This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, October 11, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Knowing what is right in acting on it defines character and character makes heroes.

That's the message of Lawrence W. Reed in his new book,

Real Heroes, Inspiring True Stories of Courage, Character, and Conviction.

Reed is the president of the Foundation for Economic Education. We spoke yesterday.

When you think of heroism, it's hard, it's like pornography, you know it when you see it, and for a lot of people, but what was your

attempt to encapsulate or at least put some walls on the idea of heroism and say this is heroism.

Well I started with the assumption that character is at the root of heroism and so I

ask myself well what are those character traits that a hero would

exemplify and of course into a great degree I think we're talking about things like honesty we're talking

about responsibility we're talking about courage we're talking about the

willingness at great risk to oneself to put the truth out there to speak truth to power.

One of the very common themes in the book is speaking truth to power.

People who have at great risk to themselves stuck their necks out on behalf of principles that were right, even if they were unconventional, unpopular, or unpolitic.

And I think that makes a person a hero,

especially if it means over an extended period of time,

you've put yourself at great risk

because of the powers that be that don't want to hear the truth.

There are some names in your book here that may be well known to people like Frederick Bastiat

or Edmund Burke or Adam Smith, but there are some other people who were not necessarily

heroes of in the creation of ideas, but were heroes in recognizing the rightness of an idea and

...