In 1905, Theodore Roosevelt delivered a speech in Chicago called “The Strenuous Life.” It begins, “I wish to preach, not the doctrine of the ignoble eases, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife.”

his anecdote about the slave and the chamber pot suggests, characteristically, that the best response to this world of constant political danger is constant individual vigilance, the display of personal integrity, and loyalty to one’s own social group—not explicit resistance to the regime.