As a prosecutor and judicial law clerk, I was involved a couple times in the adjudication of people for ‘insanity.” That’s been a long time ago but I remember enough that I could make
out a strong case that this country as a whole with our eagerness to go to war with Russia and/or China, constitutes “collective insanity.” But when all are insane, identically, it's only those few who are sane in fact, who appear insane. Something like the
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
You know your society is in trouble when some within it make recommendations that we must look for “wisdom" in an earlier generation of war-lovers/authoritarians as was frequently called for from 2001 - 2015, if not later, in calls for a return
to the “wisdom” of Carl Schmitt, in the attached article of long ago. The same must be said of Albert Wohlstetter, one of the Rand Corporation’s proponents of “Madness,” as was satirized in Dr. Strangelove as the “Bland Corporation.” Of course he, and they,
met favor, in the founding generation of the Conservative Movement centered on the masthead of National Review, with at least one of them, William Buckley, having called for a preemptive nuclear strike on China in 1965, I believe it was, which would have ended
all of our lives prematurely.
An excellent book, in most ways, is “The Cold World They Made," by Ron Robin, on “The Strategic Legacy of Roberta and Albert Wohlstetter” (2016). Good, except for some inexplicable reason, he denies the influence of Leo Strauss on our “National
Security” Ideology, which is pervasive by introducing the Hobbesian ideology for us as the self-appointed Leviathan. Richard Perle was an acolyte of Wohlstetter, and Leo Strauss, by most accounts. Which is not to attribute all that is bad in conservatism to
Strauss, because as we know, he was just part of the Conservative “architecture,” and best friends with Willmoore Kendall, with the “West Coast Straussianism" of Hillsdale and Claremont now officially “Trump’s Brain,” as the ideology of Trumpism.
Profound insights of Leo Strauss
"Amid the smears and distortions in his offensive piece (Shock, awe and Hobbes have backfired on America's neocons, December 28), Dr Richard Drayton claims: "Neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the recently indicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby
learned from Leo Strauss that a strong and wise minority of humans had to rule over the weak majority through deception and fear, rather than persuasion or compromise." Leo Strauss taught no such thing. Strauss's writings and teachings are profound considerations
of great texts, suffused - where they are relevant to contemporary politics - with a profound respect for the majority and warnings to rulers of the perils of deception and demagogy. It is hardly surprising that two-penny journalists do not scour the works
of a dead philosopher for wisdom, but there was a time when senior Cambridge lecturers were paid to do just this.
Douglas Murray
Author, Neoconservatism: Why We Need It; The Social Affairs Unit, London"
“Neoconservatism,” “National Conservatism,” there’s really no difference, when a “political theory” analysis of each is made, and their ties to Machiavelli and Hobbes are made apparent, as Strauss and Carl Schmitt did such good jobs of in revealing
as their proponents.
Amongst my problems with “Traditional Conservatives” is that they wouldn’t recognize a “Straussian,” even when one is sitting right next to one at a National Conservative Conference, or co-teaching a class on their version of the Constitution,
as we see in the joint program of TAC, Hillsdale College, and Catholic University. Or they may conceal their ideological partnership, as with Trumpism, when in some circles.