There would seem to be only a few degrees of separation between Karl Rove's philosophical muse Leo Strauss and McCain---Strauss to Rove to Bush to McCain. The late Leo Strauss is the philosophical guru of the neocons. In a nutshell his political philosophy has three main components: 1) there is an elite group of people who know what is best for the world--other people should be kept in the dark; 2) that elite group has the right to lie and cheat and do anything it needs to do to gain and keep power; 3) that group is allowed to keep all they do to gain power secret and behind the scenes and deny they are doing it because they are Superior to the rest of us. This thinking applied to the US government is not new it started with Reagan...and grew from there. A big reason that Reagan is so revered by many today is that he was able to apply Strauss' ideas so "charismatically" and so well.
Granted, this is a quick and dirty presentation of a very convoluted, intricate and devious philosophy....but it's a start. More lies beneath the fold.
According to Strauss, there are the natural ruling elites and then there are the rest of us idiots who don't deserve to have any real say in what happens in the world we live in. Karl Rove and his cohorts, starting with the Bush administration, have been fine tuning this political philosophy to engineer a pseudo-democracy...a fascist regime with a democratic veneer that has become so invisibly woven into the American political system that we may never be able to fully extricate ourselves from it. If McCain/Palin are elected this cynical philosophy will become so entrenched that the Constitution will become nothing more than a meaningless old piece of paper.
Under Rove's guidance the application of Straussian philosophy has become the M.O. of Republican campaigns and administrations. And, as we have seen, it is powerful and works---not necessarily for the good of the people, but for the good of the "Straussian Elite" even as the USA goes to hell. They see the US as merely a playing piece in a larger global game. Loudly espousing Patriotism (the lapel flag variety) is a cover lie for their own lack of it. The fact that according to US constitutional law so many of their actions are criminal means nothing--they have no real loyalty to the constitution. To the Rovians, the elite "ruling class," the law is only there for them to manipulate to their ends. They are above the law because they are working for a "higher purpose." This idea is not new it has captured the minds of ambitious people for ages and got a huge boost with the philosophy of Plato. Leo Strauss just updated it and made it more insidious.
The "higher purpose" idea makes the Straussian Neocons appreciate the religious Dominionists because their end goals are the same, except the Dominionists do not know they are one rung down the ladder from the Straussians because the Straussians are not religious (though they may lie and pretend to be) and are only using the truly religious to their own ends. To Rove and other neocon Straussians religion is truly the opium of the masses...and they are the secret drug cartel.
Katherine Yurica in her book Toward a New Political Humanism, states Strauss' political philosophy like this:
First: Strauss believed that a leader had to perpetually deceive the citizens he ruled.
Secondly: Those who lead must understand there is no morality, there is only the right of the superior to rule the inferior.
Thirdly: Religion "is the glue that holds society together." It is a handle by which the ruler can manipulate the masses. Any religion will do. Strauss is indifferent to them all.
Fourthly: "Secular society…is the worst possible thing," because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, all of which encourage dissent and rebellion. "You want a crowd that you can manipulate like putty."
Fifthly: Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat; and following Machiavelli, he maintains that if no external threat exists, then one has to be manufactured.
Sixthly: In Strauss's view, the trouble with liberal society is that it dispenses with noble lies and pious frauds. It tries to found society on secular rational foundations.
Earl Shorris, in a Harpers’ Magazine article Leo Strauss, George Bush, and the philosophy of mass deception says that
..."contradiction" is the key to the Straussian approach, and more than anything else it defines the Bush regime and its circle of influentials. Contradictions are not lies: they are nonsense, unreason. An axis of evil made up of countries that cannot be connected along any imaginable axis is a nonsense statement. A constitutional amendment banning marriage between people of the same gender would pit one part of the Constitution against several others-more nonsense. And when a State of the Union speech has for its peroration the problem of athletes using steroids, nonsense appears to be the preoccupation of the state.
Because contradiction is also used as a method of hypnotic induction--one must consider that through the media there may be a sort of mass hypnosis taking place.
The mind of a confused person is busy trying to make sense of what he is confronted with and draws upon unconscious beliefs and symbols to resolve the confusion. While doing this they are in a form of hypnotic trance of their own making and accept outside suggestions without resistance. Confusion can be created by ambiguous words, self-contradictory sentences, interruption of expected "sense" or a myriad of other disturbances of logical progressions. This type of contradiction was used by master hypnotist and psychiatrist Milton Erickson.
The reality of all this is that Straussian/Rovian morality is really a low level of morality that can be found on any school yard and has been raised to that of pristine academic bullshit. Its basic element is that lying is good. Orwell's 1984 newspeak has arrived later than he anticipated. Lying has become the accepted morality...the ends always justify the means. I have asked college students I have taught, "why do you lie or cheat?" And the honest answer is, without batting an eye..."everyone lies, you have to to get what you want." Evidently the trickle down theory really does work...at least as far as morality goes. These students have learned what Rove has now convinced McCain is the truth, "straight talk will not get you what you want." Even the "press" which at one time people trusted to help them sift out the truth from the bullshit now "modifies" the truth.
Jared Bernstein says, It helps if there's a referee to cry foul when the lies are proffered, but the media has been inconsistent at best, compelled to feign "balance" even when doing so means implicitly endorsing the lies. LINK
The hand of Rove can be seen all over the Republican Presidential campaign. I don't say McCain campaign because, obviously, McCain is not in charge of the campaign, he is only a puppet of the neocons just like his predecessor Bush. For example in the choice of the Republican VP candidate, Sarah Palin.
According to London's Daily Telegraph, the architects of the Palin Doctrine are a group of people who have been singularly wrong about virtually everything in the last decade -- the neocons, who have been briefing Palin for weeks.
As predicted, the fact that she didn't know anything wasn't a bug, it was a feature. She's perfect for the neocons: likeable on the outside, a blank slate on the inside. To borrow from an old cliché, if Sarah Palin didn't exist, the neocons would have had to invent her.
In fact, this is how one former White House aide describes her: "She's bright and she's a blank page. She's going places and it's worth going there with her."LINK
There is nothing the Rovians like better than an unsuspecting dupe with overpowering ambitions. They know that she will appeal to all the other unsuspecting dupes.
It is imperative that we act NOW to reclaim what is left of our Constitution and real American values from those who would lie us into destruction for their own demented ends. We liberals have forgotten that there are many true conservatives out there who are just as appalled at Rovian tactics as we are. We need to invite them to join with us in reclaiming true morals and true American values. Here are some D-Kos posts that address this goal of working together: Former National Review Publisher Endorses Obama; We are out here - updated;Dear Obama Administration.
Although now Rove says that McCain has gone too far in his "lies," remember that is Rove speaking...he is lying about lies... Now why would he do that?
If you are interested in reading more about the Straussian tactics in this political campaign I have found two good D-Kos diaries you may want to look at: Palin: Modifying political behavior by manipulating group identification by Jim Pivonka and The Republican Party is owned by the NEOCONS and the NEOCONS are liars by RubyGal.