Dear Meteor Blades, and JLFinch:

Dear Friends and fellow Kossacks.  I wish to call attention to Meteor Blades front paged posting about the PNAC, and the fine job he did.  Also I would like to answer Kossack JLFinch for his reply about the PNAC neos and fellow travelers being "traitors," and "insidious" ones at that.

But, any discussion of the neo-conservatives and PNAC or any updated version of the same goes nowhere without a basic understanding of one, Leo Strauss.

Strauss was a philosopher and is clearly very deep down in the second string of 20th century philosophical names.  But his impact has been profound, especially in the United States.  Let's make the jump.

This diary started as a reply to JLFinch and grew so lenghty that I felt something more would be more appropriate.

Let's assume you have heard the name Leo Strauss and might have thought he was an old time manager for the Chicago Cubs.  Sorry, wrong Leo.

Leo Strauss was a German-Jewish academic.  He ended up in the US before World War 2, and became a citizen in 1944.  For more biography, go here.

Two of the best pieces I have read about Strauss in terms of understanding him are from Scott Horton of Harper's Magazine.  

Scott, writing in July of 2006 at Balkinization reveals a great deal about Strauss at a time before the November 2006 elections.  Though down, the neos and Republicans were far from out, and neo policies were quite active at that date.  Scott's post about Strauss reveals a great deal about the man that has been glossed over or is likely unknown.

Strauss can best be called a German conservative who yearned for a return to the German Monarchy and very limited democracy.

Strauss flirted with Fascism of the Mussolini variety, if we define Fascism as strongman governance and Corporatism.  Strauss was probably not a Fascist, but it is clear that he certainly gives suspicion for his Fascist tendencies by his writings.  Let Jonah Goldberg deny that one.  

Though an object of persecution, and knowing he would have to flee Germany, Strauss nevertheless refused to blame the German right wing for his plight.  In a letter to Karl Lowith, via Scott's posting, Strauss writes,

And, what concerns this matter: the fact that the new right-wing Germany does not tolerate us says nothing against the principles of the right. To the contrary: only from the principles of the right, that is from fascist, authoritarian and imperial principles, is it possible with seemliness, that is, without resort to the ludicrous and despicable appeal to the droits imprescriptibles de l’homme(5) to protest against the shabby abomination.

("droits imprescritibles de l'homme" means "Inalienable Rights of Man" and emphasis within the blockquote is mine, and "Shabby Abomination" is what Strauss called Nazism)

And I would very much agree with the idea that the merry pranksters in the PNAC and the AEI who were so influential in the Bush administration have, via their application of Straussian thought, forced us to not only save the Constitutional foundations of our Republic, but as commenter "Sandy Levinson" writes at the end of Scott's posting,

What is becoming clearer is that the Bush Administration forces us not only to go back to constitutional fundamentals, but also to return to basic political theory.

Scott goes into some more depth in this article from Harper's.  Scott makes very clear that there have been attempts to do some bizarre contortions with liberalism in order to soften the image of Strauss.  And, it is clear that Professor Horton's critique of Harvey Mansfield's Critique of Eugene Sheppard's recent book on Strauss addresses this contortionism.  Mansfield wrote his critique at the winger hangout Claremont Review of Books subscription required and it is entitled "Timeless Mind."

The messages: Strauss flirted with Fascism, but was probably not a Fascist nearly as much as a cultural conservative with corporatist sentiments; Strauss viewed a state religion as quite important, hence the strange juxtaposition of Straussian "intellectual elite" neocons vis a vis the know-nothingness of the American theocratic right; Strauss was in no way a liberal in any western sense of the word; Strauss viewed the idea that no one, including the leader, is above the law as foolish; Strauss saw law as weakness;  Strauss's ideas are tinged by Nietzsche, and thus by default contain the pessisism that Nietzsche derived from Schopenhauer that some may call nihilism, in spite of his call for a state religion.

So when I look at the neocons and the PNAC hysteria I see Strauss.  And as Scott Horton says...

So what does this letter tell us? Strauss is not by any stretch a "liberal," no matter how you want to qualify that. He is concerned with the hold the Nazis are taking on Germany, and he is looking for a tool to try to pry Germany’s conservatives away from Nazism. There is no doubt that he sees real appeal in fascism, Mussolini style. Strauss’s instincts lie in a pure traditional cultural conservatism. He has no affinity for what followed the collapse of the second Kaiserreich and thought very little of liberal, secular democracy. Probably, like the core of German conservatism, he would have been supremely happy with a resurrection of the Kaiser and his authoritarian rule with minimalist democratic attributes. But he is also remarkably open to a dalliance with fascism.

So there’s good reason for Straussians like Mansfield to be troubled by this letter and what it says about Strauss the man. But we should keep in mind that this is a snapshot in time. Strauss went on to England, and ultimately he made a new homeland in the United States. He clearly changed his attitudes as he came to see that the American project was not the unsustainable horror he first made it out to be. But much of Strauss’s tinkering and his thoughts about "bolstering" American democracy go back to the Caesarism that was common coinage in the days of his university schooling. It clearly has been extremely influential. And not necessarily in a good way.

So, are the neo-cons traitors?  No, but their actions in the run up to Iraq are criminal and likely, are war crimes.  The neo-con, like Strauss fell for Ceaserism.  We as a nation will suffer for this for years to come if we don't, as Strauss was fond of quoting from the sixth book of the AEneid "spare the vanquished, and crush the proud" to make it short.

So when Harry and Nancy or the last Honest Man and St John McCain start gibbering about "success" or how we must allow telco immunity think for a moment about the influence of Strauss, and how is it impacting our government?  

 

•  Tips, alms, flames?

  Sorry for the callout, but blades did a hell of a job.  Let's give Meteror Blades a round of applause here!

  by boilerman10 on Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 12:45:10 AM PDT

  •  You should add Carl Schmitt to the mix

    The current neoconservatives don't admit it, but they take much of their contempt for the rule of Law from Schmidt rather than Strauss.

    http://chronicle.com/...

    Excerpt:

    Schmitt argued that liberals, properly speaking, can never be political. Liberals tend to be optimistic about human nature, whereas "all genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil." Liberals believe in the possibility of neutral rules that can mediate between conflicting positions, but to Schmitt there is no such neutrality, since any rule -- even an ostensibly fair one -- merely represents the victory of one political faction over another. (If that formulation sounds like Stanley Fish when he persistently argues that there is no such thing as principle, that only testifies to the ways in which Schmitt's ideas pervade the contemporary intellectual zeitgeist.) Liberals insist that there exists something called society independent of the state, but Schmitt believed that pluralism is an illusion because no real state would ever allow other forces, like the family or the church, to contest its power. Liberals, in a word, are uncomfortable around power, and, because they are, they criticize politics more than they engage in it.

    No wonder that Schmitt admired thinkers such as Machiavelli and Hobbes, who treated politics without illusions. Leaders inspired by them, in no way in thrall to the individualism of liberal thought, are willing to recognize that sometimes politics involves the sacrifice of life. They are better at fighting wars than liberals because they dispense with such notions as the common good or the interests of all humanity. ("Humanity," Schmitt wrote in a typically terse formulation that is brilliant if you admire it and chilling if you do not, "cannot wage war because it has no enemy.") Conservatives are not bothered by injustice because they recognize that politics means maximizing your side's advantages, not giving them away. If unity can be achieved only by repressing dissent, even at risk of violating the rule of law, that is how conservatives will achieve it.

    by NCrefugee on Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 03:17:09 AM PDT

•  Thank you. Many discussion of Strauss

  become too abstruse for me.  This speaks in terms I can understand without (I think) oversimplifying too much.

  I still wear the guy's jeans, though.  ;)

  by Bob Love on Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 12:53:49 AM PDT

  •  The Nobel Lie

    is really the only thing you need to know about Strausians.

    A lie can be used to unite and guide the masses.

    Religion is a tool for social control, but it is only to control the morality of the masses – the rulers who preached it need not be bound by it.

    by Zwoof on Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 12:59:45 AM PDT

•  On a "right-wing populist note"

  Populist on the right have always had Rambo fantasies. That is it's ok to break the law to defend America. Shoot criminals without trial in movies (lynchings back in the day) that are right-wing populist fanatsies. So Teleco immunity fits th ebill. Ignore the law if it goes along with conservative fantasies of defending America. For a party that for years ran on "law and order" they are very forgiving of corporate, and Oly North style law breaking.

  BTW great article on Strauss I don't think enough "thought leaders" on the left know who he is nad what his ideas are. They really have infected the right through the growth of conservative think tanks.

  by dopper0189 on Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 01:06:48 AM PDT

  •  Don't forget Tom Clancy.

    Great example of the Rambo/John Wayne/Ronald Reagan nexxus. Clancy is definitely an acolyte.

    by homogenius on Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 05:17:50 AM PDT

•  Other teachers

  H. Bradford Westerfield, a Yale political scientist whose courses attracted 10,000 students, mostly undergraduates, among them President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, [John Kerry, Joe Lieberman....] died on Jan. 19 in Watch Hill, R.I. He was 79.

  SNIP
  Mr. Cheney repeatedly said Dr. Westerfield helped shape his hard-line approach to foreign policy. But an article in The Nation in 2004 reported that Dr.
  Westerfield came to regret the hard-nosed lessons Mr. Cheney said he had learned. Dr. Westerfield explained that his own politics had become much more dovish since advocating uncompromising anticommunism in classes Mr. Cheney attended, transformed in large part by America’s troubles in the Vietnam War.

  Dr. Westerfield characterized the current Bush administration as overly confrontational, calling that "precisely the wrong approach."

  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/education/27westerfield.html?ref=obituaries

  As for Leo Straus, contrast him with George Soros' mentor, Karl Popper:

  Among Soros's philanthropic foundations is the Open Society Institute, a think-tank named in honour of Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies, which Soros founded to advance the Popperian defense of the open society against authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

  Popperian philosophy also inspired the creation of Taking Children Seriously, a movement arguing that children and adults should try to resolve their differences without coercion.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/...
  http://en.wikipedia.org/...

  by LNK on Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 01:27:30 AM PDT

  •  Popper is an important figure in intell history

    and I suspect that perhaps one reason some conservatives don't like him is because his framing of what qualifies as science would be anathema to much of the religious right

    by teacherken on Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 02:38:26 AM PDT

•  The Straussian pitch basically adopted by the

  Neocons = feed the Rednecks lots of fables (Religion, the Threat From The Different) so that they'll be willing to volunteer and fight wars for the benefit of Capitalism.

  by Lepanto on Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 01:33:13 AM PDT

•  in the intellectual aftermath of World War I

  when just about every conceivable Western institution was accountable for the four year genocide of the innocents in the trenches,
  the temptation was to completely sweep off the table and start fresh.

  It still resounds with truth. What kind of society could really have sustained that level of  carnage for that long, at that cost and somehow miss the necessity of ending it.  The Western establishment was inviting revolution. And they got a lot of it.

  But when you sweep that table clean and come up with a new way of organizing society you ask some pretty searching questions. The most important being:

  What, above all things am I?

  1. an individual, a member of a family.

  Irrelevant. The QUESTION is about organizing society.

  2. an economic unit. I work with others. I am working class. I share this with my brothers across artifical national boundaries. We were used as cannon fodder. Workers of the world unite. We will celebrate by redistributing economic power and fortune to serve a much wider interest than the "investment class" ever did.

  3. a tribal unit. I am defined by people. My people are a distinct racial/cultural group. My people's interests may not be the interests of other tribes.

  We trust ourselves and not others.
  We will celebrate by creating truly ethic states that promote the distinct language, traditions, religion, and culture.

  4. A Straussian power unit. But most others won't recognize their potential. They can be manipulated.

  But because I understand the presumptuous principle behind Strauss I will strive to impose conditions where people claim to enjoy my exertion of control.
  We celebrate by taking money in enormous sums that go univestigated, lie and obfuscate, try to over-rule constitutional government by exploiting its weakspot... cash friendliness.

  5. a "democrat".  ( And in fact Woodrow Wilson was viewed as the ideological saviour model in the ashes of World War I.)

  I am a member of many communites. Through regular free fair elections the views of my many communities will emerge. Legislators will reflect the views of their consituents. Exemptions will be allowed for representatives only on the grounds of wisdom and no self-interest. We will celebrate by choosing policies and policy makers as an excercise of citizenship in a society that values me as a member.

  No wonder Straussians aren't a mass movement.

  I am still for giving the 5th option one more good old fashioned "college try".  All it needs is politicians who serve the public's best interest and a free media.

  by BWildered on Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 02:33:30 AM PDT

  •  Hello, pleased to meet you...

    Strauss was a veteran of WW I, and served in Belgium as an interpreter.  He would have been either about, or just 18 at that time, and he was conscripted.

    He certainly would have seen some of the carnage of Arras, Passchendale, and River Lys, Second Marne, and the long, slow defeat during the Allies' Argonne Offensive, even if from a distance.

    He would have gravitated towards a right wing-ish ideology as many of the soldiers did...However, be that as it may, Strauss came from an comfortable class background and I can only imagine the impact of the Western Front and the anger of the officers and men around him as Germany drifted slowly and painfully towards defeat.  The sudden "liberation" from a more or less hermetically sealed environment like the Gymnasium Phillipinum, which is associated with the University of Marburg, and onto the Western Front would have been astonishing for him, no doubt.  From discussing neo-Kantian philosophy at the home of the Marburg Cantor, to the madness of a war zone; quite a change, no?

    And then after that to see Germany fall apart, the Kaiser abdicate, and the humiliating terms of the Versailles Treaty, and then the odd and very new nature [for Germany] of the Weimar Republic, even from his student's position at the University of Hamburg must have been disturbing to say the least.  And then to see the rise of the National Socialists!  That's a lot to absorb.

    Is it any wonder that Strauss found refuge in the suffocating, claustrophobic world of the
    German Jewish intelligensia at the universities in the 1920's?  

    Is it any wonder that Strauss disparaged such notable German Jewish intellectual figures as  Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Kurt Tucholsky, Heinrich Mann, et ux whom were all in Paris, as "rabble?"  Those names are important intellecual figures of the Jewish intelligensia, and Strauss was little more than a footnote, and he remained as such until well after his death in 1973.

    Today we know who Strauss was.  And America, as well as Israel, if we include the neo-con influence upon the Likudniks and the Olmert gang, are far poorer because of this knowledge.

    Noble lies?  No laws?  Religion as a cheap and dirty tool for control?  BWildered, all this has led to is ignoble savagry.

    Thanks for stopping by.      

    by boilerman10 on Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 08:24:00 AM PDT

    •  and thank you for your

      very knowledgeable reply.
      My first exposure was a philosphy major at the University of Toronto, and roomie of my fiance, who'd become a Straussian. (1979-81)
      She went on to Chicago to become a "Bloom petal".

      I couldn't fathom the source of her enthusiasm other than getting new meaning from Plato, but it was leading her away from liberal democratic thought and towards right wing extremism.

      The experience has made me aware of "straussians", their sense of being exclusive holders of a truth they weren't too willing to articulate.  

      Arrogance as political starting point?

      by BWildered on Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 10:59:41 AM PDT

•  Thanks to everyone who stopped by...

  I get so depressed when I see ideologues take obscure philosophical ideas and make them into a madness of deceit and horror.

  Damn them, and Strauss too.

  by boilerman10 on Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 08:26:04 AM PDT