Forgotten History - Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2006
"Little known facts and overlooked history"
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Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception
By Jim Lobe
(Some of you have asked about further history regarding
the neo-cons. Here it is.)
Strauss is a popular figure among the neoconservatives.
Adherents of his ideas include prominent figures both
within and outside the administration. They include
'Weekly Standard' editor William Kristol; his father and
indeed the godfather of the neoconservative movement,
Irving Kristol; the new Undersecretary of Defense for
Intelligence, Stephen Cambone, a number of senior fellows
at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (home to former
Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and Lynne
Cheney), and Gary Schmitt, the director of the influential
Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is
chaired by Kristol the Younger.
Strauss' philosophy is hardly incidental to the strategy
and mindset adopted by these men - as is obvious in
Shulsky's 1999 essay titled "Leo Strauss and the World of
Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)" (in Greek
philosophy the term nous denotes the highest form of
rationality). As Hersh notes in his article, Shulsky and
his co-author Schmitt "criticize America's intelligence
community for its failure to appreciate the duplicitous
nature of the regimes it deals with, its susceptibility
to social-science notions of proof, and its inability
to cope with deliberate concealment." They argued that
Strauss's idea of hidden meaning, "alerts one to the
possibility that political life may be closely linked to
deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm
in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the
expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense
with it is the exception."
Rule One: Deception
It's hardly surprising then why Strauss is so popular in
an administration obsessed with secrecy, especially when
it comes to matters of foreign policy. Not only did
Strauss have few qualms about using deception in politics,
he saw it as a necessity. While professing deep respect
for American democracy, Strauss believed that societies
should be hierarchical - divided between an elite who
should lead, and the masses who should follow. But unlike
fellow elitists like Plato, he was less concerned with the
moral character of these leaders. According to Shadia
Drury, who teaches politics at the University of Calgary,
Strauss believed that "those who are fit to rule are those
who realize there is no morality and that there is only
one natural right - the right of the superior to rule
over the inferior."
This dichotomy requires "perpetual deception" between the
rulers and the ruled, according to Drury. Robert Locke,
another Strauss analyst says,"The people are told what
they need to know and no more." While the elite few are
capable of absorbing the absence of any moral truth,
Strauss thought, the masses could not cope. If exposed
to the absence of absolute truth, they would quickly fall
into nihilism or anarchy, according to Drury, author of
'Leo Strauss and the American Right' (St. Martin's 1999).
Second Principle: Power of Religion
According to Drury, Strauss had a "huge contempt" for
secular democracy. Nazism, he believed, was a nihilistic
reaction to the irreligious and liberal nature of the
Weimar Republic. Among other neoconservatives, Irving
Kristol has long argued for a much greater role for
religion in the public sphere, even suggesting that the
Founding Fathers of the American Republic made a major
mistake by insisting on the separation of church and state.
And why? Because Strauss viewed religion as absolutely
essential in order to impose moral law on the masses who
otherwise would be out of control.
At the same time, he stressed that religion was for the
masses alone; the rulers need not be bound by it. Indeed,
it would be absurd if they were, since the truths proclaim-
ed by religion were "a pious fraud." As Ronald Bailey,
science correspondent for Reason magazine points out,
"Neoconservatives are pro-religion even though they them-
selves may not be believers."
"Secular society in their view is the worst possible
thing," Drury says, because it leads to individualism,
liberalism, and relativism, precisely those traits that
may promote dissent that in turn could dangerously weaken
society's ability to cope with external threats. Bailey
argues that it is this firm belief in the political utility
of religion as an "opiate of the masses" that helps explain
why secular Jews like Kristol in 'Commentary' magazine and
other neoconservative journals have allied themselves with
the Christian Right and even taken on Darwin's theory of
evolution.
Third Principle: Aggressive Nationalism
Like Thomas Hobbes, Strauss believed that the inherently
aggressive nature of human beings could only be restrained
by a powerful nationalistic state. "Because mankind is
intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed," he once
wrote. "Such governance can only be established, however,
when men are united - and they can only be united against
other people."
Not surprisingly, Strauss' attitude toward foreign policy
was distinctly Machiavellian. "Strauss thinks that a
political order can be stable only if it is united by an
external threat," Drury wrote in her book. "Following
Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat
exists then one has to be manufactured (emphases added)."
"Perpetual war, not perpetual peace, is what Straussians
believe in," says Drury. The idea easily translates into,
in her words, an "aggressive, belligerent foreign policy,"
of the kind that has been advocated by neocon groups like
PNAC and AEI scholars - not to mention Wolfowitz and other
administration hawks who have called for a world order
dominated by U.S. military power. Strauss' neoconservative
students see foreign policy as a means to fulfill a
"national destiny" - as Irving Kristol defined it already
in 1983 - that goes far beyond the narrow confines of a
"myopic national security."
As to what a Straussian world order might look like, the
analogy was best captured by the philosopher himself in
one of his - and student Allen Bloom's - many allusions to
Gulliver's Travels. In Drury's words, "When Lilliput was on
fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace.
In so doing, he saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but
the Lilliputians were outraged and appalled by such a show
of disrespect."
The image encapsulates the neoconservative vision of the
United States' relationship with the rest of the world -
as well as the relationship between their relationship as
a ruling elite with the masses. "They really have no use
for liberalism and democracy, but they're conquering the
world in the name of liberalism and democracy," Drury
says.