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So I spent the better part of last weekend working my way through Shadia Drury’s book: Leo Strauss and the American Right -- a project I should have tackled several years ago, before the neocons re-emerged as such a public menace.
Know thy enemy is always good advice, and while I had some minor dealings with a few of the neocon leading lights during my days as a reporter, I’ve never really taken the time to study their philosophy, or to learn more about Strauss, their intellectual capo di tutti capo.
Drury, on the other hand, appears to have made an academic career out of it. What’s more, she has the distinct advantage of being able to argue Plato and Aristotle with the best of them, while most of what I know about the classics comes from watching old Ray Harryhausen movies. Seriously, though, moral philosophy wasn’t one of my academic strong suits, and while I’m a little better versed in the political dead white guys that mattered to Strauss (such as Hobbes, Rousseau and Machiavelli) I’d never try to play the expert -- not in front of a live audience anyway.
But I am, for obvious reasons, intensely interested in the political ideas that have influenced the neocon cadres -- which is to say, I’d really like to know how the bastards think.
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