Slowpoke Neocon Norman Plonk cartoon by Jen Sorensen at http://www.slowpokecomics.com/index.html
The idea that Strauss was a great defender of liberal democracy is laughable. I suppose that Strauss’s disciples consider it a noble lie. Yet many in the media have been gullible enough to believe it.
How could an admirer of Plato and Nietzsche be a liberal democrat? The ancient philosophers whom Strauss most cherished believed that the unwashed masses were not fit for either truth or liberty, and that giving them these sublime treasures would be like throwing pearls before swine. In contrast to modern political thinkers, the ancients denied that there is any natural right to liberty.
Human beings are born neither free nor equal. The natural human condition, they held, is not one of freedom, but of subordination – and in Strauss’s estimation they were right in thinking so.
Praising the wisdom of the ancients and condemning the folly of the moderns was the whole point of Strauss’s most famous book, Natural Right and History. The cover of the book sports the American Declaration of Independence. But the book is a celebration of nature – not the natural rights of man (as the appearance of the book would lead one to believe) but the natural order of domination and subordination.
...that justice is merely the interest of the stronger; that those in power make the rules in their own interests and call it justice.
Quote by Shadia Drury who has written extensively on Leo Strauss & the neoconservatives from an interview by Daniel Postel in 2003 Noble lies and perpetual war: Leo Strauss, the neocons, and Iraq,15 October 2003
Here's a funny bit on the neocons
It's the End of the Neocons
by lawyerjim-2007 YOUTUBE
A compilation of Neocon lies, mistakes, cover ups and crimes to the tune of R.E.M.'s It's the End of the World as We Know it
Here's an example of Neocons putting Leo Strauss' political philosophy into policy and action.
First Condoleezza Rice says the US & Bush Regime doesn't support the use of torture-she being part of the inner circle knows better & that torture became government policy shortly after 9/11-so she is lying but the Political Philosophy of the Neocons is that a gov't is permitted to lie to its citizens.
Secondly Leo Strauss would argue that the leaders of America or any country are not obligated in any way to tell the citizens the complete truth about their policies
Thirdly enters nuance & interpretation & doubt by questioning the very definition of terms dealing with a controversial topic- ie "torture" the spokespersons for the Regime can always say but what does or does not constitute "torture"???
By redefining torture the Bush Regime & the Conservatives & the US mainstream Media are able to dodge the question and spend more time defending the use of so called "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" which according to the Neocons does not constitute torture even though the Geneva Conventions and the special report on Torture clearly define torture as including abuse & humiliation of subjects and also includes sensory overload, or sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, stress positions, slapping a person multiple times , parading a POW around naked and making nasty comments etc. the refusal of religious books or practices-taking away an inmates Holy Book whether the Qur'an or the Bible etc. or preventing a Christian or Muslim from praying etc.
Of all the techniques used on thousands of Prisoners incarcerated by the USA the Neocons & Bush only focus on "water-boarding "as possibly constituting torture
so threatening a naked inmate with a vicious dog or threatening to kill their family their loved ones or putting a gun to an inmates head then pulling the trigger because the gun is not loaded the American Intelligence community and the media see a lot of these interrogation techniques as mere pranks. But the individual doesn't know the gun is not loaded or that the threats are empty threats etc.
If so then US soldiers captured if they are not "waterboarded" or beaten to a pulp shouldn't complain just because they were kept awake for a week or more or were paraded around naked & made fun of -their guards were just having fun & playing mere pranks on them. The Bush Regime & now the Obama Regime do not see the use of these "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" as trivial complaints by the enemy.
Unfortunately those fighting the US have a case when they accuse American legislators or the White House or average soldiers see themselves as engaged in a Christian Crusade to undermine Islamic groups or Nations in order to spread dubious American values & Evangelical Christian Fundamentalism.
Religion Leo Strauss maintained was a way to control the masses. Strauss believed the masses to be incapable of ruling themselves or even to be able to think logically and religious beliefs were necessary along with a hyper Nationalism & an overarching national historical mythology or the nation as having a Unique destiny given to it by God/Jesus who committed to protecting America and not other nations except for Israel which in the last days play a pivotal role in fighting and destroying the Anti-Christ.
Condoleezza Rice Must Resign (Formerly Censored Video)
June 17, 2008
One of the more bizarre characters in the Bush White House, Condoleezza Rice has managed to hang on while others – the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, and other assorted criminals – have left in disgrace.
Ahmed Ismail Secretary of State? Is this some kind of a sick joke?
This video has been taken down. Thanks to one person’s tireless efforts, it’s up again.
Leo Strauss Totalitarianism & The Invention of America
A very short introduction to Leo Strauss from Adam Curtis' documentary, "The Power of Nightmares".
2007
"Leo Strauss, Conservative Mastermind " By: Robert Locke FrontPageMagazine.com ,May 31, 2002
IN CONTEMPORARY American intellectual life, there is only one school of conservative intellectuals that has taken root in academia as a movement. They are the Straussians, followers of the late Leo Strauss (1899-1973). The hostile New Republic referred to Straussians as "one of the top ten gangs of the millennium." Strauss is an ambiguous, sometimes even troubling, figure, but he is essential to the conservative revival of our time and he offers the intellectual depth we are so desperately in need of. As a crude measure of his importance for those readers who continue to believe that philosophical matters are of no practical importance, consider the following list of his students or students of his students: Justice Clarence Thomas; Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; former Assistant Secretary of State Alan Keyes; former Secretary of Education William Bennett; Weekly Standard editor and former Quayle Chief of Staff William Kristol; Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind; former New York Post editorials editor John Podhoretz; former National Endowment for the Humanities Deputy Chairman John T. Agresto; and, not meaning to class myself with this august company but in the interests of full disclosure, myself.Recommended Reading:
The great significance of Strauss for mainstream conservatives is that his is the deepest philosophical analysis of what is wrong with liberalism. Technocratic, legalistic, and empirical criticism of liberalism is all very well, but it is not enough. He believes that contemporary liberalism is the logical outcome of the philosophical principles of modernity, taken to their extremes. In some sense, modernity itself is the problem. Strauss believed that liberalism, as practiced in the advanced nations of the West in the 20th century, contains within it an intrinsic tendency towards relativism, which leads to nihilism. He first experienced this crisis in his native Germany’s Weimar Republic of the 1920s, in which the liberal state was so ultra-tolerant that it tolerated the Communists and Nazis who eventually destroyed it and tolerated the moral disorder that turned ordinary Germans against it. A Jew, he fled Germany in 1938. We see this problem repeated today in the multiculturalism that sanctions the importation into the West of Moslem fundamentalists whose foremost aim is the destruction of the Western society that makes that tolerance possible, and in an America so frightened of offending anyone that it refuses to carry out the basic duty of any normal state to guard its own borders.
Strauss believed that America is founded on an uneasy mixture of classical (Greco-Roman), Biblical, and modern political philosophy. Conservatives have not failed to note that a significant part of the mischief of liberalism consists in abandoning the biblical element; this story has been told many times and is well-represented in Washington. Where Strauss comes in is that he is the outstanding critic of the abandonment of the classical element. His key contribution to fighting the crisis of modernity was to restore the intellectual legitimacy of classical political philosophy, especially Plato and Aristotle.
* Aslan, Reza: How To Win A Cosmic War, Pub. 2009
* Drury,Shadia B. : The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, (updated edition) , pub. 2005
* ----------------- Terror and Civilization, pub.2004
* Faludi, Susan The TerrorDream : Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America, pub. 2007
* Grey,Stephen: The True Story of The CIA Torture Program, Pub. 2006
* Harris, Sam : The End of Faith : Religion, Terror & the Future of Reason ,
pub. 2004.
* Hedges, Chris : American Fascists , pub. 2007
* Hersh, Seymour : CHAIN OF COMMAND: THE ROAD FROM 9/11 TO
ABU GHRAIB, pub. 2004
* Hodgson, Godfrey: The Myth Of American Exceptionalism, pub. 2009
* Jacoby, Susan : The Age of American Unreason, pub. 2008
* Lagouranis, Tony
& Mikaelian,Allen: Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator's Dark
Journey Through Iraq &, pub. 2007
* Tanguay,Daniel: Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography, pub. 2007
* Unger,Craig: The Fall Of The House of Bush: The Untold Story of How
a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started
The Iraq War , and still Imperils America's Future, pub. 2007.
* Vidal, Gore : Dreaming War: Blood For Oil And The Cheney-Bush Junta ,
pub. 2002.
* Woodward, Bob: State of Denial: Bush at War III , Pub. 2006.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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