I know what you mean about the showers -- I've read Strauss, too, and agree with you that it's essential to go back to the source to grapple with it yourself, as awful (morally AND stylistically!) as the source might be.

I have to confess to spending less time on the derivative blatherings of his disciples and apologists, like the Kristols, Frum, Perle, Kass, Krauthammer, etc. -- and Norton herself. Once you know where they're coming from, you know what you're going to get when you read them: lies, double speak, and the occasional  attempt at "esoteric" code language meant for the other initiates in their club.  (Or, in the case of Norton, a sly effort to save Strauss from a few "bad" Straussians. Yuck.) As for Dorrien, I have to confess I haven't read his book, but from the reviews it appears to me that he doesn't really get the full implications of this movement. As you know, neoconservatism is far more sinister than a superpatriotic dream of American empire and the Pax Americana. If you know Strauss, you know that stuff is only on the level meant for consumption by the 2nd tier of humanity: the "gentlemen" class. The real truth   -- the truth of atheism, violence and the will to power as the actual foundations of reality -- is reserved for the tiny band of self-styled philosopher kings who look with bemusement on the life and death of ordinary mortals. My impression is that Dorrien doesn't plumb these ugly depths. To my knowledge, Shadia Drury is the only writer who's really systematically dissected Strauss and the neocon ideology at its Nietzschean/Machiavellian core.

(As I think about Strauss's students, it occurs to me that I'd probably include Allan Bloom as an exception. Sickening as he was, I think he does, unfortunately, have to be read if you want to understand the right wing movement in the American academe.)  

Any thoughts on my other question, above, about getting people to take seriously the ideas behind neoconservatism? I so agree with you that the best way to attack the right wing beast in this country is to drive a wedge between the neocons and the Christian right. But in order for us to attack this weak point in their alliance, we have to get progressives to understand the nature of this noxious partnership, and that means learning what neoconservative philosophy is really about -- and how it differs proufoundly in its extreme anti-modernism and anti-liberalism from other kinds of American conservatism. I'm troubled that I don't see many people out there talking about this. Most progressives seem to view the Christian right, with horror, as if it were a more or less spontaneously arising phenomenon of American talibanism, when in fact it was very largely the conscious creation of an atheistic group of postmodern academics. That's a pretty fascinating (if scary) story, but not one that's often told. I wonder if this has something to do with the apparent abstractness of the philisophical concepts in question. Maybe, ironically enough, our progressives friends can't quite believe that mere ideas could be that powerful in the real world of American politics?

Thanks again much for your good work -- on this, as well as on stem cell research and within our oh-so-wayward Church. I wish my wife and I had had the courage to say "we dissent"  the other day at mass when we were asked to sign an anti-Roe v. wade petition in the pews (as I think I read elsewhere that you did in a similar context. Way to go!)

by LittleLight on Thu Feb 02, 2006 at 09:30:10 PM EST
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