THE CASE FOR KNOWING MANY THINGS

I have known myself to be a generalist, rather than a specialist, for a long time. The reader may think they know the type- the jack of all trades and master of none- a clever fellow who is likely his own worst enemy by being unfocused, does not stay in his own lane, and refuses to became a specialist in any one area. (And this confusion applies to female generalists, also.) After all, becoming a specialist “in something” is implied by our parents, teachers, and mentors as a key to success. This trend has accelerated to the point that education is valued if it prepares students for careers, not by focusing on the liberal arts.  I beg to differ on that assessment in that in we find ultimate value in our education if indeed we are prepared to be successful in the totality of life and not by our schools assigning us to narrow vocational niches.

Rather than model this purely in my higher education pursuits, I was educated through a hybrid process. I had always enjoyed my history classes in high school and when I entered the University of Oklahoma, I declared myself a political science major with the intent of taking as much history as possible. And when the foreign language requirement became an impossible barrier for me to overcome, I changed my major to social studies education which permitted me access to the history and political science courses I desired and put me on a vocational track of teacher preparation (which paid dividends a few decades later).

 

So, when the experts and commentators denigrate the liberal arts, the humanities, and the social sciences as possible majors for college students in favor of engineering and other technical degrees, I feel they miss the point of a liberal arts education, which is to enhance one’s ability to read, write, and think across disciplines, and not to be a narrowly focused technocratic specialist. Granted, the world needs both specialists and generalists, and the tendencies of both should be discovered, encouraged, and developed throughout the years.

Then I was introduced to another increasingly popular metaphor for identifying my gifts, talents, and skills- that of being a fox rather than a hedgehog. British philosopher Isaiah Berlin, working off the fragment of a poem by an ancient Greek, introduced the fox/hedgehog dictomy to the academic world almost 80 years ago. The fox, as interpreted by Berlin, is clever and knows many things while the hedgehog is focused on knowing the one big thinG,

Then business researcher Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, further popularized the dictomy to the general public. And Collins takes sides in that he asserts that persons with the hedgehog temperament are better suited to be organizational leaders because they possess the focus and dedication to do so than foxes. While I recognize there is some truth to his assertions, I do believe that Collins is mistaken particularly when it comes to small organizations like non-profits and NGOs.

This is because leaders of small organizations were vulnerable when they were one-dimensional specialists instead of multi-talented generalists especially when it comes to staff reorganizations and staffing assignments. Some organizational roles such as IT and accounting are so technical that they are best left to specialists rather than to generalists, perhaps those responsibilities even could be out-sourced to specialty boutique firms.

How do I know I am a generalist and fox rather than a specialist and hedgehog? First, I read widely, from history to theology to education to management and leadership to philosophy. Second, I write from similar perspective as my blog posts and books of essays cover topics such as culture, faith, family, history, leadership, and politics. Third, I am curious about many diversified topics ranging from whether rear gunners on dive bombers could be counted as aces if they were credited with shooting down five or more enemy aircraft to the identification of s certain school board member in Kansas City Missouri from whom I first heard the term “limo liberal.” Fourth, I gravitate towards diverse personalities and issues. I do not “stay in my lane.” And fifth, I have had a portfolio career of related employment opportunities ranging from the US Army to Christian ministry and education to public education and in retirement, to community service and writing.

Now while generalist equates to my breath of interests and being a fox describes my temperament, I can also be identified with a term associated with having depth in multiple areas- polymath. This term is from the Greek generally meaning “one who learns much.” Leaning for polymaths is about mastery in one discipline, or even more,  with interests ranging as far as their minds will take them. So, polymaths are not dilettantes and dabblers in learning, rather they are purposefully focused life-long learners in various fields of interests.

Not long ago it was suggested to me that I was a polymath due to the nature of my writing. Even though I used this term to describe myself to promote my books I felt an unease in doing so. The unease stemmed from a sense that using this term was a bad sense of self-promotion akin to someone claiming one has a doctorate from a degree mill university.

Then recently I came across a YouTube presentation by Dr. Angela Myers on the seven qualities of polymaths-     

They are curious on how the world works.     

They connect on how the world works.

3.     They are learning for their own sake and not performing for others.

4.     They develop depth in more than one discipline.

5.     They do not “stay in their own lane” nor do they stay focused in any one domain.

6.     They are energized by solving difficult problems.

7.     They never feel like they belong in one box.

A few days later I encountered another YouTube video describing five characteristics of polymaths, albeit in a more in-depth psychological manner-

1.     Polymaths are divergent thinkers.

2.     Polymaths are easily bored  once mastery of a field is achieved.

3.     Polymaths are cross-domain synthesizers.

4.     Polymaths resist cultural pressures to conform.

5.     Polymaths are not necessarily original thinkers, rather they engage in conceptual meshing.

I am a generalist not because I am smarter than most other folk (I am not), but because I value breadth of knowledge. I am a fox not because I am better looking than most others (I am definitely not), but because of my temperament for learning and after watching the videos several times, I am convinced that I am indeed a polymath not because I value both breadth and depth of knowledge as evidenced by my body of writing- my essays and poetry on my blog and in my books- and by my portfolio career in the military, in ministry and Christian education, in public education, and in community service and writing, 

In conclusion, Angela Meyers, whom I mentioned earlier, argues that polymaths are the qualified ones to lead us through the era of AI (aka SI), In a similar vein, I contend that the leaders we need must be broadly educated in the liberal arts, the classics, and humanities. While we differ in the preparation of leaders for this massive technological disruption, we agree that narrowly focused specialists (aka technocrats) will not possess the aptitude, the skills, and the temperament to take the reins in this endeavor. And as economist Tyler Cowen warns us- only the ones who will add value to the machines will be successful in the future.

 

Selected Bibliography

Berlin, Isaiah. Hedgehogs and Foxes, 1953.

Collins, Jim. Good to Great, 2001.

Cowen, Tyler. Average is Over, 2014.

Epstein, David. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, 2021.

Marlow, Joe D. A Beginner’s Guide to AI: Essays and Resources for Christian Boomers,

          2026.

Marlow, Joe D. HEROES AND BIOs: 7 Men Who Are Helping Me Shape My Life, 2026.

Myers, Angela C. Versatile, 2026. 

Ricks. Thomas E. First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks

          And Romans and How That Shaped Our Country, 2020.

 

 

THE COAST GUARD @ GUADALCANAL

The story of Guadalcanal is usually told in the language of Marines and naval battles—Henderson Field, the Tokyo Express, and the long nights of Ironbottom Sound. But running beneath that familiar narrative is another current, quieter but no less decisive: the work of the United States Coast Guard. Their presence in the Solomons was not ornamental. It was essential. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The campaign’s success rested, in no small part, on their hands.

What strikes me first is how ordinary their expertise was. These were men trained in surfboats, rescue stations, and coastal patrols—craft shaped by routine, not glory. Yet when the nation needed amphibious skill in 1942, it was the Coast Guard that possessed it. Nineteen of the twenty‑three transports in the Guadalcanal invasion force carried Coast Guard crews. They were the ones who put Marines ashore, boatload after boatload, in the first uncertain hours of the campaign. They were the ones who returned again and again with ammunition, fuel, rations, and the wounded. Their war was not the dramatic clash of fleets but the relentless grind of small‑boat work under fire.

The Coast Guard also conducted ant-submarine operations. Higgins landing craft were loaded with depth charges and assigned sectors to patrol in the waters around the island. This was dangerous work. One night a Japanese submarine surfaced and sunk a Higgins boat with its deck gun and then began killing the survivors with small arms fire. One “coastie” survived this ordeal by pretending to be dead.

Despite the danger, there is something morally clarifying about that kind of labor. It is not glamorous. It is not celebrated. It is simply necessary. And necessity has a way of revealing character. The Coast Guard’s contribution to Guadalcanal was not a single moment but a pattern—steady, disciplined, uncomplaining service that kept the beachhead alive. In a campaign defined by scarcity, their constancy became a form of courage.

Yet even within that quiet pattern, one moment stands apart. On September 27, 1942, near the Matanikau River, a battalion of Marines found itself trapped under heavy Japanese fire. The evacuation seemed impossible. The beach was raked by machine guns. The boats would have to run straight into it. And it was a Coast Guardsman—Signalman First Class Douglas Munro—who stepped forward.

Munro’s actions that day have been recounted often, but they bear repeating because they reveal the moral center of the service he represented. He led the rescue boats in, placing his own craft between the enemy and the Marines. He drew fire so others could load. He freed a grounded boat under fire. He silenced a machine‑gun nest with his bow guns. And when he was mortally wounded during the withdrawal, his last question was simple and unadorned: Did they get off? When told yes, he smiled.

There is a purity to that moment—a man whose vocation was service, fulfilling it to the end. Munro did not die in a grand naval battle or a sweeping assault. He died doing what the Coast Guard had done every day of the campaign: protecting others. His Medal of Honor is not an outlier; it is the distilled expression of the institution’s character.

When I think about Guadalcanal now, I see the Coast Guard’s presence as a kind of moral counterpoint to the violence around them. They were not there to destroy but to deliver. They were not there to seize territory but to sustain life. Their courage was logistical, practical, embodied. And in a war that often rewarded spectacle, theirs was a courage that asked for no audience.

Institutions at their best form people capable of such work—people who understand that duty is not a performance but a commitment. The Coast Guard on Guadalcanal reminds us that the strength of a nation rests not only on its warriors but on its stewards: those who carry the wounded, those who bring the supplies, those who keep the fragile machinery of survival running when everything around them is breaking.

Guadalcanal was a turning point in the Pacific War. But it was also a testament to the quiet goods of ordinary life—skill, discipline, reliability—brought to bear in extraordinary circumstances. The Coast Guard did not ask to be the backbone of the landings. They simply were. And in doing so, they left a legacy of service that deserves to be remembered alongside the more famous stories of the campaign.

Their work was not loud. But it was indispensable. And sometimes, indispensable things are the ones that teach us the most about courage.

 

CAN THE CLASSICS SPEAK TO THE POOR?

My Experience 

During the 2009-2010 school year, I was back at the Paseo Academy of the Fine and Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri, this time as an instructional coach. (An instructional coach is part of a school’s leadership team who coaches the teachers to improve matching best practices in teaching strategies with effective use of the district’s curriculum.) One day the principal brought me a student and directed me to tutor the student on Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. Apparently, the student was having difficulty in the classroom understanding the text to the point teacher had referred the student to the office.

Even though working directly with students was not in my official job description, I had learned not to say “ no” to this principal unless I had a very good reason and I did not have one. So I accepted the principal’s directive and met with the student privately while the principal returned to her routine duties.

The student was an African American female who was a junior at the school. Although she was friendly and appeared to be bright and eager to learn, I questioned whether she could learn from a dead white male as I was briefly reminded of the 1999 movie The Sixth Sense in which psychologist Malcolm Crowe played by Bruce Willis befriends Cole, a patient of his, a traumatized boy played by Haley Joel Osment. A highlight of the film was when Cole confesses to Malcolm, “I see dead people.” Thus, I was concerned that my student would see only “dead people” as she began her study of this piece of classic literature.

I was wrong about her and I was glad. We met several times a week over the next month or so. She was present at all our tutoring sessions and on time, willing and eager to discuss her engagement with the text. I could see her heart-felt connection to Willy Loman, a tired traveling salesman, of his deferred and often quashed dreams that led to his suicide. I could also sense that her connection to Loman was not merely intellectual in that she perhaps knew an adult relative or a friend of the family who had Loman-like deferred or quashed dreams. Since she did not discuss a possible emotional connection, I respected her privacy and did not go there.

But isn’t this why some literature is deemed “classic”, in that such literature reaches beyond boundaries that divide us and unite us because classic literature speaks to the human condition? It would appear so in this case as Arthur Miller had penned a masterpiece of a play that spoke to a student who is a human first and then an African American female living in Kansas City.

 

 

The Classics Behind Bars

Some years ago I came across a small article—Wall Street Journal, I think—describing a program that brought the Greek and Roman classics into a prison classroom. The premise was disarmingly simple: give ex‑felons the intellectual and moral resources they were never offered, and you might give them a fighting chance at not returning to the life that landed them behind bars. What struck me wasn’t the novelty of the idea but its quiet confidence in the humanities as instruments of moral repair. In an age that treats the classics as decorative or elitist, here they were being used as tools of survival.

The professor in the story taught Homer and Gilgamesh, Aristotle on anger, the Greek tragedians. She asked men who had lived hard, violent lives to wrestle with Achilles’ rage, with Heracles’ self‑destruction, with the long arc of consequence that follows a single ungoverned impulse. And the men responded. They recognized themselves in these ancient figures—not in the heroism but in the volatility, the wounded pride, the inability to imagine the downstream cost of a moment’s fury. The old stories gave them a vocabulary for their own interior lives, a way to name the forces that had shaped them long before the criminal justice system ever did.

What moved me most was the program’s underlying wager: that human beings, even those who have done real harm, can be strengthened by serious thought. That moral imagination is not a luxury but a lifeline. These men were not being lectured about responsibility; they were being invited to see themselves in a tragic tradition that understands how fragile agency can be. And in that recognition, something like dignity re‑entered the room.

As such, they were treated not as cases but as thinkers—people capable of reflection, capable of change. They were equipped to ask questions such as “What would Shakespeare/Burke/the American Founders do in the situation in which I now find myself” and then discover answers to their dilemmas that would expand and amplify their moral imaginations.

Programs like this are small, almost invisible in the larger debates about crime and punishment. But they reveal something institutions once knew: that formation precedes behavior, and that without a moral vocabulary, a person is left defenseless against his own impulses. The classics do not redeem anyone. But they do what good institutions have always done—they give a person the means to understand himself, and in that understanding, the possibility of choosing differently.

Conclusion

Based upon my forementioned limited experience and a newspaper article, yes, classic literature can speak to the poor, the marginalized, across boundaries that tend to divide us, to give us the intellectual tools and the moral imagination for all of us to find success in our lives; for if it cannot, I maintain that it ceases to be the classics. But the genius of the Western Canon is that it can unify us out of the many divergent backgrounds from whence we came.

 

TALARICO AND THE BIG TEN'S SECRET CLOCK

If you missed Saturday night’s college football game between the Western Michigan Broncos of the Mid America Conference (MAC) and the Michigan Wolverines of the Big Ten Conference (B1G) you missed the “second heard around the world.” Not merely willing to play for a fat paycheck by showing up in uniform in Ann Arbor’s “Big House” stadium of over 100,000 fans, the visiting Broncos outplayed the hometown Wolverines for 40+ minutes as they took a 12-7 lead to win the game, despite being a four-touchdown underdog.

Hold on a darn second (wordplay intended)- the refs penalized the Broncos and put one second back on the clock allowing Michigan to “win” 13-12. Despite the fact that both the stadium and play booth clocks read 0:00 with Western Michigan winning, the B1G’s explanation that they had an official secret clock not synced with the other clocks the rest of America thought displayed the official time. As egregious as that secret clock incident was, we fans were assured that it never happen again.

Hold on a darn second (wordplay intended)- US Senate candidate in Texas James Talarico seems to also to possess a secret clock, albeit a metaphorical one. And Talarico may well use it to get his extra second against his opponent Ken Paxton, but if Talarico is successful, the real losers will be the good folks of Texas, not Paxton.oldHold

Talarico was interviewed by Fox News correspondent Brooke Taylor on September 10. In that interview Talarico renounced nearly every controversial view he has held. Among the changes:

 

60-Minute Stadium Clock:          God is non-binary.

Extra-Second Secret Clock:         I was being provocative.

 

60-Minute Stadium Clock:           Opposed restrictions on trans athletes.

Extra-Second Secret Clock:         Now opposes biological boys playing in girls’ sports.

 

60-Minute Stadium Clock:           There are six biological sexes.

Extra-Second Secret Clock:         There are two sexes with some genetic abnormalities.

 

60-Minute Stadium Clock:           Voted against Texas SB14 which opposed trans surgeries & puberty blockers for minors.

Extra-Second Secret Clock:         Now opposes trans surgeries for minors.

 

Most Americans, Texans included, encourage and even expect our politicians to re-examine evidence and change their minds as needed. But what Talarico did during that interview was not that, it was a wholesale full frontal lobotomy.  Say what you want to about Jasmine Crockett, she would have doubled down, stood her ground, and fired both barrels (metaphorically speaking, of course!) to share her beliefs. Apparently, Talarico’s staff, consultants, and handlers, and even Talarico himself, thought this was a good idea perhaps based on what the B1G got away with in front of millions on a Labor Day weekend.

In the interview, Talarico showed himself to be a mere corrupt politician. Talarico is not corrupt in the same manner as he charges his opponent, Talarico has a corruption in his soul- a corruption in the same way as the end justifies the means. The people of Texas deserve a candidate for the US Senate of a major party who is proud of his beliefs, who will double down and stand his ground, and will not change his mind on the core tenets of his belief system as the polls change in a tight race.

Football is a game. Elections are not. And it is vital in our constitutional republic we citizens can have trust in trustworthy candidates. A final word- I will be rooting for my Sooners to wallop those pesky Wolverines this Saturday in Ann Arbor!

THE FAILURE OF INTELLIGENCE LEADERSHIP ON GUADALCANAL

The tragedy of the Goettge Patrol is not, at its core, a story about cowardice or incompetence among the Marines who stepped off that boat west of the Matanikau River. It is a story about leadership failure at the level of intelligence judgment—a failure that cost brave men their lives before the Guadalcanal campaign had even found its footing. To understand it properly, one must hold two truths together: the men of the patrol acted with courage, discipline, and trust; their leaders sent them into an impossible situation built on hope, misreading, and wishful thinking.

Lieutenant Colonel Frank Goettge was not an amateur. He was a seasoned Marine officer, a veteran of Haiti and China, a man respected across the division for his competence and character. But intelligence leadership is not merely the accumulation of experience. It is the discipline of skepticism, the refusal to let desire shape interpretation, and the moral responsibility to protect the men who rely on your judgment. On 12 August 1942, that discipline failed.

The failure began with a story—one told by a Japanese warrant officer who had been given alcohol and who claimed that a group of Japanese west of the Matanikau were starving, sick, and ready to surrender. It continued with the sighting of what appeared to be a white flag. In the first week of the campaign, when the Marines were still trying to understand the enemy’s psychology, these signals were tempting. They suggested that the Japanese might break early, that the perimeter could be secured with minimal bloodshed, that the enemy’s will was already eroding.

But intelligence leadership cannot afford temptation. It must assume deception until proven otherwise. It must assume the enemy is capable, cunning, and committed. It must assume that the jungle hides more than it reveals. Goettge—normally a cautious officer—allowed himself to believe a narrative that fit his hopes more than the facts. He believed he could walk into the jungle and negotiate surrender. He believed the Japanese would behave as Western soldiers might behave under similar conditions. He believed the terrain would not swallow his patrol whole.

The men who followed him did not fail. They did what Marines do: they trusted their officer, they boarded the boat, they stepped into the dark, and when the ambush came, they fought with everything they had. Their courage is not diminished by the fact that they were sent into a trap. If anything, their bravery is sharpened by the knowledge that they faced a situation they never should have been placed in.

The failure was not tactical. It was moral and intellectual. Intelligence leadership must be governed by restraint—by the willingness to say “no,” by the humility to admit uncertainty, by the discipline to demand corroboration. Goettge’s patrol had none of these safeguards. It had hope, a single prisoner’s story, and the illusion of a white flag. That is not intelligence. That is wishful thinking dressed in the language of opportunity.

The consequences were immediate and brutal. The Japanese used deception with precision. The patrol was funneled into dense vegetation, pinned down, and destroyed. Goettge was killed early. Only three men escaped. The rest died in a fight they never had a chance to win.

Yet the tragedy did produce clarity. After the patrol, Marine commanders abandoned any trust in Japanese surrender signals. Patrols became larger, more deliberate, more heavily armed. Intelligence officers learned—quickly and painfully—that the Japanese would not break easily, would not surrender readily, and would use every tool of deception available to them. The lesson was written not in doctrine but in blood.

The Goettge Patrol stands today as a reminder that intelligence leadership is not merely analysis. It is stewardship. It is the moral obligation to protect the men who depend on your judgment. When that obligation falters, even briefly, brave men pay the price.

The men of the patrol deserve to be remembered for their courage. Goettge deserves to be remembered for his service—and for his mistake. And the Marine Corps deserves to remember the lesson: in war, intelligence is not the art of believing what you hope is true. It is the discipline of refusing to be deceived.

 

COLONEL WHALING AND THE MORAL IMAGINATION OF INSTITUTIONS UNDER PRESSURE

The story of Colonel William J. Whaling and his Guadalcanal scouts is, at its core, a story about institutional formation under duress—about how a single officer, working inside a battered division on a hostile island, could reshape the moral and operational imagination of the Marine Corps. It is the kind of story I return to often: a moment when an institution is forced to decide whether it will shrink to its fears or grow toward its ideals.

Whaling arrived on Guadalcanal at a time when the 1st Marine Division was learning, painfully, that its inherited habits were insufficient for the jungle. Patrols were too loud, too large, too linear. The Japanese moved like smoke; the Marines moved like a parade. The institution was not yet equal to its responsibilities.

What strikes me is that Whaling did not respond with cynicism or complaint. He responded with creation. He built something that did not exist—an improvised scout‑sniper school, a composite detachment of Marines trained in stalking, camouflage, silent movement, and the disciplined patience of small‑team reconnaissance. He taught Marines how to see again, how to listen, how to move with humility through terrain that punished arrogance. In other words, he restored the moral imagination of the division by restoring its sensory imagination.

This is the deeper lesson: institutions lose their way when they lose their ability to perceive reality. They drift, they grow sentimental, they cling to old forms. Whaling’s contribution was not merely tactical; it was epistemological. He gave the division a new way of knowing the world. His scouts became the eyes and ears of the 1st Marine Division, and in doing so, they became its conscience—reminding the larger body that survival depended on truth, discipline, and the courage to abandon comfortable habits.

There is also something profoundly human in Whaling’s method. He did not create a school of supermen. He selected ordinary Marines and taught them to trust small teams, quiet movement, and the slow accumulation of understanding. He believed that excellence was not a matter of heroic temperament but of practiced attention. In that sense, his scouts embodied a kind of moral realism: the belief that institutions are strengthened not by grand gestures but by the steady formation of people who can see clearly and act decisively.

The Guadalcanal scouts also reveal the paradox of leadership in crisis. Whaling was not the division commander; he was not the architect of the campaign. Yet his work shaped the division’s future more than many decisions made at higher echelons. This is a reminder that institutional renewal often begins at the edges—where someone sees a problem clearly, refuses to accept drift, and builds a small, durable solution that eventually becomes doctrine.

When I think about Whaling, I think about the leaders who refuse to let their institutions become smaller than their responsibilities. He did not wait for permission. He did not ask for a committee. He saw Marines dying on patrols because the institution had not yet learned how to fight in the jungle, and he acted. His scouts became the prototype for Marine reconnaissance and scout‑sniper doctrine for decades. But more importantly, they became a testament to what one person can do when he insists that an institution must be equal to the world it inhabits.

In the end, Whaling’s legacy is not simply that he taught Marines how to move through the jungle. It is that he taught them how to move through uncertainty—quietly, intelligently, humbly, and with a disciplined imagination. That is the kind of leadership I admire: the kind that enlarges the institution by enlarging the people within it.

XENOPHON AND THE FOUNDERS

When the American Founders reached for classical models to understand republican government, they did not turn only to Plato’s lofty idealism or Aristotle’s analytic precision. They turned—often, deliberately—to Xenophon. It is striking: a soldier, memoirist, gentleman‑farmer, and political realist became one of the quiet architects of the Founders’ political imagination. Xenophon offered something the new republic desperately needed: a vision of leadership grounded in character, prudence, and practical wisdom.

For men trying to build a republic in a world of empires, Xenophon was not merely a historian of antiquity. He was a manual.

Xenophon’s appeal: Practical wisdom over philosophical abstraction

The Founders admired Xenophon because he wrote about politics the way they experienced it—messy, contingent, dependent on character, and inseparable from the moral formation of leaders.

Three qualities made Xenophon uniquely attractive:

• Practicality. Xenophon’s works are filled with logistics, persuasion, morale, and the daily burdens of command. This resonated with Washington, who lived those realities.
• Moral seriousness. Xenophon believed leadership was a moral vocation. Adams and Jefferson, both steeped in virtue ethics, found in him a classical ally.
• Executive insight. Cyropaedia offered a study of how a leader educates, unifies, and governs. The Founders saw in Cyrus a prototype for executive power without tyranny.

Where Plato gave ideals, Xenophon gave operations. The Founders needed both—but they trusted Xenophon when the stakes were real.

Washington: Xenophon’s American heir

No Founder embodied Xenophon's spirit more than George Washington. Washington owned and annotated Xenophon’s works, and his contemporaries frequently compared him to Xenophon’s Cyrus and to Xenophon himself.

The parallels are striking:

• Xenophon’s Anabasis tells of a reluctant leader who rises to command through steadiness, courage, and moral authority. Washington’s ascent from Virginia planter to commander of the Continental Army mirrors this arc.
• Xenophon’s emphasis on self‑command—the leader who governs himself before governing others—became Washington’s signature virtue.
• Xenophon’s belief that a leader must be both visible and restrained shaped Washington’s understanding of republican executive power.

Washington’s Farewell Address, with its warnings about faction, ambition, and the fragility of civic virtue, reads like a Xenophontic meditation adapted to a modern republic.

Adams and Jefferson: Xenophon as a theorist of virtue and education

John Adams admired Xenophon’s moral clarity. In his writings on republican government, Adams repeatedly stressed that liberty requires virtue, and virtue requires formation. Xenophon’s portraits of Socrates and Cyrus offered Adams a classical vocabulary for discussing:

• the education of citizens,
• the dangers of luxury,
• and the moral responsibilities of leaders.

Thomas Jefferson, though more enamored of Epicurus and the civic humanists, still drew on Xenophon’s Oeconomicus and Memorabilia in thinking about agrarian virtue and the formation of republican citizens. Xenophon’s Socrates—gentler, more practical, more civic‑minded than Plato’s—fit Jefferson’s belief that philosophy should serve public life.

Both men saw Xenophon as a bridge between moral philosophy and political practice.

Hamilton and Madison: Xenophon and the problem of executive power

For Alexander Hamilton, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia was a study in the constructive uses of executive authority. Hamilton believed that republican government required energy, decisiveness, and unity in the executive—qualities Xenophon attributed to Cyrus. Hamilton did not want a king; he wanted a leader capable of acting.

James Madison, more cautious, read Xenophon as a warning. Xenophon’s admiration for Cyrus revealed how easily admiration for virtue could slide into admiration for monarchy. Madison used Xenophon as part of his broader argument that ambition must be checked by structure, not merely by character.

Thus Xenophon helped shape the Founders’ debate about executive power:

• Hamilton saw the promise.
• Madison saw the peril.
• Both saw the relevance.

Xenophon’s deeper gift: A vocabulary for republican character

The Founders did not imitate Xenophon. They used him. He gave them a language for thinking about:

• the moral formation of leaders,
• the relationship between freedom and discipline,
• the fragility of republican institutions,
• the need for citizens capable of self‑restraint,
• and the dangers of faction, luxury, and ambition.

Xenophon’s world was not democratic in the modern sense, but his insights into human nature, leadership, and civic virtue were timeless. The Founders believed that republics rise or fall on the character of their leaders and citizens. Xenophon taught them how to think about that character.

Conclusion: Xenophon as a companion in the American experiment

For contemporary Americans, Xenophon’s significance lies in what he offered the Founders: a sober, humane, and practical vision of leadership. He reminded them—and reminds us—that:

• republics are sustained by disciplined citizens,
• leaders must be formed, not merely elected,
• and freedom requires character as much as it requires laws.

In a moment when American institutions strain under polarization, mistrust, and moral exhaustion, Xenophon returns as a quiet voice from antiquity: Freedom is fragile. Leadership is moral. Character is destiny.