General Jim Mattis

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.

You know, if you look at what he went through, I can give you 100 quantifiable reasons why we failed in our Revolutionary War.

And each time, you find where Washington is able to stand the strain.

And he 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 that 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, and others too, actually.

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 Redcoats 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.