The Inconveniences Of Liberty And Bush's Straussian Ideas

[Sophree]

Great article on Straussian versus Jeffersonian views of democracy and Old Testament vs. New Testament philosophies (respectively) from BushWatch.

The Inconveniences Of Liberty And Bush's Starussian Ideas

Dr. Gerry Lower, Keysone, South Dakota
Bush Watch, www.bushwatch.com

***snip***

It was not so much a matter of Strauss telling the right wing what they wanted to hear, but of the right wing listening only to what they wanted to hear, and they heard justifications for their political agenda. While not out to destroy Jefferson's democracy, Strauss certainly contributed nothing to its advancement. Carol Burnett's television show was more richly steeped in American philosophy than anything Strauss ever contributed.

The right wing adherents of Strauss, however, have proceeded to destroy Jefferson's democracy and discredit the dialectic values which gave it birth. Were Jefferson religious, like these people, they would all burn in Jefferson's hell. Fortunately, Jefferson was a Christian "in the only way ever intended." He knew that the principles of democracy (and nascent Christianity) cannot be imposed, least of all with despotic approaches, upon dull, closed minds. These values must be accepted, as Franklin pointed out, by free acceptance of the thoughtful and caring mind.

That someone would synthesize Old World JudeoRoman political philosophies into a view that would ultimately justify and nourish an American takeover by the religious right wing was inevitable, given the people's neglected education and capitalism's thirst for dominion. Straussian views are important only in the cultural evolutionary sense, only insofar as they have nourished religious crony capitalism in its quest for global dominion, only insofar as this quest ultimately leads to discrediting vengeance-based religion and crony capitalism from the global political arena. Would this not open the doors, once again, to democracy, this time on a global basis?

With this glorious and necessary outcome, we will not know whether to bless or blame Leo Strauss. Strauss was both inevitable and necessary for this evolutionary outcome to unfold. But, of course, Strauss was wrong, and wrong about most everything, because he failed to define and think within the frameworks of the Enlightenment's Deist Democracy. Democracy will be revitalized in America and the world only after that becomes recognized and America returns to the theology from whence it emerged.

http://www.bushwatch.net/bushh.htm
(Scroll down the page to find the actual beginning of the article.)