Leo Strauss - The Father of Republican Radicalism

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• published: 13 Oct 2012
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfecdtQXSPk - Republican Neoconservatives (PNAC) Creating the New World Order? [includes a portion of the BBC documentary "Panorama - The War Party" on the Neoconservatives plan for America in their own words] http://www.american-buddha.com/911.syntheticterrormade14.htm Neoconservatism has changed the Republican Party since the days of Eisenhower and the teachings of political philosopher Leo Strauss has had a monumental influence on that change. "Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception: Many neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz are disciples of a philosopher who believed that the elite should use deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant masses." [ http://www.alternet.org/story/15935/leo_strauss%27_philosophy_of_deception ] The following is an excerpt from the book review of "Leo Strauss and the American Right" by Shadia Drury, professor of philosophy at the University of Regina. [ http://www.swans.com/library/art11/mdolin10.html ] "It was the ideals of liberalism itself -- secular politics, human rights, equal dignity, and human freedom -- that he did not relish." ...Their job, at first, is to wean America away from its "love affair" with liberalism. To do this they will drive a wedge between liberalism and democracy....Democracy is the rule of the people, or rule according to the will of the people or the majority." It can easily be used to suppress liberalism. By demagogic manipulation democracy, through a populist appeal, can be turned against liberalism. The essential first task... is to produce ideology...to attack liberalism and gain power. Strauss' hatred of liberalism is so virulent that he sees the struggle against it as a war, and in war all is fair. For this reason Straussians will use every dirty trick they can think of in the democratic arena in order to defeat liberalism. While doing so they will corrupt democracy itself. But since democracy is only a tool with which to defeat liberalism in order to institute the true Straussian hierarchical society, this is of little import. In the end they will jettison democracy if to do so is expedient. "Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat, and following Machiavelli, he maintains that if no external threat exists, then one has to be manufactured." The fundamental political categories are "us" and "them." A sense of perpetual crisis and war cements the society together with absolute loyalty to the gentlemen. But the categories "us" and "them" do not stop at external enemies. The sense of crisis makes the struggle against internal enemies an even more desperate war of "us" against "them." Quoting Leo Strauss: "It is the state of Nietzsche's "last man." Kojève in fact confirms the classical view that unlimited technological progress and its accompaniment, which are the indispensable conditions of the universal and homogeneous state (a peaceful state without want), are destructive of humanity. It is perhaps possible to say that the universal and homogeneous state is fated to come. But it is certainly impossible to say that man can reasonably be satisfied with it. If the universal and homogeneous state is the goal of History, History is absolutely "tragic." Its completion will reveal that the human problem, and hence in particular the problem of the relation of philosophy and politics, is insoluble. For centuries and centuries men have unconsciously done nothing but work their way through infinite labors and struggles and agonies, yet ever again catching hope, toward the universal and homogeneous state, and as soon as they have arrived at the end of their journey, they realize that through arriving at it they have destroyed their humanity...Yet there is no reason for despair as long as human nature has not been conquered completely...There will always be men who will revolt against a state which is destructive of humanity." (that peaceful state without want)