Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues,

courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

What's on a hill cannot be hid. It's been one for hundreds of years, a place that people aspire to, dream of,

look up to. They want to move there. They want to be a part of it. They want what it offers. They like

what it stands for. America. The city on a hill. That's what John Winthrop first called it in the year

1630. And so for even longer than the

250th anniversary that the United States is celebrating this month, America has been that. And yet,

for almost as long, people have totally missed an important part of what that idea, which comes

from the Bible, is all about. The full line, which comes from the sermon on the mount, is about how

a city on a hill cannot be hidden. Yes, it's a beacon. It is also public. Does not have the cover

of darkness, even at night. Both its virtues and its flaws are laid bare for all to see.

In meditations, Mark Surrealis expresses a similar idea about not doing anything that needs to be concealed behind walls or curtains.

If you have to hide it, if you need secrecy to protect it, if it depends on no one's seeing what you're doing,

then maybe it's a sign that you should not be doing it at all.

In right thing right now, I tell the story of a Roman politician who, when offered means of making

his house more private, doubled the architect's fee to remove any obstructions so that people could

see he had nothing to hide. Whether America is truly a city on a hill or not is up for you to

decide, but each of us should try to conduct our lives as if we were being looked at and looked

up to. Because we are by our families, by our friends, by people less fortunate than us, by people

who don't like us. We should let our light shine and yet also let sunshine keep us

honest. We must hold ourselves to a higher standard. Understand that we don't get to make

excuses or exceptions. We are privileged and empowered. Let's act that way. So apparently everybody that works for us at the bookstore and Daily Stoic is

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