Christopher Perren tries to rescue the liberal arts from Limbaugh's incoherence and disdain:
Today a classical education may not result in a quick hire as a web developer, project manager or accountant. But study the people who have had a good classical education. You will find them leading and serving others. … The classically-educated serve well, and have for about a thousand years. Perhaps the most famous CEO of all time (Steve Jobs) repeatedly said that he sought to make Apple the intersection of the liberal arts and technology.
Joseph Knippenberg and David Freddoso are on the same page:
If American conservatives are trying to conserve any particular thing, that thing is precisely the subject of a "Classical Studies" major.
My only serious academic mistake was in learning German rather than Ancient Greek in high school. My dad was convinced we'd all be run by Germans in the future (and how right he was) but the now rusty skill hasn't helped much at all. A Heidegger sentence makes a teensy bit more sense in the original, but that's about it. (Yeah, I know: poseur alert material). But Greek? I could tackle the Gospels in the original! I could read Plato and Aristotle as they were meant to be read.
But the main reason for a classical education is precisely its uselessness. True learning is practically useless; and it should be. It is not about deploying knowledge to master the world, it is about the pursuit of truth for the sake of nothing else. It is about the highest things. How is a life worth living if it ignores them?
The Dish 