Grasping for Greatness

The images young men imitate determine the men they become. It is time they looked to Washington instead of Caesar.

T he Continental Army, suffering through a miserable five-month confinement at Valley Forge, might have found the announcement peculiar in the spring of 1778. Philadelphia, the city where independence had been declared less than two years earlier, was now occupied by the British. Food was scarce; clothing, scarcer still. Many were barefoot, leaving blood-sodden trails throughout the camp. Yet the officers charged with their welfare announced not the arrival of provisions or pay, but a performance of Cato, A Tragedy, a popular play during the revolutionary period.

The officers, who staged this drama for the enlisted men, were not trying to distract them from what felt like a hopeless situation. Instead, they wanted to remind them of the cause for which they had pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor: liberation from imperial rule and the founding of a new republic.

The play tells the story of Cato the Younger, the Roman statesman who famously chose death rather than submit to Julius Caesar’s overthrow of the Roman Republic. General George Washington often quoted lines from Cato in his letters, most notably, “it is not now time to talk of aught / But chains or conquest, liberty or death.” This sentiment echoed throughout the Revolution and found its American expression through Patrick Henry’s iconic declaration: “Give me liberty, or give me death!”

General Nathanael Greene, one of Washington’s most trusted subordinates, reportedly played the title role of Cato. He would later lead a brilliant campaign of attrition against Cornwallis that paved the way for Washington’s triumph at Yorktown, bringing an effective end to the Revolutionary War.

Today, admiration for Rome’s greatness persists among young men just as it did during America’s war for independence. Regrettably, however, the object of that admiration has shifted. Captivated by screens instead of the stage, young men no longer look to the republican virtue that sustained the men at Valley Forge; they look to the empire that brought it to an end.

TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are replete with stylistic, short-form content that features rapid-fire edits of soaring statues, marble busts, mounted generals, and maps of territorial conquest. In addition to Caesar, flashing images of conquerors like Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte are set to bass-heavy, climactic music, lending an additional flex of martial energy to a message aimed squarely at young men: The highest expression of greatness is the domination of others. The will to power.

The appeal of this might-makes-right content should come as no surprise. For decades, popular culture has maligned and shamed masculinity. It did so not as a corrective toward the virtues proper to manhood, but as a blunt-force instrument against masculinity itself. From the classroom to the boardroom, men have been inundated with progressive orthodoxies that present themselves as self-evident truths. Slogans like “the future is female” carry the implicit message that masculinity itself is a relic of a less enlightened age.

The tragedy is not that young men desire greatness. They need models of greatness at a time when more than one in four men under 30 report having no close social connections, while a majority have yet to marry. They are falling behind in school and work in record numbers. In the doldrums of their discontent, they spend hours online in search of models that align with their lost sense of masculinity. Stepping into this vacuum is an internet subculture that encourages romantic attachment to authoritarian rule. It presents itself as forbidden knowledge, a suppressed inheritance of greatness withheld from them as they come of age. The attempt to redefine masculinity as a vice has therefore not quelled the desire for greatness but redirected it toward destructive ends.

The temptations of authoritarian stability were not alien to the young men who served under Washington. Even after Yorktown, the army remained unpaid. Congress was weak. No peace treaty had yet been signed. In the wake of a brutal war, the Continental Army was the strongest institution in America, commanded by a man whose popularity and prestige had never been greater. The conditions that had tempted ambitious generals since time immemorial were now present in the fledgling republic, as some of Washington’s officers began to question not only whether self-government was possible, but even if it was desirable.

Writing to Washington in 1782, Colonel Lewis Nicola suggested that “strong arguments might be produced for admitting the title of King.” While he didn’t explicitly ask Washington to assume a crown, the implication was clear enough. But the Commander of the Continental Army would have none of it, replying forcefully to Nicola that, “no occurrence in the course of the War has given me more painful sensations than your information of there being such ideas existing in the Army.”

But those ideas persisted nonetheless. The frustrations that had led Colonel Nicola to question the viability of republican government did not disappear with Washington’s rebuke. Less than a year later, an anonymous address began circulating among the officers encamped at Newburgh, N.Y., in what would later be known as the Newburgh Conspiracy. It urged the army to use its influence — and, if necessary, military force — to compel Congress to honor its obligations. Arguments for patience and republican restraint rang hollow to men who had spent nearly eight years at war without pay. They agreed to meet in secret to consider whether it was time to place the civilian government under pressure at the point of a sword.

Washington, learning of this unauthorized gathering, demanded its cancellation. He instead called for an official meeting between his officers, which he initially suggested he might not attend. But as the officers convened, Washington appeared unexpectedly to address the assembly. As he began reading his remarks, he suddenly paused. “Gentlemen,” he said heavily, as he put on his glasses, “you must pardon me. I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind.”

The effect was immediate. The conspiracy was abandoned as men were reportedly moved to tears. In a single dramatic gesture worthy of the makeshift stage at Valley Forge, Washington reminded his officers of the republican virtue they had once gathered to celebrate in Cato. They had endured years of hardship and war not to replace one king with another, but to establish a republic grounded in what Alexander Hamilton would later describe as “reflection and choice” rather than “accident and force.”

While Washington’s formal address was forceful and persuasive, more persuasive still was the image he set before them. In that brief moment, resplendent in a uniform that complemented his commanding figure, he reminded his officers that greatness is not the fulfillment of personal ambition or the conquest of others. It is the conquest of the self in subordination to something greater.

The story thereafter is known to Americans who appreciate their unique history. Washington resigned his commission and returned to his farm at Mount Vernon, modeling another Roman, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a consul of the Roman Republic who was called out of retirement, given dictatorial powers to defeat an imminent military threat, and then returned to his plow once his duty was fulfilled.

When news of Washington’s resignation reached King George III, he reportedly remarked, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

And so he was. He would go on to serve as our nation’s first president, setting a precedent for posterity when he declined to run for a third term. In his famous Farewell Address at the end of his presidency, he declared, “this resolution has not been taken without a strict regard to all the considerations appertaining to the relation which binds a dutiful citizen to his country.”

In laying down his sword and then his quill, America’s first president spoke not as a king to his subjects, but as a fellow citizen. He had fulfilled his duty and secured a form of government that exists to this day, albeit imperfectly. Those creating and consuming the counterfeit aura of authoritarian stability cannot say the same of their idols — Alexander the Great’s death led to the division of his empire; Julius Caesar was betrayed and stabbed to death on the senate floor; and Napoleon Bonaparte spent his last days exiled to a remote rock in the Atlantic. There is a profound irony that these conquerors now enjoy a revival in the flashy ecosystem of modern social media. Their lives, when viewed in their entirety, are not examples of greatness, but cautionary tales of self-inflicted ruin.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, popular culture has a unique opportunity to redeem itself. One promising example is Young Washington, an upcoming film directed by Jon Erwin, the same creative force behind the hit series House of David, which reached millions of viewers in its first two weeks and became a number-one hit on Prime Video. Like that series, Young Washington is a coming-of-age story of a man thrust into the fires of war as he takes his first command, where he begins to realize a calling that is greater than himself or his own ambitions.

These are the images of greatness that young men need, because the images they imitate determine the men they become. They will not learn them through the launch of a thousand op-eds in publications they may never read, or at salons and conferences where they will never gather. Like the men at Valley Forge, men today need to be met where they are — in the hopeless cold of their digital encampment. That is where creators must use the makeshift stage of social media to project the aura of republican virtue: the image of a commander who wielded a sword against tyranny so that he may lay it down for liberty. As America approaches its 250th anniversary, we have a rare opportunity to hold up the republican virtues that gave birth to our nation as the proper model of greatness.