The issue is not what Strauss himself did or did not say. There is a definite culture among contemporary Straussians (divided as they are) that promotes deceit and an ubermensch self-conception among the adepts. It disdains democracy due to the inability of the vast majority to attain, or even comprehend, "virtue". It is definitely not a dominant ideology on the right, but it contributes to and justifies the cynicism of rightists in power toward everyday morality. Anyone who has ever had to deal with these people first hand comes away feeling soiled.
Peter
Kenneth Campbell wrote:
'Straussians' in the news; the world trembles (II)
Clifford Orwin National Post Tuesday, June 17, 2003
In yesterday's column I began to address the allegations that a sinister cabal of "Straussians" dominates American foreign policy and was responsible for the war against Saddam. Many would have you believe that it's a fundamental principle of this sect to practise deceit against non-members the better to rule over them. "Central to the Straussian vision is a docile citizenry, kept uninformed and easy to manipulate through perpetual fear of external attack" (Linda McQuaig, The Toronto Star, May 25).
Not that Ms. McQuaig has ever read a word of Strauss. It's clear from her column that she hasn't. She's just repeating what other leftish journalists have been saying.
But where there's so much smoke, there must be fire, right? Well, don't count on warming your hands over it. Yes, a few figures in the Bush administration once took courses with the late Leo Strauss (1899-1973), whose defence of liberal democracy I discussed yesterday. Of these few, however, only one, Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul D. Wolfowitz, is in a position to make policy, and even he is only in a deputy position to make policy. As Peter Berkowitz has pointed out, this whole scenario of a Straussian takeover of the U.S. government "is wildly implausible. It supposes that President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld, and National Security Adviser Rice, non-Straussians by all accounts, are stooges and dupes [of their subordinates]."
It's also worth noting that of the supposed "Straussians" in the administration, Wolfowitz, by far the most influential, is also the least a "Straussian." A student of math and science as an undergraduate, he switched to national security studies. While he did take a couple of courses with Strauss, his mentor was the late Albert Wohlstetter, a logician and operations analyst with no connection to Strauss.
Wolfowitz is an imposing figure. As even his detractors concede, he combines an incandescent intelligence with great dedication to public service. He has served loyally in five administrations, Democrat and Republican alike. Yes, he has President Bush's ear. He's earned it. But others also have Mr. Bush's ear. Rumours of a coup ( "Straussian" or otherwise) have been greatly exaggerated.
Much of what has appeared in the press is sensationalism pure and simple. I mean not just the accusation that the Bush administration engaged in massive deception in the months prior to the war against Saddam, but the claims that in doing so it was following the teaching of Strauss.
The question of whether the administration misled the public, or was itself misled, will doubtless be subject to further scrutiny. It still remains to be shown that it engaged in any deception of anyone. But our present concern is the further assertion that if deception did occur it must have been due to the influence of Strauss.
All right, then. Have you ever wondered why politicians aren't completely truthful? Why they always use the truth selectively, in the service of partisan rhetoric, and occasionally misplace it entirely? Well, now you know. They've been corrupted by reading a certain scholar of ancient political philosophy. Well, my goodness, this couldn't have occurred to them on their own, could it? Politicians didn't use to dissemble, did they?
As if this weren't dumb enough already, there's another crucial problem with it. There's simply no basis for it in Strauss. When journalists attribute these views to him, they never quote him. They can't. Strauss never argued that democratic leaders should deceive their peoples. The statesmen he admired were ones of impeccable integrity.
Yes, Strauss did write about a certain mode of deceit, which he called "esoteric writing." Indeed he claimed to have rediscovered this practice after centuries of oblivion. But this kind of prevarication was practised not by rulers on the ruled, but by certain of the ruled on the rulers. Strauss first expounded this theme in his Persecution and the Art of Writing. The art in question was precisely a response to persecution, the resort of the powerless and unconventional (including philosophers, who as such are both of these). It was not a technique of wielding power. A recent example is the "Aesopian writing" that dissidents practised under Communism. They hid their meaning from the authorities while still conveying it to their more alert readers. Strauss's greatest -- and most disputed -- scholarly claim was that the whole history of Western thought had to be reinterpreted in view of his rediscovery that philosophers had practised this mode of writing.
Strauss's enemies mutter about the rule of "philosopher kings" by means of a "noble lie," but these are features of Plato's thought, not Strauss's. There is great irony here, for in fact Strauss broke with conventional scholarship by denying that even Plato intended this as a political teaching. The true Platonic view, he held, was that philosophy was one activity, ruling another (and incompatible) one. Strauss criticized modern thought precisely for its obsession with uniting knowledge and power, thereby corrupting both. While he took no part in public life himself, he smiled on his students doing so. Not as "philosophers," however -- he never encouraged them to put on such ridiculous airs, never put them on himself -- but simply as educated citizens.
As I suggested yesterday, Strauss made many enemies by his radical critique of modern thought and politics. He was and will remain a profoundly controversial thinker. All the more reason to beware of gross misrepresentations of his thought.
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Clifford Orwin is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto.
