the popular legend goes, he certainly did not let the great fire of Rome go to waste as an opportunity to show off his depravity. Nero rebuilt much of the destroyed city for his personal use, erecting palaces and statues while Romans went homeless. He also raised taxes on the provinces to pay for the restitution of the city, in stark contrast to Marcus Aurelius who would sell the imperial possessions rather than levy a ruinous tax on his own people.

The tale of Seneca and Nero reminds us of a key Stoic principle: that we must always do what we know to be right, regardless of the consequences. As Marcus Aurelius says in Meditations, the most important thing in life is “just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested.” Seneca would redeem himself in the end, returning to fully embodying Stoic principles in his retirement and, like Socrates or Thrasea, dying the heroic death of a philosopher dedicated to his principles. It is important to note that none of us can know how we would react if placed in his position. Many of us who judge Seneca would almost certainly have fared much worse with a knife to our throat. However, it is important to learn one key lesson from the failings of this great man: problems only get worse if ignored, and if ignored for too long enough they will consume you whole.

Nero wasn’t in Rome when the city burned in 64 AD, but the popular myth of Nero and his fiddle captures something fundamental about the essence of the man.

Rusticus Executes a Good Man

If you ask a Stoic about Junius Rusticus, he or she will likely know him as a positive figure; a teacher and a good Stoic who served his country and taught Stoicism to perhaps the greatest Stoic who ever lived. If you ask a Christian, however, you will likely be met with a different response. To them, Rusticus represents the same unjust force that beleaguered early Christians, that threw them to the lions and crucified them. It serves as a good example of the principle that even a life lived through virtue can be altered by one single decision.

Rusticus, the grandson of a proud member of the so-called “Stoic resistance” movement, was a good man. He was a soldier, a politician, and a philosopher who served his friends, family, and country. He served first as a soldier, fighting for the glory of Rome, and through merit and skill he worked his way up to becoming a General. Under emperor Hadrian, he would serve as consul of Rome and be appointed by the same as the teacher of the future emperor: Marcus Aurelius.

After Marcus Aurelius became emperor in 161 AD upon his adopted father’s death, Rusticus was appointed to various positions of power in the government. First, he served his second term as consul of Rome, once his term as consul ended, he would serve as Urban Prefect; a position that would define his legacy. As the Stoic author Ryan Holiday puts it in his book, The Lives of the Stoics, the urban prefect was essentially the mayor of Rome. As the urban prefect, Rusticus had complete legal authority within 100 miles of Rome and was charged with the task of maintaining law and order.

The burgeoning Christian sect would prove an effective challenge to Roman authority. It is not so much that the Romans were motivated by religious zeal in their conflict with the Christians; citizens and merchants were wary of them, and politicians feared their loyalty. If, those in power thought, these Christians do not acknowledge any gods but their one “true” God, then they must deny the holy nature of the office of the emperor, and thus are traitors to the state. Years before, emperor Trajan had actually criminalized Christianity on pain of death, though Christians were not actively sought out, they would be killed for not recognizing the Roman pantheon of Gods.

This came to a head in 165 AD when a Cynic named Crescens denounced a man named Justin following a dispute. Justin was dragged before Junius Rusticus to be tried. Justin and Rusticus, under any other circumstances, would have been fast friends. In fact, Justin had been a Stoic earlier in his life, though he left the school to become a Christian. Even if Justin had not been a Stoic, he might have expected lenience and clemency from Rusticus. After all, was Justin not standing up for his principles? Was he not practicing wisdom and courage in standing up to the might of Rome for his cause? Their trial is recorded for us in the Acts of Justin, in which a conversation between the prefect Rusticus and Justin goes like this: “Rusticus the prefect said, let us, then, now come to the matter in hand, and which presses. Having come together, offer sacrifice with one accord to the gods. Justin said, No right-thinking person falls away from piety to impiety. Rusticus the prefect said, unless you obey, you shall be mercilessly punished. Justin said, through prayer we can be saved on account of our Lord Jesus Christ, even when we have been punished, because this shall become to us salvation and confidence at the more fearful and universal judgment-seat of our Lord and Savior.”

Which man sounds more Stoic in this encounter? Rusticus comes across as a despotic torturer killing a man he had the power to slap on the wrist and pass on for no reason. Junius Rusticus ordered Justin to be executed, and within the year he was beheaded. At the time, Rome’s wars and a deadly plague that would ultimately claim the emperor and 5 to 10 million souls across the empire distracted from the trial of Justin Martyr; history would remember the event better than those who lived it. The tale of Rusticus and Justin is a reminder to us to live the Stoic virtue of justice. We need to see situations from other perspectives, and we should be as lenient and charitable as we possibly can be with our fellow man. As Rusticus’ student, Marcus Aurelius would write in Meditations, “I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so, none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”

Rusticus failed in this task and is now remembered as a monster by millions. Remember to act with justice and kindness, even, perhaps especially, when it is hard to do so.

Christians were often executed for failing to honor the Roman gods, their belief being confused with a refusal to acknowledge the supremacy of the Roman emperor.

“Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future” — Seneca