Much nonsense has been written on Strauss's political thought -- often caricatured as crudely anti-democratic, obsessed with secret meanings and in love with white lies told by powerful men to keep the rabble in line. Some have suggested a dark cabal of Straussian intellectuals secretly pull the strings of the Bush administration -- which is ridiculous: The mistakes and false suppositions that led us into the Iraq war are all on the record and understanding them requires no supplemental speculation about ulterior motives or conspiracy theories. -Source
Oh, Philip. Your (now-somewhat-aged) piece on a speech given by Harvey Mansfield was almost too sure to include this dismissal of a Straussian/Neo-Con link. I'll ignore the fact that it is, at its heart, only saying that Strauss himself wouldn't have supported the Bush administration in its quest for world, or at least Middle East, domination.
Because you see, Philip, you're the one making mistakes and false suppositions — the Bush administration never did that. What they employed were "noble lies," and you should know this phrase if you've been studying Strauss.
It's not as if the Neo-Conservatives need you to defend them. Irving Kristol (you know, William's daddy) had this to say, back in 1978:
... I don't think morality can be decided on the private level. I think you need public guidance and public support for a moral consensus. The average person has to know instinctively, without thinking too much about it, how he should raise his children.And that's where the myth — the noble lie — comes into play. If, from birth, you're exposed to Judeo-Christian values and morality, you won't have to make conscious decisions about what you personally consider moral. It will have already been done for you, at the government level, and in accordance with your belief system. This self-affirming form of pseudo-theocracy is exactly what Strauss implies with his writings. You don't have to believe the myth, just help to propagate it (see Karl Rove).
More Irving:
People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place.But Mr. Kristol and his Straussian buddies don't delude themselves, only the population at large:
Neo-conservatives are unlike old conservatives because they are utilitarians, not moralists, and because their aim is the prosperity of post-industrial society, not the recovery of a golden age.The traditional conservatives who've flocked to Bush's congregation in the past 7 years are being misled. Neo-conservatives have no plans to return to the 1950's. Their intention is to keep America stable by silencing criticism — and their means is indoctrination. More Christians means less hippies (or the modern equivalent thereof), and less hippies means less problems with corporations doing whatever they need to do to make more money. Given the recent spurt of Christians believing in "the gospel of wealth," this two may eventually meet in the middle.
And God help the rest of us if they do.
As far as the war in Iraq, I would suggest Phillip take some time to go through the NY Times archive, and watch the same people making the same arguments in the 70's. Rumsfeld's belief that Russia was outspending us 2-to-1 (among other insane notions, including an argument that the lack of missiles in Russia proved they had developed an even higher technology) wasn't an innocent error, it was an intentional one. Dick Cheney's famous 1994 "quagmire" quote should be evidence enough. These are a group of people who make "belief" a matter of convenience.
