We Are Who We Honor

"It was Malraux who said that we judge a society by the monuments it puts up. So imagine a society that puts up statues to tyrants, to someone who nearly succeeded in tearing an empire apart, who did horrible, inexplicably cruel things, even by the standards of their own time."Ryan tells us why monuments dedicated to the Confederacy must come down in today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  We are who we honor. It was Milrow who said that we judge a society by the monuments it puts up. So imagine a society that puts up statues to tyrants, to someone who nearly succeeded in tearing an empire apart, who did horribly, inexplicably cruel things, even by the standards of their own time. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the reign of Domitian, or the reign of Commodus? Can you imagine when the fear wore off, when the collective insanity that enabled and was complicit with their evil, what the Romans did next? "They sawed off the head of the Domitian statue, and after the death of Commodus,

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  when his terror had ceased, the Senate issued the following decree: For him who was foe of his fatherland, let his honors be taken away; let the honors of the murderer be taken away; let the murderer be dragged in the dust; the foe of his fatherland, the murderer, the gladiator, in the charnel-house, let him be mangled. On all sides are statues of the foe; on all sides are statues of the murderer; on all sides are statues of the gladiator. The statues of the murderer and the gladiator, let them be cast down; the slayer of citizens, let him be dragged in the dust; the murderer of citizens, let him be dragged in the dust; let the statues of the gladiator be overthrown."

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  Is that destroying history? Or is it simply the obvious response of a freed people with a conscience? Of course, the past is complicated. Very few people or causes who are displayed in bronze, or iron, or stone are entirely good. To judge history by the standards of the present is tricky business. But the fact that something is hard and complicated does not absolve us of the responsibility for solving it. Rome was able to tear down the monuments of its worst villains. Here in America and in the rest of the world, we have more tools at our disposal besides belatedly angry destruction. We can still study and learn about these people in our history books in our schools, just as we do for Commodus and Hitler and others.

• 2:40Ryan Holiday?

  We can move abhorrent monuments to museums. We can take them off public property, remove them from the prominent places in front of courthouses and capitals, which are supposed to be the people's house. All people. If Marcus Aurelius had caused the deaths of 1 million Romans and tore the empire in half for the sole purpose of protecting slavery, would he be our hero? No, he probably would not. If he had done it as recently as some living people's grandparents, he absolutely would not. And if his likeness had been appropriated by vicious tyrants who subverted the rule of law to intimidate fellow citizens, and if his likeness was put up in statues paid

• 3:25Ryan Holiday?

  for with stolen tax dollars, then it would be a perversion of his legacy and not worth protecting. You can make good arguments about Marcus Aurelius. There are good arguments about the good that Churchill did. There are good arguments about Jefferson and Washington and others. And only a coward is afraid of having an argument. The same is not true for Nathan Bedford Forrest. Jefferson Davis was a fool. Robert E. Lee betrayed his prior service and his country when he raised arms against it and sent a generation of men to their deaths in a rebellion over the worst cause for which men have ever rebelled, in a war that he should have had no Hope of winning. Let the statues of the foe come down.

• 4:09Ryan Holiday?

  Let the murderer's legacy be mangled. Let their celebration become dust. And finally, put up better statues in your homes and in our public spaces that reflect the kind of society we want to become.

• 4:27Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. You can sign up to get our daily email at dailystoic.com/email. I also encourage you, if you want to take your practice of Stoicism to the next level, to sign up for Daily Stoic Life, which is our members-only program. It's got all sorts of awesome benefits. You can check that out at dailystoiclife.com.