Stoicism

“No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.16 (trans. George Long, 1862) The plan is not the strait. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told reporters at the United Nations that Tehran has handed Washington a proposal with a timetable: over the first four or five days, lift the naval blockade on Iran’s oil ports, restore the waiver that lifted sanctions on Iranian oil exports, end the war on all fronts including Lebanon, and permit the release of some frozen assets. On the sixth day the Strait of Hormuz would reopen to shipping through a route designated by Oman and Iran. On the seventh day, nuclear talks would begin, accelerating what the June memorandum had scheduled for sixty days. He called the preconditions nothing new, contained in the Islamabad memorandum the president himself signed, and said he was not in a hurry. Traffic through the strait had fallen to nine vessel transits. The advantage of the offer is speed. Its defect is that the water is still closed (The Guardian, 2026; CNBC, 2026). ...

“If any one can convince or shew me that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. It is truth that I seek; and truth never yet hurt any man. What does hurt is persistence in error or in ignorance.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.21, a modern paraphrase. The sourced Long rendering reads: “If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth, by which no man was ever injured.” (trans. George Long, 1862) ...

“When you are going to take in hand any act remind yourself what kind of an act it is. If you are going to bathe, place before yourself what happens in the bath; some splashing the water, others pushing against one another, others abusing one another, and some stealing; and thus with more safety you will undertake the matter, if you say to yourself, I now intend to bathe, and to maintain my will in a manner conformable to nature.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion 4 (trans. George Long, 1862) ...

There is a version of MacKenzie Scott’s life that reads like a fable about the wrong kind of ambition. She studied creative writing at Princeton under Toni Morrison, who called her “one of the best students I’ve ever had in my creative writing classes.”1 She spent ten years writing her first novel while helping her husband build a company that would become the most valuable retailer on earth. The novel, The Testing of Luther Albright, won an American Book Award. Morrison reviewed it as “a rarity: a sophisticated novel that breaks and swells the heart.”2 And almost nobody read it. By NPD BookScan’s count, her books sold modestly.3 ...

“First say to yourself, what you would be; and then do, what you have to do.” — Epictetus, Discourses 3.23 (trans. Elizabeth Carter, 1758) Net interest on the federal debt is set to cross $1 trillion this fiscal year, more than the Pentagon’s entire budget, and it holds there every year through 2035 on the Congressional Budget Office’s own numbers (CBO, 2025). On the CBO’s calm, no-crisis baseline, debt held by the public breaks the record set finishing World War II by fiscal year 2030 (CBO, 2026). That’s about four years out. Treasury’s response this month was to double its debt buyback program, a move I wrote about this week in Treasury Buybacks: A Colossal Failure in the Making: a few billion dollars a month against a $32 trillion market, a rounding error dressed up as a fix. ...

“So long as he may allow you, take care of it as a thing which belongs to another, as travellers do with their inn.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion 11 (trans. George Long, 1862) On October 20, 2025, demolition crews began tearing down the White House East Wing, the 1902 addition that had housed the East Garden Room, the Family Theater, and generations of First Ladies’ offices. (NPR) It was coming down to make room for a 90,000-square-foot state ballroom, which the White House said in July 2025 would cost about $200 million, fully covered by Trump himself and other “patriot donors,” at no cost to taxpayers. (PBS) By December the estimate had climbed to $400 million. This week, CNBC reported the figure has reached roughly $900 million, and that it will now be “covered primarily by taxpayers.” (CNBC) ...

Steven Miller, I’m writing to you as a Stoic, an atheist, and a progressive: not to convert you, but to challenge you. I don’t share your faith, but I do share your humanity, and it’s on that common ground that I want to speak. My goal isn’t to mock or dismiss you, but to ask you to consider the consequences of your words and actions, and to reflect on whether they align with the values you claim to uphold. ...

“For this is your duty, to act well the part that is given to you; but to select the part, belongs to another.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion 17 (trans. George Long, 1862) Early this morning, the Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as Attorney General of the United States, 50 to 49. Every Democrat voted no. So did two Republicans, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. (NPR) Blanche spent most of his career on the advocate’s side of a courtroom: a decade as a federal prosecutor in New York’s violent crimes unit, then years defending white-collar clients in private practice. In 2023 he took on a single, high-profile assignment: representing Donald Trump personally, in the hush money trial, the classified documents case, and the election obstruction case. (Wikipedia) That’s not a dishonorable job on its own. The system depends on lawyers willing to argue a client’s case as hard as it can honestly be argued, whether the client is popular or not, guilty or not. ...

I have spent years writing about honor as if it were an antique: a virtue our ancestors practiced and we merely study. Stoic biographies, civics essays, a shelf of books about how a person builds a defensible inner life. I used to think the point of that work was personal: how do I hold myself together when nobody’s watching? Lately I’ve had to sit with a second, less comfortable question underneath it. What happens to a country when the people running it stop asking that question at all? ...

Stoic Saturday: When the Law Becomes a Suggestion Think clearly. Live intentionally. Love deeply. The Rule of Law Isn’t a Spectator Sport Marcus Aurelius wrote that “the best revenge is not to be like your enemy.” Today, that enemy isn’t just a person—it’s the slow rot of a system that once held power in check. The rule of law isn’t a given. It’s a daily practice, like flossing or not eating the entire pizza in one sitting. And right now, it’s being treated like a suggestion rather than a rule. ...