"The Real Leo Strauss" - The Wacky Left and the Fiction of Neo-Con-ism

The New York Times ^ | Thursday, January 29, 2009 | Jenny Strauss Clay

[Tublecane]

The Real Leo Strauss

By JENNY STRAUSS CLAY Published: June 7, 2003

Recent news articles have portrayed my father, Leo Strauss, as the mastermind behind the neoconservative ideologues who control United States foreign policy. He reaches out from his 30-year-old grave, we are told, to direct a ''cabal'' (a word with distinct anti-Semitic overtones) of Bush administration figures hoping to subject the American people to rule by a ruthless elite. I do not recognize the Leo Strauss presented in these articles.

My father was not a politician. He taught political theory, primarily at the University of Chicago. He was a conservative insofar as he did not think that change is necessarily change for the better.

Leo Strauss believed in the intrinsic dignity of the political. He believed in and defended liberal democracy; although he was not blind to its flaws, he felt it was the best form of government that could be realized, ''the last best hope.'' He was an enemy of any regime that aspired to global domination. He despised utopianism -- in our time, Nazism and Communism -- which is predicated on the denial of a fundamental and even noble feature of human nature: love of one's own. His heroes were Churchill and Lincoln. He was not an observant Jew, but he loved the Jewish people and he saw the establishment of Israel as essential to their survival.

[Tublecane]

What is with the Left's wacky assault on Leo Strauss, who has in recent years morphed from a classicist and anti-relativist into an advocate of dishonesty and bloody empire? What kind of honest critic would take his understanding of "esoteric writing" and Plato's "noble lie" and warp him into some kind of conspiritorial statist? Heck, I'm an atheist who sees social and political value in people going to Church. Does that mean I would lie to the public so I could invade Saudi Arabia and steal their oil?

Moreover, since when was neo-conservatism a consistent philosophy? And what makes Paul Wolfowitz any different from Wilson, FDR, JFK, or LBJ?

[reformedliberal]

They (so-called neo-cons) are responsible for 8 years of Bush. Democrats facilitating the election of Republicans are traitors. We all must now pay the price for that.

I am not being sarcastic.

[popdonnelly]

I’m conservative. I’ve never heard of Leo Strauss, much less anything he said or wrote. The paranoia of the Left isn’t amusing, it’s scary.

[SunkenCiv]

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[piasa]

The crazy Turks are ranting about Leo Strauss too...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3279225/posts

[LonePalm]

How do they feel about Levi Strauss?

"Ceterum censeo 0bama esse delendam."

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)