A Graduation Address
I was honored to address the graduating class at Ascent Classical Academy of Douglas County (Colorado) on Saturday, May 25, 2024. Below is a transcript of my spoken remarks.
I feel like a king when I wear this. I kind of look like one, too.
Then I remember what we Americans did to King George and his army, and I’m not sure if it’s funny or scary to look and feel like a king!
And I look around at some of our politicians who act like they’re kings. They don’t seem scared at all. They seem to have forgotten that kings don’t fare well in the United States of America. At least, kings didn’t use to do well in America. What the future United States will be is largely up to you, the young citizens gathered in this room.
According to the official Ascent Classical Academy program—elegantly designed, I might add—this is a commencement ceremony. My speech is a commencement address.
To commence is to begin. Today is the beginning of a new chapter in your life. You are no longer high school students. From this day forward, forever, each of you will be high school graduates.
This is the first day of the rest of your lives!
I speak in front of many audiences of college-educated Americans, yet I don’t use Latin often because most Americans, even those with advanced degrees, not only don’t know any Latin, they don’t know anything about the origins of Latin or its influence on the way people in the Western world today speak and think.
But here at Ascent, I can sneak in a Latin phrase confident that it is meaningful to you graduating high school students: Carpe Diem!
Seize the day! Appreciate and value each day you get to be alive. Make the most of today, tomorrow, and every day after.
I am going to offer some advice on how to Carpe Diem, how to make the most of each day. That’s what we commencement speakers are supposed to do, you know?
But first, I wanted to offer something useful, something practical. I knew I would be standing on this stage, in this flowing regal gown—feeling all royal and kingly—speaking into a microphone, and I asked myself: What can I give to the students of Ascent Classical Academy that might be useful to them?
And then I came upon the perfect answer: A toast! Yes, I am going to share with you my all-time favorite toast.
Before parents in the room get riled, let me assure everyone I am neither encouraging nor condoning underage consumption of alcohol. Oh, no, no, no. That is not my message.
If you don’t know this about lawmakers and legislators, I will tell you: Legislators gain 50 IQ points the moment they get elected. Being elected instantly transforms ordinary men and women into geniuses who know best how everyone else should run their own businesses, use their own property, spend their own money, live their own lives, and educate their own children.
An entire political class that wants to control how young Americans are educated is precisely why Ascent Classical Academy exists: To provide solid, rigorous, classical education, not the vapid cheerleading for progressive fads found in typical public schools that are managed by bureaucrats and public employee unions, neither of whom care much about other people’s children.
Genius elected politicians have declared, in law, you shall not imbibe alcohol until you are 21 years old. How could they be wrong? I mean, it’s not like politicians gave us Prohibition in the 1920s and early 1930s. It’s not like Prohibition resulted in more gangsterism, more government corruption, more murders, more binge drinking, and more alcoholism, right?
My point here is not to encourage you to drink. Certainly, we are not going to follow the example of an NFL player who chugs beer on stage after receiving his diploma—we’re going to be classier, more dignified than that.
My point is to poke some fun at politicians. Americans are freer when they don’t take politicians so seriously, when they know the limits of what politics can achieve.
And my point is that as you mature and head out into the world—after you turn 21, if it involves alcohol—occasions will present themselves when it is fitting to offer a toast.
When that happens, I don’t want you to be caught off guard or unprepared. I want to give you a toast that is memorable, funny, and sure to get attention. You have my permission to use this toast as often as you like, anywhere you like. When you get married, maybe this will be the perfect toast for you or someone in your wedding party?
This is a historical toast. It is a patriotic toast for freedom lovers, fitting for this patriotic school staffed by freedom lovers. And it involves one of the most interesting of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, who was wise, witty, and probably had the best sense of humor among those luminaries of classical and modern thought.
The toast alludes to a famous, classical story. I don’t need to remind Ascent students of famous classical stories, but not everyone gathered here this morning has the benefit of an Ascent education.
Martin, John. Joshua Commanding the Sun and Moon to Stand Still. 1816, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
So let me remind the audience of the story: In the Book of Joshua, the namesake prayed for extended daylight, giving Israelites much-needed time to secure victory in their battle against the Amorite kings. God granted Joshua’s prayer: The Sun and the Moon stood still for almost a day.
Now to the toast: Late in his life—after the American Revolution—Benjamin Franklin attended a formal dinner with diplomats and ambassadors from around the world. During the course of the dinner, as was custom, a Frenchman stood and offered a toast to the King of France, Louis XVI, whom he compared to the radiance, brilliance, and brightness of the Sun.
In this, Louis XVI was like his grandfather, the Frenchman insisted, known to the world as the Sun King.
This prompted an Englishman to stand and propose a toast to King George III. The King of England was like the Moon – he possessed mysterious and awesome powers – he could make ocean tides rise and fall.
Wow. Those are some amazing toasts, right? The King of France is like the Sun! The King of England is like the Moon! What could top those?
Then old Ben stood up, holding his glass of wine high in the air with one hand, steadying himself with a cane in the other, and offered a toast of his own: “To George Washington, who, like Joshua of old, commanded the Sun and the Moon to stand still, and they obeyed!”
To George Washington, the Indispensable Man of the American Revolution, the man without whom there would be no free United States of America, and probably no Ascent Classical Academy today!
That is the best toast I know. It is my gift to each of you. I hope you have occasion to use it. Maybe not at your wedding, but somewhere it seems fitting and appropriate.
I have not yet said this: Congratulations, everyone. Staff, faculty, and the board of Ascent Classical Academy of Douglas County. Good work. Parents, families, friends, supporters, and well-wishers. Thank you.
And most of all, congratulations to you, the graduating class of 2024!
You’ve made it through something most of us who are older cannot imagine. You started high school at the peak of the Covid frenzy—not the peak of Covid, but the Covid frenzy. I’ll say more about that frenzy in a few minutes.
You started high school, and completed high school, during highly unusual and challenging times. Just as you were transitioning from middle school, you landed…back home. Some of you were forced to take classes virtually, through screens—as if young Americans today need yet more screen time!
At any rate, you did something no other generation of Americans did, and I salute you on a job well done.
Now to the advice I have to offer.
I have three subjects I’d like to address briefly, each of which is now controversial and greatly disputed in our postmodern, progressive United States today, yet should be familiar to graduates of Ascent Classical Academy.
The three subjects are:
Goodness precedes happiness
Friends matter
Freedom matters
Let us address these in order.
Goodness Precedes Happiness
Goodness precedes happiness. You must learn what goodness is, first, and you must be good—you must exercise the moral and intellectual virtues—if you are to be happy.
Happiness is the result of being good. Happiness is the result of a life well-lived.
That means the study of living well—the study of what classical thinkers called the “good”—is of supreme importance. Arguably, there is nothing more important than discovering and understanding the virtues, and practicing them.
As Aristotle remarked long ago, we study the good not merely to know what the good is, but to be good. We study the virtues not merely to know what they are, but to be virtuous. We study and practice the virtues to change who we are and how we behave, to become better.
The subject of what is good has never been an easy course of study, but today it is surrounded by more difficulties than ever.
Many of our fellow citizens—probably a majority—laugh at any mention of the good. They insist there is no good—or, perhaps, what people call “good” is nothing but a prejudice, the meaning of which varies among different people and different cultures at different times.
They assert that there are many different opinions about what is good, right, or just, but none are truer than others, only different.
This leads many postmodern Americans, including best-selling authors and social media “influencers,” to assert that the only good is to be “yourself,” to free yourself from all social and moral constraints, to do whatever you will.
According to this nihilistic postmodern view, nothing is objectively good and the emancipation of the human will from all moral constraints is objectively good. And they don’t want us discussing that glaring contradiction.
To borrow a term from one popular postmodern author, to be free, to be good, to be happy requires one to be “untamed”—to ignore what others think, to discard all standards of decency and decorum, to indulge one’s appetites and desires, whatever they might be, like animals in the jungle.
Yet, we are not mere animals of the jungle. We are human beings. We are the only earthly beings capable of magnanimity—we can use our reason and make choices that are noble and deserving of great honors—precisely because we have the capacity to choose whether to live like animals of the jungle—where might and right are synonymous—or to live according to the natural moral law, to do what is right, even when we are tempted to do wrong, to act justly, to be good.
Study all the virtues—study the good—practice being good—and you will set yourself on a path for happiness, a life well-lived, a life guided by wisdom, a life with few or no regrets.
Friends Matter
Second, friends matter. Chances are high that throughout your life, some very small number of people will be your true friends; some very small number of people will be your known enemies, and everyone else—all the billions of people in the world—will be somewhere in between.
Of the many in-betweeners, it will be up to you to decide which ones are your friends, which ones are your enemies, and which ones are neither. Here’s the rub: It’s not always easy to tell.
Sometimes, you will make mistakes. You will mistakenly think someone is a friend who turns out to be an enemy, or vice versa. And it will be painful. Prepare yourself.
I was speaking a moment ago about the importance of the good and the moral and intellectual virtues. The most perfect book that explains those virtues, in my opinion, is Aristotle’s classical masterpiece, The Nicomachean Ethics.
There is a curious feature of that book that many readers, even scholars, overlook: In the first seven books of The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle offers detailed definitions of the different virtues and explains how they relate to one another.
Each virtue, it turns out, is contained within the others. One cannot be wise, for example, without being courageous. The example Aristotle offers is that a man frozen in panicked fear is unlikely to choose wisely.
In book eight, however, Aristotle introduces the subject of friendship. And once friendship enters the discussion, the detailed accounts of the virtues virtually disappear.
I interpret this to mean that two friends who genuinely care about each other, love each other, and want only what is good for each other, don’t need textbook definitions of the virtues. The virtue of friendship, in a certain way, transcends and incorporates all the other virtues.
Friendship among virtuous individuals is an instance of the whole being more than the sum of the parts: A friendship between two good people is more than two good people.
Today, record numbers of young Americans report that they have not one friend, at all. This is a social science statistic that breaks our hearts. Let us remedy this problem, beginning here at Ascent: Look for good friends—friends who are good. Find friends who are wise, courageous, moderate, and just. Truly good friends help each other to be better, and to be happy.
Some of you, probably most of you, will get married someday. I encourage you to get married. Though many social scientists are reluctant to admit this, the data show that married people tend to be the healthiest and happiest people.
Those who are married also tend to make the most money, which, contrary to Karl Marx, isn’t a bad thing.
Some people measure how progressive a nation is by how many Marxists there are. We certainly have many Marxists in America today. Yet, the Marxists among us don’t seem to realize that wealth must be created. We do. We know better than the Marxists. We know that wealth can be created, which means that a person born into a poor family, in a regime of liberty, is not destined to remain poor. A person born into a poor family can create new wealth by producing what others value and helping others be more efficient.
The difference between us and the growing numbers of Marxists around us has nothing to do with natural talents or abilities. It’s simply that they don’t know—and we do know—that when you create new wealth by being productive, it doesn’t stop me from doing the same; that when you are productive, it doesn’t mean you stole from someone else. It means you weren’t lazy, you were the opposite of lazy, and the rest of us should thank you.
If you want to do well in life, marry wisely, stay married, raise your children well, and be productive, self-reliant, and independent to the best of your ability. The social sciences say that’s a recipe for upward mobility and many other good things. And we are a nation of people who believe in science, right?
One need only look around to see that where families either fall apart often or are never formed—when increasing numbers of children are raised with only one parent, which usually means children who don’t know their father—bad things follow. Very bad things.
You can be the generation to reverse that terrible trend of progressive social pathologies, a trend that has been hurting Americans since the 1970s, at growing rates, like metastasizing social cancers.
If you choose well, the person you marry likely will be your best friend for life, the person with whom you can be open, honest, and fully transparent. Take care of that person as much as you take care of yourself, maybe even more. Love that person as best you can, which will include loving the children you bring into the world together if you are so blessed.
You will never regret loving and caring for your best friend and the children you both bring into existence, I promise.
Freedom Matters
Third, freedom matters. Remember the first point—goodness precedes happiness? It turns out goodness precedes freedom, too.
If you want to live freely, as self-governing citizens of a self-governing constitutional republic, then you must be good.
Political freedom requires a government of constitutionally limited powers. The alternative, after all, is a government of unlimited powers—a government that can do anything it wants to you, take any and all of what you’ve produced or what you own. The result is not freedom. The result is the opposite of freedom.
If, then, government is to be and remain limited, citizens must be able to control or restrain themselves. Without self-restraint, without being good, we would need something like a police state—a large government of unlimited powers, what some call “total government”—to maintain civic safety and order among citizens.
The rub with police states, or total governments, is that while they’re created in the name of public safety and order, they almost always end up harming, even murdering in large numbers, the very people they claim to protect.
That is among the many reasons why constitutional self-government is always preferable to total government. And constitutional self-government begins with each of us taking care of ourselves and the people we love, governing ourselves, and refraining from harming others unjustly.
When we take care of ourselves, we don’t ask much from those in government, which means those in government have no excuse to lord over us as if they are our perpetual parents and we are perpetual children.
This, too, is no easy thing today. There is a class of people—progressives—always looking for excuses to take our freedom. Remember earlier I mentioned the Covid frenzy when you were starting high school? Social distancing, lockdowns, shelter-in-place edicts, closing businesses, closing ports of entry, stopping trade, stopping production, closing schools, masks: All lies.
“Take the vaccine,” they said; “it’s safe,” they said—“if you’re vaccinated, you won’t get Covid,” they said—then they said, “take the vaccine, you won’t infect others.” More lies.
These empty promises and unfounded assurances came from top-ranking state and federal bureaucrats as well as the President of the United States!
Not one of the drastic measures listed above achieved the results promised by the controlling progressive political class.
But they all resulted in more power for those in government, less freedom for Americans, not to mention trillions of dollars of lost productivity, lost capital, opportunity costs, and human suffering caused not merely by a virus created with U.S. taxpayer dollars, but by progressive public policies issued by those looking for excuses to take liberty away from you and me.
And it’s not only Covid. These same people launched a War on Poverty, yet we have more homeless people now than ever. They launched a War on Drugs, yet more Americans are addicted to prescription and street drugs than ever. Results don’t matter to these people.
All that matters to them is that government power expands, government takes more of your money, government hires more unelected unionized employees, and your sphere of liberty shrinks. Will they win? Will they get the total government they want? The answer depends largely on what we do and whether we let them win.
Many Americans today have forgotten that freedom matters. Some even laugh and mock the idea of freedom. Please don’t make that mistake. There is little in the world more important, more valuable than freedom.
Want to worship God as you choose? Want to marry the love of your life and raise and educate your children as you think best? Want to send your kids someday to Ascent Classical Academy? Want to defend your family and home however you think best? Want to start your own business and run it as you think it should be run? Want to use your own property as you please, spend your money on what you value, give your money to those you want to help?
Then live freely.
Live well. Take the advice of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington: Be productive, independent, and self-reliant. Choose your friends wisely. Be good to your husband or wife. Take responsibility for all that is rightfully your responsibility.
Be good. Be virtuous. Enjoy the happiness that results from a life well-lived. Never tolerate those in positions of government power treating you as a perpetual child, because you are not. Never tolerate those in positions of government power acting like your perpetual parents, because they are not.
Thank you, and congratulations to the Ascent Classical Academy of Douglas County, graduating class of 2024!