"But to just shit on it as if Grimes is a random asshole...to completely miss the point and replace it with some bizarre comparison of which group has supposedly done more for social justice (as if world history can be sensibly described or understood this way) robs both Chuck and the list of the discussion we should be having. "
"Replace it with some bizarre comparison of which group has supposedly done more for social justice"?
Dwayne, you should read Chuck's post again.
What was the case against Leo Strauss made?
First Chuck without any justification whatsoever asserts that "The whole package is about constructing a dominant white male identity through the use of the history of ideas". Bullshit. There is nothing about white male identity in Strauss.
After a couple of lame sentences, Chuch abandons any attempt to talk about Strauss' ideas, saying: "feel free to correct the detail on the OT, Spinoza and Aristotle. I got very bored reading this stuff. It was a labor of loathing and it was several years ago"
And then the real post starts, with a rant about the short, fat Jew who nobody dates
"He thought his proper inheridence as a Jew and as a Jewish man was being stolen by the political and ideological programs of the Enlightenment, via Weimar policies of social assimiluation and social tolerance." writes Chuck, before giving full vent
"Second, he was threatened as a man, that is his masculinity was evidently always on the table. He was short, fat, and a bookish whimp. The scholar type. For example he married late. He once asked a young Hannah Arendt out for a date and she turned him down."
All of these are completely ad hominem attacks, attacks on the personal life history of the man, that tell us nothing whatsoever about his ideas. For the most part they are personal insults: he was short, he was Jewish, he was not attractive to women. Who gives a rat's ass? I am not thinking about dating him, but whether I might learn something from his book about Aristotle.
And restless as ever, Chuck has no intention of talking about Strauss either the ideas or the man, but uses him as a cipher for a generalised attack on "white men in middle to lower middle class". It was not me that opened a debate about which race has made the greater contribution to social change, it was Chuck.
There is of course a clue to Chuck's real meaning, it is in the title, 'Fucking white assholes, kiss my ass'.
Of course, it did occur to me to re-write that, but that is not my meaning. I just mean that you can make as good, if not better, a case that white people have been the radicals in history. As Diogenes said, a man called me a dog, why should he be surprised if I piss on him?