How the Supreme Court is Failing to Defend the Rule of Law

America is a deeply divided land facing a myriad of complex quandaries.

Should Ukraine receive aid from the United States, and if so how much?

How can we stop the unprecedented level of gun violence in our schools?

What can be done to solve the crisis at our southern border?

These questions present deep issues that can catalyze good-faith discussion about how to move forward; they more commonly seem to incite vitriol and anger. However, perhaps no issue strikes more deeply to the core of the American experiment than the survival of our Republic.

Last year, the State of Colorado made international headlines when they removed former President Donald Trump’s name from ballots in the centennial state for the upcoming 2024 elections. Mr. Trump is the Republican frontrunner who will almost certainly win the nomination of his party for the 3rd election in a row, and as such his removal from the ticket is igniting another cantankerous public debate.

This debate is not at issue here, however. At issue is not whether Donald Trump used his speech to illegally incite insurrection against the United States; this is an explication of a deeper principle that has always irked me when listening to public debate surrounding our Constitution: the weight of historical context.

In Trump v. Anderson, the Colorado Supreme Court cites the 14th Amendment’s 3rd clause, preventing any previous “officer of the United States” who has previously engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States Constitution from serving in any office “civil or military.” The argument is simple enough, Colorado alleges that Donald Trump engaged in insurrectionary behavior in inciting the crowd to march on the Federal Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021, and is therefore constitutionally ineligible to serve as President.

The instant debate in the Supreme Court, however, does not seem to be focused on whether or not Donald Trump engaged in insurrectionary acts on January 6th, but rather whether or not the 14th Amendment even applies here at all.

According to NBC News,

“Chief Justice John Roberts said that the ‘whole point’ of the 14th Amendment was to restrict state power after the Civil War in an attempt to bring Confederate states into line and questioned why it would give states the ability to kick a presidential candidate off the ballot.”

The problem with this line of argument is that it is patently ridiculous because every article and amendment in the United States Constitution has a historical context surrounding why it was passed.

For example, the 3rd Amendment to the Constitution bars the quartering of soldiers in houses “without the consent of the owner.” This amendment was clearly passed due to the egregious violation of American rights during the Revolutionary War by British troops, but it is also not meant to apply to the actions of British troops alone. Any army, indeed even American armies, cannot violate this amendment at any time.

If one applies Chief Justice Robert’s logic to the 3rd Amendment, the illogical nature of his line of reasoning reveals itself.

Imagine Chief Justice Roberts arguing that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army could quarter their troops in American homes without the consent of the owners because the ‘whole point’ of the 3rd Amendment was to curtail the ability of British soldiers to illegally occupy American homes. Imagine him questioning why the 3rd Amendment would give the government the ability to kick out those PLA soldiers.

“It's a good thing these soldiers are redcoats, otherwise I’d have no 3rd Amendment protection”

The purpose of the 14th Amendment’s 3rd clause is clear. In passing the 14th Amendment, the 39th Congress sought both to limit former Confederates’ ability to continue their assault on the Federal Government from inside the Federal Government AND to prevent similar insurrectionaries from making such assaults in the future. These aims are not mutually exclusive. It logically flows that if the 39th Congress sought to enact the former goal, they would also be just as interested in protecting the Constitution from future assaults of the latter variety.

The purpose of a constitution is to protect the rule of law from bad actors who seek to subvert it. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

A particular historical moment reveals the necessity of a particular Constitutional protection, but the protection’s power is not limited to that epoch alone.

It is for American courts, and indeed each American citizen, to decide whether or not Donald Trump committed insurrectionary acts on January 6th, 2021. What is not up for debate, however, is that public officials who commit insurrection or rebellion are barred from serving in offices of public trust; that principle is expressed plainly, in black and white, in the United States Constitution.

Since 1787, millions of Americans have fought and died in the name of our Constitutional Republic, without the enforcement of the laws in the Constitution, their sacrifices would have been in vain. It falls now to us to defend the Constitution from all threats so that we honor those who came before us.

“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.” — Aristotle

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

Biden’s Billions: The Slow Erosion of the Separation of Powers and the Threat to American Democracy

Although the United States was the first modern nation to transition from a monarchic to a democratic government, hardly any countries have adopted the most distinctive features of our republican system. Few 18th-century advocates for republicanism rushed to copy our electoral college or our federalist system while designing their own republics. However, this has not been the case for one key American founding principle: the separation of powers, which has been widely embraced. Our founding fathers were well-versed in history and enlightenment philosophy and knew the dangers of vesting too much power in any single individual or governmental body. After 7 years of fighting in a bloody war against the crown, the American statesmen tasked with crafting the government of, by, and for the people knew that too much centrally vested power would return the nascent country to an antebellum order of anti-democratic, top-down control. In The Federalist №51, James Madison writes of the separation of powers that “it may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.” Even in the 18th century, the founding fathers understood the principle that Sir John Acton would famously elucidate in the phrase: “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In the 20th century, however, the separation of powers came under a siege that has yet to subside. A slow erosion of this principle in favor of short-term expediency has left the federal government unable to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

President Joe Biden on August 24th, 2022

War Powers

In 1964, following an attack on U.S. naval forces, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which vested in then President Lyndon B. Johnson nearly limitless power to militarily aid “any member or protocol state” of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). In writing this blank check to the executive branch, Congress effectively removed its exclusive exercise of the rights granted to it by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution (to declare war, raise and support armies, make rules for the government, regulation of the land and naval forces, etc.). The war in Vietnam would arguably end in an American defeat, and with the deaths of more than 1.3 million people. A defeated America, licking its wounds from the Vietnam conflict and jaded with overseas conflict, demanded structural change. In 1973, Congress headed their calls and passed the War Powers Act, overriding President Nixon’s veto. The intent of the act was to clarify the role of Congress and the role of the president in waging war. This War Powers Act was balanced on a knife’s edge from the beginning. It aimed to allow the president to react swiftly to threats that required more immediate action than Congress could provide, while also maintaining Congress’ constitutional right to declare and oversee America’s wars. Though the effort to preserve the separation of powers was noble, the War Powers Act arguably failed to adequately check the executive branch. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada without congressional approval. Although it sparked an intense backlash among Reagan’s political opponents, the invasion resulted in only minor disputes over military funding. In late 1990, then President George H.W. Bush stationed more than 500,000 U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia in response to Saddam Hussein’s illegal invasion of Kuwait, without Congressional approval. In 1991, Congress further caved to the demands of President Bush to invade Iraq. In this case, Congress passed a blank check, similar to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution though not as sweeping, allowing President Bush to wage war in Iraq with limited congressional oversight. In the mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton arguably violated the spirit of the War Powers Act by sending U.S. troops into Bosnia. Finally, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed several bills allowing for the use of military force in Afghanistan and Iraq, authorized by then President George W. Bush. This lack of oversight by Congress has enmeshed America in several overseas conflicts, resulting in trillions of dollars wasted and the deaths of thousands, while we have arguably failed to achieve many of our foreign policy objectives.

Overreach by the Supreme Court

Article III of the U.S. Constitution created the Supreme Court and vested in it “the judicial power of the United States.” The landmark 1803 Supreme Court case, Marbury v. Madison, gave the court the right of judicial review. These powers were granted to the court so that, when the president acted in his/her capacity as the chief executive or when Congress passed a law, the court could review that action to determine its constitutionality. This role of the court, necessary for the preservation of the separation of powers, has come under attack in the name of political expediency. Today, the court acts less as a check on the executive and legislative branches of government, and more as a de facto legislature. Gay marriage, abortion rights, and the outcome of presidential elections have all had their final say, not in front of an elected legislature, but rather by 9 unelected justices appointed by the president. It is important to note that the opinions here expressed are only relevant insofar as they pertain to the function of government. No argument is being made one way or the other about the viability of gay marriage, the morality of abortion or bans thereof, or regarding the outcome of the election of 2000. When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 by the Warren court, it was immediately controversial among constitutional scholars. The penumbra argument made by the court in Roe seemed to some to create a constitutional right to privacy out of whole cloth, and then to necessarily imply a right to an abortion up to a certain point in the development of the fetus, despite no article or amendment in the constitution directly establishing such rights. The language of the decision established the viability standard; that no state could regulate abortion before the point of viability in the third trimester. Disregarding one’s opinion on abortion, the arguments before the court read more like a legislative fact-finding mission, and the decision itself has little to do with the supreme court’s powers to determine the constitutionality of the laws. This disconnect was the basis for the recent Dobbs v. Jackson decision, in which the court struck down Roe v. Wade, and returned the question of abortion to the states or to the federal legislature, as it always should have been. If one is pro-choice, would it be preferable to have a woman’s right to choose always contingent on the whim of 9 unelected justices, or should it be a question of legislation? If one is pro-life, would it be preferable for the state to commit what is viewed by pro-lifers as state-sanctioned murder because of 9 unelected justices, or would one prefer their elected officials to oversee the legislative process, and create laws that address abortion directly? All of our peers in the west have actual laws regulating abortion, rather than sweeping judicial precedent; we should emulate this. It is important to note that this critique of the Supreme Court only applies insofar as the decisions made therein violate the Constitutional purpose of the court, as outlined in Article III of the Constitution. The court has repeatedly made decisions that positively affect marginalized communities in the United States, such as in Brown v. Board of Education, where the segregationist principle of “separate but equal” established in the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson was struck down. The difference between the decision in Brown and the decision in Roe is that Brown struck down segregation based on principles of the Constitution, namely the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, while Roe could cite no such explicit Constitutional principle. When the judiciary begins to act as a legislature, a carefully crafted tripartite system, designed to combat man’s proclivity to be corrupted absolutely by absolute power quickly breaks down into a de facto elected monarchy, or perhaps an oligarchy. The president signs executive orders, appoints justices to the supreme court, and wages war with little or no oversight by Congress, which is supposed to be the central branch of our democracy. This paradigm vests far too much power in a single person and creates an opening for a radical leader to radically lurch the policy agenda of the United States with little standing in their way. President Donald Trump showed the rotting system of checks and balances for what it was by repeatedly breaking with tradition and established legal precedent with no consequences.

Biden’s Plan to Bail Out Students

The most recent example of the erosion of the separation of powers is President Joe Biden’s plan to spend $400 billion without permission from Congress, in order to bail out those with student loan debt. Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress “the power of the purse” or the ability to spend public funds collected through taxation of the citizens. There is a limited amount of money that the executive branch is entitled to spend on various causes, though a plan with a $400 billion price tag, sanctioned entirely under the auspices of the president, grossly violates mos maiorum and established precedent. Spending of that magnitude ought to be handled by the legislature to better reflect the will of the people. All of the aforementioned issues would have been handled better were Congress in charge of their execution, as mandated by the Constitution. Declarations of war, issues with cultural salience like abortion and gay marriage, and large-scale spending are issues about which there ought to be vigorous debate, but ultimately insofar as the law is concerned, these issues should be decided by the body that the people have the most regular control over; Congress. Spending without adequate checks on that spending is a problem in and of itself, however, it does act as a canary in a coal mine for more structural problems in the government which highlight the threat posed to the separation of powers to American democracy. What if, instead of a political moderate like Joe Biden, some radical politician was elected to the presidency? This person, without adequate checks on their power, could stack the Supreme Court with loyalists, issuing de facto legislation by fiat that would affect hundreds of millions. The president could spend billions or even trillions of dollars without the necessary oversight that Congress can provide. Finally, and perhaps scariest of all, the president can declare wars, throwing the full might of the American armed forces into whatever country he/she may desire without the consent of the people. Biden’s proposed plan to bail out student loan debt may be something that seems disconnected from the broader erosion of our institutions, however, that could not be farther from the truth. This level of spending from the executive is unprecedented in our history, and will only contribute to our rising national debt. Our founders understood the value of the separation of powers; we ought to learn this lesson.

Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

How Stoics Remain Loyal to Their Principles in Polarized Times

The political landscape in the West has become increasingly polarized in recent years. Extremist activists, commentators, and governments portray a political landscape that many do not experience in their daily lives; one of intense division and rancor. Nowhere in the developed world is this trend made more lucid than in the United States where, according to a study from Pew Research, both sides of the political spectrum are becoming deeper enmeshed in their ideological convictions. The researchers at Pew wanted to compare political data collected from the early 1990s to that collected in the 2010s; their results were interesting. According to the results, “Today, 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median (middle) Democrat, compared with 64% twenty years ago. And 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican, up from 70% in 1994.” This split means less communication, less dialogue, and less common ground.

Less communication leads to a positive feedback loop wherein people make a caricature of their opponent’s positions and believe them to be maliciously motivated. This effect only adds to the tribalism that defines the “culture war” era of American politics. This challenge is nothing to despair at, however. As the Roman poet Ovid said, “Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.” Ovid is right. Tough times are challenging, but the alternative to standing against the maladies that plague our political discourse is to cower and acquiesce to them. This is an unacceptable alternative. This essay will explicate Stoic texts for their wisdom and examine how adherence to one’s principles in difficult times is the only way to restore a healthy public discourse.

The first principle is flexibility, not in one’s principles, but in the battles one chooses. In the opening book of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Marcus lists his various debts and lessons from those who have most influenced him. Of his philosophy teacher, Apollonius of Chalcedon, Marcus is grateful for the lesson that “a man can show both strength and flexibility.” This passage came to mind recently when I was walking outside during a heavy wind. I noticed the leaves rustling in the tree’s canopies and the branches swaying violently in the howling gale. This scene, when viewed through the lens of Marcus’ gratitude toward Apollonius, suggested a metaphor to me; that strength is like a tree in a storm; flexing its extremities to suit the situation but keeping its trunk and roots secure and unmoving. We do not need to run headfirst into every fight, nor do we need to cower and sacrifice our principles in the name of comfort. Temperance, that most subtle of Stoic virtues, is required here. As Aristotle says in his Nicomachean Ethics, “Temperance and courage, then, are destroyed by excess and defect, and preserved by the mean.” Remaining rigid and unmoving will break you when strong winds blow. Running blindly into every battle is not courageous, it is rash and foolhardy. So, in the modern political landscape, one must stick to the principles one has adopted, but one must also remember not to stumble into every trap along the way; you have more useful things to do with your time than that.

Practically, flexibility means remaining confident in your positions, but not so overly stiff that you become brittle and breakable. When, for example, a friend or peer is discussing some political issue with you, it is not necessary to intervene aggressively in defense of your position. Allow some leniency and let perceived slights pass. If, though, you are challenged directly on some political point, defend yourself in a respectful and thoughtful manner: let your leaves rustle in the breeze but keep your roots buried deep and unmoving.

The second principle is loyalty; remembering what we should revere and what we should not. One should never feel a sense of loyalty to a particular ideology, especially to the point of accepting willful blindness in its name. Today, it is all too common for people to form a tribal attachment to their political party, going as far as ignoring the truth to protect their insecure but firmly held beliefs. This is how so-called “echo chambers” are formed, by otherwise rational actors electing to ignore their better angels for the hollow comfort of ideology. This is not the path to a healthy political or social fabric; this is the path to tribal chaos and ruin. As President Abraham Lincoln said of America, “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Foreign armies have not harried America’s cities since the War of 1812 when our nation was much smaller and weaker. The times when we have come closest to destruction were when we chose hate over love, discord over order, and callousness over empathy. Only Americans can destroy America, that is why getting this right is important.

So if not ideology, what should we be loyal to? Again, Marcus Aurelius answers that question beautifully in Meditations, this time in Book 4. “Two kinds of readiness are constantly needed” he says, “(I) to do only what the logos (reason) of authority and law directs, with the good of human beings in mind; (II) to reconsider your position, when someone can set you straight or convert you to his. But your conversion should always rest on a conviction that it's right or benefits others — nothing else — not because it's more appealing or popular.” Our loyalties, in the Stoic view, should lie with reason alone, but not reason of the cold and utilitarian sort, reason oriented toward the good of our fellow man. In this way, the second principle is related to the first; it is imperative to remain flexible when presented with a new idea. Do not hold on to your preconceptions out of some loyalty to an ideology that does not merit such treatment. Examine your ideas harshly and remember to constantly ask yourself whether or not your worldview comports with reality. “Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself” as Marcus says. Doing this will allow you to speak in the face of adversity from political “opponents” because you will have nothing to fear; if the new idea is faulty, explain why it is so and if you cannot offer a rebuttal to the new idea, examine your beliefs and change. This will allow us to live honestly and forthrightly.

In the real world, this looks like standing up for your beliefs, even when you know you will be shouted down. If, for example, someone is yelling at you because you believe that the 2020 election was free and fair, and they do not, unless they provide sufficient evidence to shift your position, then stay the course. If you find that someone on the political left smears you with some epithet, calling you phobic of something you know yourself not to fear; let that roll off you like rainwater off an umbrella. So long as you examine your positions deeply and critically, you have nothing to fear from making those positions known, and then standing by them in the heat of an argument.

Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger

Many of the most famous Stoics lived hard lives. Marcus Aurelius spent his adult life away from home, lost his father as a young child, lost his wife Faustina while suppressing a rebellion, and ultimately lost nine of his children. Seneca was chronically ill and was repeatedly exiled from Rome. Epictetus was born into the brutal system of Mediterranean slavery that would break his limbs, but not his spirit. These maladies struck when and where they did because of fate. Cato the Younger, on the other hand, was dealt a comfortable hand by fate. He was born into a rich and storied Roman family with political connections and plentiful resources. Cato chose the difficult path and chose to stand by his principles, but not in a way that was rash or ineffective. A famous story about Cato as a young boy tells us that he visited a man named Sulla, a Dictator who forcibly seized power and prescribed “hit lists” of his political rivals to be killed and stripped of their land and titles. Cato asked why this man was so important, and why so many felt the need to offer favors to him. He was told that, rather than being loved, it was because Romans feared Sulla’s power. To this, Cato supposedly said, “Why then didn’t you give me a sword so I could free my country from slavery?”

Cato earnestly and forthrightly climbed his way through the rungs of mos maiorum, the obligatory step-latter of Roman political life. He abstained from a vice that was all too common in his time: bribery. Cato simply felt that saying and doing the right thing would be enough to win him the necessary votes. The Greek historian Plutarch says of Cato that “the harshness of his sentiments, and the mingling of his character with them, gave their austerity a smiling graciousness that won men’s hearts.” At thirty, Cato was elected to the position of quaestor and thus was granted access to the senate, a body from which he would deliver his most cutting speeches against the degradation of the republic he loved. He gave speeches denouncing the triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus and denounced Caesar’s campaign in Gaul as an elongated war crime (as the opening scene of HBO’s Rome depicts). He never compromised where it mattered, but he was willing to work within the bounds of the system and alongside those with whom he disagreed to achieve his ends. As Ryan Holiday records in his book Lives of the Stoics, “It would be a mistake, however, to think that Cato was incapable of compromise or collaboration…within him there was an equal blend…of severity and kindness, of caution and bravery, of solicitude for others and fearlessness for themselves, of the careful avoidance of baseness and, in like degree, the eager pursuit of justice.”

Cato would ultimately fail to beat his political opponents, namely Gaius Julius Caesar. Caesar took over as dictator in Rome, defeated Pompey, and killed the republic which Cato spent his last and greatest measure of devotion in defense of. Cato, however, was never conquered by Caesar. He may have been unable to accomplish his goals, but he was never truly beaten. Instead, though offered amnesty by a victorious tyrant, Cato chose to take his own life. As the great Stoic philosopher Seneca said of Cato,

“In an age when the old credulity had long been thrown aside, and knowledge had by time attained its highest development, Cato came into conflict with ambition, a monster of many shapes, with the boundless greed for power which the division of the whole world among three men could not satisfy. He stood against the vices of a degenerate state that was sinking to destruction beneath its very weight, and he stayed the fall of the republic to the utmost that one man’s hand could do to draw it back.”

In that way, Cato was the victor, for he lived according to his principles and left the rest to fate.

Cato’s final day was like many others in his life. He ate a full meal, laughed, talked philosophy with friends and family, and then fell on his sword. Gone but never conquered.

Cato’s example should inspire us all to consider our positions deeply and, once done, to speak honestly and without restraint. Today, there are few violent battles between political opponents and there are even fewer politically motivated killings. Yet paradoxically it seems that we are more afraid than ever to speak our thoughts openly. What are we afraid of? Something so empty as the jeers of the utopian naysayers and those who do not know good from evil? Why should we allow them to dictate terms to us? This is the cardinal political problem of the so-called “culture war” era, perhaps best summed up by Dr. Jordan Peterson who said, “If you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.” So, live your life honestly and with reason aimed at the maximal human good. Do not fear speaking your mind, instead accept that you will encounter sneers and jeers from those who do not know all that you do. Listen to them and if they are then right adopt their position, however, if they are wrong then stand by your principles or die doing so. The light of the Roman Republic was extinguished by a series of weak men refusing to say what needed to be said for so long that even one man of an iron constitution could not right their collective wrongs. America will be no different. Let us not repeat this calamitous error.

“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future” — John F. Kennedy