Speech Canceled: What Happened at the Naval Academy
Censorship, Stoicism, and standing up for the truth: My interview with Ryan Holiday.
Ryan Holiday has spent years studying Stoic philosophy. You might know him from his #1 New York Times-bestselling books, like The Obstacle is the Way, his chart-topping Daily Stoic podcast, or his newsletter, DailyStoic.com. He’s an in-demand speaker who travels the world discussing how we might apply the stoic virtues, like courage and wisdom, to our lives in the modern day.
He’s been called one of the finest thinkers of our generation.
And for several years, he has spoken to the Midshipmen of the US Naval Academy on these virtues. This year, the topic of his talk was the concept of wisdom. But moments before he was set to take the stage, the Naval Academy pulled the plug and sent him home.
The reason? Book bans, and government censorship of criticism.
If you care about American democracy, and I think you do, this is an important conversation. Watch here:
To see more of Ryan’s work and to subscribe to his daily meditations, go to DailyStoic.com.
What an amazing conversation! Thank you Sharon and thank you Ryan for going deep on these critically important ideas.
When Sharon pointed out that a private citizen was told they couldn't criticize the government—a classic warning sign of authoritarianism—I found myself nodding. But I'd go further: we're not just on a slippery slope; we've already slid down it. The widespread book banning we're seeing is just the tip of the iceberg that is the chilling effect in action. And we can see from authoritarian examples across the world, sometimes it doesn’t look like martial law, it’s just people oppressed into complying with government demands on thought.
I found myself going back to my "Project 2029" idea from a couple weeks ago, thinking about deterring the current administration with promises about what opposing actions will look like once Trump is inevitably gone. What if we started publicly declaring that every banned book will eventually get a special featured display when restored to libraries? Perhaps schedule featured talks about each book and why the government felt the ideas contained were dangerous? Ryan demonstrated this beautifully: they canceled his speech, but now his message has reached exponentially more people through this interview. Sometimes suppression backfires magnificently.
Sharon's observation about race being singled out as the uniquely "harmful" topic struck me as the interview's most revealing insight. When engaging with those who haven't yet viewed the administration critically, consider asking: If adult naval officers have access to literature covering every conceivable evil humanity has produced, why is *race* supposedly the one topic too dangerous for them? Even if someone believes race is over-discussed, surely they don't think it should be erased entirely from a library's collection. This reveals the strategy isn't "anti-woke" but "pro-racism."
The semantic battle over what constitutes "political" speech is fascinating. The academy claims their bans aren't political, yet Ryan's criticism of those bans somehow is? They seem to define "political" as being motivated by interests that conflict with educating military students. But how does that make sense here? The ban itself stems directly from a politician's election and agenda—that's the obviously political element. Meanwhile, Ryan arguing for principles transcending political expediency is arguably the opposite of "political" speech.
I'm genuinely curious: has anyone noticed MAGA "free speech absolutists" raising concerns about book bans? Ryan's courage inspires me to perhaps research this today, despite the mental harm I might be putting myself through by wading into that muck. All in the service of democracy, I guess! I want to understand most of all: what are the contradictions in that worldview that can be used in conversations to make people realize their Trump fantasy is built on a foundation of hypocrisy.
There's strategic potential here too. The narrative has long been that Democrats dismiss opposing viewpoints without debate, yet here we see top-down control of ideas in action. When speaking with Trump administration supporters, perhaps ask: "If your ideas are winning in the marketplace of thought, why the need to restrict access to competing perspectives?"
I've felt some apprehension about publicly criticizing the administration, given what is clearly a backsliding of democracy, but recent polls showing Americans' waning patience with the president have been encouraging. Maybe with worse polling news for Trump we will start to see some distance between Republican party loyalists and this authoritarian administration.
Democrats fundamentally erred in the 2024 election by not fielding a strong candidate from the beginning, instead running on an "everything's fine as is" platform. Voters weren't choosing the lesser of two evils so much as the "less recent" of two evils—and now they're remembering why they voted Trump out of office so emphatically in 2020. It wasn’t that long ago. He would have been so easy to defeat if the Democratic Party was motivated beyond the political motivations of its individual members. (BTW I should clarify that I am not calling Biden or Harris evil, just trying to describe the mindset of someone who struggled to vote for them during the last election.)
Going forward, I'm committed to pushing for reforming the system to choose candidates for competence and vision rather than party loyalty—candidates capable of maintaining baseline approval throughout their terms. Who's with me?
Trump has already removed most of the military’s top-ranking women from their posts in the last hundred days. I’m sure this weighed heavily on Vice-Admiral Yvette Davids, Naval Academy Supt., when she made the decision to cancel Holiday’s talk. I guess she felt like it was more important to stay in her position for the battles ahead than to die on this particular book removal hill. It shows that Trump’s actions have already started to effectively chill dissent. Now I’m off to find a copy of Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic.