Leo Strauss and the Neo-Cons
openDemocracy has an interesting article highlighting the influence of Leo Strauss on the Bush administration neo-conservatives. You can check it out here. Here’s an excerpt:
The effect of Strauss’s teaching is to convince his acolytes that they are the natural ruling elite and the persecuted few. . . . So, they come to the conclusion that they have a moral justification to lie in order to avoid persecution. Strauss goes so far as to say that dissembling and deception — in effect, a culture of lies — is the peculiar justice of the wise.
The Energy Task Force document imbroglio, the justification for the pre-emptive war against Iraq, the justifications for the President’s tax cuts are all examples of the “noble lie” that Strauss championed for the ruling elite. Now it’s time for the “vulgar many” (Strauss’s term for the non-elite) to take note, and take action.
The Leo Strauss and the Neo-Cons by SharedThought, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.