Rewind! The Genius of Leo Strauss: A Republican State of Mind (Attack of the Republican Blogs)

Today on my Republican blog: The genius of Leo Strauss. This is a very special treat for all of my Republicans. I know most of you are already well versed in the works of Leo Strauss and politics, so I decided to post this for all of the confused liberals who either misrepresent Leo Strauss’s teachings on purpose or just out of sheer ignorance. It’s an article from the June 7, 2003 edition of the New York Times. And guess who wrote it? Jenny Strauss Clay. I would think she would know her father a little better than anyone else. Just a bit of advice to my left leaning friends: go to Borders or get a library card and read one of Strauss’s books. I suggest you start with Natural Right and History. I know almost all of it’s going to go over your head at first, but don’t be discouraged. Read it again. And then read it again and again and again until it starts to make sense to you. And once you come to the realization that everything you’ve always believed in is false…that’s when the healing starts. At that point, the Republican Party won’t look so bad to you anymore. In closing, I’d like to give a special thanks to the RNC, the Missouri Republican Party, the Illinois Republican Party, the College Republican National Committee, the Wall Street Journal, KSDK Channel 5 and KTVI Fox 2 News. To all of my Republicans and Republican blogs and bloggers, my Libertarians and Libertarian blogs and bloggers, my Democrats and Democratic blogs and bloggers (come to the light), and to all Political blogs and bloggers: Let your voice be heard. GOP in 2012! Enjoy

June 7, 2003
The Real Leo Strauss
By Jenny Strauss Clay
Recent news articles have portrayed my father, Leo Strauss, as the mastermind behind the neoconservative ideologues who control United States foreign policy. He reaches out from his 30-year-old grave, we are told, to direct a ”cabal” (a word with distinct anti-Semitic overtones) of Bush administration figures hoping to subject the American people to rule by a ruthless elite. I do not recognize the Leo Strauss presented in these articles.
My father was not a politician. He taught political theory, primarily at the University of Chicago. He was a conservative insofar as he did not think that change is necessarily change for the better.
Leo Strauss believed in the intrinsic dignity of the political. He believed in and defended liberal democracy; although he was not blind to its flaws, he felt it was the best form of government that could be realized, ”the last best hope.” He was an enemy of any regime that aspired to global domination. He despised utopianism — in our time, Nazism and Communism — which is predicated on the denial of a fundamental and even noble feature of human nature: love of one’s own. His heroes were Churchill and Lincoln. He was not an observant Jew, but he loved the Jewish people and he saw the establishment of Israel as essential to their survival.
To me, what characterized him above all else was his total lack of vanity and self-importance. As a result, he had no interest in honors within the academy, and was completely unsuited to political ambition. His own earliest passion, he confessed, was to spend his life raising rabbits (Flemish Giants) and reading Plato.
He was first and foremost a teacher. He did not seek to mold people in his own image. Rather, he was devoted to helping young people see the world as it is, in all its misery and splendor. The objects of his teaching were the Great Books, those works generally recognized as the foundation of a liberal education. But that alone was not a sufficient reason for reading them.
He began where good teachers should begin, from his students’ received opinions, in order to scrutinize their foundation. At that time, as is still true today, academia leaned to the left; hence such questioning required an examination of the left’s tenets. Had the prevailing beliefs been different, they too would have been subject to his skeptical inquiry.
Among the received opinions of the time was an unquestioned faith in progress and science combined with a queasiness regarding any kind of moral judgment, or ”relativism.” Many young people were confused, without a compass, with nothing substantial to admire. My father’s turning them to the Great Books was thus motivated not merely by aesthetic or antiquarian interest, but by a search for an understanding of mankind’s present predicament: what were its sources and what, if any, were the alternatives? The latter he found in the writings of the ancient Greeks.
Furthermore, he insistently confronted his students with the question of the ”good life.” For him, the choice boiled down to the life in accordance with Revelation or the life according to Reason — Jerusalem versus Athens. The vitality of Western tradition, he felt, lay in the invigorating tension between the two.
My father saw reading not as a passive exercise but as taking part in an active dialogue with the great minds of the past. One had to read with great care, great respect, and try, as he always said, to ”understand the author as he understood himself.” Today this task, admittedly difficult and demanding, is dismissed in fashionable academia as impossible. Rather, we are told, each reader inevitably constructs his own text over which the author has no control, and the writer’s intentions are irrelevant.
The fact is that Leo Strauss also recognized a multiplicity of readers, but he had enough faith in his authors to assume that they, too, recognized that they would have a diverse readership. Some of their readers, the ancients realized, would want only to find their own views and prejudices confirmed; others might be willing to open themselves to new, perhaps unconventional or unpopular, ideas. I personally think my father’s rediscovery of the art of writing for different kinds of readers will be his most lasting legacy.
Although I was never a student of my father’s, I sat in on a class of his in the 1960′s; I think it was on Xenophon’s ”Cyropaedia.” He was a small, unprepossessing and, truth be told, ugly man (daughters are their parents’ worst critics), with none of the charisma that one associates with ”great teachers.” And yet there was something utterly charming. One of the students would read little chunks of the text, and my father would comment and call for discussion. What marked this class was a combination of an engagement with questions of the highest seriousness (in this case, what is the best form of government) with the laughter of intellectual play.
It was magic. If only the truth had the power to make the misrepresentations of his achievement vanish like smoke and dust.

Remember this? March(ing) on: Rolling, Rolling, Roland Burris (Originaly posted 03-02-09)

Today on my Republican Blog: I’m not certain what they’ve been putting in the water of Chicago politicians all these years; but I’ve gotta try it. It apparently makes you immune to all reality and common sense. Case in point: Roland Burris’s continuing refusal to step down from the senate seat that we all know he bought and subsequently lied about buying. As I’ve said before on previous posts: do not accept this appointment because if you do, no one will take anything you do in the senate seriously and you’ll just be embarrassing yourself. Well, back to the future(cast). Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, also a dem, has just said that he’s giving Burris two weeks to step down before he urges Illinois lawmakers to consider a special election. I hate to say I told you so…but I told you so. This train wreck of a situation has us all now watching Burris holding press conferences and reading his ridiculous news releases; all in his attempt to disprove what we now know has just been confirmed. Mr. Burris, I don’t know if you read the news, but Illinois state attorney general, Lisa Madigan (D), issued an opinion stating that a special election will probably happen. And by the way, Alexi Giannoulias (Illinois state treasurer), U.S. Reps Mark Kirk and Peter Roskam, and also William Daley (the brother of the mayor), are all waiting to attack. The piranhas are starting to taste blood in the water; and they’re ready to bite. Stop this nonsense and just resign. And to the people of Illinois: when this special election is held, could you please stop your historic addiction to democrats ruining your state and vote Republican? So to all my Republican blogs and bloggers, my Libertarian blogs and blogger, and especially my Democrat blogs and bloggers (told you so): let your voice be heard. GOP in 2012! See you in a minute!

Tough as Steele: A Republican State of Mind (Attack of the Republican Blogs)

Today on my Republican blog: Tough as Steele. I just came across an interesting article by Jim Galloway from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about GOP chairman Michael Steele. If you’ve previously read my blog, you already know how I feel about the leader of my Republican Party. If you haven’t, allow me to clarify it for you: Michael Steele is the leader of the GOP… period. As much as some in the Republican Party want to ignore that fact; the grass is still green, water is still wet and the sun still rises every morning. It’s time for the older guard to start supporting the new GOP. The past is the past and we need to be focusing on the future. So before I go, I’d like to give a special thanks to the RNC, the Missouri Republican Party, the Illinois Republican Party, the College Republican National Committee, the National Black Republican Association, the Wall Street Journal, KSDK Channel 5, and KTVI Fox 2 News. To all of my Republican Blogs and Bloggers (embrace the future of our party), my Libertarian blogs and bloggers, my Democrat blogs and bloggers (it’s over for you in 2012), and to all Political blogs and bloggers: Let your voice be heard. GOP in 2012! If you’re not on the right, you’re wrong. Ready by 2011 to win in 2012! Enjoy.

Steele and the soul of the GOP
Future of chair, party to be debated at special session this week.
By Jim Galloway
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, May 18, 2009
SAVANNAH —- To understand the churning passions within the Republican Party this weekend, all one had to do was play a game of follow-the-leader.
In one of two speeches on Saturday, national GOP chairman Michael Steele paid red-meat tribute to the defiance of 1,200 frustrated and angry delegates who showed up at the state Republican convention.
“We don’t have to remake anything. What do we have to remake? Our values?” Steele shouted.
But only a few hours earlier, at a smaller breakfast event, the chairman of the Republican National Committee had delivered a quite different message, using the blunt language that’s made him famous.
The chairman said he had inherited leadership of a party that was “stuck in a 1980s philosophy, using a 1990s strategy to win campaigns.”
The Republican demand for orthodoxy and purity, Steele said, risks making the party irrelevant to “the changing heartbeat of this nation.”
“We can no longer be afraid that to open up, to invite someone in, diminishes us. I don’t know how that works,” Steele said. “If you are true to your convictions, to your core, why are you so afraid to share that?”
The RNC chairman rushed out of Savannah without speaking to reporters. Unscripted moments have cost him lately —- plus, there was a Sunday appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to prepare for.
But more importantly, the head of the national GOP probably needed a few hours to ready himself for this week’s palace revolt.
The 108 days of Steele’s tenure as the first African-American chairman of the GOP will be marked by a special session of the 168-member Republican National Committee that elected him.
A faction within the RNC has placed at least two items on the agenda. One is a high school-prankish resolution to mandate that all Democrats be referred to as “Democrat Socialists.”
A more serious measure would put new controls on Steele’s power to determine where Republican cash resources —- which remain formidable —- will be spent.
Georgia has Republicans on both sides of a fight that is less about book-keeping practices and more about how Republicans should attempt to recover from four years of defeat.
Alec Poitevint, former chairman of the state GOP and a former treasurer of the RNC, identified himself as one of the “dissidents” insisting on tighter fiscal controls over the new chairman.
“We live in a more transparent world,” Poitevint said.
More exacting, business-style regulations would increase faith in Steele’s role as “CEO of the Republican National Committee,” the Bainbridge businessman said —- and “absolutely” should not be interpreted as the first move in an attempt to send him packing.
But Poitevint hinted at dissatisfaction with Steele’s early performance, which has been marked by gaffes —- the latest over Mitt Romney and his Mormon faith. “There’s an impatience within the Republican base. I think that’s what you see at the RNC,” Poitevint said.
Sue Everhart, re-elected by acclamation as chairman of the state GOP this weekend, twisted many an arm in January to get Steele elected. And she’ll do so again this week to preserve his authority.
To slap controls on Steele would be a blunder for a party looking to expand its reach, she thinks.
“We’ve had chairmen that were very extravagant; we’ve had chairmen that were frugal,” said Everhart. “To me, it would be sending a message. Do we not want him to be able to write checks because he’s black? We don’t trust him? Why?
“I don’t think we need to put anything on Michael that we didn’t put on any other chairman,” she said. “I think it’s just a bunch of people who didn’t get who they wanted, so they want to punish him.”
Linda Herren is the third Georgia Republican on the RNC. She’s not opposed to controls aimed at exorbitant spending.
But the constantly morphing draft resolutions she’s seen would require Steele to get approval for expenditures over $100,000 to $150,000.
“You can spend that in stamps,” she said. “That would pretty much tie his hands.”

Happy Mother’s Day! A Republican State of Mind (Attack of the Republican Blogs)

Today on my Republican Blog: Happy Mother’s Day! To all of the mothers out there, I’d just like to take a moment to say happy mother’s day. To be honest, most of us don’t truly appreciate the sacrifices our mothers have made in their lives to make us the individuals that we are today. We’ve all gone through the different stages of needing our mothers (as a baby) to thinking we know everything (as a teenager); to eventually needing your mothers help and advise at times (as an adult). So to all mothers reading this: enjoy your day! And to my mother: I know I haven’t been the best son at all times, but I love you for always supporting me and instilling in me the value of taking care of family first. And that people, is a Republican state of mind. In closing, I’d like to give a special thanks to the RNC, the Missouri Republican Party, the Illinois Republican Party, the College Republican National Committee, the National Black Republican Association, the Wall Street Journal, KSDK Channel 5, and KTVI Fox 2 News. To all of my Republican Blogs and Bloggers, my Libertarian blogs and bloggers, my Democrat blogs and bloggers (apologize to your mothers), and to all Political blogs and bloggers: Let your voice be heard. GOP in 2012! If you’re not on the right, you’re wrong. And I love you Mom!