Battle for the American Mind: Defense secretary Pete Hegseth says classical Christian education key to winning America back

When he was first nominated for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth stoked the fires of patriotism with bold ideas of military reform and American dominance.

But Hegseth knows whizzing bullets and brawny soldiers aren’t enough to revive America’s glory days.

In his 2022 book Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation, Hegseth explains how public education went awry and how the U.S. can be revived by returning to its philosophical roots.

The magic solution is something Hegseth calls the WCP – Western Christian Paideia.

Paideia is a Greek concept that loosely translates to “education.” But it’s much more than math, reading and science. It’s a holistic transmission of one’s culture, traditions and beliefs to the next generation. Hegseth summarizes this as “the vision of the good life.”  

Famous writer and Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton put it this way: “Education is not a subject and does not deal in subjects. It is instead a transfer of a way of life.” 

Now, some Americans, even conservatives, will argue schools should teach the three Rs and leave everything else to the parents. But Hegseth notes students will spend around 16,000 hours in K-12 classrooms with teachers trained at teacher colleges now steeped in progressivist ideology.  

Even Christian schools, which cut out obvious leftwing propaganda such as CRT and restore biblical teaching, may still be missing the core components of the WCP.  

“You probably thought, as I did, that the problem in our schools is what is being taught,” Hegseth writes. “It’s not. The problem is what has been systematically, if quietly, removed. 

“Progressives, like [Woodrow] Wilson, believe that most people just needed a vocational education – they had no use for a free-man’s (classical) education. The progressive view of ‘Democracy’ was easier to manage when most people were not thinkers, but rather doers.”  

Perhaps the most obvious example of this push for “vocational education” is the emphasis on STEM. Even higher education has become a mere steppingstone to professional success.  

Hegseth quotes C.S. Lewis, who bluntly put it, “You see at once that education is essentially for freemen and vocational training for slaves [. . .] If education is beaten by training, civilization dies.”  

Battle for the American Mind chronicles how progressives refashioned the public schools step by step into secular institutions, kept in power by Marxist teachers’ unions, leftist DEI and CRT rhetoric and a watered down understanding of the purpose of education.  

“Separated from their Christian source, older American ideals were ‘cut flowers,’” Hegseth explains, “nice to look at, but destined to die.”  

But all is not lost.  

The WCP is already making a comeback, and the defense secretary contrasts what he’s seen in classical Christian schools with progressive public ones.  

“Under the old form of classical Christian education, children gained wisdom by studying history and the classics. With the current American paideia in our schools, children look only to factual knowledge and only those facts that are new and recent. Old is outdated and irrelevant. 

“With the WCP, children saw divine order in everything. Today, the current American paideia leads toward a twisted form of antihumanist anarchy, masquerading as progressive humanism.  

“Under the WCP, children were practiced in the art of reason as they sought Truth. Today’s American paideia consists of indoctrination from the secular cultural ideologues in power. 

“The WCP set children on a lifelong search for greater meaning. The current American paideia has been reduced to a search for a vocational job.  

“The WCP created a strong-spirited citizen who was better together with others, in community. In our schools today, Americans have become weak-spirited citizens who serve only the state.”  

Underpinning this brewing revival is the C in the WCP: Christian.  

“At the end of the day, Christianity will survive without America, but America cannot survive without Christianity,” Hegseth concludes. “Liberated citizens who love God, love freedom, and seek wisdom and virtue will chart the future for our nation. 

“Jesus Christ has to be at the center of all of it.”