Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
19 December 2011
Architect of Conservatism:
Leo Strauss
The political right takes much of its direction
from the theories of a man who escaped the
Holocaust and settled in the United States
Kirchain is a small the town that sits in the centre of modern Germany. In 1899, it was in the Kingdom of Prussia and home to Hugo and Jennie Strauss.
On September 30 of that year a boy was born into this orthodox Jewish family and he was given the name of Leo.
He received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Hamburg and continued his career in universities, teaching and studying, in France and England.
Return to his native Germany under the persecution of the Nazis was unthinkable so, in 1937, he moved to the United States.
Strauss Teaches Conservative Philosophy
After a number of teaching positions (Columbia University
and the New School in New York) Strauss (above) landed a job as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago in 1949.
It was from this perch that he was to have his greatest influence on neoconservative thinking. Strauss died in 1973.
The list of Strauss’s disciples includes many who were influential in the movement that got George W. Bush elected President in 2000, by marrying national pride to religion. It’s the founding idea that gives the Tea Party movement its impetus.
Writing at AlterNet.org (May 2003) Jim Lobe, Washington bureau chief for Inter Press Service, names “Weekly Standard editor William Kristol; his father and indeed the godfather of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol,” as fervent Straussians.”
Lobe also identifies senior Bush officials Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Stephen Cambone, Abram Shulsky, and Gary Schmidt as followers of Strauss’s teachings. Some of these people had earlier worked in the Reagan White House.
Strauss Saw Moral Failings Causing Social Collapse
In her book, Leo Strauss and the American Right (Palgrave Macmillan, February 1999)
Professor Shadia B. Bury traces the influences that brought Strauss to his belief
that right-
Leo Strauss believed that Nazism was made possible by the collapse of morality brought on by the liberal democracy of Germany in the 1920s. Without a rigid moral code imposed by religion, Germany slumped into vice, depravity, and decadence.
Among the political right there is a belief that the history of western civilization
has led to the triumph of the inferior, the rabble. The only thing the masses are
interested in, goes the theory, is self-
Return of God to Public Life
Straussians feel that with God in decline and obedience to his unbending dictates faltering society faces the danger of falling apart.
Time to put a bit of stick about, they say, so they turn to religion as an essential part of their political ideology.
As Jim Lobe points out, “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.”
Strauss’s followers also believe that society is in a perpetual state of war of good against evil, and that this requires actions that most people don’t have the stomach for.
They also say that truth and justice are myths, but that it’s not a good idea to let the masses in on this insight – it might frighten them.
Deceiving the populace in pursuit of higher goals is a core belief among those who follow Leo Strauss.
Politics of Deception
In a lengthy essay in The New Yorker (May 2003) Seymour M. Hersh, examines how the
Bush Administration took the Strauss playbook to create the fiction that Iraq’s dictator,
Saddam Hussein, had built an arsenal or weapons of mass destruction and had developed
links to al-
Hersh quotes Stephen Holmes, a law professor at New York University: Straussians
“believe that your enemy is deceiving you, and you have to pretend to agree, but
secretly you follow your own views. The whole story is complicated by Strauss’s idea—actually
Plato’s—that philosophers need to tell noble lies not only to the people at large
but also to powerful politicians.”
Is Stephen Harper a Strauss Follower?
In January 2011, left-
Salutin points out that Strauss advocated that to defeat liberalism a strategy of duplicity and secrecy is necessary: “This rarefied vision became highly influential when it was spread by [Strauss’s] students (and theirs) in government, think tanks, and media during the Reagan and Bush years. It’s a prominent force at Mr. Harper’s intellectual home, the University of Calgary.”
Journalist Lawrence Martin has written about Harper in his book, Harperland, (Viking, October 2010). CBC News says, “The book also portrays Harper as someone with a drive for secrecy and control over the government and who has a visceral hatred for the Liberal opposition.”
Sources
“Leo Strauss’ Philosophy of Deception.” Jim Lobe, AlternetMay 19, 2003.
“Leo Strauss and the American Right.” Professor Shadia B. Bury, Palgrave Macmillan, February 1999.
“Selective Intelligence.” The New Yorker, Seymour M. Hersh, May 12, 2003.
“Stephen Harper -
“Author Defends Harper Book.” CBC News, October 1, 2010.
“The Demonization Of Leo Strauss.” Adam Kirsch, New York Sun, May 17, 2006.
© Canada and the World, December 2011
All rights reserved
Rick Salutin’s column connecting Stephen Harper to Leo Strauss was the last he wrote
for The Globe and Mail, which unceremoniously fired him. Writing at The Tyee, (September
30, 2010) David Beers reports that journalist Murray Dobbin among others suggests
the right-
“Secretiveness, an aura of manipulation and a sense of hidden agendas. From a Straussian view, these are good things as means to noble ends.”
Rick Salutin
Globe and Mail
ANTI-
Writing in the New York Sun (May 2006) Adam Kirsch list some of the negative things that have been written about Leo Strauss:
- “the high priest of ultra-
conservatism” (the Guardian). - His views on politics are “disturbingly elitist and antidemocratic,” full of warnings not to “let the rabble get above themselves” (the New York Times).
- He believed that “a strong and wise minority of humans had to rule over the weak majority through deception and fear, rather than persuasion or compromise” (the Guardian again).
- For such rulers, he taught, lying is not a sin, but a necessity: The leader should "use the language of morality to mask [his] real interests, which are his own survival in power and his ability to continue to exert dominance over the populace” (the Nation).
Kirsch says the criticism of Strauss is an example of anti-