 Welcome to Free Thoughts from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. I'm Aaron Powell. I'm Matthew Feeney. And I'm Trevor Burris. Joining us today is Brian Wilson. He's co-founder of Combat and Classics, a program out of St. John's that organizes free online seminars on classic techs for active duty reserve and veteran U.S. military. He's joining us today to discuss Plato's Apology. But Brian, let's maybe kick things off by having you tell us a bit about Combat and Classics. Sure. Combat and Classics is sponsored by St. John's College. It's an outreach program through St. John's. I'm a graduate of the Graduate Institute in Annapolis. And when I was kind of transitioning from student to alumnus, approached the dean of the college and just said, you know, hey, what can I do for you guys? And they just really wanted to get kind of more involvement with the military. And we thought the best way to do that was just by what we do at St. John's, which is just Socratic Dialogue and great books, just with the military audience. And does it come over pretty well? Do you get, I mean, are there any texts that you tend to focus on mostly in that? Or is it pretty broad? Is it classic philosophy or plays or Greek and Roman or anything? Yeah. I mean, the degree from St. John's, right, is liberal arts. And so we study everything from Euclid to Newton to Aristophanes to Plato to basically the kind of classical liberal education. So we try to represent that as best we can with combat and classics. We do probably do a little bit more history and philosophy, a little bit more Thesitides, a little bit more Herodotus, a little bit more Plato. But we try to get in a good amount of things that maybe somebody who's looking at the great books and is in the military has already started on. But for instance, our March and April seminars are both Macbeth. So we'll be doing Shakespeare for those. But our February upcoming seminar is on the Iliad. So we do kind of a martial theme to a certain extent. But it's a broad swath of classical literature that we use. Well, then I guess let's turn to our text. We chose today Plato's Apology, which is one that you've done seminars on. So give us some background on it. So the Apology is Socrates on trial, right? He is apparently corrupted the youth. He is accused of being a heretic of not believing in the gods. And this is Socrates, you would call lackluster defense of those charges, but also a robust defense of what it means to be an individual, to be able to stand up to the state. And what is the consequences of that for both the individual and the state? Why would you call the defense lackluster? I think that, you know, and Socrates, I think admits this to a certain extent. You know, Melitus, his accuser, has kind of made his case and Socrates is replying. And that's the beginning of the dialogue as Socrates is replying. And you know, he says like what Melitus has said is, and the accusers at large is just not true, right? But it sways the jury, right? And it's obvious that it swayed the jury. And he says, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to play this game. I'm just going to do what I do, which is seek truth, right? Examine virtue. And if you guys don't like that, all right, no big deal. And he's willing to accept the consequences of that decision of being kind of true to himself, rather than, you know, I'm going to make a case to get myself out of punishment. Should we interpret this as, I've never got a good handle on the theistic, I guess I'm trying to, piety of the Greeks of how much are they kind of like modern-day Christians who, if you don't believe in their gods, as I always thought with, if you are, if you believe in many gods, then you believe that you kind of accept other people who believe in those gods too and don't treat them as atheists as much. So are these trumped up charges? Are we sort of like this impiety? Was it the worst thing in ancient Greece to believe in different gods than those gods and this corruption of views? Should we interpret them as trumped up charges? No, I think it's pretty clear that they are trumped up. You know, whether or not Socrates was an actual theist or an atheist or what is kind of one of those things that, and I know that Cato has talked about this in the past as far as like, you know, how much of a deist was Thomas Jefferson in George Washington? And so it's those kind of things where it's like, you know, only the people that only, only you know, you know, how much you buy into whatever religious creed you might or might not espouse. And so there were certain, certainly questions that Socrates raised that could make people uncomfortable, but there's no statement that I can think of in the entire kind of platonic canon where he comes out and says, I don't believe any of this stuff, right? But it's the questioning that certainly causes this accusation to get carried forward and certainly sway to decent amount of the jury. I think it's, I mean, it's pretty clear he's not, he's not a straight-up atheist, like he very obviously, he defends himself along these lines by saying, look, I talk all the time and tell people all the time about Demigods, Demigods and demons and other things that assume these are gods. Does he mean like Hercules? Is that what he was like? He talks about the Demigods. He talks about the offspring of, you know, gods and men. And I think it's very much a Rorschach test, I think, for the reader, right? If you want to read that as if you're an atheist reader approaching the text, then you can go, oh, he's messing with these guys. But if you're a theist reader, then you can go, no, he's trying to fit it into this theist doctrine that's, you know, part of the community and he's, you know, just trying to play by those rules. Well, it's certainly the case, at least toward the end, I don't want to jump ahead too much, but that he postulates after death, there are a couple of possibilities. And one is that it's just an eternal kind of sleep. And the other is, hey, I've got to hang out with Homer and all these other guys. But he seems, and so at the beginning, there's this question when he speaks to the Oracle and it seems like hard to believe someone not taking that seriously without some sort of theistic belief. If you really don't believe that the Oracle was the voice of a God, then his walking around Athens trying to see if he could find someone wiser than him seems a little pointless. One final question I want to ask before we open up a bag of worms here, but before we get fully into the text is, is this a history? I mean, your guess is as good as mine on that. I think that, you know, I always liked Christopher Hitchens kind of description of Socrates versus Jesus, you know, it's like it's not important if you're looking at Socrates, whether or not he existed at all, right? You can you can take his teachings and you can take whatever you want out of that, right? And it's not important if he existed or didn't exist, or if this is what he said or didn't say, but it's a little different because in this one, I think one of two, maybe of Plato's dialogues, Plato is supposed to be there. So maybe he was taking notes so that it kind of brings that spectrum. But I think I think this is complicated by so we only we only have two accounts of Socrates defense. We have Plato's Xenophon, who was another follower of Socrates. But then at the same time, there's this at after Socrates his death, it was kind of a thing for writers to write their own versions of his defense. It was like just fan fiction, which is also probably kind of like a Rorschach test. And they all wrote it in the way that they saw. Yes. And so it's I mean, it's a little bit difficult. Like we have we have almost no texts. What we do know about Socrates largely comes from Plato and Xenophon and Plato very clearly drifts away from Socrates presenting anything that even is remotely, you know, historical or documentary in his later dialogues where we get to just these are Plato's ideas and Socrates is a mouthpiece for them. There's the argument made that I think seems relatively persuasive to me that of the two apologies that we have Plato's and Xenophon's like Xenophon, well, a smart guy was not a genius on the level of Plato. And so it's it's less so Plato's genius probably takes over a bit more in his presentation. But they're I mean, they're similar enough, although it's the Xenophon Socrates is not his speech is not the great work of literature that we read for today and is quite a bit more straightforward. But the skeleton is relatively the same. So we could probably say, I mean, there's some level of accuracy there, but we don't know. So I think I think largely when we're talking about Socrates, we're analyzing Socrates in the way that we would talk about Hamlet, right? Like we act as if we analyze him as a real person while recognizing to that he was a historical figure, but what we're really talking about is Plato's presentation of him. So let's talk about that skeleton. Then how does the dialogue open up? Well, the dialogue, I mean, it rolls right into the defense, right? And there's no which I find always find interesting is that there's not really a presentation of the accuser's argument, you know, it is it is just the defense. And you have to kind of start with that question. I mean, there is a dialogue that's supposed to have happened right before the trial, which is the youth fro, which I know I'm pronouncing wrong because my Greek is pretty terrible, but they don't really talk much about Socrates trial, right? They talk about youth fro's trial for for manslaughter. So we open with this and Socrates immediately kind of goes for underwhelming. You know, he says, I do not know what effect my accusers have had upon you. He's speaking to the jury, but for my own part, I was almost carried away by them. Their arguments were so convincing. On the other hand, scarcely a word of what they said was true. It's a wonderful line to read during a presidential election. Yeah. She'll be picturing him in an amphitheater type situation with the kind of I picture this as a circle with the people sitting on benches around him while speaking to them. I always kind of think about it as like Perry Mason. That's these kind of juries, I think we're done. I forget the name of the location, but it's quite close to the Acropolis and it would have been about for the time about 500 people would have been hearing the accusation and the defense on the top of this rather small hill in Athens. I think that the police procedural is just kind of tainted my visualization a little bit too much. I'm visualizing law and order. And the setup, just the setup of this trial and the way it functions is I think something we could talk about because it's fairly interesting as a contrast to the way that we do things now. Sure. I mean, he's he has this jury of 500 people, right? And it seems obvious to me that they've been fairly swayed by the accusers. What we usually do at St. John's when we're when we're opening a seminar when we're talking about something like this is that the the tutor will just ask an opening question and from there there's not really we're trying to stick to the reading as much as possible. Obviously, you're the hosts and you're the Cato Institute. So if we want to talk about the Iowa caucus, then go for it. But please no, probably not. But we we just try to stick to the text as much as we can for our points and for our question. So the question I would like to ask you is what is Socrates' mindset during this trial? So I think that's a great opening because if you think about the timeline here, he's already an old man, 70, which is considered pretty old now, let alone in ancient Greece. And reading the defense, I got the impression that he might be just sort of resigned to the way this might end and the way it will end because he's an old man and the way he's addressing it. He discusses how death isn't particularly that bad. And the important thing is to lead a good life and that you shouldn't calculate the chances of living or dying. You should think about doing the right thing versus the wrong thing. And maybe if I die, I'll be able to an eternal sleep or talk to people I admire and I can continue these conversations. So part of many things his mindset might be, well, I could be doomed, but at least I can go out in a great rhetorical flourish and make these people look a little silly. And I think that he succeeds in doing that, especially if Meletus, that accuser. Well, I could, yeah, I kind of agree with Matthew. I think also that I always read Socrates is so tongue-in-cheek the way he spoke to people that I kind of read the apology as him being kind of angry and his righteousness against the accusing apparatus. And this is why I think it is a libertarian-ish task or text or something we can learn just political philosophy about a person standing against a power who has the righteous position, which he discusses later on. And if you do think you have the righteous position, that's the way Socrates does everything. Do you think he would never say it? He'd be like, you know, he's like, what do you think? Socrates, do you have the righteous position? He's like, I don't know, sir. Do you think I have the righteous position? Our cow is righteous. He would never say it, but you know he does think this. And now he's on a stand in front of the the pollist, which is a much more community-oriented type of concept than the current state. But and then tell them basically like a pox on both your houses or all of you. And that's why I see anger. Yeah. That was my reading more so than just resignation was the righteousness coming in because he's so he tells us this story of the Oracle of Delphi saying that he's the wisest man alive and that he's basically built a career around trying to assess that because he like he doesn't think of himself as wise but which of course I think he really does but he just likes to think he's not and it's because he recognizes his lack of wisdom that the Oracle thinks he's the most wise. But to kind of test this he goes around asking people who are presumed to be wise and testing their wisdom and always finding it lacking and so he and he's got this other part where he goes in about the training of the horses right where he says you know you wouldn't when you when you want to break a horse you call in an expert you don't just have like everyone break the horse because that's not going to work and that seems to be a dig against this system. And so I read this is like a like look I've been going around showing all of you up and now you've done this dumb thing where you're putting me on trial and so it's not just that I'm kind of resigned to my fate and I don't really think that living over 70 would be all that awesome anyway and death isn't all isn't something to worry about but also that you know I'm going to prove like my last act will be proving that I was right all along by getting by showing the complete lack of wisdom of all of you and that seems to be because he's constantly provoking them this isn't just like a lackluster defense this is like come and get me right. And so even when he's given like every opportunity and we get that in the the follow-up dialogue the credo where he's given the opportunity after he's been convicted to run away and he's just doesn't take it like in every step he seems to want them to kill him. You know even when I mean that they've declared him guilty and he offers up these basically absurd alternative sentences that he knows they're going to reject. He just he seems angry and he seems like he wants to demonstrate the foolishness of the people of Athens. Yeah I mean he I like the idea of anger just because you know right at 28 he kind of has a external internal dialogue and says but perhaps someone will say do you feel no compunction Socrates and having followed a line of action which puts you in danger of the death penalty. I might fairly reply to him you are mistaken my friend if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death and he gives the example of Achilles right. Which we have this you know whole book of Homer about in the first word of that is menace right rage and it's singham use of the rage of Achilles and so he you know he kind of brings it off and the whole presentation I mean you can obviously if you're directing this you can you know get a Mickey Rourke in there you can you know kind of get somebody a little bit more relaxed but you know the rage is there right I mean it's right in the dialogue when he brings up Achilles. But what's interesting to me is that you know he says right there you know the idea of even questioning that right the idea of you know thinking about that is but that's what Achilles did for you know half the book and so I feel like there's kind of a maybe a duality there of he's saying it's wrong but he might also be implying that there's a certain bit of human nature in wanting to spare yourself do any of you feel like Socrates tries at any point to kind of at least give himself some breathing room in the dialogue to maybe you know convince the jury I'm not as big a threat as you think I am. I mean I think that he certainly does make fools of the accusers and make the make the charges sound ridiculous but I think as as Aaron alluded to earlier after the vote where he's found guilty but not by a particularly large margin and Socrates well I'm glad that you didn't you know that I got some support here but then goes on to propose that they give him a pension or that they you know that some you know comparatively meagre fine be imposed and he seems to he must have known that that would lose him what what support he probably did have and then you know instead of a sort of sensible negotiation or proposal he's sentenced to death and I think that that's quite telling well I think that the interesting he does try to some extent but this begin at the beginning he mentions Aristophanes the cloud and the clouds which kind of parodies Socrates but he seems like a guy who believes that popular opinion is a one thing about him like if you imagine a star today and everyone thinks that like there's some sort of rumor about someone and there's really nothing he can do to change this especially because I do think that he believes that most people are stupid and so he says well I get up there and I talk to a bunch of stupid people who have an idea about me because of this opinion that's in the clouds and other sort of just rumors about me and I'm not going to convince them at all but I think he does try or at least tries to make a case with a few people who might be willing to listen to him to some degree. Well that was I mean teasing out this whether like because he defends himself but whether it's an attempt to soften it as you asked or just to not I guess give in to what he sees as false charges because he you know he could have just said okay you're right and then throw himself on the mercy of the court or not really mounted much of a defense if he didn't care one way or another or but he but it seems like his defense is I guess why I had a difficult time for him is how much of the defense was like him trying to like I don't want to be punished and so I'm going to try to defend myself versus I totally don't care what happens to me and in fact would like to be punished because it would prove be right but I can't stand by and because he talks about how much what ultimately matters is not wealth it's not prestige it's the kind of person you are it's your principles and so he's not going to he's going to defend his honor and his principles against these false charges but it doesn't matter what happens to him ultimately can we compare this to I mean it has been of course but can we compare this to Jesus in front of Pontius pilot in the sense of Jesus offering a defense against a crowd with a huge bias against him and saying nothing in response to their claims of of his his own type of disobedience of of the Pharisees I think it's very similar except for Jesus was a little bit more taciturn so I haven't actually heard much about that comparison but I think what they both have in common is that that to a contemporary 21st century reader in Washington DC it's very the thing that Socrates and Jesus do seem to have in common is that they're being accused of what's effectively thought crime in the sense like you and have the wrong kind of ideas and you're being you're being you're being too persuasive to people and all this other sort of stuff but then our post rationalization because they kind of both start movements or these texts are at least written for the purpose of starting a movement in both of these they're just like well I'm going to die and my death is going to be a lesson I mean it's a really big lesson for Jesus but they just sort of reside themselves to the fate and so we see a trial which again has a righteousness of standing against the power that is a raid against you. Yeah and it is the case that Socrates does say I think at the end something like you're going to think yourself a little silly and I think he's been proven right. Well there's a farisic quality to the people who are accusing him I mean and that's what these three accusers who I think are just some sort of they represent classes if I read that correctly. Yeah I mean the way that I kind of tie this in more is I feel like that Plato I mean obviously this is an important part of the canon right of the Platonic canon an important part of Socrates. I don't know if you need it you know like you need the Pontius pilot story to have a you know serious impact on Christianity. I don't know if you need the apology to make you know Socrates understood but it is important but I would compare it more to something like Kafka's the trial you know something like Orwell something like you know Eileen Chang's Naked Earth where it's you're against this you're against the state right and that and Socrates lays it out right. He says very specifically around 31 C he basically says he says you know I don't mess with the state because I know what's going to happen right. The last part of 31 C the true champion of justice if he intends to survive even for a short time must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone right. So and he's tried to go out of his way to do this but the state doesn't care right the state just by questioning any aspect of its doctrine is going to get insulted right. I like how he keeps bringing up how he makes no money. It kind of there's a lot of things that in as a lawyer there's a lot of things in the world where the state can't get you until you're making money off of it. They don't have they don't have any jurisdiction over you until you're making money off of it. So he's like hey I'm just doing this you know my own private life private's private. Yeah one and the thing is that this is the only thing that the only two things that they could threaten right was first saying you can't do this anymore right and it was important for him to be able to do it and in Athens and then the only other thing was his life right and so if he if he wants to take that kind of binary look and say you know if this or that it does show how necessary he sees exploring you know what is the virtuous life as at least critical for him and I think that you know that example obviously shines through in a very robust way in what he's talking about you know something that we talk about because we've done this seminar a couple of times with the military audience is Ritterall round line 29 he says the truth of the matter is this gentleman and this is right after the Achilles comparison the truth of the matter is this gentleman where a man is once taken up a stand either because it seems best to him or in obedience to his orders there I believe he is bound to remain and face the danger taking no account of death or anything else before dishonor this being so it would be shocking it would be a shocking inconsistency on my part gentlemen if when the officers whom you chose to command me assigned me my position at Portodia and I'm and I'm fabulous and in Deleum I remain in my post like anyone else and face death and yet afterwards when God appointed me as I supposed and believed the duty of leading the philosophic life examining myself and others I were then through fear of death or any other danger dessert my post and so well that's like super fiery up e for like libertarians you know you have to wonder how effective that is you know how effective is that analogy to you as readers how effective potentially is that for a military reader I mean it certainly puts like a lot of military readers kind of on the horns of a dilemma is you know there is this idea of death before dishonor you know what why is Socrates so set on you know either not teaching philosophy as more dishonorable than death well I think it might strike us as maybe a little odd as readers now to hear that rhetoric especially coming from someone who was a philosopher but I think it's important to remember that that Socrates was a soldier for a while and that one of the accusers is a general who fought the Spartans in the Peloponnesian war and that a lot of people in Athens at the time would have understood the role of the military and would probably have served and I think it's some sort of appeal and of course saying I'm just like Achilles is a clear you know everyone in ancient Greece would have known the reference clearly and Homeric legends were very popular and of course Achilles had this living with dishonor is worse than death and that even if I know I'm dead after I fight and kill Hector that's that's worthwhile and he seems to view his own death I mean I think the the Socrates is arrogance is on display in a number of places but my my favorite example of that was when he says maybe if I die I can my death will be like other people who died unjustly and he cites Palomitas who was of course sent to get Odysseus the great trickster to come to Troy and Palomitas tricked the trickster because Odysseus tried to pretend to be insane was sowing salt into the earth and Palomitas put Odysseus's son Telemachus in front of the plough and tricked Odysseus because Odysseus wasn't going to cut his own son in half of the plough and I just find that a really interesting compare that when he says my death will be like other unjust deaths and that it's deaths of at least one particularly clever person is really quite telling but no I think going back to the original line of inquiry here that the military rhetoric is very deliberate and I think he must have known that it would have pulled on the hot strings of a few of the people on the jury. Well a lot of the this tradition of death before dishonor or anyone from Gandhi to Martin Luther King to people standing against and say I will not I will not forsake my principles for this this thing that's standing against me that has none of these principles at all. It resonates with almost everyone I mean movies everything is made after this and you can always go to put a libertarian's spin on this but I think it's interesting that there's something I hadn't noticed before that and I don't have the exact locations unfortunately that you do for the official version but he's done this before Socrates talks about the 30 and like how he had done this before he had stood against this this the 30 when the oligarchy of the 30 was in power they sent me and four others into the rotunda and made us bring Leon the salamnian from Salamis as they wanted to put him to death. This was a specimen of the sort of commands which they were always giving with a view of implicating as many as possible in their crimes. So we get this there basically some sort of Stalinist despotism just killing people left and right. And I showed not not in word only but indeed that if I may be allowed to use such an expression I cared not a straw for death and that my great and only care was less I should do an unrighteous or unholy thing for the strong arm of that oppressive power did not frighten me into doing wrong. And we came out of the rotunda the other four went to Salamis and fetch Leon but I went quietly home for which I might have lost my life had not the power of the 30 shortly afterwards come to an end and many will witness my words. So it's kind of interesting that at some point and I'm not sure historically how long ago that was he had made a habit of this death before unrighteousness kind of thing. Yeah the historical context here is interesting because this sort of this oligarchy this pro spot in a set of tyrants were in charge effectively in charge of Athens and you know what years so this was 404 so just five years before it was very recent. It was very recent and I think the apology to the historians if that's wrong but it was it was recent and I think that there are certainly people who claim that part of the accusation against Socrates was that he stuck around in Athens and certainly knew the leader of these tyrants and was and that was not perceived as particularly who's actually was a mentor of of crudius later of the tyrants. I mean so that's so to some extent like because we reading this thousands of years later we look you know this looks very bad for the people of Athens right but I think that we can we can defend them a bit in the sense that you know this the historical situation you had Athens democracy it was taken over by these tyrants things were very bad Socrates had been the mentor of the leader of the tyrants he had also been the friend and mentor of alcibiades who had worked against the democracy had been kicked out had run off to Sparta was pro Spartan Socrates is at least presented by Plato seems to like a lot of elements of the Spartan regime. He didn't leave when the 30 took over and and so and then my understanding is when the 30 left there was a treaty that was signed that granted some degree of amnesty to people who were involved in it and so if the people of Athens were mad at him for what looked like support of the of the 30 and then there was this also notion in Greece at the time that like the mentor was to some degree always responsible for the actions of his students because it was his job to teach them and they were carrying out his teachings and so they can blame Socrates for what happened but the treaty prevents them from trying him for that and so this is possibly a run around the the treaty so it doesn't look so we can still we still judge them harshly but there may have been complicating factors here which is why these charges look so silly kind of like the Kafka So if we can you know this is all good background I don't mean to turn us off from this but within the text and taking into account those kind of historical precedents why did Socrates stick around through all this through the tyrants through Alcibiades defection and through this trial he has no property right I mean that's what ties us to the state in a lot of ways right we usually have property and it's hard to move it why did he stick around right righteousness again I'm gonna say yeah I don't know I think you know he's an old man he might just not be up for you know this political uncertainty and going into fleeing Athens although you know whatever his reasons I think it would be mistaken to think that he was some sort of supporter of this oligarchy that he was pro this tyranny and I think it would be a little unfair but he does seem anti-democracy sure but these are these can be mutually exclusive right you can be anti-democracy and also anti the tyranny at the time so yeah that's a good I think historical question I don't know I don't know if anyone I mean he gives reasons this is on the next text so I won't but he does give some reasons for sticking around in the credo which is when his followers show up while he's in jail waiting execution and say look we can get you out of here it'll be easy we just bribe the guards kind of everyone's expecting you to do like a chopper yeah and yes and and he says no when he presents these reasons and every intern semester I give a talk to the interns about the credo and about obligations to obey the law and say that Socrates arguments are all terrible but but he does he does have these arguments my sense I mean from this and from just what we know of him is his character is I mean Athens is his home he like he seems to be Socrates seems like a creature of habit I mean to the degree that I think one of the more delightful parts of this text is at the end when he's talking about so Socrates says he would be a hard guy to live around I mean he just goes around harassing like horrible next or he's a pain in the ass be like a Jehovah's witness neighbor that just never stopped but he's like he's a historically epic pain in the end and and then he doesn't when he's talking about death at the end and he's like death is nothing to fear because on the one hand it might be oblivion which he really good night which is a really good night sleep or there's an afterlife and in the afterlife I can go and harass all of those you know and you can imagine all of these like great Greek heroes looking down from the actual life and just saying please don't kill him please don't kill him but he just seems to be like he just knows this way of life this is what he does and that's my reading of to large sense why he doesn't leave there's the principle reason like he doesn't think he should have to but he just this is this is what he knows this is his home this is what he's been doing for years you're comment about being as democracy but before the passage I read about the 30 he seems to call that the days of the democracy and again when I know how much he supports it but he says right before the part I led when I made up my mind that I'd run the risk having law and justice with me rather than take part in your injustice because I feared imprisonment and death this happened in the days of the democracy but when the oligarchy of the 30 da da da da da so that's easy is that does that sound to you also like he's saying that that was the same time as the 30 the democracy that was unclear to me but I he is pretty anti-democratic I think that's that's quite clear I wanted to this question of the orders and what sort of orders he's obey and the death before dishonor I want to tease that out a bit from this libertarian perspective because it is I mean it's a really it's a fairly radical notion right and especially in the context of military people that you know that there are there are principles that he thinks were knowable via philosophy principles of honor principles of justice and that those trump that those trump the state that they you know that the orders of the king the orders of the democracy are not synonymous with justice and that when they conflict with justice when they conflict with basic morality our duty is to this these higher principles it's not to the state which is I mean important from a libertarian perspective because many of our arguments libertarianism when argued from a moral background instead of as opposed to say just like a economic efficiency arguments is often like look what the state does is morally wrong it's morally wrong to take people's money in these ways it's morally wrong to lock them in cages for taking certain substances and that it's your duty to follow morality and not the dictates of the state but this is I mean Trevor you said everyone kind of believes the death before dishonor to some degree but it's also extremely controversial thing I mean I you know like does this mean that I think it's true that this means that say like a district attorney has a moral obligation not to prosecute people for unjust under unjust laws and that in fact if they do they are behaving immorally and should be condemned for it but you could take it to the extreme in the military remember there's a Twitter trending topic a while back of like express your unpopular opinion and I think it was Will Wilkinson who used to be a Cato and now is not his thing was soldiers who kill and unjust wars are murderers which is an extremely controversial and radical claim to make and certainly is not something that like you would have higher ups in the military saying is the case right I think there's a lot more gray area than you might think I mean something that's kind of shocking to folks that haven't spent a lot of time you know with military folks are but in the military themselves and you know it's something I was kind of surprised at you know I went through the Naval Academy and that's been 13 years in Marine Corps and you know there there's almost a dual pronged education system there there is you would be shocked at the amount of time that we spent in situations like this sitting around and talking about what's the right thing to do you know and how much it is reinforced that you know you have to make unpopular decisions you have to make decisions that are contrary to what somebody told you to do because it's the right thing and for a lot of folks they just look at me after I say something like that and they're like no that's not how it is I go I'm pretty sure it is that was there and you know that that helps you a great deal I think in your kind of own you know personal moral education and that the troubling thing that you find is that you find people that in the military that ignore that you know they've had that training but they err on the side of you know not examining that maybe as closely as you'd like them to but you know I'm consistently kind of gratified by the number of folks that seem completely at ease more or less with I know if I'm told something to do and it's wrong that I'm not going to do it and I'll accept the consequence of that and it's it's it's fascinating and you know the kind of trite piece of that is you know you make an oath to the constitution and not you know to the orders of your higher ups right and the key thing there is that you just have to accept the consequences right so no matter what what it is that you're choosing to do or not do you have to accept the consequences and you know the example that that I always like to give is you know Omar from the wire where it's you know man's got to have a code right and a lot of people in the military kind of understand that going in and you know there's really from my experience and a fairly small minority that don't get that that don't you know understand that and the way that I would describe it you know having been in Iraq is that you know I suited up for game time today you know I got I got I got my uniform on like I mean I'm here to play right if somebody else wants to suit up and get on the field with me that's that's fine they are they're in the game but if they're not on the field they are spectators you know they they should not have anything happen to them at all to them or their property or you know their family or anything they are not in the game and that is something that is you know reinforced I would say a significant amount in in the military and it's you know it's it's clear in our rules of engagement to a certain extent there's ambiguity there there's certainly folks that buck against that but you know with with my experience and kind of the counterinsurgency realm it's it's how you won't say win but it's how you don't lose so how how do the military then in your program combat classics like you probably talk about this but in regards to apology and like could is this something we can learn lessons from in our jobs is military about what what happens when you're in a Nuremberg type situation or something like this where yeah I mean I really like you know the people that that show up for these are already kind of questioning a lot of things and they're already wondering you know what else is out there as far as education I mean you know another reason that you know I started this program was because I was enrolled in Command and Staff College which is you know a requisite for field grade officers and the Marine Corps and I did that after St. John's and I just did not have a very good time you know it was it was it was not something that was edifying and enlightening you know when when I'm you know in Annapolis or in these online seminars there are these you know moments of tremendous joy in in reading these kind of limitless works and you know just talking with other people and you know having them help me learn in the Socratic fashion you know what what these what this means you know is it logical does it make sense and does it represent you know human nature and if if if not where are the flaws and picking those things apart is something I think that a lot of military audience want to do to a greater degree because too often it is you know it it is a Nuremberg example you know it is it is it is you know Lieutenant Callie and Mealy those are the examples that that are drawn out and so I think that the our type of audience wants something like you know Socrates Apology where it's like it's not you know it's not a hundred percent clear because you know it was the state right in doing this is another question you know do they have the power to do this is it within their purview to do something like this was Socrates a threat to the state does the state have a moral obligation to act against those kind of threats and you know while I love any of your feedback on any of those questions because that's what I do well that was that was part of my question too and I thought you guys would have more these accusers because I wanted to try and get a grip on what the state is in this because it is not totally analogous to what we would call it a post-vabarian post-Westphalian Vabarian definition of a state but these accusers if they're real if they were even real people which is probably a silly question but they seem to just represent classes of Athenian society and he calls all of them idiots basically I mean as as Aaron mentioned like Socrates went around and was trying to figure out if you know what was wise and he said all these people are really smart but they're all not wise at all well that I just that so they're just an opportunity to there's a wonderful I love this line where he's talking about his attempt to go and find people who are wise and he talks about looking at artists and poets and he says poets are by far the worst because they think that they are wise but they totally aren't which is interesting in light of how much he and everyone else cites Homer and other poets as authorities but he says he's talking about why they might overestimate their wisdom and so he says because he someone who is say a very good poet or a good artist because he excelled in the practice of his art he thought he was very wise in other most important matters and this mistake of theirs obscured the wisdom that they really possessed and I just that explains so much of human behavior and political opinions and Washington and it's why there's no topic under the sun that Paul Krugman won't write about yeah right or Aaron's big thing about people who have some knowledge of tech therefore have large knowledge of how to reorganize healthcare yeah or I went to a dinner with a Nobel laureate who had in economics and had done work on a fairly narrow field in economics and then received his Nobel Prize and then wrote a book about basically the decline of America and American culture and it was everything that's wrong with basically the kids these days and it was very clear after listening to him talk that his real problem was he just didn't understand what the internet was and like didn't he didn't understand what like he had his tastes and he liked classical music and so rock and roll was a decline and he liked Baroque art and so graffiti artists were an example of the end of Western civilization and so is this like he thought you know I've been awarded this prize there's no prize that says you are wise more than the Nobel Prize right and but it was for this narrow thing and he's very good in that line of his art but he thought that represented wisdom everywhere else and this seems to be a very Paul Krugman being another Nobel laureate who thinks he knows everything about everything. So I was I mean on that going off that with these critics who represent these different classes of Athenian society or at least the way I read it who are all called idiots by Socrates and I would say by Plato and I mean at this point in Athenian society is a kind of a democracy and so there's also there's a huge condemnation of the way that society and the state is currently made up in the kind of idiots who run it which again I have to go back to it again very similar to Jesus in the trial because a huge part of the gospel writer's intention was to lambast the Jews who you know quote unquote kill Jesus and the Pharisees and the Sadducees these different groups that were just bad and so like there's a subtext there in the in the gospels and here we see we can read Plato's condemnation of everything about it and then we know from the Republic what he really thinks a good society looks like and it's not very similar to what the one that killed Socrates. Yeah I mean I think that for me this and it might be self congratulatory right but you know as libertarians we say I don't know how to live your life you know I don't know what you should do with your property I just know that you shouldn't hurt me and you probably shouldn't hurt other people too you know but a lot of that's none of my business so you know we want to pat ourselves on the back and say to a certain extent like you know we've accomplished some kind of Socratic ideal I don't know how well we hue to that too much because I think that our instincts are like most human's instincts of wanting to get involved in things that we potentially shouldn't but you know it also causes me to have it because we think we kind of figured it out right we think we got both property right it's property it's me libertarians yeah it's you know voluntary interaction it's you know we've got these principles and so I think it actually while we can pat ourselves on the back to a certain degree and say you know we have the Socratic ideal I don't know what's best for you there's still a long way to go and maybe I'm not sure that this is actually right you know when we you know read kind of the foundational authors if we're reading Myzik or high Myzes or Hayek or something like that even in you know technical economic terms we go I don't know if this is right you know and so I think that you know from the libertarian audience they can get a ton from these kind of seminars from these kind of readings and the military audience as well because the military audience I think is also fairly sure how certain things are but when you actually peel away those layers and you say well define your terms you know and Socrates doesn't really do that either you know but I think that that's probably at least for me that's kind of how I found libertarianism is because you know I thought I was part of team red you know because that's basically what it is team red team blue and I thought I was part of team red and I was like okay let me read about this conservative republican stuff and I went oh this doesn't make any sense and you know you have to dig through those principles and you have to question and question and question and when you think you've figured out the right answer you're probably a militess and you're probably wrong. Yeah I think what I especially like about the text and what you just said reminded me of it is that what Socrates does is he's asking his accusers to answer questions truthfully and they do and they look dumb is this sort of amazing and I think that's why these are such profound texts that you read these accusers digging themselves into these logical holes and Socrates is left with the truth on his side. I'm imagining like going to a White House press conference and being like you must answer truthfully now and making them look like idiots. But it's sort of a great image to think of these hundreds of people staring down on Socrates asking you know I just want you to you know just lay it out for people to hear exactly what you think I've done and why you don't like my response and I think the power of that I mean I think it's a reason why it remains so poignant is that it's not some sort of crime novel where they've been trumped up evidence or whatever. It's these people really believe that what Socrates has admits that he's doing is wrong and that's what I think makes it really great reading. And I think that's what your point about even these principles that we as libertarians believe are correct and hold to very strongly we should have this degree of why and might I be wrong and might I change my mind which is a point that we make a lot on free thoughts makes this notion I mean Socrates when he presents like this is look the choices between you know sticking to justice or doing what I'm told and we want to we want to read the apology as look he's Socrates is standing up for justice and principle as opposed to the Athenians who are just angry at him or want to kill him off but these are arguments about principle that's going on here. I mean the Athenians think that they have principle on their side that there is such a thing as impiety and he has been in pious and being pious is really important at a basic principle level and that democracy matters and that respecting your elders matters and the teaching the youth to disrespect their elders or doubt the wise is harmful to citing that these are important principles and so they disagree with Socrates on the core principles of what really matters and that that's what the argument is about and that that's a very important thing for libertarians to think about for everyone to think about that you're closely that when there's political disagreement say that it's often at the level of it can happen at the level of principle that it's not that you are principled and your opponents aren't right is that they hold different views and they may be wrong but before we condemn them we should make an attempt to really dig into them to really understand them to really learn from them. That's a tricky thing and that's part of the reason why I wanted to ask about the mindset because it's always staggering for me to read any play-doh and not put myself in Socrates' situation and just say I just wanna punch this guy, it just seems so demanding to both, having done it, I'm sure we've all done something tried to do some type of Socratic dialogue and whether you're talking with another libertarian who's just a little bit off from what you think is more important or whether you're talking to a socialist or a Republican or a Democrat and you feel that anger begin to swell at some point. I don't, either anger or just you start laughing inside at least. I mean they're not giving the right answers. Yeah, I mean they're not being truthful. They're not examining and so it's yet another kind of thing that we try to bring to that military audience is saying like really take a look at what you're sure of, really examine what you're sure of and then be open to other interpretations. I had a very fortunate job in the Marine Corps and then I did human intelligence. And so while I was in Iraq, a lot of Marines are having language barrier issues, they're having kind of confrontational issues with Iraqis where I'm seeing Iraqis who are risking their lives every day to come and talk to me and tell me this guy is killing people, this guy is killing your guys, this guy is doing the wrong thing and I see that level of bravery and I see that level of self-sacrifice and so I generalize and say the Iraqis I dealt with are some of the bravest people I've ever met and I bring that up and not in these seminars but in just kind of conversations with other Marines and they just kind of look at me like what are you talking about? It's not their impression but that really helped me kind of understand the big divergence that can happen within the military between, I'm in the same place as you are, I've got the same things happening to me that are happening to you and I have this completely diametrically opposed thing but it also made me go maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm wrong about this stuff and I think that's very helpful for that military audience to kind of be able to, if they can't do it in a situation like that, at least do it through the lens of Socrates and say what am I more certain about and what am I less certain and maybe I should take a look at this. So we've touched on this a bit, but maybe closed by your courses, your seminars are for military and ex-military people and so the value of these texts in particular, so these classic texts to, because most of what we're talking about is these are lessons that we can all learn and we all have, we all see like just a certain side of things and peeling back the layers and seeing the other sides valuable, but what if anything in these texts is uniquely important for the military and ex-military audience to learn and then also I'm just curious, is there when they respond to the texts in the seminars, is there a difference in the way that they respond to the text if they're active duty or reserve or veterans? Yeah, I mean, to your first point, what we're really trying to get at is what is the nature of man in conflict and what is the nature of man in cooperation? How do those two things differ? And the other thing we're trying to offer is an alternative, right? So for me it was, okay, I can go to command and staff and not enjoy any of this or I can just kind of go back and hang out at St. John's or start a program like this and while the people that need to stay in need to accomplish things like that, at least I can hope to give them some little bit of a different avenue to educate themselves that might keep them sane during the kind of less sane education that goes on within the military. And I think your last question was? When they're responding to the texts, do you see a difference in the way that they interpret or respond to the texts if they're active duty versus say reserve or veterans? I think that the actual, the biggest difference, we don't see a huge difference with active duty versus veteran or even versus service. What's most entertaining and most enlightening for me is seeing the difference between the more senior and more junior members that come to the seminars. The more senior members have read, at least they think a decent amount about this and have many times kind of been within a certain world view for a much longer time. And so they have a lot of problems with some of the bigger questions that we raise and they're very defensive sometimes about the idea of doing it, somehow they got harangued into doing it or just the idea of asking some of these questions. And the junior folks are much more open to really examining, really critiquing what the reading means to them and also how it impacts their military career. And so I mean, most of the people that stick with the program are really company grade, field grade type officers. So these are folks that are really in their late 20s, early 30s, haven't made that step of saying, okay, I'm gonna stay in for 20 years. And it's one of those things where it's like, if you can just reach one or two people at every seminar and get them to really kind of say, wow, this is not something I knew was this important. It was not something I knew was this rich and it's something that they're gonna carry with them for the rest of their lives and go, I need to do this. Free Thoughts is produced by Evan Banks and Mark McDaniel. To learn more about libertarianism and the ideas that influence it, visit us on the web at www.libertarianism.org.