By Mona
As many who have read me for any significant time would by now know, I am convinced that neoconservatism is a deeply pernicious, even evil political ideology; I further believe that many neoconservative individuals are lying purveyors of wickedness. To continue in my endeavors to support these positions (alas, prior such efforts remain in unretrieved Inactivist archives), I turn to Shadia B. Drury, a scholar of the former University of Chicago philosopher Leo Strauss; Drury recently wrote in Free Inquiry of the enormous influence the unusual and controversial Strauss has had in shaping the views of neoconservatives.
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First, as Drury notes neoconservatives regard religion much as Marx did — except they eagerly embrace it as a means of manipulating hoi polloi:
There is a certain irony in the fact that the chief guru of the neoconservatives is a thinker who regarded religion merely as a political tool intended for the masses but not for the superior few. Leo Strauss, the German Jewish émigré who taught at the University of Chicago almost until his death in 1973, did not dissent from Marx’s view that religion is the opium of the people; but he believed that the people need their opium. He therefore taught that those in power must invent noble lies and pious frauds to keep the people in the stupor for which they are supremely fit.
Thus, even as they themselves frequently do not believe in any sort of personal deity who intervenes in the lives of human beings and expects them to “behave,” neoconservatives generally are most willing to ally themselves with the agenda of proto-theocrats who do so believe. For neoconservatives worry a great deal that the masses constantly teeter on the brink of unbridled depravity and that rigid moral orthodoxy is being undermined, thus as Drury puts it:
There is a strong asceticism at the heart of the neoconservative ideology that explains why it appeals to the Christian Right. Neoconservatism dovetails nicely with the views that humanity is too wicked to be free; too much pleasure is sinful; and suffering is good because it makes man cry out to God for redemption.
Such a worldview, of course, should render neoconservatism entirely at odds with libertarianism, liberalism, and liberty — and indeed it does. Godfather of neoconservatism Irving Kristol set forth a manifesto titled The Neoconservative Persuasion in the August 25, 2003 issue of The Weekly Standard, and his rejection of social issue libertarianism could not be clearer, my emphasis:
The steady decline in our democratic culture, sinking to new levels of vulgarity, does unite neocons with traditional conservatives–though not with those libertarian conservatives who are conservative in economics but unmindful of the culture. The upshot is a quite unexpected alliance between neocons, who include a fair proportion of secular intellectuals, and religious traditionalists. They are united on issues concerning the quality of education, the relations of church and state, the regulation of pornography, and the like, all of which they regard as proper candidates for the government’s attention. And since the Republican party now has a substantial base among the religious, this gives neocons a certain influence and even power. Because religious conservatism is so feeble in Europe, the neoconservative potential there is correspondingly weak.
And, as Brian Doherty has reported in Reason, Irving Kristol does indeed endorse, as Drury puts it, Straussian notions of “noble lies and pious frauds,” my emphasis:
Kristol has been quite candid about his belief that religion is essential for inculcating and sustaining morality in culture. He wrote in a 1991 essay, “If there is one indisputable fact about the human condition it is that no community can survive if it is persuaded–or even if it suspects–that its members are leading meaningless lives in a meaningless universe.”…
Kristol has acknowledged his intellectual debt to Strauss in a recent autobiographical essay. “What made him so controversial within the academic community was his disbelief in the Enlightenment dogma that `the truth will make men free.’” Kristol adds that “Strauss was an intellectual aristocrat who thought that the truth could make some [emphasis Kristol’s] minds free, but he was convinced that there was an inherent conflict between philosophic truth and political order, and that the popularization and vulgarization of these truths might import unease, turmoil and the release of popular passions hitherto held in check by tradition and religion with utterly unpredictable, but mostly negative, consequences.”
Kristol agrees with this view. “There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people,” he says in an interview. “There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn’t work.”
Second, and in addition to maintaining the cultural glue of religion by any duplicitous means deemed necessary (such as by cynically promoting creationism as Doherty’s article documents), Drury shows that many neoconservatives influential with and in the Bush Administration hold the view that at virtually all times it is critical for a strong nation to be unified against an Enemy, and to be engaged in essentially Perpetual Warfare:
Strauss thought that the best way for ordinary human beings to raise themselves above the beasts is to be utterly devoted to their nation and willing to sacrifice their lives for it. He recommended a rabid nationalism and a militant society modelled on Sparta. He thought that this was the best hope for a nation to be secure against her external enemies as well as the internal threat of decadence, sloth, and pleasure. A policy of perpetual war against a threatening enemy is the best way to ward off political decay. And if the enemy cannot be found, then it must be invented.
With the neoconservatives and the Christian Right in power, Americans can forget about the pursuit of happiness and look forward to perpetual war, death, and catastrophe. And in the midst of all the human carnage and calamity that such policies are bound to bring, the Olympian laughter of the Straussian gods will be heard by those who have ears to hear it. …
The fact that so many of the most powerful men in America are self-proclaimed disciples of Leo Strauss is rather troublesome. For example, Abram Shulsky, the director of the Office of Special Plans, which was created by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was a student of Strauss. Shulsky was responsible for finding intelligence that would help to make the case for war in Iraq. We know now that the intelligence was false and misleading. Shulsky tells us that he learned from Strauss that “deception is the norm in political life.”…
Another important Straussian close to the Bush administration is William Kristol…[who] wrote his thesis on Machiavelliæa theorist who was much admired by Strauss for everything except his lack of subtlety. Strauss endorsed Machiavellian tactics in politicsænot just lies and the manipulation of public opinion but every manner of unscrupulous conduct necessary to keep the masses in a state of heightened alert, afraid for their lives and their families and therefore willing to do whateverwas deemed necessary for the security of the nation. For Strauss as for Machiavelli, only the constant threat of a common enemy could save a people from becoming soft, pampered, and depraved. Strauss would have admired the ingenuity of a color code intended to inform Americans of the looming threats and present dangers, which in turn makes them more than willing to trade their liberty for a modicum of security.
Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney, is also a self-proclaimed follower of Strauss. Like many of Strauss’s students, he is animated by a sense of missionæa mission to save America from her secular liberal decadence. And what better solution is there to secular liberal sloth than a war effort?
So, then, lying for the Greater Good is necessary and proper, and neoconservatives are called to peddle falsehood in the service of both their social agenda and warmongering, all to Preserve the State. They will pander to any fear and promote any lie to maintain both their power and an America that is an illiberal, authoritarian nation at war with the Eternal Enemy.
Drury, Doherty and Irving Kristol himself have all shown us who the neoconservatives are and what they do; failing to understand their fundamental commitment to Straussian philosophy (even among those who may not realize they have been imbued with it simply by abiding in a neoconservative milieu) precludes any ability to grasp their ideology and behavior, or read them correctly, at all. They desire to control your life, send your sons and daughters to war, and they believe it imperative to lull you into accepting these goals by any means, even the most egregiously dishonest and disreputable.
That is who the neoconservatives are.
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Update:
I’m not sure my friend Michael Ledeen will thank me for ascribing authorship to him and he may have only been semi-serious when he crafted it, but here is the bedrock tenet of the Ledeen Doctrine in more or less his own words: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”….For now let’s fall back on the Ledeen Doctrine. The United States needs to go to war with Iraq because it needs to go to war with someone in the region and Iraq makes the most sense.
Original article posted here.
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