Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
>
> This intellectual mistake was taken up by the US neocons and righwing
> who have adopted, in a broad and sloppy way, many of Strauss's (and
> others) interpretative readings, and have proceeded to re-construct US
> political discourse and policies under this generalized idealistic
> influence.
Chuck, doesn't this thesis itself constitute seeing the neocons through the lens of philosophical idealism, since you seem to abstract the neocons from _their_ history and conceptualize them as existing prior to and outside that history. It you return them to history, you would (I think) first see them forming certain attitudes in response to events, then (spontaneously or deliberately) foraging through intllectual history to find the ideas that fit their political program. This won't quite do, it comes to close to merely turning your history upside down, and that's too mechanical, but I think it nevertheless points to some weakness in your formulation.
Carrol