The Death of the Classics and Civil American Discourse

My four years at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point taught me a lot. I learned how to fire a weapon safely. I learned physics, chemistry, geology, and Mandarin, or at least the basics. I learned how to lead soldiers, plan an ambush, shine my boots, and discipline fairly. But what has stuck with me the longest, and proved most essential over time, was my introduction to the classics: Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Homer, Lucretius.

This week is Reception Day at West Point: the day new cadets arrive, shave their heads, and begin learning a set of lessons they won’t fully appreciate until years later. It has been 20 years since my own R-Day. Since then, I’ve served in Afghanistan, earned a law degree, and worked in institutions like the White House, the Hague, and the United States Congress. And still, what I return to most are the ideas I first encountered in those ancient texts.

Take Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In it, people live their lives chained inside a dark cave, seeing only shadows projected on a wall. One person escapes, discovers the real world, and returns to try and explain it, only to be rejected, feared, even blinded by the change. Plato was describing the power and difficulty of education. And today, that parable feels more relevant than ever.

It’s not hard to see our own cultural moment as a cave of sorts. We argue over everything from pineapple on pizza to Die Hard as a Christmas movie, as if the point were winning, not understanding. When a recent Pew poll found that only 20% of conservative Republicans think colleges and universities have a positive effect on the country, my gut reaction was frustration. But maybe yelling is part of the problem. Plato didn’t say education would make us right—he said it would make us humble. The real tragedy is not that we disagree, but that we have lost the ability to listen across difference.

I believe America should welcome refugees. Maybe you don’t. I shouldn’t be angry at you for disagreeing—I should be angry at myself for failing to explain why. I should start by telling you how my Afghan interpreters saved my life, how one was executed by the Taliban, and how the other found refuge in Europe after we failed to take him in.

We all bring different experiences, values, and educations to the table. That doesn’t mean we’re enemies. But calls for “civility” can feel hollow when the other side feels so fundamentally wrong. What I’m asking for isn’t civility as silence. It’s humility. The humility to admit we may be in a cave of our own.

This isn’t easy. It wasn’t easy for me to sit across from insurgent commanders who had shot at my unit days earlier. But it was the only way to reach peace. It wasn’t fair. The Geneva Conventions apply to us, not to those planting roadside bombs. But fairness is not the standard—integrity is. Victory means nothing if you lose yourself in the process.

So maybe log off Twitter. Open Plato instead. And remember what he said through Socrates: “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” That, I’ve learned, is where dialogue begins.