Seth Leibsohn: Our Dangerous Illiteracy
Podcasts > Townhall Review | Conservative Commentary On Today's News
Monday, May 18, 2026
Recently, a professor of Politics at Princeton wrote an op-ed pointing out how many of his students—and students at other colleges—simply are unfamiliar with the Ten Commandments. He writes, “they lack religious literacy, and their ignorance of religious ideas means they struggle to understand a wide array of Western art, literature and philosophy.”
They also wouldn’t understand a great deal of art or history, never mind philosophy from Marx to Rousseau—or recognize lines from Shakespeare to our Founding to Frederick Douglass to Lincoln to MLKing, Jr.
This is what the late Richard John Newhaus worried about decades ago: An America that with an increasingly naked public square, bare of any religiosity, or recognition of religious faith or culture. What Newhaus feared is now is now nearly complete, when students at major universities are now illiterate in the cornerstone of Western Civilization.
Many states right now are debating posting the Ten Commandments in K-12 classrooms. This wouldn’t be a parochial decision, it would, rather, constitute necessary basic and remedial education.
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