No sillier allegation has found its way into mass-circulation newspapers than the notion that a conspiracy of Leo Strauss acolytes has infiltrated the Bush administration. Supposedly Defense Undersecretary Paul Wolfowitz, a Strauss doctoral student, and other lesser-known officials form a neo-conservative cabal practicing some sort of political black arts.
If anything, the Straussians are dangerous not because they are Machiavellian but because they are naive.
First of all, there is no Straussian conspiracy, for the simple reason that no two Straussians agree about what Leo Strauss (1899-1973) really meant to say during his 37 years of teaching in the United States. Anyone who does not believe this should listen to today's Straussians searching for hidden meanings in his works by reference to numerology, comparative word counts, and other far-fetched devices. At the conclusion of this essay I will reveal the secret of the Tower of Straussian Babel.
Spengler Asia Times May 13, 2003concluding paragraph of essay:
Despite his atheism, Strauss remained occupied with Jewish issues throughout his life. He is buried in the cemetery of the Knesseth Israel Synagogue in Annapolis, Maryland. What characterizes Strauss's diverse group of followers is not a penchant for conspiracy, but a kind of optimism, a faith, if you will, that statecraft can improve the human condition. What will happen to his legacy? Demography soon will solve Europe's Existential crisis, as the Europeans die out. The issues that occupied Strauss are dying out with them. He left his students no tools to apply to a world of civilizational and religious war. It was not the philosophers, but the theologians who sorted out Europe in the religious wars of the 17th century. If Washington really is in the hands of the Straussians, the United States is flying blind.
