Brian Johnson on Tom Morris's The Everyday Patriot: every choice you make is a vote for the kind of nation you want. Morris says get informed, act locally, build virtues like wisdom and courage, and cast votes with your time, attention, and energy every single day.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. In our last plus one we talked about my process of creating these plus ones and the fact that I have an I vote sticker next to the 30 plus 1s on the upper right hand corner of my whiteboard. I pointed out the fact that I made my sticker say I vote and reminded us that we all vote. All day, every day, every single choice we make is a vote for a more noble and virtuous world. Period. Today I want to chat about a book that inspired me to remember that lesson. It's called the Everyday Patriot by my friend Tom Morris. As you know, if you've been following along, I love Tom. He has two PhDs from Yale, one in Philosophy and the other in Religious Studies. He taught at Notre Dame for 15 years before becoming a public philosopher. In fact, to put it in perspective, he's the philosopher who wrote Philosophy for Dummies. He's one of my all time favorite authors and at least tied for first as my favorite living philosopher. We've featured a number of his books thus far, including True Plato's Lemonade Stand, the Stoic Art of Living Superheroes and Philosophy and the Art of Achievement. Check all those notes out. Over the last several years, I've gotten to know Tom personally and I consider him a dear friend and sole uncle. So when he sent me a copy of this book, I read it immediately as I knew that he would provide an important philosophical frame to the current crisis we face as a nation and and world divided. The book is a simple collection of short essays in which Professor Morris challenges us to reconsider what it means to be a citizen and an everyday patriot in the modern world, committed to upholding the virtues of our highest ideals in our everyday lives. It's a great read. Now here's the passage that led to my sticker modification. This is Tom Vote in the next election. Vote in every election. Vote even when there is no election. But of course, in a deeper sense, there is always an election. The words elect in election come from an ancient Latin root, the verb illego or ilegare. Pardon the Latin scholars who just recognized I may have mispronounced that that meant to choose or pick out, we need to think of our daily actions as the result of what we have chosen to do. What we have picked out of all available alternatives as worth our time and attention. And we should choose things that will be of benefit to our communities and our nation, to each other and to the world. Elect the right matters of concern. Choose needed actions. Vote with your time, your attention, your conversation and your energies day to day, he says. Read the paper. Keep up with the more reliable news sources that have been around a long time and are staffed by well trained journalists, sites that were not created simply for narrowly partisan interests. Keep up on the problems and opportunities of the day and get involved in your community to help with the many solutions to local challenges that are required for a better life. Together.
Together.
Notice all the needs and challenges that exist around you. Take action. Do something good and by your deeds as well as your words, you can make your views known. And of course, by doing the same things, so can I vote in the next election and know that we are casting a vote every second of every day. Tom quotes Confucius who tells us, I quote him to put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order. To put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order. To put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life. We must first set our hearts right. Let's vote wisely as we embody the wisdom, self mastery, love, courage, gratitude, hope, curiosity and zest that will allow us to play our roles as heroically well as we can to meet these historically significant challenges head on. Together. Heroes Unite. Day one all in. Let's go.
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