a conflation of a Straussian and a liberal discourse that is really, really troubling. And both of them are fundamentally anti-democratic.
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Yes. But nailing down exactly what it is in the Strauss's thought that makes it so antithetical to how I understand democracy is a lot more difficult than it seems at first glance. Sure it is easy to blow off Brooks or Bloom by castigating something they wrote, but if you think about what was behind their words in any serious way, then it becomes much more difficult to pin down exactly what is so objectionable about them.
Strauss wasn't an idiot and didn't craft a Machiavellian plot the way Shadia Drury seems to think. Straussians might, and might be very clannish about it. But Strauss at least in his writing was at a different game. He was interested in re-defining what `liberal democracy' meant. For example I think Strauss would have approved the most egregious provisions of the Patriot Act whole heartedly.
While USPA is full of `plot' like potentials, it was openly passed by the US Congress, so in that sense it was an example of what Strauss would call `liberal democracy' at the work of `protecting' itself. This is a case of using the `ends' in other words `security' to justify the `means' which amounts to granting the executive branch, and to the president alone absolute powers unchecked by the balance of power normally exercised by the judiciary and legislative branches, and unchecked by any prohibitions in the bill of rights. We are left with assurances this extraordinary power will be exercised only for the good of national security. Needless to say what is in the interest of national security is also up to the executive. So then, there is a fundamental violation of intent and substance of both Constitution separation of powers, and in the amendments, that is in the prohibitions on government power in the bill of rights. Instead of law, we have executive decrees and orders, instead of courts we have executive branch secret and or military tribunals, and instead of rights of accused and detained individuals, we have essentially nothing, but pronouncements by executive authorities as to their general guilt, mostly of crimes specified by the same USPA. Thus it is all a closed circle.
In the most simplified terms what makes Strauss an enemy, and I seriously think his writings are a kind of treachery and betrayal of core US political values, is his telos, his intention to present `ends' in themselves as `good', and be thoroughly unconcerned about the `means' used to attain them. The good of society is all that matters. Naturally Strauss and the current administration reserve the privilege and power to define that good to themselves. There are no means provided to form a consensus of the good, since it is known in advance to all. We must take their word on it of course, and all their bad acts are performed for the good and for the benefit of others, not themselves alone. The war on Iraq is a perfect example where some distant end, like Democracy is served through the most heinous of means like Abu Ghraib.
The question is where did Strauss get these ideas? And the over simplified answer is Aristotle---specifically to eschew the later Enlightenment interpretations by Kant and Hegel whom Strauss saw as undermining a classical hierarchy of political philosophy and its hierarchical ordering of social and political values.
At bottom what makes the Enlightenment interpretations of classical political philosophy, and more particularly the US understanding of that Enlightenment work both unique and important to us in a concrete and very practical sense is very simple. The means of political process and exercise of law are the only systems we live with. We do not live among the ends at all. We live within these systems these specific means and these must be always negotiated, struggled with, ignored, resisted, or complied with in the process of living our lives. There are not ulterior ends and no fixed institutions that must always be obeyed. There is no such thing as `good' independent of these means. It is always a question of arguing and struggling over the process itself. If a consensus falls out, so much the better, but if it does not, then the means are engaged forever, if necessary. That nothing gets done isn't the worst of all worlds.
So, Yes to an endless committee meeting if that's what it comes down to. After all, that was the intention of the separation of powers, and the bill of rights was intended to protect society as whole from arbitrary government power, when and if the process ever decided badly.
Strauss had no conception at all of what the political process means in the US, nor how fundamental it is to insuring the existence of an open and tolerant society in which no group exercised more influence than another (skip the obvious objections for the moment, please). He simply didn't see that in a society as diverse as ours, there could be no absolute telos, no common and shared wisdom, no common tradition and culture, no common language---and yet none of these or all of them together do not prevent sharing more or less the same means of political life in engaging the process itself, on whatever terms can can be brought to bare. The obvious result of a messy multiplicity in which only a very few things are agreed to and accomplished is good enough for any defining moment of the larger social `good'.
Whether the US actually performs this way or not isn't quite the point here. The point is that Strauss didn't share these as ideals and did not seem to understand that in a mass society like ours, a thorough going relativity of values and ideals is a concrete fact of life---and that understanding must be completely integrated into the political process of conducting life. So that the ultimate good is only derived from the fairness of conducting such an open and negotiated political, social, and economic process as the means.
Ultimately what attracts apologists for Capital to Strauss is his hierarchical ordering in which all social relations are devoted to the transcendent good, in this case profit. Here then the corporate hierarchy, with its absolute power at the top, and its chosen minions below, are all orchestrated to work toward the great goals of the `social' entity, some brand-X legal fiction, whose sole reason for existence is survival and profit. It matters not a wit how many individuals are destroyed in the great effort or how those great ends are achieved, all means are irrelevant just as long as the great end is achieved---quite regularly every quarter I might add.... so forth and so on...blah, blah, blah...
Finally, we must come down to understanding how Strauss conceived the idea of a common unity, which is a fundamental necessity in order to overcome the mass of contention and cultural relativity that is the most characteristic feature of mass society---even in its much older and smaller form as the Weimar Republic of the 20s. Unfortunately, Strauss's models for this social coherence and political unity were Zionism and Nazism. Instead of going over the intimate inter-relatedness and the mutual enmity of these ideologies, we can extract from them their common thread which was nationalism and their defining characteristics of political society as constituted by a single and unique `people'. Here the shared understanding is that a single `people' are the embodiment of a `nation' and further that the survival of a `people' is absolutely depend on the survival of the `nation' itself. These intertwined abstractions, the people and the nation are the ultimate `good' towards which all means are devoted and towards which all individuals must strive, and submit themselves to the hierarchical order of power invested in `leaders' who in turn embody the `people' as the political rulers of the `nation'.
There are numerous antecedents to all this starting with Plato, Aristotle, several medieval christian and jewish scholastics, and arriving in the era of Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Burke and Rousseau.
But, at bottom Strauss's ideas were a philosophical and political reaction against the cultural diversity and relativity of values Strauss found implicit in the Enlightenment. In the converse, the particulars of US history managed to elaborate out in concrete terms these same implicit themes of diversity and relativity that Strauss found so objectionable. For the US there was never such a thing as a common `people' or common `tradition' or even a common language or culture. The US has always been a mix of completely diverse peoples. While the US system was never very good at inclusion under common political means, there always existed in principle an ideal among at least some that such diversity should be inclusive---if only by those so excluded.
Whatever one thinks about the 60s, the one thing that did happen was an explosion and overthrow of established hierarchies in political, social, and cultural institutions in which all pretense at a national `unity' on these matters was shattered. And it was this shattering that spawned the US rightwing and its latter day history. Strauss's works were gone over by a very select elite and found to have all the philosophical foundational necessities for putting a theoretical gloss to an otherwise uninformed and raw reactionary movement. That's his legacy.
Whether Leo Strauss would have approved of Bush as President or Tom DeLay as House majority leader is as relevant as asking if Fredrick Nietzsche would have approved of Hitler. The answer is no. But it is also clear that many ideas in both Strauss and Nietzsche were found to be of great utility for the reactionary cause, and among those are the idea that there is such a thing as a single `people' that can be embodied in a single `nation' and that the survival of the former is dependent on the survival of the latter---and that these together form the ultimate social `good'.
As far as I can tell, you can find this dribble from all sorts of groups with the religious right figuring large among them. But these are of course not the only ones. The idea that Judaism is embodied by Israel and Zionism is yet another, as well as all those who seem to think their idea of patriotism is founded on such ideals is yet another.
In the end they all blurr together in my mind, and the results of my deepest philosophical analysis is, bullshit.
And worse. There were never a single people, and even less so going back in history when we arrive at Strauss's beloved antiquity. In fact you can make the social history point that the whole idea of a uniformity of culture and society that these fanatics seem to celebrate was most likely spawned in a reaction to the messy business of living among others where were in fact Other in every sense of the word from their customs, languages, social orders, food, clothing, and arts to their physical appearance and manners. The Greek ideal of cultural unity was only given in opposition to the Other, the Barbarians. And it is quite likely the same process was in operation among the Hellenistic Jews of the `chosen' people, the Christians with their water sprinklers admitting only the `anointed' into heaven, the aloof Romans with their `citizens' and slaves, and the Arabs with the supremacy of their tautological Qur'an and its `believers'.
Everybody has a reason why they are unique, privileged etc, and those who are not are simply the Other---and that is pretty much the long and short of why all these systems are fundamentally un-democratic. And in case it is forgotten, this was precisely why the US has a separation of church and state---since it was recognized that one key thing about religion is the idea that believers are privilaged over non-believers---exactly the sort of thing that has no place in a democratic process.
CG