Rarely have I simultaneously so desperately wanted not to click, and wanted to click.

Reader, I have clicked.

Ok, fine, let's do this. I'm already regretting this, but I guess there will always be a part of me that hopes, however fruitless it seems, these cultists can be engaged at some sort of human, rational level?

Ok, so first of all, note the use of "critical." It's absurd to suggest that Classics hasn't been "critical" already. The hermeneutic of suspicion is in full swing, the deconstruction already mandatory. (Of course, the study of classical authors was always "critical" in the...

... good, healthy sense of the term.) Of course, this says "more" critical, and I suppose you can always be "more" critical.

Also, good to learn that these people who "apply a more critical eye" ALSO "critique." Peak English right there.

Now, what's striking here is the Six-Degrees-Of-Kevin-Bacon Disqualification Game that has become such a Pavlovian reflex on the Left. I get why it's used politically, but in a scholarly setting, what is the point, exactly? Seriously.

I have no problem believing that classical authors "have been used" (note the passive voice) to "authorize ... exclusionary practices and narratives." (Presumably, by the Narrative Authorization Bureau.) Throughout the intellectual history of the West, the classics have been ...

... used to argue for, and against, nearly every idea that was contemplated once, simply because they are so central to our cultural history, which suggests (to me) that that's a good reason to study them, at least if we want to understand our own past.

But let's take this on its own terms. Let it be granted, arguendo, that some dude once wrote "The Truth Of Nazism Proved From The Works Of Herodotus And Cicero". What, precisely, does that fact mean, or ought to mean, for the study of Classics today? Please be specific and ...

... explicit when drawing the logical connections between that fact and your conclusion.

Oh, right, you won't do that.

But the Classics were "accomplices" in "violent societal structures". Boy, that sounds really bad! We should probably cancel anyone who did something...

... like that. I suggest starting with Marx and Foucault. And let's also cancel Darwin, while we're at it. Because your stated criterion is not whether something is good, or historically important, but whether someone, some time, used it to justify something bad. And if THAT's...

... your criterion, then oh boy, hey hey, ho ho, evolution's *absolutely* got to go. (In fact let's just cancel all of genetics just to be sure. What could go wrong?)

Ah, yes, the classic Lib transference. "If you disagree with me, it's because you're irrational and mentally ill." Wokophobe!

"omits to mention all the intellectual innovation and knowledge advancement that is happening in and alongside". Look at that dégringolade of a sentence. Did a robot write this?

I used to think the main benefit of Classics for Western students was that they help us write our own languages better, but she's (of course it's a she) convincing me that may be wrong. I'm learning so much. Thank you, professor.

Ah, yes, we need to get rid of "Western civ" so we can be better friends with China! Why didn't I think of that?? Who can be against friendship with China? Certainly not American universities, whose business model increasingly rely on selling them "Western" technology.

Can't threaten that business model, or else the Classics Department might get cut! Don't think it's a good idea to sell bleeding-edge technology to a foreign totalitarian regime? Clearly you're a racist. Don't you know Aristotle wrote a defense of slavery?

What was it you were saying is bad, professor? "Complicity" in "violent societal structures"? Just checking.

Ah, yes. We suck, America sucks, we should just accept our "diminished status in a globalized world". Once you understand liberalism as the psychology of self-hatred, you can't unsee it.

Put aside the politics. How can any educated person talk of classics as a "fairytale Western origin story". Every important figure in the history of the West was influenced by the Classics! You can believe that that's horrible. But it happened. It did!

How is it possible to see this as anything but sublimated self-hatred? And how do you talk rationally with these people? I genuinely ask. If it's possible, I would like to do it. But there's no "there" there. There's no substance. There's no argument. Just lust for destruction.

The debate around Classics is so revealing because it's a synecdoche for the whole thing. Here, they are honest: yes, the past is bad, Western civilization is bad, and it must be destroyed. Ruins are good. What dialogue is possible with barbarians?

Well, I don't regret clicking. There is no thought there, just inchoate feelings and resentments.

These people clearly need some education. Have they tried *reading the Classics?*