Saturday, April 30, 2005
Leo Strauss and the Neo Cons
This longish piece is a overview of the philosophies of Leo Strauss, who is the intellectual founder of neoconservatism. If you are not familar with his work then I would suggest you read this.
Jax
I decided to step away from my computer for a few days and catch up on
my reading – I’m getting tired of looking at the same set of book
covers on the left side of my page, and figured I should either read a
couple of them or stop pretending and take them down.
So I spent the better part of last weekend working my way through
Shadia Drury’s book: Leo Strauss and the American Right
-- a project I
should have tackled several years ago, before the neocons re-emerged as such
a public menace.
Know thy enemy is always good advice, and while I had some minor
dealings with a few of the neocon leading lights during my days as a
reporter, I’ve never really taken the time to study their philosophy, or to
learn more about Strauss, their intellectual capo di tutti capo.
Drury, on the other hand, appears to have made an academic career out
of it. What’s more, she has the distinct advantage of being able to
argue Plato and Aristotle with the best of them, while most of what I know
about the classics comes from watching old Ray Harryhausen movies.
Seriously, though, moral philosophy wasn’t one of my academic strong suits,
and while I’m a little better versed in the political dead white guys
that mattered to Strauss (such as Hobbes, Rousseau and Machiavelli) I’d
never try to play the expert -- not in front of a live audience anyway.
But I am, for obvious reasons, intensely interested in the political
ideas that have influenced the neocon cadres -- which is to say, I’d
really like to know how the bastards think.
Drury is a liberal, and, being a Canadian, doesn’t have to pretend to
be something else, as American liberals have felt compelled to do since
about 1968. So she’s hardly an objective source. However, since I’m a
“progressive” (i.e. a post-1968 American liberal) it seems reasonable to
assume my interpretation of Strauss, and of the neocons, would be
roughly comparable with hers if I had spent the better part of my adult
years studying their moral philosophy.
And if that seems like a blatant example of wanting to have my existing
prejudices reinforced, sue me. This is a blog post, not a dissertation.
Watch on the Rhine
What strikes me most about the Straussians – and by extension, the
neocons – is that they’ve pushed the traditional liberal/conservative
dichotomy of American politics back about 150 years, and moved it roughly
4,000 miles to the east, to the far side of the Rhine River. Their grand
existential struggle isn’t with the likes of Teddy Kennedy or even
Franklin D. Roosevelt, it’s with the liberalism of Voltaire, John Locke and
John Stuart Mill – not to mention the author of the Declaration of the
Independence.
Strauss, in other words, wasn’t a neo anything. He was a conservative
in the original European sense – fond of hierarchy, tradition and
religious orthodoxy; deeply suspicious of newfangled ideas like
egalitarianism, rationalism and a political theory based on enlightened self
interest and the social contract. Nor was he impressed by Mill’s utilitarian
adding machine – constantly calculating the greatest good for the
greatest number.
To the Straussians, rationality does not provide an adequate basis for
a stable social order. To the contrary, the Age of Enlightenment has
ushered in the crisis of modernity, in which nihilism – the moral vacuum
left behind by the death of God – inevitably leads to decadence,
decline and, ultimately, genocide.
That logical leap from Jefferson to Hitler might seem like the
intellectual equivalent of Evel Knieval’s outlandish attempt to jump the Snake
River canyon on a rocket-powered motorcycle. But it’s essential to the
Straussian world view – just as it provides the crucial angst that
gives neo-conservatism such sharp political edges.
When Newt Gingrich equated feminism with the destruction of Western
civ, he was echoing (in his dumbed-down way) Strauss’s lurking fear that
the liberal American state would steer the same course as the Weimar
Republic – a political Titanic on a collision course with a totalitarian
iceberg. Deprived of the moral certainty provided by religion and
tradition, the masses are vulnerable to crazed political adventurers who
would fill the nihilistic void with their own crackpot ideas – like, say,
the international conspiracy of Communists and Freemasons. They might
even be worse than Tom DeLay. Or, as Drury laconically puts it:
Strauss . . . does not disagree with Marx that religion is the
opium of the masses, he just thinks that people need their opium.
What gives Straussian thought its special flavor – a bitter blend of
hypocrisy and cynicism – is the fact that Strauss himself didn’t believe
in the eternal “truths” he championed. He was a nihilist, in other
words – but one who believed only the philosophical elite could be trusted
to indulge in such a dangerous vice. In exchange for this privilege,
the elite has a special obligation to uphold the “noble lies” the
ignorant masses must live by if society is to survive.
What’s more, Strauss not only thought this – he believed the ancient
philosophers agreed with him, which is why their texts shouldn’t be read
literally – at least not by the privileged elite. It seems that
Strauss, like Madonna, had a thing for Kabbalism. He believed his Greek role
models had endowed their Great Books with two very different meanings:
one for the elect and one for the masses (like first class and coach, in
other words, but with extra frequent flyer miles for the PhDs.) But
these secret meanings had been carefully concealed, so as not to scare the
children with the awful truth – or, more accurately, the awful lack of
truth. They could, however, be deciphered by wise and virtuous
philosophers who understood and shared the classical world view – by Leo
Strauss, in other words.
As Drury points out, people who go looking for hidden meanings usually
find them. And everywhere Strauss looked – in the works of Plato,
Aristotle and Nietzsche – he found . . . Leo Strauss, staring back up at him
from the page. A philosophical case of “incestuous amplification,” in
other words, a tendency the Straussians have emulated unto the present
day, and not just in the Pentagon’s E ring.
The ridicule of the Straussians in the academy is connected to
their unquestioning devotion to a set of ideas that they cannot or will not
defend except to those who are already converted . . . For they do not
want their ideas discussed openly or even known to anyone outside the
charmed circle of initiates.
The Populist Ploy
All this would be just another academic exercise – so to speak – if
some of the Straussians hadn’t turned his philosophical fixations into a
political crusade to “save” America from the horrors of modernity.
Whether this was originally Strauss’s project or something his followers
dreamed up later isn’t clear, at least not from Drury’s book. What is
clear is that Strauss took great pains to recruit disciples who could
transmit his ideas to future generations of impressionable young
philosophers. And some of these apostles, such as political scientist Willmoore
Kendall, sought to extend his influence to the political as well as the
intellectual elite – positioning Strauss as the philosopher behind the
philosopher kings.
Through these channels, Straussian ideas have thoroughly penetrated the
modern GOP – and not only its avowedly neocon wing. Kendall was William
F. Buckley Jr.’s mentor at Yale; Irving Kristol has cited Strauss as a
primary influence; Newt Gingrich cribbed heavily from Straussian theory
(and tactics) in drafting the Contract On America. Rove and his crew
are born Straussians – even if they can’t spell the word philosophy, much
less pronounce it.
One of the Straussians’ most important innovations has been to
reconcile their brand of elite conservatism with Southern fried demagogic
populism ala Huey Long and George Wallace. That’s a pretty radical
concession for a movement with its mind (or at least its heart) planted firmly
in the fifth century BC. But it's solved the traditional dilemma of
old-style conservatives in America: How to win power in a society that has
no landed gentry, no nobility, no established church – none of Europe’s
archaic feudal institutions and loyalties.
The rationale – or rationalization – for the populist ploy is that the
common folk are a hell of a lot less liberal (again, using the
Enlightenment definition of the word) than what the Straussians like to call
America’s “parchment regime” – that is, the ideas and principles
enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The
masses want their opium, in other words, and with the right guidance, will
happily sweep away the liberal elites who have been denying it to them.
This, in turn, will set the stage for a golden (or at least silver) age
of religious orthodoxy, patriarchal values and a hierarchical corporate
capitalism stripped of its original libertarian feistiness – all of it
supervised by a moral nanny state freed from the confines of all that
“parchment.”
National Greatness, indeed.
The Death of the Death of God
There are so many problems with this political vision (insane,
potentially catastrophic problems) that it’s hard to know where to begin. I can
start, I suppose, by attacking the notion that liberalism or secularism
– or even nihilism, for that matter – is the royal road to
totalitarianism.
Leaving aside the fact that most totalitarian movements are simply
imitation religions that feed off the same irrational emotions as the
established name brands, there’s the rather obvious empirical example of
modern Europe – about as secular and cosmopolitan a society as ever has
existed. Europe has its social problems just as America has hers, but
it’s not obvious they’re any worse – in fact, on many indicators (teen
pregnancy, drug abuse, violent crime, election turnout, public civility)
they’re clearly better. Likewise, back at the ranch, the Godless blue
states rank, on average, ahead of the Bible-thumping red states on such
hot-button morality indicators as divorce, unwed mothers and domestic
violence.
So perhaps the masses don't need to be spoon fed their religious opium
in order to have a reasonably decent society. The death of God may have
left the neocon elites trembling with existential dread, but it’s
possible that everyman and everywoman can go right on loving their children,
obeying the laws and finding meaning in life even without the old
bugger upstairs.
The nihilist threat, in other words, may be the Straussian version of
an “inside the beltway” issue – one which paralyzes the philosophical
elite but which the rest of the Western world is increasingly inclined to
ignore as it tries to get on with daily life. The horrors of the 20th
century were unquestionably real, and even more terrible ones may well
await us in the 21st. But the horrors of the Thirty Years War, the Holy
Inquisition and the Russian pogroms were also real – and it’s pretty
hard to blame them on the death of God.
If there is a crisis of modernity, it appears to be more a function of
the faithful – some whom are getting awfully violent for a bunch of
opium addicts. When the 9/11 terrorists flew their planes into the World
Trade Center, I can guarantee you they weren’t reciting passages from
Mill’s On Liberty. The real crisis may be the lack of modernity, not a
surplus of the stuff – an argument the neocons themselves are now making,
at least about the religious fanatics in the Middle East.
The ones in Midwest, on the other hand, are another story. To the
Straussians, it apparently doesn’t matter what kind of religious orthodoxy
America has – as long as it has one. And so the highly educated
followers of a Jewish refugee from demented old Europe have allied themselves
with some of the most ignorant, racist and xenophobic people in modern
crazy America.
There’s a certain irony to this, because it seems Strauss himself had a
somewhat ambiguous relationship with fascism. Like many German
conservatives, his contempt for Enlightenment values was influenced by the
“organic” and “volkish” sensibilities of German Romanticism – the same
ideological compost heap that eventually sprouted National Socialism.
It’s surely no coincidence that Strauss’s two leading intellectual
mentors – the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger and the legal
theorist Carl Schmitt – both ended up playing patty cake with the Nazis.
Schmitt, in particular, was the parent of a rather chilling political
theory in which the struggle against the “other” (whether external or
internal) was held to exist outside any moral or ethical constraints. The
result was supposed to be the creation of a “pure enemy,” one who could
not be demonized as evil or immoral even as he was “existentially
negated.” But Drury points out that in the real world, Schmitt’s “negation”
could just as easily be interpreted as permission for total war against
the enemies of the volk – a war of annihilation.
Drury speculates that Schmitt’s theories may have influenced Strauss’s
belief that an external enemy – the “other” – is as necessary as public
religion for the health of the state. By derivation, this may also be
the source of the neocon fascination with militarism as a sign of
national vitality. One can only wonder where Strauss’s philosophical journey
might have taken him if his Jewishness hadn’t made him one of the “pure
enemies” to be “existentially negated.” It seems the whiff of fascism
that surrounds the neocons has real historical antecedents.
The Little Curs
The real threat, however, isn’t that the neocons are fascists, but that
their cynicism and egoism could open the door to something more like
the genuine article.
The Straussians see themselves as the new elite, leading the
opium-eating masses back to the Zion of moral certainty and public virtue. But
it’s a ridiculous fantasy to think the social clock can be turned back by
political means – or that the kind of society they desire can be
maintained in a highly advanced post-industrial country at the center of
rapidly globalizing economy. America isn’t Athens. It isn’t even Sparta.
And it also isn’t John Winthrop’s “city on the hill, raised up.” The old
Puritan tradition may still be powerful, but isn’t nearly strong enough
to serve as the organizing principle for a new/old social order – at
least, not without banging a hell of lot of skulls together. As Drury
puts it:
The strategy relies on America’s puritanical longing for virtue – a
longing that is ultimately incompatible with the love of freedom. The
political success of neoconservatism depends on the capacity for the
desire for virtue to triumph over the love of freedom.
But love of freedom may not have the edge in that battle. Maybe
modernity isn’t in crisis, but classic liberalism – and the political
institutions it created – is trapped in a dire one. It, too, seems increasingly
incompatible with the demands of imperial globalization. And the
“parchment regime” that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison gave us is being
subverted by the very forces – the executive branch, the corporate
media, one and a half of the two major political parties – that are supposed
to defend it.
As I’ve said before, the American constitutional edifice reminds me of
a house riddled by termites – it looks solid enough from the outside,
but lean too hard against a wall and big pieces might start toppling
over. And right now, the neocons and their Bible Belt allies are leaning
pretty damned hard. There are days (like “Justice Sunday”) when the
Weimar analogy no longer seems so far fetched.
If we’re fortunate – as fortunate as America has been through most of
its history – the center will hold. Things won’t fall apart. The
neocons, having overreached, will be thrown for a big loss and forced to punt.
But I’m not as confident as I used to be that the game still works that
way.
What’s more, if the neocons did succeed in tearing up the liberal
parchment regime, I seriously doubt they could control the forces they’ve
helped unleash. The Bible fedayeen aren’t exactly yearning for a little
recycled Plato from the philosophical elite. Their version of the city
on the hill might not have room for a philosophical elite – not unless
it’s a fundamentalist Protestant one, which is a contradiction in terms.
The risk, then, is that by unleashing the forces of religious populism
to save America from the inevitable consequences of liberal nihilism,
the Straussians conceivably could end up assisting the very catastrophe
they claim they’re trying to avoid.
And wouldn’t that be ironic.(Link)
Jax
I decided to step away from my computer for a few days and catch up on
my reading – I’m getting tired of looking at the same set of book
covers on the left side of my page, and figured I should either read a
couple of them or stop pretending and take them down.
So I spent the better part of last weekend working my way through
Shadia Drury’s book: Leo Strauss and the American Right
-- a project Ishould have tackled several years ago, before the neocons re-emerged as such
a public menace.
Know thy enemy is always good advice, and while I had some minor
dealings with a few of the neocon leading lights during my days as a
reporter, I’ve never really taken the time to study their philosophy, or to
learn more about Strauss, their intellectual capo di tutti capo.
Drury, on the other hand, appears to have made an academic career out
of it. What’s more, she has the distinct advantage of being able to
argue Plato and Aristotle with the best of them, while most of what I know
about the classics comes from watching old Ray Harryhausen movies.
Seriously, though, moral philosophy wasn’t one of my academic strong suits,
and while I’m a little better versed in the political dead white guys
that mattered to Strauss (such as Hobbes, Rousseau and Machiavelli) I’d
never try to play the expert -- not in front of a live audience anyway.
But I am, for obvious reasons, intensely interested in the political
ideas that have influenced the neocon cadres -- which is to say, I’d
really like to know how the bastards think.
Drury is a liberal, and, being a Canadian, doesn’t have to pretend to
be something else, as American liberals have felt compelled to do since
about 1968. So she’s hardly an objective source. However, since I’m a
“progressive” (i.e. a post-1968 American liberal) it seems reasonable to
assume my interpretation of Strauss, and of the neocons, would be
roughly comparable with hers if I had spent the better part of my adult
years studying their moral philosophy.
And if that seems like a blatant example of wanting to have my existing
prejudices reinforced, sue me. This is a blog post, not a dissertation.
Watch on the Rhine
What strikes me most about the Straussians – and by extension, the
neocons – is that they’ve pushed the traditional liberal/conservative
dichotomy of American politics back about 150 years, and moved it roughly
4,000 miles to the east, to the far side of the Rhine River. Their grand
existential struggle isn’t with the likes of Teddy Kennedy or even
Franklin D. Roosevelt, it’s with the liberalism of Voltaire, John Locke and
John Stuart Mill – not to mention the author of the Declaration of the
Independence.
Strauss, in other words, wasn’t a neo anything. He was a conservative
in the original European sense – fond of hierarchy, tradition and
religious orthodoxy; deeply suspicious of newfangled ideas like
egalitarianism, rationalism and a political theory based on enlightened self
interest and the social contract. Nor was he impressed by Mill’s utilitarian
adding machine – constantly calculating the greatest good for the
greatest number.
To the Straussians, rationality does not provide an adequate basis for
a stable social order. To the contrary, the Age of Enlightenment has
ushered in the crisis of modernity, in which nihilism – the moral vacuum
left behind by the death of God – inevitably leads to decadence,
decline and, ultimately, genocide.
That logical leap from Jefferson to Hitler might seem like the
intellectual equivalent of Evel Knieval’s outlandish attempt to jump the Snake
River canyon on a rocket-powered motorcycle. But it’s essential to the
Straussian world view – just as it provides the crucial angst that
gives neo-conservatism such sharp political edges.
When Newt Gingrich equated feminism with the destruction of Western
civ, he was echoing (in his dumbed-down way) Strauss’s lurking fear that
the liberal American state would steer the same course as the Weimar
Republic – a political Titanic on a collision course with a totalitarian
iceberg. Deprived of the moral certainty provided by religion and
tradition, the masses are vulnerable to crazed political adventurers who
would fill the nihilistic void with their own crackpot ideas – like, say,
the international conspiracy of Communists and Freemasons. They might
even be worse than Tom DeLay. Or, as Drury laconically puts it:
Strauss . . . does not disagree with Marx that religion is the
opium of the masses, he just thinks that people need their opium.
What gives Straussian thought its special flavor – a bitter blend of
hypocrisy and cynicism – is the fact that Strauss himself didn’t believe
in the eternal “truths” he championed. He was a nihilist, in other
words – but one who believed only the philosophical elite could be trusted
to indulge in such a dangerous vice. In exchange for this privilege,
the elite has a special obligation to uphold the “noble lies” the
ignorant masses must live by if society is to survive.
What’s more, Strauss not only thought this – he believed the ancient
philosophers agreed with him, which is why their texts shouldn’t be read
literally – at least not by the privileged elite. It seems that
Strauss, like Madonna, had a thing for Kabbalism. He believed his Greek role
models had endowed their Great Books with two very different meanings:
one for the elect and one for the masses (like first class and coach, in
other words, but with extra frequent flyer miles for the PhDs.) But
these secret meanings had been carefully concealed, so as not to scare the
children with the awful truth – or, more accurately, the awful lack of
truth. They could, however, be deciphered by wise and virtuous
philosophers who understood and shared the classical world view – by Leo
Strauss, in other words.
As Drury points out, people who go looking for hidden meanings usually
find them. And everywhere Strauss looked – in the works of Plato,
Aristotle and Nietzsche – he found . . . Leo Strauss, staring back up at him
from the page. A philosophical case of “incestuous amplification,” in
other words, a tendency the Straussians have emulated unto the present
day, and not just in the Pentagon’s E ring.
The ridicule of the Straussians in the academy is connected to
their unquestioning devotion to a set of ideas that they cannot or will not
defend except to those who are already converted . . . For they do not
want their ideas discussed openly or even known to anyone outside the
charmed circle of initiates.
The Populist Ploy
All this would be just another academic exercise – so to speak – if
some of the Straussians hadn’t turned his philosophical fixations into a
political crusade to “save” America from the horrors of modernity.
Whether this was originally Strauss’s project or something his followers
dreamed up later isn’t clear, at least not from Drury’s book. What is
clear is that Strauss took great pains to recruit disciples who could
transmit his ideas to future generations of impressionable young
philosophers. And some of these apostles, such as political scientist Willmoore
Kendall, sought to extend his influence to the political as well as the
intellectual elite – positioning Strauss as the philosopher behind the
philosopher kings.
Through these channels, Straussian ideas have thoroughly penetrated the
modern GOP – and not only its avowedly neocon wing. Kendall was William
F. Buckley Jr.’s mentor at Yale; Irving Kristol has cited Strauss as a
primary influence; Newt Gingrich cribbed heavily from Straussian theory
(and tactics) in drafting the Contract On America. Rove and his crew
are born Straussians – even if they can’t spell the word philosophy, much
less pronounce it.
One of the Straussians’ most important innovations has been to
reconcile their brand of elite conservatism with Southern fried demagogic
populism ala Huey Long and George Wallace. That’s a pretty radical
concession for a movement with its mind (or at least its heart) planted firmly
in the fifth century BC. But it's solved the traditional dilemma of
old-style conservatives in America: How to win power in a society that has
no landed gentry, no nobility, no established church – none of Europe’s
archaic feudal institutions and loyalties.
The rationale – or rationalization – for the populist ploy is that the
common folk are a hell of a lot less liberal (again, using the
Enlightenment definition of the word) than what the Straussians like to call
America’s “parchment regime” – that is, the ideas and principles
enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The
masses want their opium, in other words, and with the right guidance, will
happily sweep away the liberal elites who have been denying it to them.
This, in turn, will set the stage for a golden (or at least silver) age
of religious orthodoxy, patriarchal values and a hierarchical corporate
capitalism stripped of its original libertarian feistiness – all of it
supervised by a moral nanny state freed from the confines of all that
“parchment.”
National Greatness, indeed.
The Death of the Death of God
There are so many problems with this political vision (insane,
potentially catastrophic problems) that it’s hard to know where to begin. I can
start, I suppose, by attacking the notion that liberalism or secularism
– or even nihilism, for that matter – is the royal road to
totalitarianism.
Leaving aside the fact that most totalitarian movements are simply
imitation religions that feed off the same irrational emotions as the
established name brands, there’s the rather obvious empirical example of
modern Europe – about as secular and cosmopolitan a society as ever has
existed. Europe has its social problems just as America has hers, but
it’s not obvious they’re any worse – in fact, on many indicators (teen
pregnancy, drug abuse, violent crime, election turnout, public civility)
they’re clearly better. Likewise, back at the ranch, the Godless blue
states rank, on average, ahead of the Bible-thumping red states on such
hot-button morality indicators as divorce, unwed mothers and domestic
violence.
So perhaps the masses don't need to be spoon fed their religious opium
in order to have a reasonably decent society. The death of God may have
left the neocon elites trembling with existential dread, but it’s
possible that everyman and everywoman can go right on loving their children,
obeying the laws and finding meaning in life even without the old
bugger upstairs.
The nihilist threat, in other words, may be the Straussian version of
an “inside the beltway” issue – one which paralyzes the philosophical
elite but which the rest of the Western world is increasingly inclined to
ignore as it tries to get on with daily life. The horrors of the 20th
century were unquestionably real, and even more terrible ones may well
await us in the 21st. But the horrors of the Thirty Years War, the Holy
Inquisition and the Russian pogroms were also real – and it’s pretty
hard to blame them on the death of God.
If there is a crisis of modernity, it appears to be more a function of
the faithful – some whom are getting awfully violent for a bunch of
opium addicts. When the 9/11 terrorists flew their planes into the World
Trade Center, I can guarantee you they weren’t reciting passages from
Mill’s On Liberty. The real crisis may be the lack of modernity, not a
surplus of the stuff – an argument the neocons themselves are now making,
at least about the religious fanatics in the Middle East.
The ones in Midwest, on the other hand, are another story. To the
Straussians, it apparently doesn’t matter what kind of religious orthodoxy
America has – as long as it has one. And so the highly educated
followers of a Jewish refugee from demented old Europe have allied themselves
with some of the most ignorant, racist and xenophobic people in modern
crazy America.
There’s a certain irony to this, because it seems Strauss himself had a
somewhat ambiguous relationship with fascism. Like many German
conservatives, his contempt for Enlightenment values was influenced by the
“organic” and “volkish” sensibilities of German Romanticism – the same
ideological compost heap that eventually sprouted National Socialism.
It’s surely no coincidence that Strauss’s two leading intellectual
mentors – the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger and the legal
theorist Carl Schmitt – both ended up playing patty cake with the Nazis.
Schmitt, in particular, was the parent of a rather chilling political
theory in which the struggle against the “other” (whether external or
internal) was held to exist outside any moral or ethical constraints. The
result was supposed to be the creation of a “pure enemy,” one who could
not be demonized as evil or immoral even as he was “existentially
negated.” But Drury points out that in the real world, Schmitt’s “negation”
could just as easily be interpreted as permission for total war against
the enemies of the volk – a war of annihilation.
Drury speculates that Schmitt’s theories may have influenced Strauss’s
belief that an external enemy – the “other” – is as necessary as public
religion for the health of the state. By derivation, this may also be
the source of the neocon fascination with militarism as a sign of
national vitality. One can only wonder where Strauss’s philosophical journey
might have taken him if his Jewishness hadn’t made him one of the “pure
enemies” to be “existentially negated.” It seems the whiff of fascism
that surrounds the neocons has real historical antecedents.
The Little Curs
The real threat, however, isn’t that the neocons are fascists, but that
their cynicism and egoism could open the door to something more like
the genuine article.
The Straussians see themselves as the new elite, leading the
opium-eating masses back to the Zion of moral certainty and public virtue. But
it’s a ridiculous fantasy to think the social clock can be turned back by
political means – or that the kind of society they desire can be
maintained in a highly advanced post-industrial country at the center of
rapidly globalizing economy. America isn’t Athens. It isn’t even Sparta.
And it also isn’t John Winthrop’s “city on the hill, raised up.” The old
Puritan tradition may still be powerful, but isn’t nearly strong enough
to serve as the organizing principle for a new/old social order – at
least, not without banging a hell of lot of skulls together. As Drury
puts it:
The strategy relies on America’s puritanical longing for virtue – a
longing that is ultimately incompatible with the love of freedom. The
political success of neoconservatism depends on the capacity for the
desire for virtue to triumph over the love of freedom.
But love of freedom may not have the edge in that battle. Maybe
modernity isn’t in crisis, but classic liberalism – and the political
institutions it created – is trapped in a dire one. It, too, seems increasingly
incompatible with the demands of imperial globalization. And the
“parchment regime” that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison gave us is being
subverted by the very forces – the executive branch, the corporate
media, one and a half of the two major political parties – that are supposed
to defend it.
As I’ve said before, the American constitutional edifice reminds me of
a house riddled by termites – it looks solid enough from the outside,
but lean too hard against a wall and big pieces might start toppling
over. And right now, the neocons and their Bible Belt allies are leaning
pretty damned hard. There are days (like “Justice Sunday”) when the
Weimar analogy no longer seems so far fetched.
If we’re fortunate – as fortunate as America has been through most of
its history – the center will hold. Things won’t fall apart. The
neocons, having overreached, will be thrown for a big loss and forced to punt.
But I’m not as confident as I used to be that the game still works that
way.
What’s more, if the neocons did succeed in tearing up the liberal
parchment regime, I seriously doubt they could control the forces they’ve
helped unleash. The Bible fedayeen aren’t exactly yearning for a little
recycled Plato from the philosophical elite. Their version of the city
on the hill might not have room for a philosophical elite – not unless
it’s a fundamentalist Protestant one, which is a contradiction in terms.
The risk, then, is that by unleashing the forces of religious populism
to save America from the inevitable consequences of liberal nihilism,
the Straussians conceivably could end up assisting the very catastrophe
they claim they’re trying to avoid.
And wouldn’t that be ironic.(Link)
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The risk, then, is that by unleashing the forces of religious populism
to save America from the inevitable consequences of liberal nihilism,
the Straussians conceivably could end up assisting the very catastrophe
they claim they’re trying to avoid.
What strikes me about modern America is that there's a sizeable and growing segment that belongs to the anti-democratic/anti-human rights & freedoms camp of extreme/devout/fundamentalist segment of the Christian religion.
This segment isn't going to die down without significant social turmoil, so, I guess a question worth pondering is: "How can this turmoil be accelerated?" or, more abitiously, "How can this anti-human rights and freedoms camp be contained, PERMANENTLY?"
What offers a glimmer of hope is that the bulk of Americans are no more ideological about their religion than are Canadians or Europeans. This segment of society has to turn the extremists into parriahs.
Europe and Canada has their fair share of right-wing loonies but they're contained and sequestered from society.
How does the world contain America, and, how does it constrain the power of the Judeo-Muslem-Christian religion (and, all other religion/religion-like politics (e.g. Communism with a capital C)?
to save America from the inevitable consequences of liberal nihilism,
the Straussians conceivably could end up assisting the very catastrophe
they claim they’re trying to avoid.
What strikes me about modern America is that there's a sizeable and growing segment that belongs to the anti-democratic/anti-human rights & freedoms camp of extreme/devout/fundamentalist segment of the Christian religion.
This segment isn't going to die down without significant social turmoil, so, I guess a question worth pondering is: "How can this turmoil be accelerated?" or, more abitiously, "How can this anti-human rights and freedoms camp be contained, PERMANENTLY?"
What offers a glimmer of hope is that the bulk of Americans are no more ideological about their religion than are Canadians or Europeans. This segment of society has to turn the extremists into parriahs.
Europe and Canada has their fair share of right-wing loonies but they're contained and sequestered from society.
How does the world contain America, and, how does it constrain the power of the Judeo-Muslem-Christian religion (and, all other religion/religion-like politics (e.g. Communism with a capital C)?
# posted by 
: 5/05/2005 05:44:00 p.m.
: 5/05/2005 05:44:00 p.m.
It really is quite annoying to see so many errors repeated so often.
The Straussians are not a cabal of mad geniuses bent on world domination. The original Straussians, Strauss’ students, are all now quite old and toothless, though some are quite a bit sharper in their dotage than many academics are in their prime. They, and their students, and their students’ students, and their students’ students’ students, style themselves as “political philosophers,” or, more correctly, as historians of political philosophy. They are employed as political theorists at political science departments around the country. Their activities, as far as I can see, consist of: teaching, publishing obscure articles on obscure themes about Maimonides or al-Farabi in obscure journals edited and peer-reviewed by other Straussians, publishing elsewhere (which is of a lower priority), inviting their friends, teachers, students and other Straussians to come and speak at their institution, getting their students hired at other institutions (usually happens when another Straussian retires, creating a vacancy), and recruiting those very, very few who are capable/interested in becoming one of the next generation of Straussians. You’ll note that several of these activities are related to getting new Straussians and ensuring that they have successful careers. This emphasis has much to do with the continued success of the Straussian school in American political science.
Newt Gingrich is not a Straussian, nor are Carl Rove and company. They do not know the secret handshake. It is true that Straussians teach how to be politically effective, and this boils down to following Machiavelli’s advice. This does not mean Gingrich learned this from Strauss. In his case, I suspect he read the Machiavel on his own. Rove isn’t an academic, and therefore cannot be a real Straussian. Accusing him of somehow being an accidental Straussian is meaningless, sort of like accusing someone of being an accidental 13-th degree Mason.
Drury wrote some few correct things in her book, but she goes overboard, especially in accusing Strauss of being a student of Schmitt. Strauss was a student of Ernst Cassirer, not Schmitt. Schmitt and Strauss knew of each other, and corresponded very briefly, and Schmitt did write a letter of recommendation for Strauss. But that’s all that is documented. It’s not like Schmitt was Strauss’ Dissertatsionsvater or anything. That was, again, Cassirer. I won’t belabor the point, but, Drury notwithstanding, their theories, works and methods have little in common. The only thing they have in common is that they were German academics of roughly the same generation (Schmitt was, I think, 10 years older). As such, they had roughly the same education and cultural development (extensive reading in the classical tradition), so you can find certain similarities in language and in references, but that is really all.
Finally, you write that “The Bible fedayeen aren’t exactly yearning for a little recycled Plato from the philosophical elite. Their version of the city on the hill might not have room for a philosophical elite – not unless it’s a fundamentalist Protestant one, which is a contradiction in terms.” Don’t you think that the Straussians, as smart as they are, realize this? They are, of course, mainly Jewish. It is the neocons, not the Straussians, who have made a Faustian bargain with the evangelicals. Straussians teach that the ideal life is to practice philosophy, with they seem to interpret as being practicing academics at the university. Straussians are really quite comfortable in their existence in the university, but realize how tenuous it is—they teach exactly this! They believe in a profoundly pessimistic and anti-democratic teaching. They are the very last people who would go out and stir up the rabble.
Just because someone claims to have been influenced by someone does not mean they have the interpretation correct. The evangelicals claim to be most directly influenced by Jesus, all the while teaching and acting in the most un-Christlike ways imaginable! (Who was, by the way, himself another Jewish teacher who recycled Plato for the masses.)
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The Straussians are not a cabal of mad geniuses bent on world domination. The original Straussians, Strauss’ students, are all now quite old and toothless, though some are quite a bit sharper in their dotage than many academics are in their prime. They, and their students, and their students’ students, and their students’ students’ students, style themselves as “political philosophers,” or, more correctly, as historians of political philosophy. They are employed as political theorists at political science departments around the country. Their activities, as far as I can see, consist of: teaching, publishing obscure articles on obscure themes about Maimonides or al-Farabi in obscure journals edited and peer-reviewed by other Straussians, publishing elsewhere (which is of a lower priority), inviting their friends, teachers, students and other Straussians to come and speak at their institution, getting their students hired at other institutions (usually happens when another Straussian retires, creating a vacancy), and recruiting those very, very few who are capable/interested in becoming one of the next generation of Straussians. You’ll note that several of these activities are related to getting new Straussians and ensuring that they have successful careers. This emphasis has much to do with the continued success of the Straussian school in American political science.
Newt Gingrich is not a Straussian, nor are Carl Rove and company. They do not know the secret handshake. It is true that Straussians teach how to be politically effective, and this boils down to following Machiavelli’s advice. This does not mean Gingrich learned this from Strauss. In his case, I suspect he read the Machiavel on his own. Rove isn’t an academic, and therefore cannot be a real Straussian. Accusing him of somehow being an accidental Straussian is meaningless, sort of like accusing someone of being an accidental 13-th degree Mason.
Drury wrote some few correct things in her book, but she goes overboard, especially in accusing Strauss of being a student of Schmitt. Strauss was a student of Ernst Cassirer, not Schmitt. Schmitt and Strauss knew of each other, and corresponded very briefly, and Schmitt did write a letter of recommendation for Strauss. But that’s all that is documented. It’s not like Schmitt was Strauss’ Dissertatsionsvater or anything. That was, again, Cassirer. I won’t belabor the point, but, Drury notwithstanding, their theories, works and methods have little in common. The only thing they have in common is that they were German academics of roughly the same generation (Schmitt was, I think, 10 years older). As such, they had roughly the same education and cultural development (extensive reading in the classical tradition), so you can find certain similarities in language and in references, but that is really all.
Finally, you write that “The Bible fedayeen aren’t exactly yearning for a little recycled Plato from the philosophical elite. Their version of the city on the hill might not have room for a philosophical elite – not unless it’s a fundamentalist Protestant one, which is a contradiction in terms.” Don’t you think that the Straussians, as smart as they are, realize this? They are, of course, mainly Jewish. It is the neocons, not the Straussians, who have made a Faustian bargain with the evangelicals. Straussians teach that the ideal life is to practice philosophy, with they seem to interpret as being practicing academics at the university. Straussians are really quite comfortable in their existence in the university, but realize how tenuous it is—they teach exactly this! They believe in a profoundly pessimistic and anti-democratic teaching. They are the very last people who would go out and stir up the rabble.
Just because someone claims to have been influenced by someone does not mean they have the interpretation correct. The evangelicals claim to be most directly influenced by Jesus, all the while teaching and acting in the most un-Christlike ways imaginable! (Who was, by the way, himself another Jewish teacher who recycled Plato for the masses.)
# posted by : 5/14/2005 04:37:00 p.m.
: 5/14/2005 04:37:00 p.m. << Home
