(THE FEDERALIST) – The woke are succeeding where Plato failed. In Plato's most famous dialogue, the "Republic," the character of Socrates argues the ideal polity will exclude Homer and the rest of the Greek poets and dramatists. But Plato, who loved the poets, leaves the door open for their return. As with much else in Plato's work, the proposed ban on Homer should perhaps be taken seriously, not literally.
Today's cultural radicals, however, have no such subtlety. When they say we should get rid of Homer, they mean we should get rid of Homer, ideally replacing the "Odyssey" with a new novel by a trans woman of color. As Meghan Cox Gurdon reports in the Wall Street Journal, their "demands for censorship appear to be getting results" as high school teachers boast of dumping the classics.
Writing in Quillette, Lona Manning provides further background on this movement, loosely organized around the hashtag slogan #DisruptTexts. Encouraged by the current mélange of intersectional ideology and critical theory that has captivated the left, it's an intensification of the left's efforts to cull "dead white males" from curricula.
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