Todd, two simple responses to your lengthy argument: 1. You actually prove my point in quoting from my review of the Elmers biography of Harry Jaffa about the distinctions among conservatives as to the issues of American foreign policy and the danger of centralized government. Both Willmoore Kendall conservatives and Hayek libertarians favor limited government and oppose these wars that are not in our national interest. As I point out in my review of the Jaffa biography,, Kendall warned of the danger of “American Caesarism” in Jaffa’s thesis of the Founding as far back as 1959 in an article in National Review.; 2. Willmoore Kendall and George Carey are, indeed, conservative populists, but they would not have been supportive of these neocon-driven wars in the post-Reagan era of American politics. Nor would Ronald Reagan who negotiated a settlement with Gorbachev to end the Cold War. All conservatives are not Straussians and not “fascists”. You overreach and paint a false brush on the backs of many conservatives who despise the idea of “America as world empire” and simply want to restore an American Republic as we once had. I urge readers to read my full review of the Elmers book. Tom Pauken Sent from my iPad On Jul 28, 2022, at 11:39 AM, Todd Pierce via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:
Part 3 of 3 in this trilogy of American Fascism, and then I’m done for a while, having explained Trumpism relying on reliable sources as well as possible for anyone with an open mind, and registering my opposition to it. Which is not to register
support for Biden’s disastrous, self-destructive “war fighting policies” in taking Trump’s massive military buildup to its logical policy conclusion of open kinetic war now. But now arriving at Exhibit A, right from the “Fascist’s mouth” (the “best source,”
like reading Mussolini, and not US political scientists who "define” fascism as if to exclude a Perpetual Warfare State, but see below), of the “theory” of Trumpism. Why I believe it is relevant to an understanding of US politics today, is that it is drawn
from the “political theory” which is controlling in one major party and of Trumpism, and a large part of the other, which too has its Straussian roots, via Scoop Jackson Democrats/Neocons:
BLUF, in Michael Anton’s own words:
"We do believe the friend-enemy distinction is fundamental to politics. Why? Because it is. Where do we get this idea? From our teacher, Harry Jaffa, whom Watson accuses us of betraying. Where did he get
it? From his teacher, Leo Strauss, who got it from Plato and Aristotle, and, one may say, from observations of and reflections on the nature of things. (It's not quite so simple in regard to Aristotle, with Plato a
different matter if anyone ever read The Republic with its sketching out of a fascist utopia.)
"A word needs to be said about Strauss and Schmitt. Like all the other concern trolls who invoke Schmitt to trash us, Watson seems to think that simply to cite “Schmitt-the-Nazi” is to win the argument ad
uno tratto. But if that were the case, then he would also be delivering a knock-out punch to Strauss and to his student Jaffa, from whose teachings we are said to have woefully departed.
"Watson is apparently unaware of the great respect in which Strauss and Schmitt held one another, or of Strauss’s qualified esteem for Schmitt’s work (as opposed to his political activities), which Strauss passed on to his
own students, including Jaffa, who passed it on to us. Strauss and Schmitt knew one another personally and did each other important services. Schmitt was instrumental in getting Strauss the grant money that allowed him to leave Germany in 1932. Strauss privately
wrote to Schmitt the most penetrating and detailed criticism of his major work, The Concept of the Political, that Schmitt received from any quarter. Schmitt later enthused that Strauss “saw through me and X-rayed me
as nobody else has.”
"Schmitt’s works (and Strauss’s notes on them) are long, complex and defy easy summary. Those interested will want to turn to the originals. There is also a fine overview, Carl
Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, by Heinrich Meier.
I agree with Anton that citing “Schmitt-the-Nazi,” is not correct. But citing “Schmitt-the-Fascist,” is totally correct, as it is for like minded thinkers. Here is one of those little spats that Straussians/Conservatives have
with each other, as one can see if capable of a close, critical reading. Watson too is a “Jaffaite,” as can be seen in being on Hillsdale’s faculty list, and accusing Anton of “betraying” their mutual teacher, Harry Jaffa, with Anton’s “rebuttal” here. Schmitt’s,
and Strauss’s et al., “friend-enemy distinction,” is the very essence of fascist thought, from the founding of fascism with no one distilling that essence better than Carl Schmitt, a founding fascist thinker, not as a Nazi, but as a German “Conservative Revolutionary”
(and incidentally celebrated at Paul Gottfried’s H.L. Mencken Society back in about 2011 or 2012, along with Richard Spencer’s celebration of Teddy Roosevelt at the same event, with Schmitt similarly minded). Given the “law of identity,” if one thinks identically
to fascists, then one is a fascist, simply put, per “logic.”
So pardon me if this is a taboo subject but here’s one for the Straussians, Jaffaites, Trumpites, TAC readers, et al., collectively known as “Conservatives,” and/or Trumpists, with apologies in advance if I may offend anyone. With ideological
instruction here by Michael Anton, "Lecturer in Politics and Research Fellow at Hillsdale College's Kirby Center in Washington, DC," and sometime lecturer in The American Conservative’s “Constitutional
Fellowship” program. Of which I can only say, therefore, "Dear God, save this Republic from such “Conservative Constitutionalists.” Here is an apologia and his explanation of why Strauss’s/Schmitt’s fascism (and of their now deceased contemporaneous
“intellectual” collaborators), shouldn’t be confused with - wait for it - fascism. Using Strauss’s old trope of denouncing anyone recognizing his fascist ideology, by accusing them of “Reductio ad Hitlerum.” As in “nothing to see here, move along.”
This should put to rest that there is an antipathy to Straussians by The American Conservative, given how close Anton is to TAC, and the “Claremont Fellows” they’ve had on their staff over the last 7 years or so:
Tom Pauken wrote an article on Jaffa, which I narrowly quote here only to the point of the associations he identifies in my extract here:
"Suffice it to say, Harry Jaffa became completely absorbed in Strauss’ teachings: “Over the next seven years,” author Ellmers writes, “he
attended nineteen courses taught by Strauss, in New York and then Chicago.
"But the controversy over the thesis of Crisis of the
House Divided is ongoing even today. Harry Jaffa argued that the American Founding was fundamentally flawed because of the existence of slavery and was redeemed
only by the “equality” language in the Declaration of Independence. Jaffa believed in the “centrality of the Declaration of Independence for understanding American constitutionalism,” as his biographer notes. Jaffa saw Abraham Lincoln as the man of greatness
who freed the slaves and who brought America back to the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence.
"Equally important was the role of the Claremont Institute, which has pushed Jaffa’s interpretation of the American Founding consistently from the
beginning down to the present. Moreover, Claremont’s (and Jaffa’s) influence was greatly expanded when the Jaffaites got one of their own, Larry Arrn, appointed as President of Hillsdale College. Dr. Arrn was a student of Harry Jaffa at Claremont, and Hillsdale
is known as a conservative institution. As mentioned above, Dr. Arrn wrote the introduction to the present biography of Jaffa, and Jaffa’s papers are housed at Hillsdale. Dr. Ellmers got his Ph.D. at Claremont and is a research fellow at Hillsdale. Both institutions
churn out graduate degrees to students who are taught Jaffa’s views and who often are hired as professors at mostly conservative institutions."
End
So here is Tom’s written agreement with what I have been saying to this “genealogy,” though stopped where I did as I rely on letters more regarding the guy now being celebrated so much as the guy “who invented Trumpism,” which would seem to be
relevant to American politics today, and suitable for discussion here, with appropriate evidence for any assertions, like this National Interest article and its reliance on a recent biography, which I mention only because Tom brought him up:
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-willmoore-kendall-invented-trumpism-198739
But I would add that I agree with Jaffa on the point of “equality” under the law, perhaps his one redeeming value, though I know it wasn’t sincere given the policy prescriptions that came out of Jaffa and Claremont.
Unless you want an unrestrained, unconstrained “Police State,” as many “Traditional Conservatives” upheld in the South during the de-segregation era, particularly those calling for “Democratic Majoritarianism,” with its denial of “rights” for
minorities, with extra-judicial police killings then, like Derek Chauvin did to George Floyd recently, and perhaps as this Mississippi Police Chief might have:
"telling one of his officers he wouldn't care if the officer "killed a m*therf**ker in cold blood," and that he himself had killed 13 people."
And as existed here, and maybe existing again, like with DeSantis’s Executive Branch intelligence agency he’s creating under the pretext of sniffing our voter fraud:
"Was the police state that was Mississippi a model for the nation?”
(Only if you advise someone on how/where to get an abortion, or to exercise a supposed right to vote if you’re African American, or to exercise due process rights, etc.)
But here is more on Anton, and The American Conservative magazines latest, favorite Trumpite/Straussian of the "American Moment” (where do they suddenly get all their money to do what they’re doing to propagate Trumpism? Which Oligarch(s) are
they fronting for? Well, they are connected with Hillsdale and there are deep pockets funding this extreme militarism, if one looks at it beneath the “Straussian veil”):
BLUF: "Michael Anton is a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a former national security official in the Trump administration. In 2016, under
the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus, he wrote The Flight 93 Election, an influential essay in support of Donald Trump’s campaign which was subsequently credited by various media as the one that made the argument that got the President elected.
"A senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and a professor at Hillsdale College, a careful student of Leo Strauss by way of tutor Harry V. Jaffa as well as a dedicated scholar of Niccolò Macchiavelli, Anton is considered by many as the leading thinker of the
‘New American Right‘. Because of his willingness to engage with thinkers outside of the Overton window and usually ignored by mainstream conservatives, he’s also one of the most appreciated figures by the online dissident Right."
And his orbiting satellite “thinkers:”
"Opening Remarks on the future of American Foreign Policy from Saurabh Sharma, President of American Moment and Emile Doak, Executive Director of
The American Conservative, at the "Up From Chaos: Conserving American Security" Conference in Washington D.C."
P.S. Just saw this, Anton’s spat with Watson was in fact an intra-Straussian spat, intra-Hillsdale faculty spat, which often has happened amongst Straussians, like between Jaffa, and that other guy, but not representing a “break”: https://dc.hillsdale.edu/About/Faculty/
One can see from this faculty list where TAC and Quincy Institute’s "Responsible Statecraft” is drawing their foreign policy “experts” now. Mollie Hemingway: good grief, as with a recent event.
For some reason there are people who object to having the ideological/genealogical connections of Straussianism and Conservatism revealed, and one can only speculate on those motives. But there is a Presidential campaign already on now, and while
I deplore all potential candidate as out-of control militarists, no one should be allowed to hide behind fabricated histories, or “myths,” if you prefer. People wonder, as I’ve read here on the list, of “why” there is such hostile division in the country today.
Which they can only do if they close their eyes and minds to the "political theory” of the “friend-enemy distinction” so central to politics today, but always taken to a greater extreme as Anton, et al., propagate, and celebrate it, in their American variety
of fascism, as revealed here to anyone who can “think.” No one should ask later: how did it happen here? It's right in front of anyone who can read, with the legitimization of Schmitt’s fascist thought, which I’ve written of in the past as in the attached
file:
All this explains as well the open collaboration with the most extreme right-wing forces in the world today, whether the Israeli “Conservatives," now totally conjoined with the Republicans, and to the Democrats to a lesser degree, and with Bolsonaro,
Modi, Duterte, Orban, and Trump, a veritable “Universal Fascism” which Michael Ledeen long dreamed of, brought into power with all the instruments of election interference Oligarchical money can buy. Here is an older article by a conservative sociologist which
might help explain why a student of Rousseau might adopt "democratic majoritarianism” ideology, not saying anyone did. Just saying . . .
Reductio ad Hitlerum
National Review's failure to grasp the friend-enemy distinction is revealing.
"This is about National Review, who isn’t worth giving a lot of consideration—by you or me—so I’ll try to keep it short.
"One of the pitfalls of success in social media-saturated modern America is you get a lot of concern trolls. The “Claremont school” of conservatism—broadly understood as people educated at the Claremont Graduate School by
Harry Jaffa and his students, plus those who became fellow travelers—has risen in prominence over the last decade or so.
"This has occasioned much tut-tutting that we have somehow betrayed our principles, or our teacher, in particular for saying nice things about Trump. That article (or tweet thread) has been written so many times that you’d
think people would get tired of it and stop offering fresh examples.
"But here comes NR with another entrant. Mike Watson, of whom I have never heard, is the author. Did he go to Claremont? Attend any of the Claremont Institute’s fellowship programs?
Spend any time with Jaffa at all? Not that I know of. Why, then, does he feel especially qualified to tell those of us who did what our “true” principles are and what they (allegedly) require us to conclude?
"One of the maxims of Jaffa’s great teacher Leo Strauss was that, before one can accurately or usefully criticize a thinker (or body of thought), one must first understand him exactly as he understands himself. Like all of
our concern trolls, Mike Watson believes that he understands Claremont as well as, or better than, the Claremonsters.
"But he doesn’t. In fact, he doesn’t seem to understand us at all.
"I’m not going to refute Watson’s claims point-by-point (although I easily could, but who cares). However, one is deserving of examination, since it has been made dozens of times before, will no doubt be made dozens of times
more, and demonstrates Watson’s lack of familiarity with the issues and materials at hand.
"Watson may think he is being original in comparing us to Carl Schmitt, the German jurist and political theorist who joined the Nazi Party in 1933, served the Nazi state until coming under Party suspicion three years later,
and yet in 1985 went to his grave apparently unrepentant. But this facile comparison has been done to death over the last six years. Maybe Watson doesn’t know that; but didn’t any of his editors?
"Like his concern troll forebears, Watson finds a commonality between Schmitt’s most famous idea and some of the more recent arguments coming out of the Claremont school. Watson doesn’t come right out and call us Nazis; he’s
too polite or pusillanimous for that. He just writes an entire piece comparing everyone with influence on the contemporary right, including us, to the second-most famous (after Martin Heidegger) thinker who joined the Nazi Party. The reader is left to draw
his own conclusion. And what else is he supposed to conclude?
"As to the “substance” (such as it is) of Watson’s claim, the aforementioned “most famous idea” of Carl Schmitt is his assertion that the friend-enemy distinction is the foundation of all politics. Watson finds this, and thus
by extension us, whom he accuses of subscribing to it, anathema.
"That’s about the only thing he gets right. We do believe the friend-enemy distinction is fundamental to politics. Why? Because it is. Where do we get this idea? From our teacher, Harry
Jaffa, whom Watson accuses us of betraying. Where did he get it? From his teacher, Leo Strauss, who got it from Plato and Aristotle, and, one may say, from observations of and
reflections on the nature of things.
"A word needs to be said about Strauss and Schmitt. Like all the other concern trolls who invoke Schmitt to trash us, Watson seems to think that simply to cite “Schmitt-the-Nazi” is to win the argument ad
uno tratto. But if that were the case, then he would also be delivering a knock-out punch to Strauss and to his student Jaffa, from whose teachings we are said to have woefully departed.
"Watson is apparently unaware of the great respect in which Strauss and Schmitt held one another, or of Strauss’s qualified esteem for Schmitt’s work (as opposed to his political activities), which Strauss passed on to his
own students, including Jaffa, who passed it on to us. Strauss and Schmitt knew one another personally and did each other important services. Schmitt was instrumental in getting Strauss the grant money that allowed him to leave Germany in 1932. Strauss privately
wrote to Schmitt the most penetrating and detailed criticism of his major work, The Concept of the Political, that Schmitt received from any quarter. Schmitt later enthused that Strauss “saw through me and X-rayed me
as nobody else has.”
"Schmitt’s works (and Strauss’s notes on them) are long, complex and defy easy summary. Those interested will want to turn to the originals. There is also a fine overview, Carl
Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, by Heinrich Meier.
"For present purposes, we may say the following. Schmitt’s admission that Strauss “saw through” him is perceptive. Strauss does not denounce Schmitt’s core insight; rather, he thinks it through to its roots and assesses not
just its strengths but its ultimate inadequacy. This is, one hardly need add, far from the glib dismissal we get from the likes of Watson.
"Strauss many times pointed out that, of the three definitions of justice proffered in Book I of Plato’s Republic, only one survives the transition to the perfectly just city or “city
in speech.” And that is the view that justice is helping friends and harming enemies. If we want to be absolutely strict, we would immediately clarify that Socrates denies that justice entails harming anyone, but he does so by defining “harm” in such way that
offends ordinary common sense (e.g., deserved punishment is not harm; cf. the Gorgias).
"Socrates does not, however, deny the friend-enemy distinction. To the contrary: he builds his whole political philosophy thereon. His just city emphatically begins, and never retreats,
from recognizing that all politics is particular. There will always be borders, citizens and non-citizens, and hence friends and enemies. This does not mean that every non-citizen is always an active enemy combatant, but he is always potentially so and never
a friend in the same way the fellow citizen can and must be. The eternal and inevitable presence of potential enemies is why there must be a “guardian” (later renamed “auxiliary”) warrior class.
"For Strauss, this basic insight, fundamental to all politics, is a necessary starting point from which one must ascend to discover, and eventually implement, true justice, or the closest approximation practicable in the real
world. Hence for Strauss, Schmitt’s theory is not so much wrong but incomplete. To tell a very long story in very few words, for Strauss, Schmitt’s thought is but another attempt to address fundamental problems of late modernity that end up either relying
on or even radicalizing faulty modern premises. Strauss credits Schmitt (as he credits Heidegger) with seeing late modernity’s dead-end more or less clearly but criticizes him for not fully thinking through the implications of his own ideas. For Strauss, the
only way forward is a return to ancient modes of thought that nearly all of his contemporaries, including Schmitt, considered decisively refuted and, thus, of only historical interest. Strauss alone showed that they were wrong.
"I wouldn’t expect someone like Watson, or anyone at National Review, to know any of this. It’s abstruse, academic stuff. But if they don’t, they shouldn’t write about or publish on
it. It’s embarrassing for them (or should be) and disrespectful to the memories of great men (Strauss and Jaffa). It’s also meretricious and low to refer to people whose ideas they don’t understand as Nazis.
"One reason the genuine right considers National Review a joke is that the magazine long ago lost the ability to distinguish between friends and enemies. NR spills
considerable ink cozying up to the left and trying to show that they are not like those unacceptable bad conservatives but are instead harmless and reliable good guys. It attacks and backstabs those who ostensibly are, or should be, its friends and sucks up
to its supposed enemies. Or perhaps NR is simply lying to its readers—and donors—and is playing Schmittian politics after all, but having switched sides? I couldn’t say, but that explanation fits the observable facts.
"National Review presents itself as the flagship publication of American conservatism, but then goes around calling conservatives it doesn’t like Nazis. Those who call you Nazis are
not your friends but your enemies. No one who is not a fool takes advice from his enemies, or assumes that said advice is well intentioned. It may be useful, even necessary, to know what your enemies are saying about you, but that’s about as far as it goes.
In the case of NR, which as best as I can tell no longer has much influence, it doesn’t even go that far.
"Not long ago, when National Review transitioned to a new editor—only its fourth in the magazine’s 67-year history—I mentioned this to a prominent conservative intellectual. That is,
prominent in the relevant new right, not the irrelevant establishment grifter “right.”
“When did this happen?” he asked me, clearly surprised.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Three months ago? Maybe six?”
“What does it say,” he mused aloud, “that National Review, whose smallest masthead changes used to be big news on the right, got a new editor and I didn’t even know it?”
"It says it all.” End
"Suffice it to say, Harry Jaffa became completely absorbed in Strauss’ teachings: “Over the next seven years,”
author Ellmers writes, “he attended nineteen courses taught by Strauss, in New York and then Chicago.
"But the controversy over the thesis of Crisis of the
House Divided is ongoing even today. Harry Jaffa argued that the American Founding was fundamentally flawed because of the existence of slavery and was redeemed
only by the “equality” language in the Declaration of Independence. Jaffa believed in the “centrality of the Declaration of Independence for understanding American constitutionalism,” as his biographer notes. Jaffa saw Abraham Lincoln as the man of greatness
who freed the slaves and who brought America back to the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence.
"Equally important was the role of the Claremont Institute, which has pushed Jaffa’s interpretation of the American Founding consistently from the
beginning down to the present. Moreover, Claremont’s (and Jaffa’s) influence was greatly expanded when the Jaffaites got one of their own, Larry Arrn, appointed as President of Hillsdale College. Dr. Arrn was a student of Harry Jaffa at Claremont, and Hillsdale
is known as a conservative institution. As mentioned above, Dr. Arrn wrote the introduction to the present biography of Jaffa, and Jaffa’s papers are housed at Hillsdale. Dr. Ellmers got his Ph.D. at Claremont and is a research fellow at Hillsdale. Both institutions
churn out graduate degrees to students who are taught Jaffa’s views and who often are hired as professors at mostly conservative institutions."
Begin forwarded message:
Subject: Join Hillsdale College's D.C. Graduate School of Government at TAC's Annual Gala!
Date: September 22, 2021 at 1:29:55 PM CDT
To:
The American Conservative · 910 17th Street, NW · Suite 400 · Washington, DC 20006-2604 · USA
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