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

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

It would be wonderful if the world was naturally just, if people were automatically good,

always doing the right thing. But of course, they don't.

It's one of the most heartbreaking and frustrating things about life. Not only do people often not

do the right thing, they will continue in error or evil even after they've been challenged,

even after you've made every argument or followed all the procedures. Nothing illustrates this more than

the fight to end segregation in America,

which was more than just marches. It was a series of endless court cases, cases that took

years to get picked up, years to get their day in court, years to get the right verdict,

and once passed were then often ignored by southern politicians and law enforcement officers. But the reason the

cause eventually prevailed was encapsulated by the legal philosophy of John Doer, who served as

assistant attorney general for civil rights during the 1960s. You've just got to keep going back,

he would explain. The Southern strategy was one of holding out of being so

difficult, being so painful to deal with, the hope being that the North would do what they'd done

during reconstruction. They'd eventually be disheartened, and they would give up and leave. In the case of

John Meredith, the black man who integrated the University of Mississippi, Dore filed hundreds

of motions, sat before

multiple judges, appealed and appealed and appealed. He never lost hard. He never gave up. And neither

did Meredith. It should be said, even after he was shot in the head. You've just got to keep going

back, he said. Justice, the most essential of the stooic virtues is not just about being right. It's not

just having the moral high ground. You have to fight for it. You have to seize and command that

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