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Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception
By Jim Lobe, AlterNet
Posted on May 19, 2003, Printed on October 23, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/15935/
What would you do if you wanted to topple Saddam Hussein, but your
intelligence agencies couldn't find the evidence to justify a war?
A follower of Leo Strauss may just hire the "right" kind of men to get the
job done – people with the intellect, acuity, and, if necessary, the political
commitment, polemical skills, and, above all, the imagination to find the
evidence that career intelligence officers could not detect.
The "right" man for Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, suggests Seymour
Hersh in his recent New Yorker article entitled 'Selective Intelligence,' was
Abram Shulsky, director of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) – an agency
created specifically to find the evidence of WMDs and/or links with Al Qaeda,
piece it together, and clinch the case for the invasion of Iraq.
Like Wolfowitz, Shulsky is a student of an obscure German Jewish political
philosopher named Leo Strauss who arrived in the United States in 1938. Strauss
taught at several major universities, including Wolfowitz and Shulsky's alma
mater, the University of Chicago, before his death in 1973.
Strauss is a popular figure among the neoconservatives. Adherents of his
ideas include prominent figures both within and outside the administration.
They
include 'Weekly Standard' editor William Kristol; his father and indeed the
godfather of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol; the new
Undersecretary
of Defense for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone, a number of senior fellows at
the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (home to former Defense Policy Board
chairman Richard Perle and Lynne Cheney), and Gary Schmitt, the director of the
influential Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is chaired by
Kristol the Younger.
Strauss' philosophy is hardly incidental to the strategy and mindset adopted
by these men – as is obvious in Shulsky's 1999 essay titled "Leo Strauss and
the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)" (in Greek philosophy
the term nous denotes the highest form of rationality). As Hersh notes in his
article, Shulsky and his co-author Schmitt "criticize America's intelligence
community for its failure to appreciate the duplicitous nature of the regimes
it deals with, its susceptibility to social-science notions of proof, and its
inability to cope with deliberate concealment." They argued that Strauss's idea
of hidden meaning, "alerts one to the possibility that political life may be
closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in
political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of
establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception."
Rule One: Deception
It's hardly surprising then why Strauss is so popular in an administration
obsessed with secrecy, especially when it comes to matters of foreign policy.
Not only did Strauss have few qualms about using deception in politics, he saw
it as a necessity. While professing deep respect for American democracy,
Strauss believed that societies should be hierarchical – divided between an
elite
who should lead, and the masses who should follow. But unlike fellow elitists
like Plato, he was less concerned with the moral character of these leaders.
According to Shadia Drury, who teaches politics at the University of Calgary,
Strauss believed that "those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is
no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the
superior to rule over the inferior."
This dichotomy requires "perpetual deception" between the rulers and the
ruled, according to Drury. Robert Locke, another Strauss analyst says,"The
people
are told what they need to know and no more." While the elite few are capable
of absorbing the absence of any moral truth, Strauss thought, the masses could
not cope. If exposed to the absence of absolute truth, they would quickly
fall into nihilism or anarchy, according to Drury, author of 'Leo Strauss and
the
American Right' (St. Martin's 1999).
Second Principle: Power of Religion
According to Drury, Strauss had a "huge contempt" for secular democracy.
Nazism, he believed, was a nihilistic reaction to the irreligious and liberal
nature of the Weimar Republic. Among other neoconservatives, Irving Kristol has
long argued for a much greater role for religion in the public sphere, even
suggesting that the Founding Fathers of the American Republic made a major
mistake
by insisting on the separation of church and state. And why? Because Strauss
viewed religion as absolutely essential in order to [manipulate] the masses
who otherwise would be out of control.
At the same time, he stressed that religion was for the masses alone; the
rulers need not be bound by it. Indeed, it would be absurd if they were, since
the truths proclaimed by religion were "a pious fraud." As Ronald Bailey,
science correspondent for Reason magazine points out, "Neoconservatives are
pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers."
"Secular society in their view is the worst possible thing,'' Drury says,
because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, precisely those
traits that may promote dissent that in turn could dangerously weaken society's
ability to cope with external threats. Bailey argues that it is this firm
belief in the political utility of religion as an "opiate of the masses" that
helps explain why secular Jews like Kristol in 'Commentary' magazine and other
neoconservative journals have allied themselves with the Christian Right and
even
taken on Darwin's theory of evolution.
Third Principle: Aggressive Nationalism
Like Thomas Hobbes, Strauss believed that the inherently aggressive nature of
human beings could only be restrained by a powerful nationalistic state.
"Because mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed," he once
wrote.
"Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united – and
they can only be united against other people."
Not surprisingly, Strauss' attitude toward foreign policy was distinctly
Machiavellian. "Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it
is
united by an external threat," Drury wrote in her book. "Following
Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be
manufactured (emphases added)."
"Perpetual war, not perpetual peace, is what Straussians believe in," says
Drury. The idea easily translates into, in her words, an "aggressive,
belligerent foreign policy," of the kind that has been advocated by neocon
groups like
PNAC and AEI scholars – not to mention Wolfowitz and other administration hawks
who have called for a world order dominated by U.S. military power. Strauss'
neoconservative students see foreign policy as a means to fulfill a "national
destiny" – as Irving Kristol defined it already in 1983 – that goes far
beyond the narrow confines of a " myopic national security."
As to what a Straussian world order might look like, the analogy was best
captured by the philosopher himself in one of his – and student Allen Bloom's –
many allusions to Gulliver's Travels. In Drury's words, "When Lilliput was on
fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace. In so doing, he
saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but the Lilliputians were outraged and
appalled by such a show of disrespect."
The image encapsulates the neoconservative vision of the United States'
relationship with the rest of the world – as well as their relationship with
the
masses. "They really have no use for democracy, but they're conquering the
world
in the name of democracy," Drury says.
Jim Lobe writes on foreign policy for Alternet. His work has also appeared on
Foreign Policy In Focus and TomPaine.com.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/15935/
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