Classical education: a conservative Trojan horse?

By Keith Parsons | 21 August 2026
Letters to a Free Country

(Image by Peter H from Pixabay)

Let me begin by laying my cards on the table so that you can judge whether my perspective has biased my arguments. On political, social, and economic issues, I am a true-blue liberal. I do dissent from liberal orthodoxy on a few points. For instance, I am an “in principle” supporter of the death penalty. Some crimes are so unspeakably heinous and some people so egregiously horrible that death is the only appropriate punishment. A Syrian court recently imposed a death penalty in absentia on Bashar al-Assad, the country’s former dictator and mass murderer and torturer. Too bad the sentence cannot be carried out. In practice, capital punishment is often imposed cruelly and unjustly. Those without the capital get the punishment. Also, bucking current trends, I am not a socialist. I agree with David Leonhardt’s wonderful book Ours Was the Shining Future (2023) that capitalism can and has been regulated so that the wealth generated flows to everyone and not just the tiny top fraction of a percent.

On almost every other issue, I align with the stereotypical liberal agenda. With respect to academic matters, on the other hand, I am a conservative throwback. I guess it just would not be practical to still require Latin and Greek (sigh).* However, no one should be considered to have achieved a higher education if that person has not been grounded in the classics that are the intellectual foundation of our civilization. Institutions of higher education should at least offer, as part if its core curriculum, experience of The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, basic works of Plato and Aristotle, plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, the great historical writings of Herodotus, Thucydides, Caesar, and Tacitus, and the oratory of Cicero. I say “offer” because, mindful of the old saying about leading the horse to water, you cannot make the student learn. All an educator can do is lead to the fountain of knowledge. Some will drink deeply and others only gargle.

Further, I hold that there has to be a sharp and clear distinction between scholarship and activism. I strongly disapprove of any professor using the classroom as a bully pulpit to promote an ideology—any ideology, liberal, conservative, libertarian, Marxist, religious, anti-religious, feminist, traditionalist—or whatever. I have the old-fashioned view that with respect to controversial topics, a professor’s job is to teach a student how to think not what to think. Further, any topic should be discussable and any perspective expressible. Free speech should exist at universities, if anywhere. When, as sometimes happened, a student in one of my classes would make a prejudiced remark during class discussions, I did not have to say anything. I just let the class members themselves confront the speaker, and they did so much more effectively than I could have.

So I guess I should welcome the development reported in The Houston Chronicle (08/16) in the article reprinted from the Associated Press, “Course for U.S. base schools draws scrutiny,” by Annie Ma and Konstantin Toropin. They report that, for the schools for the children of active service members operated worldwide by the Defense Department, the Department has authorized a course centered on Western civilization. The course is part of the emphasis on “classical learning” that has been embraced by many conservative politicians as a way of countering what they see as progressive indoctrination in education. According to the authors:

Classical education broadly refers to a teaching style built on the liberal arts, with an emphasis on critical thinking and citizenship. Students are taught to imitate the rhetoric and style of great thinkers and writers.

Gee, I approve of all of that, though students writing in the style of Platonic dialogues might be a bit much. Critical thinking and citizenship are “thumbs up” concepts for me. As for citizenship, I have taught Plato’s Crito, where Socrates, after having been condemned to death, is offered a chance to escape. He refuses on the grounds that to do so would be to defy the laws of Athens, his native city under whose laws he has lived for seventy years. Such a betrayal would be a repudiation of the duties of citizenship, for the citizen must respect the laws, even when they rule against him. As for critical thinking, I don’t think there could be better training than to read essential works of Plato and Aristotle.

I strongly agree with conservative classicists such as Bruce Thornton, Victor Davis Hanson, and John Heath. They argue that many of the concepts most crucial for understanding ourselves—our aspirations, assumptions, values, and critical disagreements—were first discussed by the Greeks with great penetration and insight. These are concepts such as civil liberty, democracy, constitutional government, what it means to be a human being, and the nature of the human good. To disregard such wisdom is to impoverish ourselves intellectually and spiritually.

So I should be all for this new curriculum, right? The fact that it is being endorsed by Pete Hegseth gives me pause. I guess a curriculum endorsed by an idiot might nevertheless be good, but the probabilities are against it. Hegseth an idiot? But he went to Princeton. I am afraid that the “elite” universities have lost their mystique for me when you consider some of the people that went to them (George W. Bush could hardly articulate a coherent sentence, and he has degrees from both Harvard and Yale.). Anyone who thinks that what the US military really needs is more testosterone is living in some sort of toxic macho fantasy world. What about decent chow and some down time for the sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln?

I suspect, however, that the curriculum is being promoted by Hegseth and others due to ulterior motives other than the salutary one of connecting students to the glories of the classical past. When did Donald Trump et al. ever give a shit about Socrates or Sophocles? Trump knows about Aristotle, though. He was that billionaire Greek guy that married Jackie Kennedy.

To be clear: There is nothing inherently racist, sexist, or even politically conservative about wanting to go back to a more traditional emphasis on the classics. What is problematic is if ideologues use the cover of classical learning as a Trojan Horse (Another classical reference!), a tactic to disguise other agendas. This does seem to be a danger. The textbook for the new course on Western civilization is titled The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition. Volume I: The Ancient World and Christendom. The authors of the Associated Press article describe some of its content:

The book describes Islam as inherently more violent than Christianity. In a section titled “Holy War and Martyrdom in Battle,” the book describes wars fought by Christians, such as the Crusades, as intended to protect and defend other Christians. Islam, in contrast, glorifies violence and war, the book says, invoking the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and 9/11.

When the crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099, they protected Christians by conducting a general massacre of the city’s population. Modern estimates are that 40,000 were killed. In the Third Crusade, King Richard, “the Lionheart,” protected Christians by ordering the massacre of 2000 Muslim prisoners, the Massacre at Ayyadieh. In the Fourth Crusade, the crusaders protected the Byzantine Christians by sacking and brutally pillaging their capital Constantinople.

And the aggressions continued into the modern era: In 1757, the British East India Company’s army, led by Robert Clive, defeated the Muslim Nawab of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey, starting 200 years of British rule of India. The Catholic French under Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1799 and employed superior firepower to easily defeat the Islamic Mamluks in the Battle of the Pyramids. At the Battle of Omdurman in Sudan in 1898, the British employed machine guns and artillery to kill 10,000 of the primitively armed Islamic Mahdist army.

Is Islam, in general, more violent and warlike than Christianity? Such sweeping judgements are almost meaningless. The twists and turns of history are too complex to support such unqualified and unnuanced judgements. Islam definitely has had aggressive, expansionist phases. I understand that when crusading Islam conquered a territory, they offered Jews and Christians three choices: convert, pay tribute, or die. That is two more choices than the Christian crusaders offered their victims.

Sectarian violence has plagued both religions. In 1572, French Catholics massacred Huguenots in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Philip II of Spain commissioned the Armada of 1588 to overthrow Queen Elizabeth and reestablish Catholicism in England. From 1618 to 1648, Protestants and Catholics enthusiastically slaughtered one another in the Thirty Years War. Within Islam, the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites had its roots in the seventh century and continues unabated to this day.

All religions have their fanatics and militants, even Buddhism. Fanaticism and tribalism are flaws in the human character and not distinctive of any religion.

Classical learning has nothing to do with downplaying Christian violence vis-a-vis Muslims. Classical learning has nothing to do with the Defense Department’s schools banning hundreds of books relating to race, gender, and democracy. Classical learning has nothing to do with whitewashing the disgraceful parts of American history. Classical learning has nothing to do with the inculcation of Christianity. Those who appeal to classical learning as a smokescreen to mask the imposition of conservative ideology are doing no service to the great Greeks. Socrates would call out their duplicity. Aristophanes would ridicule it. Pericles would denounce it before the Assembly.

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*In retirement, I am giving myself the classical education I always wanted but was too busy earning a living to get. I am learning ancient Greek.

Keith Parsons is a Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, emeritus at the University of Houston at Clear Lake and the former editor of the philosophy journal Philo. He has debated William Lane Craig on the topics “Is Christianity True?” and “Does God Exist?”. Dr. Parsons holds a Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Queens University.

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