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Comrade Freeman, "Leo Strauss and American Politics"
June 10, 2005 - 7:37am -- jim
Comrade Freeman writes:
"The Philosophy of Leo Strauss:
Oligarchs with Myths"
Comrade Freeman
Leo Strauss was born in Germany during the last year of the 19th century, where he studied philosophy, natural science and mathematics. By 1932 though he left his native country and gained a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship through the personal recommendation of the Nazi legal philosopher Carl Schmitt. Eventually Strauss made his way to the United States of America where he gained work as political philosophy professor at the New School for Social Research, and then, the University of Chicago.
Through Strauss’s years of teaching at these institutions he gained a following of devoted students who became in turn teachers and implementers of his political philosophy. Through this essay we will analyse the influences on Leo Strauss and what came to be the political philosophy he supported. Furthermore we will look at the influence Strauss philosophy is having on world politics through its influence on the American consciousness.Strauss came to age during a time of great turbulence; the Treaty of Versailles kept the liberal Weimar Republic in constant economic depression leading to high unemployment and street fights between the Freikorps, Brown Shirts of the Nazis against the communist party’s Red Front. It was during these times that he became concerned with the crisis of modernity.
This Crisis of modernity is a phenomenon that many great thinkers have analysed and given answers to elucidate it. Karl Marx saw the crisis of modernity as the Frankenstein nature of capital and its institutions, conjured by the bourgeoisie “like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells”(1). For Albert Camus the crisis was the absurdity of life, like Sisyphus working constantly for a meaningless cause. Martin Heidegger views it as an existential crisis of ‘the forgetting of Being’. But for Strauss theses thinkers have misdiagnosed the crisis of modernity, the problem as he views it is the problem of relativism.
The relativism of our modern age leads us into the abyss of nihilism, where everything is subjected to ruthless criticism by individuals who believe in nothing, thus subverting the shared values that underpin society and uphold ‘the natural right’. Furthermore According to Strauss the weakness of liberalism is its compromising nature which is a materialisation of relativism which if left unchecked will lead into the decay and eventual collapse of society. This is how Strauss analysed the Weimar Republic which decayed and collapsed under pressure from communists to ultranationalists and militarists. He viewed American liberalism as in the same boat as the weak compromising relativism of the Weimar republic.
The relativism of modernity comes about because modern philosophers are unable to find essential truths but only accidental truths, thus finding no absolute moral values. Thus Strauss turns to classical antiquity.
“It is not self-forgetting and pain-loving antiquarianism nor self-forgetting and intoxicating romanticism which induces us to turn with passionate interest, with unqualified willingness to learn, toward the political thought of classical antiquity. We are impelled to do so by the crisis of our time, the crisis of the West.” (2)
This return to classic political philosophy focused mainly on Platonism, because the crisis of modernity was formed not by material processes as Marx would have it. But by modern philosopher starting with Machiavelli and Hobbes who eventually led to the “third wave” of modern philosopher such as Nietzsche or Heidegger were values and morals are contained only within human-subjectivity. Moreover when Sartre declares “if I regard a certain course of action as good, it is only I who choose to say that it is good and not bad”(3) this leads to certain conclusions in the realm of political philosophy of having no essential values and thus nothing to bound society together and give it direction. The relativism and histrionism of modernity lead Strauss to Plato because “Platonists are not concerned with the historical (accidental) truth, since they are exclusively interested in the philosophic (essential) truth” (4).
Plato’s notion of truth is based on the relationship between "intellectual illumination" or “The Form of the Good” and “representations” and “shadows” (5). In Plato’s theory of forms “the form of the good” is pure knowledge as an abstraction or a priori which is a higher form then matter. Matter is just a representation or substandard copy of the form of the good and thus an imperfect form. Thus opinions based on perception based stimuli are flawed and can never be knowledge even though humans have a divine spark of the form of the good within them. Plato’s notions of truth were expensed with metaphors and allegories, most famously in ‘the allegory of the cave’. In which prisoners are kept from childhood shackled in a cave immobilised with a fire burning behind them which they cannot see, all the while on a raised path way man carry shapes of animals and various objects. These objects project shadows upon the wall which the prisoners see and play a game naming them, at the same time when the man carrying shapes speak the prisoners believe the noises come from the shadows. For the prisoners this is their reality, knowing nothing of the world outside of the cave. Plato thought that because they lived their whole life without direct light to turn and look at the fire would hurt their eyes but to leave the cave and see the sun would blind them, thus the prisoners would rather live in their cave. This draws very closely with Plato’s metaphor of the sun, the illuminating form of the good which we cannot understand because we are trapped within our own “cave”. Thus for Strauss with all his talk of essential truths we find a man walking around in the back of a cave trying to find knowledge while it’s the illuminating light which he shies away from.
But while Strauss has problems finding knowledge as in the highest form of truth that doesn’t stop him from disseminating ‘truths’ to the people. Strauss thought that society needs two pillars of mythology in which to give it strength, direction and the continuation of the natural rights. The myths that hold strong societies together must be propagated by a vanguard of “philosopher kings” as Plato would have it and Strauss encoded. Though the philosopher kings don’t actually have to believe in the noble lies they propagate that is why they must have an esoteric side to their writings to communicate with other philosophers or “superman” if we want to highlight the influences of Nietzsche on Strauss and his followers. Furthermore their exoteric deceptions propagate myths which bind society to the ideal of natural rights.
The First pilar in the mythology of strong societies is the use of religion. Strauss would agree with Marx famous dictum ‘religion is the opium of the masses’ (6) but he would see it as a necessary illusion. A religious belief system puts morals out side the realm of human-subjectivity which characterises the existentialist philosophy (which is the ‘third wave’ of modernity). Thus making a binding self of values by which society is directed and individuals invested. This is also a continuation of Strauss wars with the modern on behalf of the ancients. Plato envisioned a caste society which institutions of education dispensed an ideological imprint on its individuals going as far as to ban certain poets and artist who break with the ideological hegemony of his perfect society. Such banned artist would be Homer or Hesiod because they present gods in a bad image, as plotting and fighting which according to Plato is against the nature of divinity. This kind of religious reasoning was used by monarchist to justly the rule of the king, claiming a divine right. But the enlightenment sort to overthrow notions of divine right and religious reasoning which was seen as hiding material vested interested which should be called despotism. Deism was championed by moderate critics such as Voltaire to install an age of reason in which church and religion were separated from the affairs of state where secularism would reign. Some enlightenment thinkers went as far to expound a mechanical materialism such as Denis Diderot. In the realm of political philosophy Rousseau thought that sovereignty should be held by the general will of the people and that law should be their will universalised(7). But for Strauss this view of things is unacceptable because it was part of the development of relativism which weakened society and the “superman”, “the herd” (8) dimension (the natural rights).
The second pilar of mythology for strong society was the notion of patriotism. The ideal of the nation was for Strauss a tool to unite the people against the relativism of modernity. Hermann Goering once said:-
“Naturally the common people don’t want war. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” (9)
Strauss would agree with this statement, furthermore he sees it’s as a necessary illusion for manipulation of peoples consent and thus obedience. The manufacturing of an enemy is used throughout history to galvanise and unite the people. The threat doesn’t have to be a real threat, did the Spanish blow up the United States ship U.S.S. Maine that exploded in Havana Harbour? We don’t know but the United States of America went to war and managed to greatly increase it influence. The assassination Franz Ferdinand by the Narodna Odbrana a Serbian terrorist group lead to world war one, but it was just the excuse for the war. Europe was set to explode which was well known, the second international met in 1912 two years before the war to work out a policy on the coming imperialist conflict. War has always been used as a tool long before and after Carl von Clausewitz wrote in the Eighteen-hundreds:-
“War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.
Strauss considered himself a conservative scholar (opposed to philosopher who originate systems of thought, scholars just judge and reason with pre-existing systems, at least this is Strauss own categorisation) who returned to classical philosophy for an answer to the crisis of the west, of modernity. Strauss believed that the enlightenment along with it’s relativism that undermined societal unity and values brought a new conception of nature and the relation of philosophy to society. Strauss wanted to return the Platonist conception of nature opposed to the tradition of the enlightenment epitomised by thinkers like Rousseau who felt human nature shifted under different material contexts. This idea was taken further by Karl Marx, who felt nature was a temporal condition that was negated by the actions of mankind determining their own human nature and conditions. Though this was a two way street of conditions influencing the individual and the individual influencing the conditions:-
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” (11)
The revolutionary humanism of Marx in the tradition of the enlightenment though of cause a critical adaptation of the tradition was of the political movements which Strauss sort to guard against. Strauss was an Anti-histrionist who saw Marx ideas us based on accidental truths in attempt to undermined ‘natural rights’. Thus Strauss whished that bring forward the ideals of Plato ironically would address current historical problems. The natural rights which are being subverted by revolutionary humanism and liberalism were the ideal that society must be hierarchical that the masses must be lead by a vanguard of philosopher kings. The philosopher kings must guard their intentions though and maintain their deception and myths, Straussian Esotericism does not go us far as that of Ammonius Saccas (12) who wrote nothing of his ideas and is only known according to his followers. Though another irony of Leo Strauss is through his works and teaching his philosopher of deceit has become well-known in circles who don’t hold favourable views on his aims. Another why in which the enlightenment challenged Strauss views was in the relation of philosophy to the city or society. For enlightenment thinkers philosophy was to become exoteric even though they wrote in an esoteric way, something of a historical constraint (avoiding censorship and such, Denis Diderot was haunted by the police). For Marx philosophy and theory was consciousness of material forces:-
“We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.” (13)
Which is quite contrary to Strauss who thought truth was only grasped in the abstract. Furthermore Marx felt philosophy to have any relevance must be gripped by the people, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways;
the point is to change it”(14). While Strauss saw all philosophy as political this is not the use he would see it put.
The philosophy of Leo Strauss is based on Plato who incidentally the liberal democrat Karl Popper called a “proto-totalitarian”, (15) this philosophy is an attempt to resecure the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie from subversive and dangerous philosophical-political movements of the moderns.
2
The philosophy of Leo Strauss found its practical expression in a group of his students and readers who rallied together in infiltrating political philosophy departments, think tanks and government institutions and have became known as “Neo-conservatives”. Though there is no group who self-identifies as “Neo-conservative”, even though the press is ready to label them and plain conservatives to draw distinctions. This section of the essay will focus on major events and figures in the history of the Straussian conservative movement and its effect on the workings of government and world affaires.
Karl Marx once wrote that new revolution grown of new struggles find their sprit in old revolutions:-
“Thus the awakening of the dead in those revolutions served the purpose of glorifying the new struggles, not of parodying the old; of magnifying the given task in the imagination, not recoiling from its solution in reality; of finding once more the spirit of revolution, not making its ghost walk again.”(16)
The neo-conservatives are not like normal conservatives being as they see themselves as closer to revolutionaries contrary to the normal conservatives who want stability in world affairs and at home. Claes Ryn sees the neo-conservatives as a variant of Neo-Jacobinism, while other see them as trying to create a new roman empire. Others draw the neo-conservative drive for ‘democratic revolution’ as an adaptation of Trotsky’s “permanent revolution” (17) seeing that early Neo-conservatives such as Irving Kristol (sometimes called the godfather of the neoconservative movement) was himself a member of the Fourth international (Trotskyist international, opposed to the third [Stalinist] international). Furthermore Neo-conservatives have been greatly influenced by the ideas of Max Shachtman a non-orthodox Trotskyist who argued with Trotsky over the class nature of the soviet republic drawing the conclusion that it was a Bureaucratic collectivist state which should not be supported even critically (contrary to Trotsky’s notion of deformed workers state). But also the ex-Trotskyist thinker James Burnham who declared “the war of 1914 was the last great war of capitalist society” and that “the war of 1939 is the first great war of managerial society” (18), his notion of “managerial revolution” (19) is capitalism has been slowly eroding away and that Nazi Germany, Soviet union and the united states under the new deal represented a new society – “Managerial society” (20).
Within this new world order however someone wishes to characterise it, two of the most prevalent and longest standing politicians in the Neo-conservative movement are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, Both having served under many administrations. Donald Rumsfeld served under the Nixon administration but started to make real headway for the neo-conservative movement during the Presidency of Gerald R. Ford. In the position of White House Chief of Staff Member of the President's Cabinet (1974-1975); and the 13th U.S. Secretary of Defence (1975-1977). It was during this time that Rumsfeld and Cheney became evolved in controversy surrounding the death of CIA scientist Frank Olson who was involved in Project MKULTRA a now uncovered operation researching mind control drugs, experiments often carried out on non-consenting victims (American and Canadian, Theodore Kaczynski the Unabomber is thought to be a victim). Cheney and Rumsfeld helped organise the white house response to Olson’s death, which was not accepted by the Olson’s family and close friends. The government offered settlement out of court which the family accepted. In 1994, Professor James E. Starrs of The George Washington University determined that Olson had suffered some form of blunt force trauma prior to falling out of the window, and called the evidence “rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide”. In1996 Manhattan district attorney opened a homicide investigation into Olson's death but was unable to find enough evidence to file charges. Eric Olson still believes his father developed moral qualms about his work and then the United States government had him killed. But also amidst the controversy in these positions Rumsfeld is attributed a large role in increasing the power of the military within the government at the expanse of the CIA and Henry Kissinger, who traditionally has been an enemy of the neo-conservatives because he supported a pragmatist approach to stability rather then revolutionising the world order. Rumsfeld achieved this power play victory by propagating the view or noble lie that the Soviet Union was spending more on arms and that the appropriate response was a United States arms production increase. This view was contrary to all reports done by the CIA at the time who concluded that the Soviet Union was suffering from economic decline that would lead to collapse of the system. Furthermore at his time Rumsfeld paved the way for the idea’s of Leo Strauss to become more accepted, though the neo-conservatives never attained much weight in directing foreign policy until the Reagan’s administration and the end of Détente.
The Détente ended with a chain of events one being the Islamist revolution in Iran led the United States populace and government to believe they were losing power and their position in the world. During Reagan’s presidency the neo-conservatives were considered only a small faction within the administration. But Reagan was an anti-communist throughout his life, during his acting career he informed on many people he considered ‘un-American’ or ‘disloyal’ becoming a FBI informant under the code name "Agent T-10". On becoming president Reagan heated up the rhetoric of the cold war and increased defence spending, thus producing a renewed arms race between the Russian soviets and themselves. Furthermore the Reagan administration outline to win the cold war was one to increase the negotiating position of the United States by increased strategic position through arms superiority. Too bring out the arms race would lead to increased soviet spending on defence which would contribute to its already declining economy. Three was support of clandestine Anti-soviet forces and right-wing dictatorships (fascism) to Holt any increase in the Anti-USA power bloc (which included many countries and ideologies).
The new foreign policy of the Reagan administration basic aim was the same as all American foreign polices for the last century differing only in scop. The basic aim of American foreign policy is to continue its ideological hegemony and support it’s “interests”. Thus a country that doesn’t pose a military threat to the United States and its citizens can still be a legitimate target because it doesn’t comply with United States ideological alignment and thus represents an alternative. The change in scope however is the area in which this ideological hegemony must be continued and interest maintained. Before world war two the United States ‘sphere of influence’ was largely limited to the western hemisphere, though there are occasions were they bent their own rules. But after world war two the United States became what Burnham called “receiver” (21) of the British Empire. During Reagan’s Administration there was further imperialist aggression, supported by the neo-conservatives.
It was during this time that many world events were shaped and shaped the neo-conservatives. This was the time of the Iranian Islamist revolution, the Iran-Iraqi war, Iran-contra affair, arming of the Contras (short for counter-revolutionaries) in Nicaragua, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lebanon’s civil war and soviet intervention in Afghanistan along with many other events notwithstanding the fall of the Berlin wall. The neo-conservative line was much the same as Reagan’s policy, differing on one issue. That issue was the Iraqi-Iran war, during which the Reagan white house openly supported the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and supplying arms to fight the Iranians. Richard Perle a leading neo-conservative policy advisor said “I was actually rather uncomfortable with the support that we gave Saddam during the war between Iraq and Iran” (22). Perle in explained the reasoning of the Reagan administration and the action he felt should have been taken:-
“the view was that the mullahs in Tehran were worst than the tyrant in Baghdad, and I understand that argument. I don’t agree with it, but even for those who accepted that view, the right course immediately after the end of that war would have been to say to Saddam, now we’ve had enough of you too, and we’re not gonna to tolerate it.” (23)
The reason why Perle was critical of Reagan’s handily of the Iraqi-Iran war was because he believes in using American military power as a means of toppling tyranny, war as a political instrument of cleansing evil elements within the world community. Though Perle was up in arms over this and combating American hypocrisy, other Neo-conservatives have been rather selective in their criticisms of nations they see to be evil, while supporting right-wing dictatorships and nations willing to help them in their “war on terror”. The Soviet-Afghanistan war is one that neo-conservatives are rather proud of.
The soviet-Afghanistan war has often been referred to as the Russians Vietnam because of the gradual evolution from military advisors to full blown intervention but also because it ended in a virtual stalemate. The soviets were draw into the war because the Marxist-Leninist government of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was under attack from supporters from the old regime and the conservative Islamic peasantry. Supporters of soviet foreign policy claim that the intervention was a pre-emptive strike aimed at Islamist terrorist to stop them from taking control of the government. In response to the events in Afghanistan the United States administration under the influence of the neo-conservatives supported the Islamic resistance called “the Mujahideen”. Reagan referred to the Mujahideen as "freedom fighters
After the withdrawal of soviet troops was completed on February 2, 1989 it was expected that the central government in Kabul would collapse but these’s hopes were dashed when the Mujahideen was unsuccessful in taking provincial capitals or Kabul. The civil war continued until PDPA was no longer able to hold together the factions that constituted their government, thus in 1992 the Mujahideen who had only been united through anti-communist sentiments took power divided in two main groups, the radical Taliban which created the central government and the Northern Alliance controlled provincial areas. As Gorbachev had warned the Mujahideen victory would not result in anything approaching democracy, which was correct because the result was an Islamic republic which the soviets had originally feared. As an aside to the victory of the Mujahideen Osama bin Laden and the more militant supports from his Maktab al-Khadamat (MAK, funnelled money, arms, and Muslim fighters into Afghanistan during the war) formed a group influenced by Sayyid Qutb (an Islamist thinker with a hate for Liberalism not far removed from Leo Strauss’s ideals). The group Aimed to install Islamist republics in the Arab world, through attacking the ‘far’ enemy the United States which it sees as the corrupting source of liberalism and anti-Islamic values. Through all this though the Neo-conservatives were more assured of their ideals, believing that they had defeated the ‘evil empire’.
After the Reagan administration the Neo-conservatives found themselves outsiders in the George H.W. Bush administration. It was during this administration that the United States invaded oil rich Kuwait to oust the Iraqi armed forces who had invaded early on the order of Saddam Hussein (Colin Powell opposed the USA lead invasion suggesting sanction would be more appropriate ) . The neo-conservatives pushed for the army to invade Iraq proper and remove Hussein from power. But Bush had a more traditional approach to foreign policy aiming for stability rather then an aggressive moralist stance supported by the ‘hawkish’ Neo-conservatives. During the Clinton administration they remained outsiders but managed to tap into puritan politicalization lead by protestant fundamentalists in groups like “the moral majority”.
The puritan upsurge within the United States has been beneficial to the right-wing of politics, providing a kind of McCarthyite scare tactic. Since the end of the cold war there was not a major outside enemy but the myth of religion was creating a galvanising force in reaction to the ‘lax’ morality of bill Clinton. Some of the attacks on Clinton’s personal indiscretions turned out to have truth behind them, such as the Monica Lewinsky affair. But a lot of the allegations levelled at Clinton were complete fabrications such Whitewater. But while Clinton was hounded by theses alligation it represented a wider social change and focus on moral based issues playing into the hands of the Neo-conservatives.
The next president was George W. Bush of whom many of his critics feel was illegitimately elected in 2000. The new administration was a great victory for the Neo-conservatives with many of its top positions being filled by members of the neo-conservative movement (Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and others). The presidency of George w. bush has been a very controversial one from it’s conception, the influence of the neo-conservatives can been seen throughout this administrations actions, Afghanistan invasion (using the northern alliance), operation Iraqi liberation, puritan religious rhetoric.
The events of September, 11, 2001 will ever remain in the mind of those who lived through theses times. The events of that day are having a far greater effect the death of few thousand innocent people, they have been used has the basis for the invasion of two different countries. Firstly the invasion of Afghanistan because they refused to hand over Osama bin Laden the man believed to be behind the September 11th attacks, though the United States provided no evidence to support their claim. But secondly the invasion of Iraq which the neo-conservatives have been backing for years as outlined in a open letter to Bill Clinton on January 26, 1998
“Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.” (25)
This is not the last time neo-conservative expressed wishes to invade Iraq the same think tank from which the latter was sent “the Project for the New American Century” (PNAC). The PNAC produced a 90-page document in September 2000 that states: “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”(26). This statement highlights the intention of the neo-conservatives, the excuse of war, links to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction have turned out to be completely false. But the premeditation to invade the Middle East remains clear and is part of the idea that America should be the sole world superpower and should maintain its ideology hegemony. This neo-conservative foreign policy finds it’s embodiment in the Bush Doctrine. This states the principles of Peremption: that the united state as the sole super power should be allowed to declare war if it feels threaded by terrorist or the states that support them. Unilateralism: the belief that the United States can take unilateral military action when bilateral action is not possible. Strength beyond Challenge: the notion that the United States is the strongest nation on earth and for security reasons must keep its defence above and beyond any rival power. Democracy, Liberty, and Security to All Regions: the notion that the United States has the right and duty to spread ‘democracy’ and other values it sees as good around the world through whatever means necessary.
We have seen that through the years of the neo-conservative movement they have been able to implement many of the notions of Leo Strauss. They supplied us all with noble lies about reasons for war and a constant threat which cannot be found but is there, so the nation unites against terrorism. They have managed to ride the wave of puritan outrage at their enemies in the Democratic Party. But above all they’ve been able to use the circumstances to their advantage as they new they would “The process of transformation,” according to the plan “is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalysing event—like a new Pearl Harbour.” (27). but with respect to the underlying philosophical concerns of the Neo-conservatives of uniting the people in common mythology they have largely done this but not without complications. There is a minority but growing groups within the United States from both the left and right who oppose the policies of the neo-conservatives. The Neo-conservatives have long studied classical antiquity for answers to modern historical problems and particularly the Athenian philosophers. So it’s interesting to note that the arrogant city of Athens ruined itself in the pursuit of empire by the leadership of Alcibiades a student of Socrates. If we look at the world situation we see the neo-conservatives students of Plato and Socrates leading the United States in the pursuit of empire on a new Sicilian Expedition.
Notes
1) “The Manifesto of the communist party” by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels.
2) “The City and Man” by Leo Strauss.
3) “Existentialism is a Humanism” by Jean-Paul Sartre.
4) “"Farabi's Plato" by Leo Strauss.
5) All quoted from “The republic” by Plato (some translators consider “the state” to be a more accurate translation of the title)
6) This often quoted remark is actually a misquote what Karl Marx really wrote was, “Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” In “Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right Introduction”.
7) George W.F Hegel blamed the influences of Rousseau on the French revolution for leading to its excesses of the terror. This is unwarranted because the Jacobins practiced representative “democracy” rather then direct democracy and thus they were not in line with Rousseau’s alternative social contract. Also the terror was at ends with Rousseau’s view on the use of violence in the attainment of said social contract.
8) For clarification the terms “Superman” or sometimes translated “overman” and “the herd” were employed by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The first two terms depict people whose volition was strong, thus a strong sense of the “will to power”. While “the herd” were people with a weak “will to power” thus being lead as slaves by the “superman”. Some commentators see Leo Strauss as a closet Nietzschean, see Shadia Drury "The Esoteric Philosophy of Leo Strauss" Political Theory 13:3 (1985) 315-37 and The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (New York, 1988); Laurence Lampert Leo Strauss and Nietzsche (Chicago, 1996); and Peter Levine Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities (Albany, 1995).
9) Hermann Goering, Hitler’s second in command, speaking at the Nuremberg Trials which took place after World War II.
10) “On War” by Carl von Clausewitz.
11) “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” by Karl Marx.
12) Ammonius Saccas lived during 3rd century AD and was a Greek philosopher of Alexandria, often called the founder of the Neoplatonic School, but is often confused with a Christian philosopher of the same name.
13) “Letter from Marx to Ruge” by Karl Marx in 1843.
14) “Theses on Feuerbach, Thesis XI” by Karl Marx.
15) “The Open Society and Its Enemies” by Karl Popper.
16) “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” by Karl Marx.
17) See Leon Trotsky’s “the Permanent Revolution”.
18) “The Managerial Revolution” by James Burnham
19) ibid
20) ibid
21) ibid
22) “Richard Perle: The Making of a Neoconservative” Aired 11/14/2002 on Think Tank a PBS program, interviewer: Ben Wattenberg.
23) ibid
24) “Proclamation 4908 -- Afghanistan Day” by Ronald Reagan, Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 3:54 p.m., March 10, 1982.
25) January 26, 1998 PNAC Open Letter to the Honourable William J. Clinton
President of the United States, signed by Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr, Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey and Robert B. Zoellick.
26) “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century” produced by PNAC in 2000.
27) ibid.
Comrade Freeman writes:
"The Philosophy of Leo Strauss:
Oligarchs with Myths"
Comrade Freeman
Leo Strauss was born in Germany during the last year of the 19th century, where he studied philosophy, natural science and mathematics. By 1932 though he left his native country and gained a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship through the personal recommendation of the Nazi legal philosopher Carl Schmitt. Eventually Strauss made his way to the United States of America where he gained work as political philosophy professor at the New School for Social Research, and then, the University of Chicago.
Through Strauss’s years of teaching at these institutions he gained a following of devoted students who became in turn teachers and implementers of his political philosophy. Through this essay we will analyse the influences on Leo Strauss and what came to be the political philosophy he supported. Furthermore we will look at the influence Strauss philosophy is having on world politics through its influence on the American consciousness.Strauss came to age during a time of great turbulence; the Treaty of Versailles kept the liberal Weimar Republic in constant economic depression leading to high unemployment and street fights between the Freikorps, Brown Shirts of the Nazis against the communist party’s Red Front. It was during these times that he became concerned with the crisis of modernity.
This Crisis of modernity is a phenomenon that many great thinkers have analysed and given answers to elucidate it. Karl Marx saw the crisis of modernity as the Frankenstein nature of capital and its institutions, conjured by the bourgeoisie “like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells”(1). For Albert Camus the crisis was the absurdity of life, like Sisyphus working constantly for a meaningless cause. Martin Heidegger views it as an existential crisis of ‘the forgetting of Being’. But for Strauss theses thinkers have misdiagnosed the crisis of modernity, the problem as he views it is the problem of relativism.
The relativism of our modern age leads us into the abyss of nihilism, where everything is subjected to ruthless criticism by individuals who believe in nothing, thus subverting the shared values that underpin society and uphold ‘the natural right’. Furthermore According to Strauss the weakness of liberalism is its compromising nature which is a materialisation of relativism which if left unchecked will lead into the decay and eventual collapse of society. This is how Strauss analysed the Weimar Republic which decayed and collapsed under pressure from communists to ultranationalists and militarists. He viewed American liberalism as in the same boat as the weak compromising relativism of the Weimar republic.
The relativism of modernity comes about because modern philosophers are unable to find essential truths but only accidental truths, thus finding no absolute moral values. Thus Strauss turns to classical antiquity.
“It is not self-forgetting and pain-loving antiquarianism nor self-forgetting and intoxicating romanticism which induces us to turn with passionate interest, with unqualified willingness to learn, toward the political thought of classical antiquity. We are impelled to do so by the crisis of our time, the crisis of the West.” (2)
This return to classic political philosophy focused mainly on Platonism, because the crisis of modernity was formed not by material processes as Marx would have it. But by modern philosopher starting with Machiavelli and Hobbes who eventually led to the “third wave” of modern philosopher such as Nietzsche or Heidegger were values and morals are contained only within human-subjectivity. Moreover when Sartre declares “if I regard a certain course of action as good, it is only I who choose to say that it is good and not bad”(3) this leads to certain conclusions in the realm of political philosophy of having no essential values and thus nothing to bound society together and give it direction. The relativism and histrionism of modernity lead Strauss to Plato because “Platonists are not concerned with the historical (accidental) truth, since they are exclusively interested in the philosophic (essential) truth” (4).
Plato’s notion of truth is based on the relationship between "intellectual illumination" or “The Form of the Good” and “representations” and “shadows” (5). In Plato’s theory of forms “the form of the good” is pure knowledge as an abstraction or a priori which is a higher form then matter. Matter is just a representation or substandard copy of the form of the good and thus an imperfect form. Thus opinions based on perception based stimuli are flawed and can never be knowledge even though humans have a divine spark of the form of the good within them. Plato’s notions of truth were expensed with metaphors and allegories, most famously in ‘the allegory of the cave’. In which prisoners are kept from childhood shackled in a cave immobilised with a fire burning behind them which they cannot see, all the while on a raised path way man carry shapes of animals and various objects. These objects project shadows upon the wall which the prisoners see and play a game naming them, at the same time when the man carrying shapes speak the prisoners believe the noises come from the shadows. For the prisoners this is their reality, knowing nothing of the world outside of the cave. Plato thought that because they lived their whole life without direct light to turn and look at the fire would hurt their eyes but to leave the cave and see the sun would blind them, thus the prisoners would rather live in their cave. This draws very closely with Plato’s metaphor of the sun, the illuminating form of the good which we cannot understand because we are trapped within our own “cave”. Thus for Strauss with all his talk of essential truths we find a man walking around in the back of a cave trying to find knowledge while it’s the illuminating light which he shies away from.
But while Strauss has problems finding knowledge as in the highest form of truth that doesn’t stop him from disseminating ‘truths’ to the people. Strauss thought that society needs two pillars of mythology in which to give it strength, direction and the continuation of the natural rights. The myths that hold strong societies together must be propagated by a vanguard of “philosopher kings” as Plato would have it and Strauss encoded. Though the philosopher kings don’t actually have to believe in the noble lies they propagate that is why they must have an esoteric side to their writings to communicate with other philosophers or “superman” if we want to highlight the influences of Nietzsche on Strauss and his followers. Furthermore their exoteric deceptions propagate myths which bind society to the ideal of natural rights.
The First pilar in the mythology of strong societies is the use of religion. Strauss would agree with Marx famous dictum ‘religion is the opium of the masses’ (6) but he would see it as a necessary illusion. A religious belief system puts morals out side the realm of human-subjectivity which characterises the existentialist philosophy (which is the ‘third wave’ of modernity). Thus making a binding self of values by which society is directed and individuals invested. This is also a continuation of Strauss wars with the modern on behalf of the ancients. Plato envisioned a caste society which institutions of education dispensed an ideological imprint on its individuals going as far as to ban certain poets and artist who break with the ideological hegemony of his perfect society. Such banned artist would be Homer or Hesiod because they present gods in a bad image, as plotting and fighting which according to Plato is against the nature of divinity. This kind of religious reasoning was used by monarchist to justly the rule of the king, claiming a divine right. But the enlightenment sort to overthrow notions of divine right and religious reasoning which was seen as hiding material vested interested which should be called despotism. Deism was championed by moderate critics such as Voltaire to install an age of reason in which church and religion were separated from the affairs of state where secularism would reign. Some enlightenment thinkers went as far to expound a mechanical materialism such as Denis Diderot. In the realm of political philosophy Rousseau thought that sovereignty should be held by the general will of the people and that law should be their will universalised(7). But for Strauss this view of things is unacceptable because it was part of the development of relativism which weakened society and the “superman”, “the herd” (8) dimension (the natural rights).
The second pilar of mythology for strong society was the notion of patriotism. The ideal of the nation was for Strauss a tool to unite the people against the relativism of modernity. Hermann Goering once said:-
“Naturally the common people don’t want war. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” (9)
Strauss would agree with this statement, furthermore he sees it’s as a necessary illusion for manipulation of peoples consent and thus obedience. The manufacturing of an enemy is used throughout history to galvanise and unite the people. The threat doesn’t have to be a real threat, did the Spanish blow up the United States ship U.S.S. Maine that exploded in Havana Harbour? We don’t know but the United States of America went to war and managed to greatly increase it influence. The assassination Franz Ferdinand by the Narodna Odbrana a Serbian terrorist group lead to world war one, but it was just the excuse for the war. Europe was set to explode which was well known, the second international met in 1912 two years before the war to work out a policy on the coming imperialist conflict. War has always been used as a tool long before and after Carl von Clausewitz wrote in the Eighteen-hundreds:-
“War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.
Strauss considered himself a conservative scholar (opposed to philosopher who originate systems of thought, scholars just judge and reason with pre-existing systems, at least this is Strauss own categorisation) who returned to classical philosophy for an answer to the crisis of the west, of modernity. Strauss believed that the enlightenment along with it’s relativism that undermined societal unity and values brought a new conception of nature and the relation of philosophy to society. Strauss wanted to return the Platonist conception of nature opposed to the tradition of the enlightenment epitomised by thinkers like Rousseau who felt human nature shifted under different material contexts. This idea was taken further by Karl Marx, who felt nature was a temporal condition that was negated by the actions of mankind determining their own human nature and conditions. Though this was a two way street of conditions influencing the individual and the individual influencing the conditions:-
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” (11)
The revolutionary humanism of Marx in the tradition of the enlightenment though of cause a critical adaptation of the tradition was of the political movements which Strauss sort to guard against. Strauss was an Anti-histrionist who saw Marx ideas us based on accidental truths in attempt to undermined ‘natural rights’. Thus Strauss whished that bring forward the ideals of Plato ironically would address current historical problems. The natural rights which are being subverted by revolutionary humanism and liberalism were the ideal that society must be hierarchical that the masses must be lead by a vanguard of philosopher kings. The philosopher kings must guard their intentions though and maintain their deception and myths, Straussian Esotericism does not go us far as that of Ammonius Saccas (12) who wrote nothing of his ideas and is only known according to his followers. Though another irony of Leo Strauss is through his works and teaching his philosopher of deceit has become well-known in circles who don’t hold favourable views on his aims. Another why in which the enlightenment challenged Strauss views was in the relation of philosophy to the city or society. For enlightenment thinkers philosophy was to become exoteric even though they wrote in an esoteric way, something of a historical constraint (avoiding censorship and such, Denis Diderot was haunted by the police). For Marx philosophy and theory was consciousness of material forces:-
“We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.” (13)
Which is quite contrary to Strauss who thought truth was only grasped in the abstract. Furthermore Marx felt philosophy to have any relevance must be gripped by the people, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways;
the point is to change it”(14). While Strauss saw all philosophy as political this is not the use he would see it put.
The philosophy of Leo Strauss is based on Plato who incidentally the liberal democrat Karl Popper called a “proto-totalitarian”, (15) this philosophy is an attempt to resecure the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie from subversive and dangerous philosophical-political movements of the moderns.
2
The philosophy of Leo Strauss found its practical expression in a group of his students and readers who rallied together in infiltrating political philosophy departments, think tanks and government institutions and have became known as “Neo-conservatives”. Though there is no group who self-identifies as “Neo-conservative”, even though the press is ready to label them and plain conservatives to draw distinctions. This section of the essay will focus on major events and figures in the history of the Straussian conservative movement and its effect on the workings of government and world affaires.
Karl Marx once wrote that new revolution grown of new struggles find their sprit in old revolutions:-
“Thus the awakening of the dead in those revolutions served the purpose of glorifying the new struggles, not of parodying the old; of magnifying the given task in the imagination, not recoiling from its solution in reality; of finding once more the spirit of revolution, not making its ghost walk again.”(16)
The neo-conservatives are not like normal conservatives being as they see themselves as closer to revolutionaries contrary to the normal conservatives who want stability in world affairs and at home. Claes Ryn sees the neo-conservatives as a variant of Neo-Jacobinism, while other see them as trying to create a new roman empire. Others draw the neo-conservative drive for ‘democratic revolution’ as an adaptation of Trotsky’s “permanent revolution” (17) seeing that early Neo-conservatives such as Irving Kristol (sometimes called the godfather of the neoconservative movement) was himself a member of the Fourth international (Trotskyist international, opposed to the third [Stalinist] international). Furthermore Neo-conservatives have been greatly influenced by the ideas of Max Shachtman a non-orthodox Trotskyist who argued with Trotsky over the class nature of the soviet republic drawing the conclusion that it was a Bureaucratic collectivist state which should not be supported even critically (contrary to Trotsky’s notion of deformed workers state). But also the ex-Trotskyist thinker James Burnham who declared “the war of 1914 was the last great war of capitalist society” and that “the war of 1939 is the first great war of managerial society” (18), his notion of “managerial revolution” (19) is capitalism has been slowly eroding away and that Nazi Germany, Soviet union and the united states under the new deal represented a new society – “Managerial society” (20).
Within this new world order however someone wishes to characterise it, two of the most prevalent and longest standing politicians in the Neo-conservative movement are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, Both having served under many administrations. Donald Rumsfeld served under the Nixon administration but started to make real headway for the neo-conservative movement during the Presidency of Gerald R. Ford. In the position of White House Chief of Staff Member of the President's Cabinet (1974-1975); and the 13th U.S. Secretary of Defence (1975-1977). It was during this time that Rumsfeld and Cheney became evolved in controversy surrounding the death of CIA scientist Frank Olson who was involved in Project MKULTRA a now uncovered operation researching mind control drugs, experiments often carried out on non-consenting victims (American and Canadian, Theodore Kaczynski the Unabomber is thought to be a victim). Cheney and Rumsfeld helped organise the white house response to Olson’s death, which was not accepted by the Olson’s family and close friends. The government offered settlement out of court which the family accepted. In 1994, Professor James E. Starrs of The George Washington University determined that Olson had suffered some form of blunt force trauma prior to falling out of the window, and called the evidence “rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide”. In1996 Manhattan district attorney opened a homicide investigation into Olson's death but was unable to find enough evidence to file charges. Eric Olson still believes his father developed moral qualms about his work and then the United States government had him killed. But also amidst the controversy in these positions Rumsfeld is attributed a large role in increasing the power of the military within the government at the expanse of the CIA and Henry Kissinger, who traditionally has been an enemy of the neo-conservatives because he supported a pragmatist approach to stability rather then revolutionising the world order. Rumsfeld achieved this power play victory by propagating the view or noble lie that the Soviet Union was spending more on arms and that the appropriate response was a United States arms production increase. This view was contrary to all reports done by the CIA at the time who concluded that the Soviet Union was suffering from economic decline that would lead to collapse of the system. Furthermore at his time Rumsfeld paved the way for the idea’s of Leo Strauss to become more accepted, though the neo-conservatives never attained much weight in directing foreign policy until the Reagan’s administration and the end of Détente.
The Détente ended with a chain of events one being the Islamist revolution in Iran led the United States populace and government to believe they were losing power and their position in the world. During Reagan’s presidency the neo-conservatives were considered only a small faction within the administration. But Reagan was an anti-communist throughout his life, during his acting career he informed on many people he considered ‘un-American’ or ‘disloyal’ becoming a FBI informant under the code name "Agent T-10". On becoming president Reagan heated up the rhetoric of the cold war and increased defence spending, thus producing a renewed arms race between the Russian soviets and themselves. Furthermore the Reagan administration outline to win the cold war was one to increase the negotiating position of the United States by increased strategic position through arms superiority. Too bring out the arms race would lead to increased soviet spending on defence which would contribute to its already declining economy. Three was support of clandestine Anti-soviet forces and right-wing dictatorships (fascism) to Holt any increase in the Anti-USA power bloc (which included many countries and ideologies).
The new foreign policy of the Reagan administration basic aim was the same as all American foreign polices for the last century differing only in scop. The basic aim of American foreign policy is to continue its ideological hegemony and support it’s “interests”. Thus a country that doesn’t pose a military threat to the United States and its citizens can still be a legitimate target because it doesn’t comply with United States ideological alignment and thus represents an alternative. The change in scope however is the area in which this ideological hegemony must be continued and interest maintained. Before world war two the United States ‘sphere of influence’ was largely limited to the western hemisphere, though there are occasions were they bent their own rules. But after world war two the United States became what Burnham called “receiver” (21) of the British Empire. During Reagan’s Administration there was further imperialist aggression, supported by the neo-conservatives.
It was during this time that many world events were shaped and shaped the neo-conservatives. This was the time of the Iranian Islamist revolution, the Iran-Iraqi war, Iran-contra affair, arming of the Contras (short for counter-revolutionaries) in Nicaragua, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lebanon’s civil war and soviet intervention in Afghanistan along with many other events notwithstanding the fall of the Berlin wall. The neo-conservative line was much the same as Reagan’s policy, differing on one issue. That issue was the Iraqi-Iran war, during which the Reagan white house openly supported the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and supplying arms to fight the Iranians. Richard Perle a leading neo-conservative policy advisor said “I was actually rather uncomfortable with the support that we gave Saddam during the war between Iraq and Iran” (22). Perle in explained the reasoning of the Reagan administration and the action he felt should have been taken:-
“the view was that the mullahs in Tehran were worst than the tyrant in Baghdad, and I understand that argument. I don’t agree with it, but even for those who accepted that view, the right course immediately after the end of that war would have been to say to Saddam, now we’ve had enough of you too, and we’re not gonna to tolerate it.” (23)
The reason why Perle was critical of Reagan’s handily of the Iraqi-Iran war was because he believes in using American military power as a means of toppling tyranny, war as a political instrument of cleansing evil elements within the world community. Though Perle was up in arms over this and combating American hypocrisy, other Neo-conservatives have been rather selective in their criticisms of nations they see to be evil, while supporting right-wing dictatorships and nations willing to help them in their “war on terror”. The Soviet-Afghanistan war is one that neo-conservatives are rather proud of.
The soviet-Afghanistan war has often been referred to as the Russians Vietnam because of the gradual evolution from military advisors to full blown intervention but also because it ended in a virtual stalemate. The soviets were draw into the war because the Marxist-Leninist government of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was under attack from supporters from the old regime and the conservative Islamic peasantry. Supporters of soviet foreign policy claim that the intervention was a pre-emptive strike aimed at Islamist terrorist to stop them from taking control of the government. In response to the events in Afghanistan the United States administration under the influence of the neo-conservatives supported the Islamic resistance called “the Mujahideen”. Reagan referred to the Mujahideen as "freedom fighters
After the withdrawal of soviet troops was completed on February 2, 1989 it was expected that the central government in Kabul would collapse but these’s hopes were dashed when the Mujahideen was unsuccessful in taking provincial capitals or Kabul. The civil war continued until PDPA was no longer able to hold together the factions that constituted their government, thus in 1992 the Mujahideen who had only been united through anti-communist sentiments took power divided in two main groups, the radical Taliban which created the central government and the Northern Alliance controlled provincial areas. As Gorbachev had warned the Mujahideen victory would not result in anything approaching democracy, which was correct because the result was an Islamic republic which the soviets had originally feared. As an aside to the victory of the Mujahideen Osama bin Laden and the more militant supports from his Maktab al-Khadamat (MAK, funnelled money, arms, and Muslim fighters into Afghanistan during the war) formed a group influenced by Sayyid Qutb (an Islamist thinker with a hate for Liberalism not far removed from Leo Strauss’s ideals). The group Aimed to install Islamist republics in the Arab world, through attacking the ‘far’ enemy the United States which it sees as the corrupting source of liberalism and anti-Islamic values. Through all this though the Neo-conservatives were more assured of their ideals, believing that they had defeated the ‘evil empire’.
After the Reagan administration the Neo-conservatives found themselves outsiders in the George H.W. Bush administration. It was during this administration that the United States invaded oil rich Kuwait to oust the Iraqi armed forces who had invaded early on the order of Saddam Hussein (Colin Powell opposed the USA lead invasion suggesting sanction would be more appropriate ) . The neo-conservatives pushed for the army to invade Iraq proper and remove Hussein from power. But Bush had a more traditional approach to foreign policy aiming for stability rather then an aggressive moralist stance supported by the ‘hawkish’ Neo-conservatives. During the Clinton administration they remained outsiders but managed to tap into puritan politicalization lead by protestant fundamentalists in groups like “the moral majority”.
The puritan upsurge within the United States has been beneficial to the right-wing of politics, providing a kind of McCarthyite scare tactic. Since the end of the cold war there was not a major outside enemy but the myth of religion was creating a galvanising force in reaction to the ‘lax’ morality of bill Clinton. Some of the attacks on Clinton’s personal indiscretions turned out to have truth behind them, such as the Monica Lewinsky affair. But a lot of the allegations levelled at Clinton were complete fabrications such Whitewater. But while Clinton was hounded by theses alligation it represented a wider social change and focus on moral based issues playing into the hands of the Neo-conservatives.
The next president was George W. Bush of whom many of his critics feel was illegitimately elected in 2000. The new administration was a great victory for the Neo-conservatives with many of its top positions being filled by members of the neo-conservative movement (Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and others). The presidency of George w. bush has been a very controversial one from it’s conception, the influence of the neo-conservatives can been seen throughout this administrations actions, Afghanistan invasion (using the northern alliance), operation Iraqi liberation, puritan religious rhetoric.
The events of September, 11, 2001 will ever remain in the mind of those who lived through theses times. The events of that day are having a far greater effect the death of few thousand innocent people, they have been used has the basis for the invasion of two different countries. Firstly the invasion of Afghanistan because they refused to hand over Osama bin Laden the man believed to be behind the September 11th attacks, though the United States provided no evidence to support their claim. But secondly the invasion of Iraq which the neo-conservatives have been backing for years as outlined in a open letter to Bill Clinton on January 26, 1998
“Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.” (25)
This is not the last time neo-conservative expressed wishes to invade Iraq the same think tank from which the latter was sent “the Project for the New American Century” (PNAC). The PNAC produced a 90-page document in September 2000 that states: “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”(26). This statement highlights the intention of the neo-conservatives, the excuse of war, links to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction have turned out to be completely false. But the premeditation to invade the Middle East remains clear and is part of the idea that America should be the sole world superpower and should maintain its ideology hegemony. This neo-conservative foreign policy finds it’s embodiment in the Bush Doctrine. This states the principles of Peremption: that the united state as the sole super power should be allowed to declare war if it feels threaded by terrorist or the states that support them. Unilateralism: the belief that the United States can take unilateral military action when bilateral action is not possible. Strength beyond Challenge: the notion that the United States is the strongest nation on earth and for security reasons must keep its defence above and beyond any rival power. Democracy, Liberty, and Security to All Regions: the notion that the United States has the right and duty to spread ‘democracy’ and other values it sees as good around the world through whatever means necessary.
We have seen that through the years of the neo-conservative movement they have been able to implement many of the notions of Leo Strauss. They supplied us all with noble lies about reasons for war and a constant threat which cannot be found but is there, so the nation unites against terrorism. They have managed to ride the wave of puritan outrage at their enemies in the Democratic Party. But above all they’ve been able to use the circumstances to their advantage as they new they would “The process of transformation,” according to the plan “is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalysing event—like a new Pearl Harbour.” (27). but with respect to the underlying philosophical concerns of the Neo-conservatives of uniting the people in common mythology they have largely done this but not without complications. There is a minority but growing groups within the United States from both the left and right who oppose the policies of the neo-conservatives. The Neo-conservatives have long studied classical antiquity for answers to modern historical problems and particularly the Athenian philosophers. So it’s interesting to note that the arrogant city of Athens ruined itself in the pursuit of empire by the leadership of Alcibiades a student of Socrates. If we look at the world situation we see the neo-conservatives students of Plato and Socrates leading the United States in the pursuit of empire on a new Sicilian Expedition.
Notes
1) “The Manifesto of the communist party” by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels.
2) “The City and Man” by Leo Strauss.
3) “Existentialism is a Humanism” by Jean-Paul Sartre.
4) “"Farabi's Plato" by Leo Strauss.
5) All quoted from “The republic” by Plato (some translators consider “the state” to be a more accurate translation of the title)
6) This often quoted remark is actually a misquote what Karl Marx really wrote was, “Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” In “Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right Introduction”.
7) George W.F Hegel blamed the influences of Rousseau on the French revolution for leading to its excesses of the terror. This is unwarranted because the Jacobins practiced representative “democracy” rather then direct democracy and thus they were not in line with Rousseau’s alternative social contract. Also the terror was at ends with Rousseau’s view on the use of violence in the attainment of said social contract.
8) For clarification the terms “Superman” or sometimes translated “overman” and “the herd” were employed by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The first two terms depict people whose volition was strong, thus a strong sense of the “will to power”. While “the herd” were people with a weak “will to power” thus being lead as slaves by the “superman”. Some commentators see Leo Strauss as a closet Nietzschean, see Shadia Drury "The Esoteric Philosophy of Leo Strauss" Political Theory 13:3 (1985) 315-37 and The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (New York, 1988); Laurence Lampert Leo Strauss and Nietzsche (Chicago, 1996); and Peter Levine Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities (Albany, 1995).
9) Hermann Goering, Hitler’s second in command, speaking at the Nuremberg Trials which took place after World War II.
10) “On War” by Carl von Clausewitz.
11) “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” by Karl Marx.
12) Ammonius Saccas lived during 3rd century AD and was a Greek philosopher of Alexandria, often called the founder of the Neoplatonic School, but is often confused with a Christian philosopher of the same name.
13) “Letter from Marx to Ruge” by Karl Marx in 1843.
14) “Theses on Feuerbach, Thesis XI” by Karl Marx.
15) “The Open Society and Its Enemies” by Karl Popper.
16) “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” by Karl Marx.
17) See Leon Trotsky’s “the Permanent Revolution”.
18) “The Managerial Revolution” by James Burnham
19) ibid
20) ibid
21) ibid
22) “Richard Perle: The Making of a Neoconservative” Aired 11/14/2002 on Think Tank a PBS program, interviewer: Ben Wattenberg.
23) ibid
24) “Proclamation 4908 -- Afghanistan Day” by Ronald Reagan, Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 3:54 p.m., March 10, 1982.
25) January 26, 1998 PNAC Open Letter to the Honourable William J. Clinton
President of the United States, signed by Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr, Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey and Robert B. Zoellick.
26) “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century” produced by PNAC in 2000.
27) ibid.