Obama and the ‘Noble Lie’

NRO ^ | 29 june 09 | Victor Davis Hanson

[rellimpank]

For much of the Bush administration, the media splashed stories of neoconservative conspiracies and cabals. Exposés about mostly Jewish liberals-turned-conservatives charged that they were adherents of the philosopher Leo Strauss and embraced the Platonic notion of the “noble lie.”

In his Republic, Plato outlined an elaborate, ranked utopia, a good city (“Kallipolis”) run by a sort of benign natural selection. The philosopher-kings sat atop hierarchies in which occupations were assigned for the citizenry. To justify arbitrary selections, the rulers would make up “noble lies” about divine edicts, making clear that the occupations chosen for lesser folk were god-given.

Once the inferiors understood that there were divine sanctions behind their lot in life, they would feel happier. And society at large would benefit by each worker’s having the proper aptitude for his occupation. The larger point Plato was making was simply that sometimes an all-knowing elite must hedge on the truth to convince the ignorant public what is good for it.

[rellimpank]

-ping-

[A. Morgan]

Obama is just a plain ole’ liar!

[WayneS]

There is nothing noble about the obamessiah’s lies.

[andy58-in-nh]

This is an important article by Dr. Hanson, who succeeds in explaining a great deal about Barack Obama's character and motivation. In an nutshell:"Barack Obama believes he is a philosopher-king, whose exalted ends more than justify his mendacious means."

I would urge you all to read the full article at NRO. And thanks for posting it.

[andy58-in-nh]

This is an important article by Dr. Hanson, who succeeds in explaining a great deal about Barack Obama's character and motivation. In an nutshell:"Barack Obama believes he is a philosopher-king, whose exalted ends more than justify his mendacious means."

I would urge you all to read the full article at NRO. And thanks for posting it.

[Tolik]

Victor Davis Hanson:

... So why does President Obama so often get history wrong, so often call for utopian schemes he would hardly adopt for himself, and so often distort by misinformation and incomplete disclosure?

Partly the culprit is administrative inexperience, partly historical ignorance. But mostly the disconnect comes because Barack Obama believes he is a philosopher-king, whose exalted ends more than justify his mendacious means.

In other words, Obama is our first truly postmodern president. And the Guardians who form his elite circle — in the very manner that they once falsely accused neo-cons of doing — deliberately, but “nobly,” distort the truth on behalf of us all.

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

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[Woebama]

Blah, blah, blah. Obama is setting up a fraudulent census, funding the left with our money, foisting huge spending on us that will make our children chattel property of government taxation, and these guys talk as if though the finer points of political philosophy matter. This is brute force politics and we have a very narrow window to save our freedoms. It will require all out effort by each of us, and apparently without a leader in politics or the press. Yes, neo-cons helped screw up the Republican party and the country. What do we do now? That’s the question no one is answering.

[Woebama]

Blah, blah, blah. Obama is setting up a fraudulent census, funding the left with our money, foisting huge spending on us that will make our children chattel property of government taxation, and these guys talk as if though the finer points of political philosophy matter. This is brute force politics and we have a very narrow window to save our freedoms. It will require all out effort by each of us, and apparently without a leader in politics or the press. Yes, neo-cons helped screw up the Republican party and the country. What do we do now? That’s the question no one is answering.

[Woebama]

Blah, blah, blah. Obama is setting up a fraudulent census, funding the left with our money, foisting huge spending on us that will make our children chattel property of government taxation, and these guys talk as if though the finer points of political philosophy matter. This is brute force politics and we have a very narrow window to save our freedoms. It will require all out effort by each of us, and apparently without a leader in politics or the press. Yes, neo-cons helped screw up the Republican party and the country. What do we do now? That’s the question no one is answering.

[Woebama]

Blah, blah, blah. Obama is gaming the system with fraudulent census taking, fraudulent vote registration and counting, funding the left with our tax dollars, putting us in chattel slavery to government taxation to pay for his spending binge. We have a very narrow window to take the country back, against the odds, and we have no leader in the press or in politics to direct that effort. That’s the elephant in the room and the niceties of Plato’s Republic is a waste of time as far as I’m concerned. The neo-cons played a role in screwing up the country. So has everyone else, including sit-on-our-hands and close-our-wallets conservatives yammering at each other here. What will we do without a leader and without a plan?

[rock_lobsta]

And THAT’S the truth!

[rock_lobsta]

And THAT’S the truth!

[DieHard the Hunter]

> Obama is just a plain ole’ liar!

whereas AlGore is a Nobel Liar.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> Obama is just a plain ole’ liar!

whereas AlGore is a Nobel Liar.

[brushcop]

There’s no such thing as a “noble lie” in government, the end result is a lie, meant to deceive for personal/power gain.

[marron]

Good job.

[RepublitarianRoger2]

Just a couple of minor problems with that theory:
1. Zero is not all-knowing (even though he thinks he is)
2. The public is not ALL ignorant (even though waaaay too many are)

The lies are just lies. Nothing noble there.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Obama's intellectual side is still a mystery. We have been talking about Obama's crypto-Straussian Platonist alter ego since his esoteric comments about people being "bitter" and "clinging to religion" in the campaign. Although that seemed inspired by Richard Hofstadter, the liberal professor at Columbia University. And he could have picked it up from the George Soros Open Society Institute seminars, relying heavily on the Soros reading of Karl Popper and Kant. There seems to be a tension between his "inner Plato" and "inner Alinsky" in all of this.

Since the One is a Renaissance man, this should get interesting and you never know where it will lead next with Obama's Neo-Platonism. Maybe dramatic readings of The Book of the Courtier, Machiavelli, Dante, Erasmus, da Vinci, Pico della Mirandola, Ficino, Bessarion, Nicholas Cusanus, and Petrarch at the White House. As inspired by Ibn Rushd, Al-Ghazali, Hassan-i-Sabah , Omar Khayyám , and The Arabian Nights, of course.

It would be cheaper for everyone to send him back to Harvard for four years to study with Harvey Mansfield to sort this all out in his mind.

[Ooh-Ah]

WOW—a MUST READ in its entirety!