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.

[Red Boots]

He is certain that the average Joe cannot quite figure out what is going on, and would never suspect that a charismatic, postracial Guardian would ever deceive the people

Well, fellow citizens: is he right ? Are we that stupid ?

[Louis Foxwell]

Liars seek to distort reality. Some believe that reality emanates from their lies. None are capable of understanding the Will of God.

[corvus]

Great. VDH at the top of his form.

[corvus]

Great. VDH at the top of his form.

[corvus]

Great. VDH at the top of his form.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"Liars seek to distort reality."
22 posted on Monday, June 29, 2009 2:09:47 PM by Amos the Prophet

But does he know that they are lies?
Since he doesn't write most of his speeches, it seems like he has encountered some of these ideas for the first time when he reads them (i.e., he may not know they are not true). Which is scarier?

[BJClinton]

Really isn’t that descriptive of liberalism in general?

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"Really isn’t that descriptive of liberalism in general?
27 posted on Monday, June 29, 2009 3:17:40 PM by BJClinton

You raise an interesting point. Maybe Andrew Sullivan could address that when he takes up the subject of Obama's Straussian neoplatonist esotericism. He would be familiar with the idea of lying to achieve a political goal from the Alinskyite stuff, Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Still, it would be interesting to hear the One's reading of Thoughts on Machiavelli and how that squares with whatever he studied at Columbia and Harvard.

This must be that suave and urbane "sophistication" the Vichy Republicans saw in Obama but which they found lacking in Palin sufficiently to switch sides.

There would be a way to resolve this, of course, by getting Obama to debate Harvey Mansfield and Pat Boone on the subject of the role of religion in civil society and politics. Then he would have to tip his hand on this one.

[Blind Eye Jones]

I don’t know how you can put Strauss and Obama together? There have been books written about the neoconservatives and Strauss (Strauss’ students in the two Bush Administrations) but why would they be interested in Obama? Yes, Obama lies, is charming, impious and reckless like the Alcibiades. There will the desecration of both public statutes and public trust. Tradition will be foisted out the window all for the pursuit of narcissistic personal glory. Demagoguery and democracy, Periclean Athenian style.

Now which Straussian thinks, like Socrates, he can tame this wild erotic child? Harvey Mansfield, Werner J. Dannhauser, Cliff Orwin, Harry V. Jaffa?

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

It was kind of a joke that started during the campaign when Obama was being hailed as a genius by some liberals and then with the Greek temple columns silliness at his convention speech. Whether he was speaking esoterically or just horsing around in his Cairo speech when he attributed the Italian Renaissance and the Scottish Enlightenment to Averroës, Sinbad, and Omar Khayyám , who knows...Anyone's guess. It's possible he read something like that at Columbia or Harvard, but he seems closer to Marcuse, C. Wright Mills, and the Fabians. And postmodernist rather than Plato, most likely

Good that someone was paying attention. Of course, there could be some similarity between his ideas and those of a Philosopher-King dictatorship, as outlined in various readings of The Republic.

γνῶθι σεαυτόν

[plenipotentiary]

Socialists confuse good intentions with good outcomes.

[Blind Eye Jones]

Yes, the Allan Bloom translation! When Obama starts expelling the poets will be the first real sign of trouble — forget nationalization of private property. And both Bloom and Obama from Chicago — what more needs to be said!

[Blind Eye Jones]

You actually may have a strong point with the Obama dictatorship. Bloom refers to radical equality of the sexes, intrusion of the community (government) into the family, etc., as characteristic of the Republic. But this is also what is happening today in America. The leftist concern for social justice, like the Republic’s concern for justice, share a lot in common. The difference is that the poets won’t be excluded — Hollywood is the biggest voice for this change. Whether the Obama blueprint is written into the stars (the Platonic forms) or coming from Das Kapital it’s still the same Utopic, modernist attempt to build perfection on earth... and the consequences will be disastrous.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Good call. Maybe the One attended their meetings at the University of Chicago? On a Soros or Bill Ayers scholarship, of course.

I would tend to doubt Obama believes in the Great Chain of Being. The positivism, postmodernism, and Critical Legal Studies he was presented with at Columbia and Harvard wouldn't allow that. There might be other ways to interpret Obama's ideology and with different schools of political philosophy. There were a couple threads a while back relating Obama to Joachim of Fiore and someone suggested The New Science of Politics there as one possibility. Maybe someone remembers that discussion, with the One positioning himself at the head of another "Third Age" of the spirit. Molnar's Utopia: The Perennial Heresy was also mentioned. When Obama made the elitist comments about people in small towns being "bitter" and "clinging to religion" it seemed like there might be more to what he was thinking there which could have come from Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style. Maybe he imprinted with that at Columbia?

This part was pretty good: "Niccolo Machiavelli and Italian rollercoasters of the 16th Century through the lens of radical Marxist theory and Critical Theory to deconstruct the foundations of hegemonic Modernism"

I think they are having a similar Lacanian seminar at Yale. But isn't liberalism of the 1960s American and Obama variety just another form of "hegemonic Modernism" (according to such theorists)?

[Blind Eye Jones]

But isn't liberalism of the 1960s American and Obama variety just another form of "hegemonic Modernism" (according to such theorists)?

No doubt. There is little to suggest otherwise. The battle of the books has been decisively won by the moderns. Egalitarianism has prevailed: for example, there is no distinction between Michael Jackson dying at 50 from pill addiction and Glenn Gould dying at 50 from pill addiction. Michael will get more press but he ended no better off for his life in pop music than Gould for his life in classical music. The highs and lows balance out in death. None can escape it (though some post moderns believe that through language – Language is the House of Being, according to Heidegger – they can lock the door on death, lock it out of reality or their mental constructs, redefine it away, conquer it somehow with discourse, if discourse is all there is.) Modernism with its powerful science is also trying to conquer death. With no high or low cultures to guide us we look to the health of the body. Another tragic example is Allan Bloom, who believed in a high musical culture and thought that rock music was decadent: it corrupted the youth that should have been corrupted by some Socratic teacher figure, like himself. And like Socrates in the Republic, whose real antagonist was Homer, Bloom had to wage a battle for the hearts and souls of his students and listeners. He had to singlehandly wrestle Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger to the ground, thus championing the traditional benefits esteemed by liberal education and classical music. He was the street fighter, par excellence, for high culture. Ironically, IMHO, Bloom died from overdosing on Opera. Saul Bellow’s book "Ravelstein" exposed his addiction. Death from Opera? Yes, Bloom was taking the equivalent of a bucket of Opera pills daily and the adverse side effects were inflamed passions and irrationally. In this case you can’t pump the stomach. With love’s passion dominating his soul, induced by the erotic strains in Opera played at a high volume at all hours of the day, Bloom failed to take common sense precautions... and died of AIDS. So, in effect, high or low cultures don’t mean that much in the end. The real problem is death.

Now Bloom once met Michael Jackson in Paris. Jackson also worked a bit with Paul McCartney who, at the time of being a Beatle in 1964, was hated by Glenn Gould for "bad voice leading." Modernism is like a vicious circle, like the Ouroboros chewing on its own tail, falling back on itself, forming a Zero and an Obama; whereas the Ancients preferred the Chain of Being to form a hierarchy, a heavenly triangle that aspired upwards. Plato’s Republic is also a triangle shape and is suppose to mirror the soul. But Modernism can’t acknowledge a soul, only the body... and death.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

The One "taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004." Any chance he met Ravelstein? He would seem to be closer to the Frankfurt School. Apparently he likes pop music. "Love Train" at the convention and inaugural galas.

Apparently, lying and the Noble lie are covered in The Open Society and Its Enemies which inspired Obama benefactor and handler George Soros, although the agenda seems far from "open" in that sense. He seems to say things to please and then just gets caught in the contradictions.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

See this yet: Obama's 'noble truth' is a Lie.

Note the Bloom translation of The Republic cited.

[Blind Eye Jones]

Thanks for the link!