Its Just Good Old Straussian Tactics

[Montagnard]

My suggestion is for you to read something about Leo Strauss’ philosophy. Then things that are happening will start to make sense. Strauss is the guiding philosopher of those who are today running country.

Just a few Straussian philosophical points:

Any country should be led and ruled by an elite
The population should be indoctrinated so as to achieve a nationalistic fervor
Fear, fear, fear! A population should be immersed in fear.
The ruling class has a duty to lie to the population; the population cannot stand the truth.

Do any or all of that ring a bell

[Vincardog]

1. Ding Ding Ding Ask not for whom the bell tolls

[SteppingRazor]

2. You know, having read The City and Man and Thoughts on Machiavelli...

I often wonder whether these ideas can really be laid at Strauss' feet, or whether it's more of a perversion of his words by some of his students and followers, similar to the way the Nazis used Nietzsche. Certainly, Strauss was no friend to liberalism, but neither did he ever specifically endorse imperialism, to my knowledge.

While I'm certainly no fan of Strauss' political philosophy, I prefer to lay the blame for fearmongering and jingoism where it belongs -- the Bush administration, some of whom happen to be Straussian

On edit: To be perfectly truthful, I didn't quite get through City and Man. Along with his other shortcomings, Strauss is a pretty dull writer.

[Montagnard]

4. Certainly Bloom has some hand

but, at the bottom it was Strauss. IMHO

[orwell]

3. Also...

...religion must be used as vehicle for mass control, whether or not the elites personally believe.

Democracy is an anachronism which leads to liberalism, moral degeneration, multiculturalism, and moral relativism. Therefore democracy must crushed by a form of veiled totalitarianism masking elite rule. Democracy becomes a branding strategy to keep the proles in line rather than a functional reality.

[SteppingRazor]

5. I don't think that was the idea behind Strauss...

I mean, his thought was that unbridled liberal democracy led to totalitarian states, often citing the example of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. And he certainly didn't think that was a good thing. So, I don't think you can say Strauss was a totalitarianist. If anything, he was against liberalism because he believed (wrongly, in my opinion), that liberalism leads to totalitarianism.

[Skidmore]

6. Tactics by Skidmore.

Kneecap the lying elite.

Philosophy of Skidmore

This nation belongs to its people.
The elite propogandist need to be denounced.
The population should be immersed in education and be knowledgeable about the nation and the world.
The people have a duty to know the truth and to speak it to power.

[TexasLawyer]

8. Oh Yeah--

I am a Skidmorian!

[Skidmore]

10. I have groupies!!!!

:)

Seriously, I'm so tired of the deference shown these lying bunch of pampered wealthy neocons. They need to be brought down. If the nation took out the robber barons in the last century, we can sure deal handily with this bunch of corrupt traitors.

[NMDemDist2]

13. perfect!

I'll sign on that one :bounce:

[lonestarnot]

20. Yes I love it!

[The Sleeper]

7. Anybody know where he's buried ??

If I'm ever out that way, I'll be sure to eat plenty of Mexican food before I pay a visit...

[nebenaube]

11. likewise...

and tag his headstone with "INSOC".

[GeorgeGist]

9. Like KKKKarl said...

"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend – but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3822

[Rockstone]

12. Clarify you post for me

"Any country should be led and ruled by an elite"

That is a principle of Plato's Ideal City which, being a platonic philosopher, Strauss commented on.

"Any country should be led and ruled by an elite
The population should be indoctrinated so as to achieve a nationalistic fervor
Fear, fear, fear! A population should be immersed in fear.
The ruling class has a duty to lie to the population; the population cannot stand the truth."

I have a hard time believing that these were the sentiments of a German Jew who lived through the time of WWII. Can you point me to where he states thing s like this?

[Montagnard]

16. I would refer you to a book by Shadia B. Drury

The paradox you questioned also concerned her,I and many others.

[Kellanved]

18. It's actually Carl Schmitt

The Nazi's legal philosopher.
Strauss was a student of Schmitt.

[tbyg52]

14. So glad the word about Leo Strauss is getting out

Quite a while ago (over a year, maybe two), I tried to find a book by or about him. No luck. He's been a well kept secret, but he has a lot of influence, damn his soul.

[Recursion]

15. Well, it's not quite that simple...

...Strauss was an obscurantist; his main contribution to scholarship was (rightly, IMO) pointing out that philosophers in the past couldn't always say exactly what they meant, particularly regarding politics. For example, before Strauss few people paid much mind to the fact that Plato's Republic begins with a slave grabbing Socrates on the way to a torch show, and taking him to his friends who threaten to beat him up if he doesn't talk about Justice with them. Or that since the city they're building is being built as a model for the individual soul, the "noble lie" would then be that our intellect and our passions have two different natures.

And yet for all his obscurantism, some students took him very literally...

[bobthedrummer]

17. He made universal fascism possible, among other things eom.

[StrictlyRockers]

19. Interesting to know some roots of neo-con philosophy.

Are these the same people who are reading Ayn Rand and creaming over it?