- Calm and chaos.

Lessons in leadership.

This week on "Firing Line."

Jim Mattis and Ryan Holiday are an unlikely duo.

General Mattis was raised by the greatest generation, commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, retiring as a four-star marine general, and then served as President Trump's first defense secretary.

- He is the real deal.

- [Margaret] Ryan Holiday is a millennial star podcaster, a bestselling author, and a leadership coach.

- [Ryan] I'll do it tomorrow is the biggest lie in the world.

- [Margaret] Both find wisdom in the ancient Stoic philosophers, as did the founders of our nation.

What are the Stoic virtues that most defined American leadership?

- First of all, the idea that we are all custodians of our democracy.

We are all protectors of our constitution.

All of us have that obligation.

- It probably said something about the moment of time that you're in when, when Stoicism is popular again.

The founders were turning to it because the founding wasn't a walk in the park either.

It was a dark time - [Margaret] As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday this summer, we brought them together on a stage at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University to discuss our history and our future.

What do Jim Mattis and Ryan Holiday say now?

- [Narrator 1] "Firing line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, the Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, the Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, Pritzker Military Foundation, Cliff and Laurel Asness, the Margaret and Daniel Loeb Foundation, and by the following.

- General Jim Mattis, Ryan Holiday, welcome to this special taping of "Firing Line" at the Hoover Institution where, General Mattis, you serve as a senior fellow, and I am privileged to serve on the board of Overseers.

The two of you, to the uninitiated, may seem like an odd couple in terms of your pairing, but the truth is that you have found one another in a shared passion for Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that emphasizes key virtues, courage, discipline, justice, wisdom, in pursuit of the better life.

Ryan, you are a bestselling author, an expert on Stoicism, and in your public appearances, you often cite General Mattis.

You have referred to him as one of your heroes.

Why?

- I think we tend to think of philosophy as something that might happen on a university campus as opposed to something that you use in the world, what you actually do, which is what the Stoic philosophers were.

We have Stoics who were emperors.

We have Stoics who were generals.

We have Stoics who were politicians.

Stoics who were merchants, people who did things in the real world.

And so I'm less interested in people like me who write and talk about Stoic philosophy and much more interested in people who are applying it in the real world, which General Mattis is an example of.

You famously carried Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations" with you on your deployments over the years.

Did you not?

- Many times.

- Ryan, one of your recent books, "Courage is Calling," has a curious blurb on the top, "A superb handbook for cultivating a purposeful life," by none other than General Jim Mattis.

General Mattis, you cite Ryan often in your interviews, you mentioned that you're reading his latest books.

You're not only just reading The Stoics themselves, but you're reading how Ryan has repurposed them.

We know you to be, as you were called sort of popularly, the Warrior Monk, a man and a general who has, you know, a library of thousands of books.

So what is it about Ryan's work that speaks to you?

- Well, first of all, Margaret, thank you because while Ryan and I have been back and forth, communicating many times over the years, this is actually the first time we've ever met.

So thank you for this opportunity.

But the problem that you face, I think, in the military on a personal basis is you're often careening from one crisis to another.

It's just the norm of military life.

It's military generally or not used unless there's a crisis of some kind.

And so what you do in a crisis as a human being, you fall back on something.

And in my case, I found that by falling back on certain values, I was able to keep myself at least calm enough to take purposeful action because a lot of people are looking to their officers to say, "What are we gonna do about this?"

And it was in finding a purpose that I stumbled into the study of philosophy.

With Ryan, he's a lot better at this stuff than I am because he is really done his homework.

He studied the applicability and he understands it in almost classical terms.

And so that was what drew me to Ryan's writings.

- Yeah, there was a Stoic about a century before Christ named Scipio Aemilianus, who was one of the great Roman generals.

And he was famous, an ancient historian said, for training as much in philosophy as he did at arms.

And I think of General Mattis as maybe a modern reincarnation of that very timeless idea.

The warrior monk as an archetype is not a new thing or even a particularly rare thing.

You have to study what you're doing.

And as you talk about in your book, the idea of learning by trial and error is both arrogant and reckless.

And so we turned to the past because the people in the past lived through situations like we're in right now.

Like whatever the one that you are in as an individual right now.

And this goes back to the origin of Stoicism.

Zeno is this merchant in the Mediterranean and he stops at the temple of Apollo and he asked the oracle there for the secret to the good life.

And she tells him that it is having conversations with the dead.

And that's what, he takes this only later to mean that reading, the study of philosophy is a conversation with the dead.

And how do we access this wisdom, bring it into our own lives, because, again, to learn by trial and error is largely an expense paid by people other than you.

- We're approaching the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence's signing.

This is a time in our country of division, uncertainty, and now, war.

General Mattis, what guidance can Americans glean from the founding generation?

- Well, Tom Ricks has written a book about this sort of thing called "First Principles."

And what you do when you're in a crisis, you fall back on your first principles.

Well, what are our first principles?

Declaration of Independence, you just mentioned, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

And you fall back on those things and you look at our founding fathers who, drawing from the Enlightenment, which is all based on the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, they had guidelines for themselves.

And based on those guidelines, they drew up those documents with a lot of skepticism about human nature, yet a belief in, quote, "the people," unquote.

And so what you do is you look for something to kind of ground yourself on.

I mean, think of the Simon and Garfunkel song about Mrs.

Robinson, and where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, our nation turned its lonely eyes to you.

In the midst of this time, we can be turning back to our first principles and the Joe DiMaggio kind of leadership, which is mature, humble, competent, and all these things that really are summed up in a code that you live by.

Again, a song you, when you're on your road, have gotta have a code to live by, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, for us gray-haired guys, right, sir?

And so the code you live by is probably found somewhere in those principles because there's nothing new under the sun, as Ryan said.

And people have been through it before.

I mean, the people who think this is so bad, what's going on right now in the country.

And yet the founding fathers were mostly still alive when we nearly made Aaron Burr our president, okay?

So get over it.

This is nothing.

These aren't dark times, These are stern times.

These are testing times.

Welcome to democracy, the worst form of government except for all the rest we've tried.

- And it's worth pointing out that ancient philosophy was what the ancients turned to also.

When Marcus Aurelius comes to Stoic philosophy, it is roughly 500 years old.

- Yeah.

- So he is looking backwards and going, "How did people live through moments like this before?

What do my predecessors have to teach me about a moment like this," as we are doing today.

It probably says something about the moment of time that you're in when Stoicism is popular again.

The founders were turning to it because the founding wasn't a walk in the park either.

It was a dark time.

And just remembering that there've always been moments like this and that people have lived through it, and then we're lucky enough that they distilled some of those lessons into these classical works that we can benefit from now.

That's the journey.

- You both point to George Washington as sort of the seminal founder who drew on the Stoics.

General Mattis, what is it about Stoicism that is so beneficial to the military?

- Washington was not a perfect human being, not by a long stretch of the imagination.

But he also knew his own weaknesses.

He knew he had a volcanic temper.

And one of the principles that you draw from Stoicism is self-control.

And so he learned how do you actually lead an army of free men, and in some cases, slaves, how do you lead that army to surrender some of their personal freedom so they can survive and thrive and have victory on a battlefield eventually?

And you see him actually turning to the examples.

You think of Cincinnatus, a wonderful example that obviously Washington was very, very aware of.

So what he's gaining is the ability when he's in a fight up against the finest small army in the world.

Remember, the red coats a few years later are going to humble Napoleon.

That's the army that he defeated by keeping his army alive all those years.

And he's doing it largely set on a foundation, I think, of the ancients, of the philosophers.

- We do these men and women a disservice when we make them superhuman, when we forget that this was hard work.

And so it was work for Washington.

He's not naturally this way.

There are people who are naturally lowercase, stoic, but I don't think that would describe Washington, wouldn't describe John Adams.

It wouldn't describe many of the founders.

It was work.

They learned about these ideas as young men, as part of the educational process.

And then it was a lifetime of trying to apply them and falling short and trying to get a little bit better.

And Washington is this embodiment of the Stoic idea of getting better because of obstacles and difficulties.

The Revolution is not the kind of war that he wants.

It does not go the way that he wants.

But he makes it work.

And that is, I think, his genius.

- You have said, Ryan, that Abraham Lincoln is perhaps the only president to simultaneously embody all four of the Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom.

How?

And why was that so unique?

- What's so impressive about Lincoln, unlike many of the other great men of history, you know, your Napoleons or your Caesars or your great conquerors, or, he uses his ambition, his power to bind the nation together, to heal, to put it back together.

You know, he said, "Every man has their peculiar ambition."

But his ambition, unlike so many of those towering figures, doesn't come at the expense of anyone else.

He's great in that way.

You could look at him as this self-made man who educates himself, who comes from, you know, to conquers great heights, but there is this moral purpose to it that I think isn't shared necessarily by all the people who in that office.

- You know, that brings to mind, Ryan, something that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote.

He said, "Great men, great nations have not been boasters and buffoons.

Rather, they have perceived the terror of life and manned themselves to face it."

By manning themselves, they're disciplining themselves.

They've got to have the inner character to actually deal with the reality.

And any leader's number one responsibility, whether it be of a corporation here in Silicon Valley or a football team or anything else, is they have to define reality.

It is very hard to define an external reality if your internal geography is churning with no real anchor point.

You'll pick up very quickly if you have a leader who does not have a quiet mind, if you're in a crisis.

You'll read it loud and clear.

And Lincoln was somehow able to take the worst crisis of our young nation, still young nation, even at 250.

And I think that this is why, is what Ryan's pointing out.

(indistinct) - So sorry.

I was just saying it's easier to be successful.

And so I think Stoicism has been misinterpreted.

You know, it is not a recipe for being a better sociopath, right?

It is easier to succeed if you don't care about anyone else, right?

If you're not held up by pesky moral principles or ideas or ideals.

And I think what you see in Lincoln is this unique combination of an incredibly crafty and pragmatic politician who also had some, what do you call them, flat ass rules, some things he would not do.

- Direct quote.

- Yes.

Some lines that were more important to him than anything else.

And that kind of moral leadership is ultimately what Stoicism is supposed to, that's why the virtue of justice is so essential.

It informs the others.

- Looking back, General Mattis, at the 250 years of this country, or since our signing of the Declaration of Independence, what are the Stoic virtues that have most defined American leadership?

- I think that, first of all, the idea that we are all custodians of our democracy.

We are all protectors of our constitution.

All of us have that obligation.

I think we've gotten big as a country.

We're spread out.

We're diverse.

At times, it can seem like these things are kind of out there and we're more spectators.

But democracy is not a spectator sport.

And I think what it really has brought home is that we're going to have to get together.

Really what we have is one great big dispute resolution process is what a democracy is.

No one's going to get everything they want their way.

At times, we're going to be compromising and we're going to be working and making it certain that we can deal with those fundamental problems so what we turn over to the next generation is something just a little bit better at our goal for a more perfect union.

- In 1979, General Westmoreland, who commanded U.S.

forces in Vietnam, appeared on the original "Firing Line" with William F. Buckley Jr., and he discussed the duties and the rights of citizenship.

Take a look at what he said.

- I don't believe our democracy long range is going to work and unless there's an attitude in our society, and particularly among our young, that they have an obligation of service.

Now, a principle of democracy is for every right, there is a duty.

For every right of citizenship, there's a duty of citizenship.

Now, we inherited this principle from the British.

And the British, I believe, inherited it from Roman law.

Now, it seems to me that in the last decade, we have put inordinate attention on rights of citizenship.

Rights, rights, rights.

And in the process, we have neglected duties of citizenship.

- Of course, General Westmoreland was speaking in the context of the military draft, but to what extent, 250 years into our nation's founding, does our democracy's long-term survival depend on this greater recognition of civic duty, General?

- Well, certainly, if we don't all protect it, this idea that we're gonna just pass on these freedoms and there's not gonna be any kind of interruption of them is something that history would refute.

We may be a very, very young country in the history of the world.

We are the oldest democracy.

I don't have a good answer for you other than to say, in my case, I was having a whale of a good time in college, lost my draft deferment, and as raised by the greatest generation, that felt the country didn't have to be perfect to be worth fighting for.

And a Uncle Sam said, "You're going," we all went.

A few didn't, but 99% of us carried out our patriotic chore.

And as my army buddies put it, "You were the dumbest draft dodger we ever met.

You joined the marine infantry to get out of the army."

I say, "Well, yeah, but it worked out."

But my point is that each of us has a responsibility, and it's not based on a perfect country.

There's never been a perfect country.

- And, you know, today when we think politics, we think, of course, running or holding office.

But there are so many ways to contribute to public life, the public sphere, right down to the fact that, you know, 50% of adults don't vote.

So we have to participate in this system.

And if the people who are philosophically inclined are not participating, who are you seeding the fields to?

I think that's ultimately what the Stoics realize on a very sort of practical level, that if you retreat off with your books and your ideas and you just debate these things in theory, but you're not involved, you're not contributing, you're not making these things accessible and practical to real people in a real way, somebody else is gonna step in and fill that void.

And so, I think, yeah, the question of, if you're not gonna participate, who is participating?

Who is speaking on your behalf?

I think that sort of explains the situation that we're in right now.

- You, Ryan, are writing a book about Admiral Stockdale, who was a fellow here at the Hoover Institution.

Explains Stockdale's role first in the Gulf of Tonkin, which is, of course, the incident that got the United States military involved in the Vietnam War.

- So he is asked to lead the reprisal raids for something that, more or less, in, you know, in his own recollections didn't occur.

And it does bring up the sort of fascinating questions that I'd be curious for your take on, on what is a soldier's duty when they receive orders that they have questions about?

What is a soldier's duty when they're called up to fight in a war that they disagree with?

Again, these are the questions where if it stops being an academic exercise and it starts to be real people in the real world.

- So let me set the table for that and then turn it to you, General Mattis.

Admiral Stockdale was ordered to engage in retaliatory strikes, despite knowing that there was no attack on U.S.

ships.

He later said that he knew the U.S.

was about to launch a war under, quote, "false pretenses," but he followed orders anyway.

So how do members of the military handle orders that they are not sure are justified?

- Well, first of all, justified, there is an assumption that orders come down from the commander in chief who's elected by the American people.

And I'm gonna say something very blunt here.

The president that you elect and the Congress that we elect have the right to be wrong, and the U.S.

military is still sworn to carry out those orders.

Now, not illegal orders.

These were not illegal orders.

Were they justified?

Debatable, to put it mildly.

But what you do is you take, you keep your faith in the fact that the Constitution is what you've sworn to uphold.

And under the Constitution, if the president was elected, per the Constitution, you are to carry out those orders.

Now, if you morally cannot, there were officers that walked in to Admiral then Commander Stockdale's office onboard the aircraft carrier, Oriskany, and they took their wings off and dropped them on the table.

And that is an option.

You can do that.

You can only resign, quit once.

So you keep faith that the Constitution will not necessarily give you the perfect answer every time.

But in the long run, the control of the people over who they vote in is what you're defending.

And that is why you carry out the orders.

It is, at times, very difficult for people who live with the freedom of our civilian society to comprehend because they're behind that wall of the military and our CIA to protect their rights to have all the freedom they have.

But if you ever have the military deciding, "No, I don't think that's a good order.

I'm not gonna do that one."

Or, "Well, I've got a better idea, you know, we'll go fight these guys."

You don't want a military making those decisions for you, even if they're right one time.

I don't think it's a surprise to anybody here, but the U.S.

military senior leadership did not recommend the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

And yet, when ordered to do it, we went into the fight.

And this shows civilian control the military.

Even when they disagree, they carry out the orders of the elected commander in chief.

- And, and I think ultimately, this is why leadership, leaders of virtue are so important because they make decisions, life or death decisions, that other people have to follow and enact.

And I think you see this fascinating contrast between people who are obediently and diligently doing their job, upholding their duty, their responsibilities.

And that is continually being subjected to political leaders who are making expedient decisions or emotional decisions, or not being forthright with the American people.

And so ultimately, you can't just have one section of your society adhering to the ideas of the Constitution or virtues and values.

It needs to be balanced.

And this is why Adams was so adamant that the Constitution would fail without, he said, "A country without virtue in the people would go through the bounds of the Constitution like a whale through a net."

He didn't just mean the political leaders, he didn't just mean himself in George Washington.

He meant that the people that virtue and values and these ideals had to be important, and they had to be more important than financial self-interest.

They had to be more important than political parties.

They had to be more important than anything.

Character is fate the ancients believed.

And they're right.

Ultimately, it has to come down to character - General Mattis, Ryan Holiday, thank you for joining us here at the Hoover Institution for a special edition of "Firing Line" - It's an honor.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

All right.

- Indeed.

(audience clapping) - Pleasure.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator 1] "Firing line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, the Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, the Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, Pritzker Military Foundation, Cliff and Laurel Asness, the Margaret and Daniel Loeb Foundation, and by the following.

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