This is an astonishing article. From start to finish. First, is the author’s hangup with neoconservatives, I presume with the warning that by supporting Bush in the Iraqi war, I am falling in with a nefarious crowd of people who are potentially duping all of us. Since, I still don’t know what a neo-conservative is other than a Republic who has incurred the wrath of Pat Buchanan, I am confused. I seriously doubt that there are 10 people in positions of power in Washington who have heard of Leo Strauss. I am further struck in all of this by the notion that these leftists are trying to insinuate that Strauss and Straussians are anti-democratic – they the followers of Carl Marx and Bill Clinton of all people.
One of Allan Bloom's students told me that Professor Bloom had taught them that Plato was just an American-style democrat. This is just absurd. Plato taught the rule of a tiny elite, which is what the Straussians actually believe.''
In this one neat little statement, this author manages to put words that were not uttered in the mouths of a host of people, discrediting all of them, without us having a clue what any of them actually said or believed. Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind” is one of the great books of the 20th century. His argument is that American leftism has its origins in the misinterpretation of a German philosophic tradition that no of the adherents actually understood. Far from telling anyone what Plato said, what Bloom says is that everyone should go and read Plato for himself. In fact, his subtitle is From Socrates Apology to Heidigger’s Rektorratsrede. Bloom’s immediate problem is to understand how philosophers went from the intellectual position that of Socrates who died rather than to submit to tyranny to Heidigger who threw the weight of his office and prestige behind the Nazis. It is very hard, based on this book, to understand Bloom as a cryptofascist, or anything other than one who exhorts individuals to do their own thinking, their own interpretation, and have the courage to stand up to the fascists of the left who dominate American campuses and what passes for the American thought.
As such, Bloom is a real problem for the left, because he exposes the American left’s philosophical barrenness. Having assumed the mantel of an intellectual and philosophical elite, they show none of the habits of philosophers thorugh the ages. As such, I suppose it is or was a vital problem for the left to discredit Bloom and Strauss. But they are both dead,
One of the most striking and jarring of Plato’s texts is the Republic, which leads us step by seductive step on the road from democracy to tyranny. Given that this reductio ad absurdum is a standard technique of the Dialogs to demonstrate to individuals how little we really know, in fact, I find it hard to believe that Plato himself endorses the position that is reached in the Republic.