The Decline of Classics and Liberal Arts Education

Is democracy and the idea of citizenship deteriorating because of the state of our country’s education system? 

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He’s written more than 25 books in the realm of classics, military history, and the American political system. His latest book, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America, explores what it means to be an American. 

Victor and Greg discuss the modern threats to citizenship, the disappearing middle class, and how America’s education system may be exacerbating the problem.  

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Episode Quotes:

Is the decline of classics and the decline of liberal arts education the same things?

32:16: Classics is an intensification of a history or a literature major, but it's the foundation of it. It had a much greater burden because it required or centered on two difficult languages, which you can become an English major or a history major without that as an undergraduate. But they're the same thing. They were the idea that you had a reverence for the past. You didn't go back and try to use the standards of the present to judge people in the past necessarily. You made moral judgments, but that wasn't the intent of history per se. In addition, through the use of literature and historical examples and writing, discussing, and debating, you develop oral fluency. You learn how to write grammatically correct English and stylistically engaging English. You thought. You were inductive. You didn't go into a class where the professor said if you say this particular gender is evil, the subtext is, and then you deduce examples that prove that.

On globalism

51:21: Globalism is a synonym for American popular culture in many ways. We have the most dynamic culture that has very few prerequisites to participate in, as Europe does. But the more sinister thing is: it's an elite-driven phenomenon.

The power of citizenship

02:33: Citizenship is very rare in history. It's usually either the person ruled or is either a member of a tribal organization, a mere resident, a subject, a serf, or a slave. But the idea that a citizen is empowered to self-govern and to create the conditions under which government exists by the consent of the governed doesn't exist anywhere outside the Mediterranean or before the 7th century.

The shifting dynamics of race, class, and gender

17:33: We used to talk about race, class, gender, race, class, gender, but class has disappeared. When you hear that mantra, it's usually race and gender. And this was very brilliant on the part of the left because class is a mobile, fluid concept, and a very successful capitalist society. One generation does not guarantee, necessarily, that they're all going to be in the class of their parents. I can tell you from my own family that's true, both positively and negatively. Races, if you fixate on it, so if you say race is the entire definition of deprivation, bias, racism, and not class, then it's immutable; it's forever.

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

• Thucydides
• Tacitus
• Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
• Herodotus
• Battles of Lexington and Concord
• Michel Foucault
• War! What Is It Good For?: Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots by Ian Morris 
• High Noon (1952)
• The Searchers (1956)

Guest Profile:

• Profile for Hoover Institution at Stanford University
• Professional Website
• Victor Davis Hanson on X

His Work:

• The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America
• The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece
• Who Killed Homer: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom
• The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny 
• Carnage and Culture Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power 

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