Great Days Download

[Alfie Overacre]

Asa boy at the Harrow School, Winston Churchill won a prize for reciting all 1200 lines in Horatius [1]. Speaking at the school decades later in October 1941 after his country had weathered the Blitz, the Prime Minister instructed the boys with an echo of Macaulay:

In the nascent days of the Roman Republic, the city was invaded by the Etruscan king Lars Porsena, on behalf of Sextus Tarquinius, the son of Rome\u2019s final (and deposed) king. A group of Romans stood against the Etruscans at the Pons Sublicius, the first bridge spanning the Tiber River in the city. On the Western side of the Tiber was the hill Janiculum, outside historic Rome; on the other was the Aventine Hill, at the city\u2019s heart. With the Etruscans amassing on the Western side, the only way to defend Rome was to keep the wooden bridge long enough to hack it apart. In Macaulay\u2019s retelling of the ancient story, the hero Publius Horatius Cocles told his countrymen:

Two men answered the call: Spurius Lartius and Herminius. And the \u201Cdauntless three,\u201D as Macaulay calls them, defended the bridge until its destruction. Horatius jumped from the collapsing bridge into the Tiber. In some tellings, that was his end; in others, he swam back to Rome. Either way, he became a hero, memorialized throughout the centuries of flourishing under the Republic and Empire. Macaulay recounts:

Macaulay\u2019s ballad was part of his 1842 collection, The Lays of Ancient Rome. It is a particularly 19th-century-British publication: interested in heroism, its sources, and its remembrance. Macaulay was a senior military and financial official, as well as an historian \u2014 with a keen sense of the value he saw in the British civilization, which he fought for.

\u201CDo not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days \u2014 the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.\u201D

For Macaulay, the defense of Rome made for \u201Cbrave days\u201D and for Churchill, the defense of Britain made for \u201Cgreat days.\u201D Churchill says \u201Cmemorable,\u201D too, well aware that the story of Horatius had survived for 2,500 years in one form or another. Churchill was inspired to be such a defender, and the British fascination with heroes and ballads played a part in that, however small. Today, that country is quite different; the Lays aren\u2019t often taught. Modern man has become wary of heroes \u2014 and of unabashed celebrations of virtue. Because what if the heroes were\u2026 controversial? [2]

The truth is that anyone who fights for something real will inevitably be seen as controversial. Churchill knew that what had been built by his forefathers \u2014 Britain itself \u2014 was worth fighting for. He didn\u2019t think there was any option except to fight, \u201Cto go on to the end\u201D as he famously said after the Dunkirk evacuation. Do his inheritors think the same? The sight in 2020 of a large gray box around a statue of Churchill in London, the city he saved from Nazi annihilation, doesn\u2019t inspire confidence. The men who grew up on Macaulay and believed in heroism, would never have tolerated such an outrage.

Like Churchill, Horatius thought that the young republic being built on one side of the Sublician bridge was worth defending from the army on the other side. A thousand years later, that conviction died, and imperial Rome was sacked thrice in a single century. As the story goes, eventually it was Romans who opened the gates for the Vandals. Those who built Rome fought for Rome. Those who didn\u2019t build it didn\u2019t fight for it.

Unlike Churchill and Horatius, we don\u2019t face an army threatening our country in the United States. But we do face a war on our values, waged both from within and outside of the United States. One big question for us is, will American builders fight for America? Unfortunately, it\u2019s taken too many entrepreneurs too long to notice that we\u2019re in a conflict at all. For many American liberals \u2014 I mean that in the original sense of the word \u2014 and especially American Jews, the October 7th attack and its aftermath was a jolt-awake moment.

If this is you, you\u2019re late to the party, but I welcome you anyway. And now that you\u2019re here, it\u2019s time to hear what you\u2019ve been missing, which is that bad cultural ideas have been tearing Western societies apart for much longer than the last seven months. It turns out that the ideas that lead students to praise terrorist attacks are the same ones that justify vandalizing statues of Churchill (or in America, Jefferson!). Those same ideas justify ending meritocracy, crushing upward mobility for millions in the name of \u201Cequity.\u201D It\u2019s those same ideas that have taken over institutions that the whole public relies on to be neutral, or at least functional: schools, hospitals, medical associations, government agencies, NGOs, you name it. Today, we\u2019re reaping the consequences of allowing such takeovers.

Now you\u2019re here. Something is wrong. Dangerous times are ahead if people don\u2019t find a voice. Institutions are not self-correcting without a fight. And yet, it doesn\u2019t require that many courageous people to make a difference. (Remember Horatius: \u201C...a thousand May well be stopped by three. Now who will stand on either hand, And keep the bridge with me?\u201D)

We have to Build and Fight. Building \u2014 enterprise, the creation of new things \u2014 is itself a rebellion against decay. It is absolutely essential to a free society, and to the United States. But building businesses, even bold businesses, isn\u2019t enough. And too often, builders are not focused enough on fighting for the values that make enterprise possible in the first place! President Milei puts this point well:

\u201CMilton Friedman used to say that 'the social role of the entrepreneur is to make money.' But that is not enough. Part of their investment must include investing in those who defend the ideals of freedom, so the socialists can make no further advances. And if they don't do it, they [socialists] will get into the state and use the state to impose a long term agenda that will destroy everything it touches. So we need a commitment from all those who create wealth to fight against socialism, to fight against statism, and to understand that if they fail to do so, the socialists will keep coming\u2026 We cannot take a day off, because when we rest, socialism creeps in.\u201D

Building without fighting cedes the field to those who fight without building. Unfortunately, this is a widespread problem among what we could call the moderate business elite in the United States \u2014 wealthy people that don\u2019t bother fighting against the immense pressures to shut up and go along. The excuses are endless. Many of these people see the armies on the other side of the river. They have the right values but don\u2019t voice them. It will attract negative press. They tell themselves stories that what they think or do doesn't matter, because they don't believe in heroes. After all, those who talk about things like \u201Cthe defense of civilization\u201D sound a bit loony! What could really go wrong with $50 trillion in debt, or ideological extremists in charge of what information is available to the public?

The concept of F-U money is often talked about with wealthy people. But who is really spending that F-U money? Fewer than you\u2019d hope \u2014 because those who are well off feel they have more to lose by being seen as controversial, or cast out of elite social circles. Do you remember what happened to my friend Peter Thiel after he spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2016 on behalf of Donald Trump? Or more recently, when Elon Musk bought Twitter? They were warnings: don\u2019t go out of bounds. When Peter and Elon fought back, those were two real instances of F-U money.

But suppose you don\u2019t want to get involved in heated presidential races, or buy a social media company. How do you start to fight? It starts with using your possessions appropriately. What are your possessions?

Not everyone has large sums of money or a well-known name. But for those that do, your obligation is to use it to fight, not abet, brokenness. Do not give your money to institutions that have lost their way, that are husks. Do not lend your name to dysfunction; the titles and \u201Chonors\u201D are actually markers of dishonor if you aren\u2019t fixing things. What you spend your time on matters; your most productive years are not trivial. Your frameworks for how to build new things don\u2019t get better in old age; building philanthropies and institutions now is better. If you don\u2019t know where to start, find a bold partner, someone who shares your values and is building already.

Build new institutions \u2014 a university, a bold company to fix broken processes, an organization to fight for better government policy. And don\u2019t stop then. Fight! Speak the truth. Because if you\u2019re starting anything worthwhile, it won\u2019t be smooth sailing into port. You will meet resistance. You will be attacked. To a cynic, it might sound obnoxious, or corny. But it\u2019s true: a society that rejects the idea of heroism will produce fewer and fewer heroes, and at the same time turn into the type of place that needs them. Whether and how we fought back when we realized we were at war is what we\u2019ll be remembered for (or why we won\u2019t be).

Today, too many people have internalized the idea that being labeled as \u201Ccontroversial\u201D by journalists or politicians isn\u2019t worth being bold \u2014 and that joining the fight will actually result in more division. Again, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy; when we lack bold, principled, competent fighters, there are fewer people to unite us. Macaulay notes how heroism and the defense of shared values actually united Romans:

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