Great necessities call out great virtues.

When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart,

then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

Happy Fourth of July.

This episode is going to drop right on Independence Day.

So I hope that while you're listening to my voice,

you're following the burger patties to put on the grill or you're getting ready to head out to the firework show or whatever it is.

I hope wherever you are, you are celebrating.

I know that America is not in a condition right now that makes everybody eager to jump up and down and dance around and feel like things are so honky-dory that we need like a big party.

But that I'm going to argue during this kind of Fourth of July special episode, that's not necessarily the point of Fourth of July.

Things don't have to be going well for us to celebrate Independence Day and understand the meaning of it.

In fact, we might be able to grasp the meaning of it more deeply if we face up to the challenges that are in front of us as a nation.

So if you've been with me on this journey for a little while, you know that we're talking through the virtues.

Right now we're talking through the canonical classical virtues, the cardinal virtues of classical antiquity.

There are four of them, wisdom, courage, moderation and justice.

But because it's the Fourth and because that's something we want to pay attention to and Mark, this is going to be sort of a special deviation, although I am going to talk about the next virtue on our list, which is courage.

We're kind of in the build a soul workshop here at the Young Heretics.

If you know those like build a bear workshops where you go from station to station and you put the stuffing in the bear and then you put the decorations on and you do all the different stages until it becomes the distinct thing.

That's what we're talking, how we're talking about the soul here in Young Heretics.

We've been talking about the three parts of the soul, the logisticon, the rational part that should rule, the thumas, the part that feels anger and courage and daring.

I've compared it to the shyle buff meme that just goes, do it! That's the thumas.

And then the desires or the epithume tecan, the part of the soul that just reaches out for things and wants whatever it wants and tries to satisfy itself however it can.

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