Today on Young Heretics, I begin with a question for you.

What do you honor most?

That is what this episode is all about. It's about honor, which is a topic that we

don't really know even how to start talking about anymore.

It's one of the most lost subjects in public discourse.

And I'm going to talk about honor by talking about the honor of one man,

which is the Roman soldier, Horatius co-clease, or Heratius co-clease.

But more generally, speaking of honor in general terms, I want to make a

crucially important point that I don't think has really been recalled successfully in

modernity. That point is you are what you honor.

That's true in two ways. First of all, what you as a person honor is what you

will strive to be and what you will strive to become. And what a society

honors is what its citizens will strive to become. Because being human beings,

we all are social animals. We have political impulses, that is, in the

original Greek sense of politic, hey, we have impulses to live together in

structured relationship with one another. And what we honor collectively as a

community is what people in the aggregate will seek to be.

And that goes in two different directions. So if a society has awards and

honors afforded to patriotism, if it is an honorable thing to achieve success

in the for the glory of your country and to make great art that celebrates your

country, then you will get a lot of patriotic art. And the most talented and

meritorious people will funnel their talent, talent and energies in that direction and

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