He taught political theory, primarily at the University of Chicago. He was widely known for his argument that the works of ancient philosophers contain deliberately concealed esoteric meanings whose truths can be comprehended only by a very few, and would be misunderstood by the masses. This has come to be known as the 'hidden meaning' thesis.
Key neo-conservative strategists consider themselves to be followers of Strauss. Is this so? One of the most prominent of them is former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who is widely regarded as the chief architect of the Iraq war. Mr. Wolfowitz is rememberd as being obsessed with ousting Iraq's Saddam Hussein as the first step winning the "war on terror', and in transforming the entire Arab Middle East. He is also seen as a leader in the Bush Administration's post-9/11 global strategy, including its controversial pre-emptive strike policy (the Bush Doctrine).
Two other very influential Straussians included are a writer for The Weekly Standard, Mr. William Kristol and Gary Schmitt who is founder/chairman and director, respectively, of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a six-year-old neo-conservative front group whose alumni include Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, as well as a number of other Bush era senior foreign policy officials.
Richard Perle
Washington D.C. power broker and long-time cold warrior Mr. Richard Norman Perle is a Straussian. He was formerly a Pentagon policy adviser (resigned February 2004), a Likud policy adviser, a media manager, an international investor, an op-ed writer, a talk show guest, a think tank expert, and a ardent supporter of the war in Iraq. Trireme Partners LP is a limited partnership venture capital company that invests in technology, goods, and services related to homeland security and defense. You can say that Trireme Partners is a defense contractor. The Company chairman is Richard N. Perle. Trireme Partners LP was registered in the state of Delaware in November 2001, two months after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Boeing corp. is one of the investors in Trireme.
Writer Seymore Hersh exposed Perle's business connections in the private fund run by Perle that manages Saudi Arabian investment in homeland security companies. Is this a conflict of interest? Not according to Leo Strauss, and it wouldn't matter anyway if it were.
The Project For The New Amerian Century
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) had long before the attack on the World Trade Center sent open letters to President George W. Bush advising him on how to fight a war on terrorism, and they have to an uncanny extent precisely "predicted" what the administration would actually do. The PNAC was originally founded by the father of Mr. William Kristol, Irving Kristol, who is regarded as the godfather of neo-conservatism, and sits on the board of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) where a number of prominent hawks, including Richard Perle, also sit., Irving Kristol has credited Leo Strauss with being one of the main influences on his thinking.
Strauss is a popular figure among the neoconservatives (neocons). Strauss' philosophy is hardly incidental to the strategy and mindset adopted by these men when they were advising the administration on the subject of the Iraq war. They argued that Strauss's idea of "hidden meaning", "alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception."
Rule One: Deception
Not only did Strauss have few qualms about using deception in politics, he saw it as a necessity. While professing deep respect for American democracy, Strauss believed that societies should be hierarchical – divided between an elite who should lead, and the masses who should follow. But unlike fellow elitists like Plato, he was less concerned with the moral character of these leaders. According to Shadia Drury, who teaches politics at the University of Calgary, Strauss believed that "those who are fit to rule are those who realize
there is no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior."
This state of being requires "perpetual deception" between the rulers and the ruled, according to Drury. Mr. Robert Locke, another Straussian analyst believes that,"people are told what they need to know and no more." While the elite few are capable of absorbing the absence of any moral truth, Strauss thought, the masses might not cope. If exposed to the absence of absolute truth, they would quickly fall into nihilism or anarchy, according to Drury, author of 'Leo Strauss and the American Right'.
Strauss believed that the inherently aggressive nature of human beings could only be restrained by a powerful nationalistic state. "Because mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed," he once wrote. "Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united – and they can only be united against other people."
The deep influence of Leo Strauss’s ideas on the current architects of US foreign policy has been referred to sporadically in the press. Leo Strauss died in 1973, but in the last few years it’s been hard to come up with a figure who has been more loved and reviled among those who study and write about political philosophy.
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