Liberals, no matter their individual religious beliefs, should again look to Reinhold Neibuhr in rebuilding a political philosophy that is powerful enough to effectively refute the radical New Right's manipulation of personal faith. Once again, the answer to a modern liberal dilemma lies in the rediscovery of its past. If Leo Strauss and his present day followers represent elitist authority, then Niebuhr does the same for the individual through the "saving grace of democracy."

Leo Strauss's philosophy forms the basis for the moral framework of many neoconservatives including Irving and William Kristol. In contrast, Reinhold Niebuhr provided liberals of the middle twentieth century with a religious-inspired morality that was based upon self-discipline. Although non-violent leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. were greatly influenced by Niebuhr's writings, he was clearly not a pacifist and believed in just war to fight evils such as Nazism. He was so universal in his teachings that he even inspired a group of followers who called themselves "Atheists for Niebuhr."

There were some similarities between the two thinkers. Both Niebuhr and Strauss lived during the same historical eras and were both heavily influenced by late nineteenth and early twentieth century German cultural attitudes. Strauss had been both born in the Hessian city of Marburg and educated in the German university system, earning his Ph.D. at Hamburg. Forced to escape Nazi persecution of the Jews, Strauss then moved to Great Britain, briefly teaching at Cambridge before coming to the United States. After holding positions at both Columbia University and The New School for Social Research, in 1949 Strauss then settled in at the University of Chicago where he taught philosophy until 1968.

Niebuhr was born in Missouri, the son of a progressive German-American pastor.  As a pastor himself in Detroit, he started out as a liberal progressive but by the early 1920s he had moved further left towards a Christian realism built upon Marxist economic principles. Shortly after the First World War he studied in Germany and was able to observe first-hand both the harshness of the Versailles Treaty as well as the flimsy nature of the Weimer Republic. Throughout this period and into the 1930s, both men believed democracy to be too weak to effectively stand up to vulgar tyrannies such as Hitler's Nazi regime.

Both men believed in an existing tension in life between reality and the ideal. For Strauss and his protégés that tension is between Jerusalem, the "revealed" truth of religious faith and Athens, reason as found in the esoteric readings of the ancient philosophers. Niebuhr also spoke of a tension existing in society. But unlike Strauss it was between the actual, historical man, and the ideal which he accepted as reality and not merely a myth, the saving grace of Christ in Eternity.

Likewise, there are similarities between Niebuhr and Irving Kristol. Niebuhr had started at a point on the political spectrum somewhat similar to Kristol. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, while politically on the Left, Niebuhr considered himself to be a Christian socialist. During this period of his life he opposed the New Deal as too utopian. Similarly, Irving Kristol in the 1940s was actually further Left being a Trotskyite Communist, but began drifting rightward in the 1950s. In his autobiography, Neoconservatism, the Autobiography of an Idea, the elder Kristol actually writes of being influenced by Niebuhr as well as Strauss, but it was Strauss who ultimately won the battle for his political soul.

While both Niebuhr and Irving Kristol eventually abandoned their Marxist beliefs and began their respective transitions, it was Niebuhr, however, who actually moderated his theories of justice to a point still left of center. Although Niebuhr was still not entirely sold on liberal democracy, he acknowledged by the end of the Second World War that the policies of the New Deal did much to make American society more just.  By that time he
further moderated his views further by admitting that even Marxism in its various forms is just as subject to will-to-power corruption as laissez-faire capitalism. He also gained a greater respect for what he called "the common sense" of liberal democracy.

Kristol, on the other hand, by the 1970s had exchanged one extreme for another. He went from a point on the socialist Left to another just short of the fascist-Right in helping to found the neoconservative movement. But one aspect of Kristol's thought remained constant: judging by his writings he maintained and perhaps reinforced many of the authoritarian characteristics of his Trotskyite past. To this end he had adopted Strauss's concept of the benign tyrant and distrust of liberal democracy. Kristol began to write about religious thought in political, not spiritual terms. In extension of this theme he opined his admiration for orthodoxy in and of itself as a basis for religious morality instead of its proper definition as a description for a manner of religious practice collateral to a given creed. For Kristol, orthodoxy exists solely for societal cohesion especially even if it tends to quell dissent and open debate.

In different ways, both schools of thought view aspects of religion seen as a myth: Unlike Straus, Niebuhr, a Baptist minister who accepted Darwin's theory on evolution, the Bible myths are not false (as Strauss believed) as much as they are metaphors for truly divine concepts. Strauss was a "Closet nihilist" as is Kristol. While they themselves cynically believe there is no deity, the masses need to believe in this "myth" to give their lives meaning. It is also for them a convenient means of political manipulation. Unlike Niebuhr, they and many other neoconservatives do not accept the concept of a saving grace of common sense that truly exists among common individuals. Leo Strauss has taught them that it is the role of academic philosopher-kings, ruling from their ivory-towered bastions of radical-Right think-tanks to hand down morality to the masses.

Strauss and many of his acolytes believe that if their personal atheism were to be accepted by the general population, anarchy would ensue. That is why many neoconservatives such as William Kristol and Robert Bork use evolution as a tool to stir the emotions of fundamentalist Christians, whipping them into a frenzy for backlash and
then trying to translate that anger into GOP votes. For them Nietzsche's existential will-to-power is admirable, but only in the hands of philosopher-kings leading less intelligent individuals. In essence, they are true only to themselves.

Niebuhr's concept of religion is substantially different. For him, faith was not merely a political tool; his Christian belief that the grace of Christ on the Cross saving humanity was the end for his politics. His own deeply held faith, not the manipulation of the beliefs of others was his tool for political change.

The differences between Strauss (as well as both Kristols) and Niebuhr are as stark as the differences that now exist between liberalism and neoconservatism. For Strauss and many of his philosophical successors, "politics" is necessary to "humanize" mankind. Lesser men are to be told "noble lies" for their own good. Conversely, Niebuhr came to believe that humanity is neither wholly good nor wholly bad. It is both egotism and the will-to-power that corrupts mankind of all political or religious persuasions. Even "the children of light" often fail to recognize their own will-to-power which must be checked with more universal morality which Niebuhr termed "the grace of democratic common sense."

More importantly, Niebuhr, unlike Strauss and his protégés understood the transcendence of man's spirit and vitality. Niebuhr sought to cultivate the best in mankind while restraining his self-interest from unleashing destructive tendencies. Unlike Strauss, Niebuhr came to believe in the common sense of democracy. As if almost foreseeing the
rise of the coming neoconservative threat, Niebuhr wrote, "No community, whether national or international, can maintain its order if it cannot finally limit expansive impulses by coercion."

When the relevant philosophical influence of Leo Strauss upon an Irving Kristol, his son William and their fellow travelers Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia is contrasted with the disciplined, but more optimistic thought of Reinhold Niebuhr the limits of radical-Right religious morality are exposed. While for the former group religion is a means to impose morality, for Niebuhr it is a means of attaining it. What separates the two schools is how they both interpret spirituality's role in religious morality. Strauss and his heirs make no room for it in their misuse of faith while for Niebuhr and modern liberalism the spirituality of justice is the central theme of applying religious beliefs into a transformation of society.

Niebuhr was very wary of those who wielded God's power against "a particular historical judgment on injustice."  Beckley interpreted Niebuhr as understanding that, "Christians should therefore always exercise power with an uneasy conscience." While this admonition applies to both side of the political aisle, this is a warning the religious Right has chosen to fully ignore. It is not giant leap of faith to imagine the revulsion Niebuhr would now have for those who too readily anoint themselves as instruments of divine retribution, seeing justice only in terms of wrath, without any sense of introspection of their own self-interest or potential for personal corruption.

When liberals begin to apply Niebuhr's principles in framing issues of morality, then the non-socialist Left may even be reconsidered by the American mainstream--and perhaps even more traditionalist minded people of faith.