Posted on 05/23/2003 1:15:02 PM PDT by GOPcapitalist
Ever since the New York Times published a long article explaining that most of the architects of the Bush foreign policy are "Straussians," more and more journalists have been asking the question, "What the heck is a Straussian?" A number of common principles have emerged after these writers have examined the writings of Leo Strauss, the godfather of neoconservativism.
Straussian Principle #1 is the perversion of the idea of natural rights, as understood by John Locke and the American founding fathers. The natural law tradition holds that man possesses natural rights to life, liberty, and property and that the state is always and everywhere the greatest threat to these God-given rights. To the founders, this meant that government should be "bound by the chains" of the Constitution, to paraphrase Jefferson. If men were angels, there would be no need for government, Madison wrote in defense of the Constitution. But men are not angels, Madison continued, which is why government power must always be limited.
Strauss (and his followers) rejected this view of natural rights in favor of Plato’s philosopher-king model of government: Eliminating restrictions on state power is fine as long as that power can be wielded by an elite few who can pursue their own vision of "the public good." As David Gordon has written, "Straus, while favoring what he considers to be the classical and Christian concepts of natural law, is bitterly opposed to the 17th and 18th Century conceptions of Locke and the rationalists, particularly to their . . . championing of the rights of the individual: liberty, property, etc." Far from advocating limited government, Strauss was a proponent of unlimited state power in pursuit of "nationalism" (as are his American neocon followers).
Straussian neocons tend to repeat the words "prudence and moderation" ad nauseum, to the point of absurdity. In all their critiques of my writings on Lincoln some of the most apoplectic criticisms have been over my "failure" to acknowledge Lincoln’s alleged prudence and moderation (as though waging an unnecessary war that killed 620,000 Americans was either). (Eric Root of the John Lock Foundation even went so far as to condemn me for failing to pontificate upon these Magic Straussian Words while admitting that he had not even read my book!)
These buzz words are merely deceptive euphemisms for "unlimited and unconstitutional executive branch power." Strauss himself was fond of praising British imperialism and Caesarism for their supposed "prudence and moderation," just as his contemporary followers are now using these same words to praise the Bush administration’s foreign policy (of which they are the main architects!).
This is obviously why the Straussians have labored so furiously to make Abraham Lincoln even more of a cult figure. He essentially declared himself dictator, suspended habeas corpus, mass arrested thousands of political dissenters, shut down hundreds of newspapers, ordered the murder of New York City draft protesters by federal troops, deported an outspoken Democratic Party opponent, Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, censored all telegraph communication, nationalized the railroads, confiscated private property, rigged Northern elections, and waged war on civilians as well as combatants. The reason he gave for these shocking acts of tyranny was to destroy the secession movement and abolish the voluntary union of the founding fathers. Or, as he deceivingly put it, "to save the Union."
Lincoln and the Republicans wanted to replace the American republic with an empire that would rival Great Britain’s. To accomplish this they invaded the Southern states, killing one out of every four white males of military age, and pillaged, plundered, and burned their way through the South, destroying its economy.
There could be no better role model for aggressive, dictatorial, militaristic nationalism, which in fact is Straussian Principle #2. Strauss believed that human aggression could only be restrained by a powerful, nationalistic state (See Jim Lobe, "Leo Strauss’ Philosophy of Deception," Alternet.org, May 19, 2003). He believed that such an omnipotent state can only be maintained if there is an external threat, "even if one has to be manufactured." This is why Straussians believe in perpetual war, and is another reason why they have formed a cult around "the church of Lincoln," whom they hold up as "the greatest statesman in history." Lincoln manufactured many "threats," including the truly bizarre notion that representative government would perish from the earth if the Southern states were permitted to secede peacefully. In reality, peaceful secession would have been a victory for self-government, keeping in mind that neither Lincoln nor Congress ever said that they were launching an invasion for any reason having to do with liberating the slaves.
Straussian Principle #3 is aggressive lying. In "Leo Strauss’ Philosophy of Deception" Jim Lobe noted that Strauss believed in the necessity of "perpetual deception" of the ruled by their rulers if nationalistic objectives are to be achieved. Straussians routinely claim to possess unique understanding of the "hidden meaning" of history and historical documents, which is often directly at odds with the plain historical truth. This is all a part of their perpetual campaign to confuse the public and keep it ignorant of their political designs.
A good example of this phenomenon is the "special meaning" of the Declaration of Independence that Straussians claim to have discovered. The Declaration declared to the world that the colonists were seceding from the British Empire, but Straussians incredibly insist that it is an anti-secessionist document because Lincoln quoted the "all men are created equal" phrase in the Gettysburg Address. They repeat Lincoln’s tall tale that the Declaration made the Union "perpetual" even though the states describe themselves in the document as "free and independent."
The Declaration announces that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, and that whenever governments become destructive of the peoples’ natural rights it is the duty of the people to abolish the government and replace it with a new one. That is exactly what Jefferson Davis announced he intended to do in his First Inaugural Address, yet the Straussians claim that it was Lincoln, not Davis, who was upholding this principle.
Even though the free and independent states ratified the Constitution to create the federal government as their agent, Lincoln held that there was never any such thing as state sovereignty because "the Union is older than the states." This of course is impossible, since the union of two things cannot be older than either thing that it is a union of.
Straussians tell us that Lincoln had to destroy the Constitution in order to save it, that he was a great humanitarian who nevertheless waged war on civilians, he favored equality even though he loudly denounced racial equality throughout his lifetime, and a thousand other deceptions.
Straussian Principle #4: Fake religiosity. Several of the journalists who have recently written about Strauss have noted that he was a proponent of a greater role for religion in affairs of state, a position that has endeared some Christians to the neocon movement. But Strauss’ position was that the political rulers and the intellectual elite (philosopher kings?) need not be bound by religion themselves; religion was primarily a propaganda tool to be used to get the masses to acquiesce in state intervention on behalf of aggressive nationalism. As Ron Bailey of Reason magazine has pointed out, "Neoconservatives are pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers."
Once again, Lincoln is the perfect Straussian role model. Lincoln never joined a church and was opposed by almost all the ministers of Springfield, Illinois, when he ran for president. He was infamous for his dirty jokes and even his criticisms of Scripture. There is no explicit evidence that he ever became a Christian, and some of his contemporaries even believed that he was probably an atheist. As James Ostrowski has written ("DiLorenzo vs. His Critics on the Lincoln Myth," LRC Archives), the "church of Lincoln" is "the church of a man who had no Church."
Lincoln was nevertheless brilliant in his use of religious language and images to mesmerize Northern audiences, especially the hyper-puritanical New England Yankees and their upper Midwest brethren. After launching a war that he apparently thought would last only a few months, Lincoln distanced himself more and more from responsibility for his own decisions by invoking religion. By the time of his Second Inaugural, when over a half million young American men had been killed in the war, he was to the point of absolving himself entirely from any responsibility for all the war’s death and destruction. He declared that "the war came," as though he had nothing to do with it, and said that it was all out of his hands and a matter of God’s will. He theorized that God was punishing America for the sin of slavery. This argument was nonsensical on its face, however, since it ignored the fact that some 95 percent of all the slaves that were brought to the western hemisphere ended up outside the U.S., where no such "punishment" was being executed by the Lord. Why would God punish Americans for the sin of slavery but no one else?
In his Second Inaugural Lincoln quoted at length Mathew 18:7 and Luke 17:1 in order to make the argument that both North and South were being punished for the sin of slavery. This in itself is, well, Straussian, since Lincoln claimed to know the "inner meaning" of God’s Word.
As Charles Adams writes in When in the Course of Human Events (p. 205), "Lincoln’s Jehovah complex gave the war a psychopathic Calvinistic fatalism, with God directing the whole affair and punishing both North and South for tolerating slavery." The slaughter of hundreds of thousands of young men, the killing of civilians, the massive theft of private property, and the burning of entire towns by federal soldiers would continue until God decided otherwise. "Not even the maddest of religious fanatics," Adams writes, "ever uttered words to equal Lincoln’s second inaugural address."
Lincoln’s cynical political manipulation of religion was the perfect Straussian subterfuge. It was the perfect propaganda tool for sugarcoating a bloody and imperialistic war of conquest. Little wonder that contemporary Straussian neocons think of Lincoln as "the greatest statesman in world history": He was an extreme nationalist; an enemy of constitutionally limited government and genuine natural rights; a skilled political conniver, manipulator and deceiver; and a phony religionist. Perfect.
And the pay and treatment of the masses of laborers in the northern industrial centers was what?
What employment opportunities were available in these areas to freed blacks migrating there from the South?
Not to endorse the peculiar institution, but aren't food, clothes, lodging and medical attention benefits?
No it wasn't. The GOP was born out of the Free-Soiler party, which subscribed to exactly that belief - that the territories should be admitted as free states. The Free Soiler's did indeed include SOME (but not all) abolitionists among their ranks, but not all free soilers were abolitionists themselves. When the GOP formed, the majority of its members were not abolitionists either.
which was essentially a church-based movement.
Some elements of abolitionism were church based. Others were not. Those that were included a very broad range of what could be considered churches - literally everything from fundamentalist christians to left wing civic-religion minded Unitarians. Most of the more prominent "religious" abolitionists were in this latter category, the unitarians, and had very little resemblence if any to what we would consider the "religious right" of today. Many of them were deists, pelagians, social-work Christians, and even a few agnostics.
At some point the abolitionists simply rejected the existing parties, mostly the Whig party, and formed their own.
That was true of the Liberty Party which existed in the 1840's, but it split in the early 1850's with many of its members going into the larger but not strictly-abolitionist Free Soil party. By the time the GOP came around, it included abolitionist and non-abolitionist elements alike as well as the old tariff whigs (of which Lincoln was one) and the various hamiltonian elements of American political thought.
It only won because the Southern Democrats basically boycotted the election
That too is not true. Every single southern state could have voted for the same candidate and Lincoln still would have won due to the northern population. His election was the product of the winner-take-all element of the electoral college more than anything else.
I find it hard to understand how anyone can make a "natural rights" argument in favor of slavery.
I don't believe anyone is trying to. There are several who are making a government-of-consent argument about the war though, and a solid majority of the southern population was denied that right by military coercion.
Had they successfully seceded, a later, much larger war would almost certainly have resulted as the two countries fought for control of the west.
How so? The southern states gave up their claims to the western territories save that of southern Arizona, which joined them in secession. The CSA states were even hesitant to allow Arizona to align with them because they knew that they had dissassociated themselves from all of the other territories.
Slave rebellions would have been viciously fought and ruthlessly put down.
The slave rebellions never happened as it was despite many, many attempts before and during the war to incite them.
I'll happily tell you it was unnecessary since the man who waged it, Abe Lincoln, adamantly denied on many occassions that slavery had anything to do with his purposes in that war. That slavery was abolished was a political consequence of the war that Lincoln undertook during that war in order to gain its political benefits. It was never a purpose of waging the war though.
Brazil darn near made it into the 20th Century with slavery. No reason the South wouldn't have.
There were free blacks migrating there from the south, and they were working.
But there is a big difference between being a low-paid blue-collar worker and being a slave, with no right over your own family or body. If you can't see that you are not serious.
And while being a laborer in any generation is a tough life, people were pouring in from Europe because whatever it was, it was better than what they came from.
But it was tough, you're right, which is what drove so many of them west, because dying on the frontier was better than what they came from whether back home in Europe or back east in the tenements. Life is tough. That is a separate issue from slavery. If you are a conservative or a libertarian you already know that.
Abolition was the founding cause of the Republican Party. It was born out of the churches; people didn't join the cause for political advantage because it was a minority party that shouldn't have had a chance. But true believers don't care about stuff like that. They just act, and let the chips fall.
It is a mistake for the Republicans to distance themselves from Abolition. It is the reason for their birth. Color-blind citizenship is at the heart of the movement's philosophy. Let the Democrats defend slavery. Its their institution. Let the Democrats defend racialism.
I am comfortable with Lincoln's flaws; he was after all a human being. You must know that by now; that if you take a stand on any moral issue you will be torn apart by your enemies in this generation and, if you had an impact, in the next. Don't worry about it. Take the stand. There were decent men on both sides of the Civil War; this is the tragedy of it. It is also one of the most important lessons; of the 640,000 men who died at least half were good men dying to defend the indefensible, led to their deaths by men who were not worthy of their sacrfice.
How very, very odd.
No one at the time was under any illusion what free territories meant. The North already dominated the House because of its population. Free territories would eventually become free states with no corresponding slave state to keep the balance in the Senate, which would then also tip to Northern domination. Abolition would then become a possibility. Southerners and Northern abolitionists understood the battle over the territories was the battle over the future of slavery. That's why Bleeding Kansas bled.
Please continue. I'm fascinated. How many were working in the 1850s? What was their treatment from management and from other laborers? What sort of pay did they receive compared to others? How about their freedom to go where they pleased, to live where they wanted (within their means), to associate with whom they wanted?
Have you ever read the Emancipation Proclamation? Do you know what it actually says and how many slaves it actually freed? Do you know why Lincoln wrote it? Do you know what plans Lincoln had for helping freed slaves make it out in society? Do you know which document really freed the slaves?
Actually, the north had a voting majority in the Senate as well in 1861. This was indeed a concern, though not entirely over slavery policy. The southerners were furious in 1861 because the northern majorities were using their power to virtually triple the tax rates. They also planned to (and later did) institute banking systems, subsidies and all sorts of tax and spend policies. As one southerner put it, they were adopting policies to make the south serve at the will of northern states, policies, and industries.
Abolition would then become a possibility.
Not as much as you would think. The amendment that Lincoln pushed through in 1861 would have prohibited Congress from interfering with slavery no matter how many northern state there were.
There are several reasons for this. First and foremost is the fact that Strauss's own writings are full of obscure and hidden meanings. He dwelled in esotericism making it very difficult to figure out exactly what he was saying. This leads to the second reason, which is that Straussianism has always been realized in what his followers made of his writings.
Thank you. All you have to do is read the Articles of Secession to see what the war was about. It is crystal clear that it is a war to save slavery as the basis of southern society; in the eyes of the South slavery was a very moral institution.
The effort by the North to deny westward expansion to slavery was explicity mentioned in the Articles as being part of the Northern assault on southern values. And the election of an abolitionist to the White House was explicitly understood by the South as being the last straw.
Neo-confederates hate the Articles of Confederation because they put the lie to their cause in black and white, in the slavers' own words. But there it is. The Republican party is the Abolition Party. There was never any misunderstanding about that among southerners.
The Democratic Party was the slavery party, in the north as well as in the south. We should not run from our past and we should not let them run from theirs. Southern Democrats seceded, and Northern Democrats were the pro-slavery fifth column. It was a tough fight, and we won. Lets not put ourselves in the position of apologizing for the destruction of this institution. We can say that it came out of another day and time, when people felt differently, and saw things differently, and while that is true, and while there is some understanding due for that reason, it still remains true that plenty of other people never had any trouble seeing it for the evil it was.
Please, I've heard the economic arguments before. The fact is the South seceeded because an opponent of slavery was elected President. Had Douglas won the election, there would have been no secession. Davis and especially Stephens made it very clear that the election of an abolitionist was the triggering event.
Lincoln tried desperately to head off secession, making several concessions to the South on the slavery issue because his overriding priority was keeping the Union together.
Not everywhere. Several northern states such as Illinois had laws that virtually prohibited blacks from even living within their boundaries. Oregon even wrote this into their constitution.
Abolition was the founding cause of the Republican Party.
Once again, that simply is not so. Free Soil was a major founding cause, combined with hamiltonian constitutionalism, high tariffs, national banking, and subsidies. This attracted some abolitionists, but abolitonism itself was not a cause.
It was born out of the churches
But, once again, not the same type of churches we tend to think of today. Some religious fundamentalists were abolitionists, but the most prominent "religious" abolitionists were all Unitarians. If you do not know what a Unitarian is look up one of their churches in your local phone book and drop in one sunday for a service. You will be treated to a leftist freak show that makes the Democrat national convention look tame.
people didn't join the cause for political advantage because it was a minority party that shouldn't have had a chance.
Actually they did gain political advantage from it and it did indeed have a chance. Numerically, the GOP had almost as many seats in Congress as the Dems. When you take into account that the congressional Dems were divided into two factions, north and south, that gave the GOP a large plurality.
No it couldn't - not as long as Lincoln's 1861 amendment was adopted. Lincoln got the amendment through Congress and it was on its way to ratification when the war broke out. Without a war, it would have become part of the consitution and permanently barred Congress from doing anything of the sort.
Thanks for your well reasoned post.
The Whigs were spent and had trouble winning elections by the 1850's. The Republicans came out of nowhere for Fremont to come close to the Presidency and Lincoln to win it. The only reason the Republicans could go that far that fast was because they stood for abolition, popular in the North, and the Whigs would not.
You're ignoring the fact that the president is elected by the Electoral College. Lincoln got his majority of the Electoral College solely in Northern states. He wasn't even on the ballot in almost all the Southern states. And whether or not Southern voters failed to vote, most of the Southern electoral votes went to the Democrat Breckenridge, who still would have lost if he had carried all of them, because of the majority of the electoral votes Lincoln got in the North.
Actually no, it couldn't have. It was to be inserted as an unamendable provision under Article V.
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