Listics

Ignoble Liars - Leo Strauss, George Bush, and the Philosophy of Mass Deception, by Earl Shorris appears in the June Harper’s Magazine. “Strauss attracted the students who thought themselves brilliant,” Shorris says. He comes up with a short list of Straussians who have served the Bush regime: Wolfowitz and Perle (foreign policy), Leon Kass and Francis Fukuyama (bioethics), Gary Schmitt (New American Century), Alan Keyes, Douglas Feith, Stephen Cambone (famous for his intelligence short-cuts with POWs), Abraham Shulsky, Irving and William Kristol.

The article provides a foundation for the more humorous and just as true work by Al Franken, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them - A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Shorris illustrates the Straussian rationalization for deceit like this:

For Strauss… the virtue of the lie depends on who is doing the lying. If a poor woman lies on her application for welfare benefits, the lie cannot be countenanced. The woman has committed fraud and must be punished. The woman is not noble, therefore the lie cannot be noble. When the leader of the free world says that “free nations do not have weapons of mass destruction,” this is but a noble lie a fable told by the aristocratic president of a country with enough nuclear weapons to leave the earth a desert….”

The class war began in earnest during the Carter presidency. It was started by those whoi would toady to an aristocracy that laughably contains men of the quality of Dan Quayle and George W. Bush. It has been waged as a guerilla war. The Aristos are winning. It’s time to turn over the rocks they hide under and expose their deceit to the light of day. Truth can triumph if we blow away the fog of Straussian obscurantism. Oh, and maybe some heads will have to roll too.