[lit-ideas] Leo Strauss and his deadly Neocon cabal
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:02:42 -0800
I read the introduction of Neoconservatism: Why we need it by Douglas Murray
and also found the book by Strauss that I purchased a few years ago: Natural
Right and History. What Murray writes about Strauss is consistent with my
recollection.
I believed Francis Fukuyama to be the founder of Neoconservatism, for all
practical purposes, not Leo Strauss, but I kept encountering conspiracy
theories like the one Irene was pushing saying dark things about a
Machiavellian Leo Strauss; so I began reading articles in journals and
pursuing the idea of buying books by and about Strauss. I was anticipating
someone exciting, a warmonger with drool running down both sides of his
mouth. What I encountered was a shy Classicist-Philosopher - or perhaps a
Philosopher-Classicist. Someone like J.L. Speranza . . . which makes me
wonder if Speranza's being a Philosopher-Classicist had anything to do with
his being humiliated by the Lit-Ideas bureaucratic cabal. Strauss did
speak out against Nihilism as does Speranza, and the current crop of
Leftists seems decidedly Nihilistic (witness Geary's current note on
politics and religion; although Geary hasn't been humiliating Speranza -
which seems nihilistic of him given his current views).
Where did the conspiracy theory about Strauss originate? Lyndon La Rouche,
according to Douglas Murray. LaRouche wrote Children of Satan, 26 March
2003 -- or perhaps edited it. Murray also references an article that
appears within Children of Satan entitled "The Ignoble Liars Behind Bush's
Deadly Iraq War." This essay was written by Jeffery Steinberg whom Murray
credits with inventing the term "cabal of Strauss disciples." Later
Steinberg wrote an article in the LaRouche publication Executive
Intelligence Review that the LaRouche attack had "drawn blood." He was
referring to two articles, one by James Atlas in The New York Times of May 4
and the other in the May 12 New Yorker by Seymour Hersh. They don't credit
LaRouche, for who would want to do that, but they use his arguments.
I'm not interested in reading LaRouche. Conspiracy theories and theorists
turn me off. A cellmate of LaRouche, the televangelist Jim Bakker, once
said that to say Lyndon LaRouche was a little paranoid was like saying the
Titanic had a little leak. Nevertheless the Left for reasons best known to
their nihilistic mystical selves have embraced his theories about Strauss.
Strauss lived from 1899 to 1973; so he died long before any of the events
the anti-Neocons blame Strauss for. So what did he teach and how did that
influence any of the Neocons? Paul Wolfowitz is one of the faces appearing
on LaRouche's Children of Satan. If he is a child of Satan, one would
presume, then Strauss is Satan himself. What did Satan teach this
particular child? In an interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity Fair, 15
May 2003, "Paul Wolfowitz poured scorn on the rumor that US foreign policy
was somehow being dictated by the dead Leo Strauss. 'It's a product of
fevered minds,' he said, 'who seem incapable of understanding that September
11th changed a lot of things and changed the way we need to approach the
world. Since they refused to confront that, they looked for some kind of
conspiracy theory to explain it. . . . I mean I took two terrific courses
from Leo Strauss as a graduate student, . . . one was on Montesquieu's
Spirit of the Laws, which helped me understand our Constitution better. And
one was on Plato's Laws. The idea that this has anything to do with U.S.
foreign policy is just laughable."
Easy for you to laugh, Wolfowitz! But LaRouche and his cabal of
anti-Neocons are serious people who don't laugh.
Interestingly, Murray writes that Leo Strauss did have one person who fit
the description, disciple, and that was Alan Bloom. Years ago I read his
The Closing of the American Mind, 1988. and would readily admit that I was
influenced by it; so unbeknownst to me I suppose, I too am an (albeit an
unconscious) disciple of Leo Strauss but not really part of the in-cabal
thing; since I'm not Jewish -- maybe I would qualify as a sort of
inadvertent fellow traveler. But Bloom was concerned about the abandonment
of the Classics by academia. I don't recall any application of the Classics
to the invasion of Iraq. But perhaps I missed it.
Lawrence Helm
San Jacinto
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