|
November 2, 2005
The Philosophy of Mendacity
By JOHN
WALSH
All governments lie as I. F. Stone famously observed,
but some governments lie more than others. And the neocon Bush
regime serves up whoppers as standard fare every day. Why this
propensity to lie? There are many reasons, but it is not widely
appreciated that the neocons
believe in lying on principle. It is the "noble"
thing for the elite to do, for the "vulgar" masses, the
"herd" will become ungovernable without such lies. This
is the idea of the "noble
lie" practiced with such success and boldness by Scooter
Libby and his co-conspirators and concocted by the political
"philosopher" Leo Strauss whose teachings lie at the
core of the neoconservative outlook and agenda, so much so that
they are sometimes called "Leocons."
Leo
Strauss (1899-1973) was a Jewish-German émigré
from the Nazi regime who eventually landed at the University of
Chicago where he developed a following that has achieved enormous
prominence in American politics. Among his students were Paul
Wolfowitz who has openly acknowledged that he is a follower of
Straus as has the godfather of neconservatism, Irving Kristol.
Irving Kristol begat William Kristol, the director of operation
for the DC neocons, editor of the Weekly Standard and "chairman"
of the Project for the New American Century, which laid out the
plans for the Iraq War. (PNAC also opined in 2000 that a Pearl
Harbor-like event would be necessary to take the country to war,
and one year later, presto, we had the strange and still
mysterious attack of September 11.) [Probably
a little over the top. -FNC] For his part Paul Wolfowitz
begat Libby, in the intellectual sense, when he taught Libby at
Yale. Others stars in the necon firmament are Richard Perle,
Douglas Feith and lesser figures like Abram Shulsky, director of
the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, created by Donald
Rumsfeld. Shulsky, also a student of Strauss, was responsible for
fabricating the lies masquerading as intelligence that were
designed to get the U.S. into the war on Iraq. While the neocons
have a passion for the Likud party and Zionism, they also count
among their number not a few pre-Vatican II Catholics and an
assortment of cranks like Newt Gingrich and John Bolton and crypto
fascists like Jeanne Kirkpatrick. The list goes on and Justin
Raimondo has documented it in great detail over the years on
Antiwar.com. But it is enough to note that Cheney's alter ego was
Libby, and Rumsfeld's second in command until recently was
Wolfowitz.
|
Official:
|
Prominent younger
Straussian alter ego:
|
|
Cheney
|
Irve
(as in Irving) Lewis Libby or
some such
|
|
Rumsfeld
|
Paul Wolfowitz
|
So both Cheney, the de facto president with an apparently ill
perfused cerebrum, and the geezer commanding the Pentagon have
been managed by younger and very prominent Straussians for the
past five years.
A superb account of the ideas of
Strauss, his followers and his influence is to be found in The
Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (hereafter PI) and Leo Strauss and
The American Right (hereafter AR), both by Shadia Drury, professor
of politics at the University of Calgary. Her account of Strauss's
ideas and the prominence they play in American politics today will
give you chills or nausea, perhaps both. As she says in PI
(p.xii), "Strauss is the key to understanding the
political vision that has inspired the most powerful men in
America under George W. Bush. In my view men who are in
the grip of Straussian political ideas cannot be trusted with
political power in any society, let alone a liberal democracy.
This book explains why this is the case." For those who wish
to understand the neocon agenda, Drury's books are essential
reading. She is clear and thorough.
Of pertinence to
"Scooter's" case and the pack of lies he was concealing
is Strauss's idea that a "philosopher elite" (i.e.,
Straussians) must rule. Moreover they must do so covertly. As
someone remarked before last Friday, "Who ever heard of I.
Lewis Libby?" [er, that's Irve
(as in Irving) Lewis Libby or
some such] a man who shunned the spotlight and operated
behind the scenes. The reason for such covert rule, or cabal, is
that the "vulgar" herd, as Strauss liked to call the
rest of us, cannot appreciate "higher truths" such as
the inevitability and necessity of wars in relations between
states and even the utility of wars in governing a state. So the
covert elite must be certain that myths like religion or the glory
of the nation are not weakened for these are among the best ways
to rule over the ignorant herd and lead it into war. (Note that
the Straussians themselves are not religious. They are "above"
religion, capable of dealing with tough truths like man's
mortality. But in their view, religion is a crucial factor in
governing in their view. Irving Kristol, following Strauss, tells
us that religion is "far more important politically"
than the Founding Fathers believed and that to rescue America it
is necessary "to breathe new life into the older, now largely
comatose religious orthodoxies." (AR, p. 148). Any religion
will do except perhaps Islam, which is more or less
verboten, given the affinity of all leading neocons for Israel.
Hence the neocons readily embrace the ideology and leadership of
Christian fundamentalism which can keep the crowd under control
and get them to march off to war and death. The neocons are mainly
interested in foreign policy, as was Strauss, but in exchange for
the support of the religious Right in foreign affairs, the neocons
line up behind the domestic program of the fundamentalists. It's a
win win situation, from their point of view
But useful
lies of the grand sort like religious myth or blind nationalism
need support by lesser lies at crucial moments. And so we go to
the "smaller" lies like "weapons of mass
destruction," the "smoking gun that comes in the
form of the mushroom cloud." And here too the elite has a
role to play. They are to use their "superior rhetorical
skills" to make the weak argument seem stronger. In other
words the cabal not only has to protect myths and manufacture lies
but go to work in selling them. What Strauss called "rhetoric,"
we call spin.
All of this comes down to one word: lying.
But for Strauss, these lies are necessary for the smooth function
of society and triumph of one's own nation in war. Hence for
Strauss, the lie becomes "noble." This phrase Strauss
borrows and distorts from Plato who meant by a "noble lie"
a myth or parable that conveyed an underlying truth about morality
or nature. But in Strauss's hands the "noble lie"
becomes a way of deceiving the herd. Strauss's "noble lies
are far from "noble." They are intended to "dupe
the multitude and secure power for a special elite" (AR, p.
79).
One other idea of Strauss's bears on the situation of
"Scooter" Libby. How is the Straussian philosophical
elite going to get from the halls of academe to the corridors of
power? This depends on good luck and the "chance"
encounter between the powerful and the Straussian. Here the
contemporary neocons go beyond Strauss and leave nothing to
chance. It would even appear that they look for the stupid,
gullible or those who are mentally compromised. So William Kristol
becomes Vice President Quayle's chief of Staff, and Libby becomes
the right hand man to the addled Cheney as well as assistant to
the Quayle-like Bush.
|
Official:
|
Prominent younger
Straussian alter ego:
|
|
V. P. Dan Quayle
|
William Kristol
|
And there are many more.
Finally, Drury makes the point
the Strauss and the neocons are not really conservative at
all. They are radicals, at war with the
entire modern enterprise which makes them turn to the ancients for
their inspiration - and even there they need to distort the
teachings of Socrates or Plato to make their case. But the
Enlightenment comes to us with the advance of science to which
Strauss is also hostile. He says that he is not against science as
such "but popularized science or the diffusion of scientific
knowledge. Science must remain the preserve of a small minority;
it must be kept secret from the common man" (PI, p. 154). But
this is impossible. Science by its very nature is a vast social
enterprise requiring the widest possible dissemination of its
findings. Any society that puts a lid on this will fail, and so by
natural selection, the Straussian project is doomed to fail.
But
before that happens the Straussians can do a lot of damage. As
Drury says, they "cannot be trusted with political power."
But we can learn from them the importance of boldness, not in the
pursuit of the "noble lie" but of the truth. And we must
be certain that we are vigorous as we hunt
them down and get them out of power. In that
effort Shadia Drury has done us a great service.
John Walsh
can be reached at jvwalshmd@gmail.com.
He thanks Gary
Leupp a regular on CounterPoint.com for pointing him to Shadia
Drury's books.
Counterpunch.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh11022005.html
alternately:
Rense.com http://www.rense.com/general68/lies.htm
|