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Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

Don't listen to the complicit. In Kato's time, Caesar's partisans wanted to cast his usurption of the Roman Republic as somebody else's fault.

The system is broken. They said the old ways don't work anymore. Don't blame Caesar. It's really Kato's fault, they said.

He is too uncompromising, too resistant to change. Why could need be more like Cicero willing to go along?

By being so difficult, they said he forced Caesar's hand. It's an old refrain. European fascists in the 20th century used the same playbook, but with an added wrinkle.

You need us to do this, they said. They excused their abuses, their violence, their destruction of old institutions by claiming that the socialists and the communists would be much worse if they didn't intercede on the people's behalf.

They might be the devil, but they were the devil you knew. And when we interviewed Annie Applebaum, the Pulitzer Prize winning expert on us the word heranism for the Daily Stoke podcast, she actually pointed out that even Vichy France made this argument.

We are surrendering to the Nazis, they said, to protect you from left wing, illiberalism.

It's a preposterous argument, of course, but one that doops people when argued forcefully enough. The Stoke struggled with it in their own time.

On the one hand, you had the opposition to Nero by Stoke's like Thrasia and Helvides and Agrippinus and Musoneus Rufus, who fought the emperor at every turn.

Then on the other hand, you had Seneca on the inside working for Nero. He likely told himself that he was mitigating Nero's worst impulses, that he was containing the damage, that he was making a difference, and that don't forget whoever comes next might be worse.

While the Stoke opposition was not perfect and Kato was not blameless in Rome's troubles from an earlier generation, these resistors were largely correct.

They saw tyranny for what it was. They risked their lives, quite literally to fight it. They put differences of opinion aside, along with petty politics and took a stand.

Other Stokes and fellow travelers like Siserro and Seneca, while good men were a complicit, their judgment was impaired. Their fear and self-interest blinded them to the reality of what they were supporting.

When the Stoke's talk of clear judgment of resisting the passions of the mob, of doing the right thing no matter what, it was these kinds of situations they were hoping to prepare us for.

They knew that politics were tricky. They knew how conflicting obligations can lead people astray. They knew that power corrupts.

They wanted to make sure that you knew how to keep your head amidst all this, and they wanted to remind you that in the end what counts as character, your character and the character of the leaders you support.

Everything after that is rationalization, or worse, it's appeasement.

Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. If you could leave us a review in iTunes, it helps a great deal. And of course, if you know anyone who had benefit from these messages, please spread the word. Thanks.

Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondering Plus in Apple podcasts.

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