Leo Strauss And The Politics Of American Empire

Rating:
Summary: The Use and Abuse of Leo Strauss
Review: This book is mean spirited with just enough "human kindness" for the author to say otherwise. It is not a scholarly work. There are no footnotes to check quotes or attribution to see whether statements or remarks are taken out of context. The author is short on history. Under the imprimatur of the Yale University Press, it is more a peep show that masquerades as a book. (For that alone, the Press should be ashamed and one wonders about its editorial policies to accept such a tome.) It is neither "honest" nor "wise" as suggested on its back. One hopes that the author had the courage of her convictions to make these ad hominem attacks personally first to the persons that she directs her imprecations.
The Late Professor Strauss deserves better.
It is not worth the read.


Rating:
Summary: A High Order of Intellectual Dishonesty
Review: Anne Norton's book, "Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire" is an interesting and well written commentary on a school of political theory (philosophy) that greatly influenced conservative political thinkers and public officials in each of the administrations since Ronald Reagan (but primarily the Republicans). Unfortunately, it is the most intellectually dishonest book I have ever read! As two reader reviews point out, there is not a single footnote in the entire text. The reason this is such a serious flaw is that it makes quoting out of context easy to do and difficult to challenge.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a student of Strauss, his students, nor am I a Straussian. But I am a friend of one of the authors that Norton quotes and misrepresents, Carnes Lord. On page 137 she says, "There are, Lord tells us, no small number of leftists, `lunatic and sinister' professors, and not all of them are visible." She then uses the phrase, "lunatic and sinister" again (on the same page), implying that Lord advocates monitoring professorial opinion (by the state). What Carnes Lord actually says in a discussion of American university education on page 139 of his book, "The Modern Prince," is, "The alternately lunatic and sinister pursuit of the agenda of political correctness that pervades contemporary university life in America raises fundamental issues, including ones of legal due process." One does not have to agree with Lord to recognize Norton's dishonest attempt to use Lord's words taken out of context to vilify a position with which she disagrees but which he did not espouse.
If one of my undergraduate students were to do what Norton has done, that student would fail the assignment. If it were done by one of my graduate students, I would argue for that individual's termination as a student in the program. What, then, are we to say about such behavior by a tenured Associate Professor in one of the nation's premier universities? Read the book (but get it from the library) to see the sad, polemical, and academically dishonest state of some modern American political theory.


Rating:
Summary: One Woman's Stream of Consciousness
Review: Professor Norton tells the reader nothing useful or interesting about either Leo Strauss or the "American Empire." All that is clear is that she dislikes both. Her thesis is, apparently, that the hawkish policies of the American government in the early 21st century are attributable to the teachings of Mr. Strauss (rather as the political adventurism of Alcibiades was attributed to the teachings of Socrates). But she does not even attempt to prove her thesis. She drops a few names, tells a few insider stories, displays her own familiarity with radical Islamist literature, and heaps contempt on those she disagrees with. The book contains no coherent argument; but maybe post-structuralists do not make coherent arguments. There are no footnotes, and there is no bibliography; there are few direct quotations (except from alleged private conversations). The author apparently still harbors resentment against those who treated her as an outsider when she was still in graduate school, and this book is her revenge.

Rating:
Summary: Truly insightful
Review: This book is bound to anger a number of supposed "scholars" and other "fellows" of such self-admiring institutions as the American Entreprise institute, the Rand Corporation and the Project for New American Century.
Indeed, Anne Norton brilliantly identifies the delusions of grandeur, the intellectual dishonesty and the plain hypocricy of the Straussian philo-political movement.
It is fascinating to see how devoid of empathy and humanist thought the views of Strauss, Bloom and their disciples really are. The book also provides a warning to those who would be tempted by the neo-aristocratic and ultimately racist and self-serving views of neo-conservatism.
This book should be required reading for anyone interested in the US political climate of the past 25 years, as well as for all those working or associated with the Straussian network.
This is genuinely enlightening stuff ... read it !!


Rating:
Summary: A timely act of citizenship by a thoughtful scholar
Review: This book is neither a memoir nor an academic treatise, and no doubt it will lose some readers who bring to it misplaced expectations. What the book is, most simply, is an act of citizenship (in several ways). With maturity and care, Anne Norton presents a series of essays and reflections on Leo Strauss, on the political movement identified as "Straussian," on American ideals, history, and identity, and ultimately on democracy, citizenship, empire, and the fragility of political philosophic inquiry.

Norton's prose is clear and unobtrusively elegant; her rhetoric is measured and deliberate without being stiff, pretentious, or shrill. The book is plainly an indictment of a group the author calls "political Straussians," although she is at pains not to include Strauss himself among the indicted. Personal and merely partisan animus are nowhere evident. She dismisses conspiracy theories about secret teachings. She does not demonize Straussians, she humanizes them. It is their beliefs, words, and actions that she holds up for moral scrutiny, and her sharp-eyed focus is quietly devastating.

While those of us who, like the author, are not Straussians can learn much from this book, part of its peculiar beauty comes from the fact that, without being coy or pulling punches, the author obviously includes Straussians well within the scope of the intended audience. They may be opponents of democratic freedoms, praisers of tyrants, armchair generals and cheerleaders in wars that neither "Ancients" nor "Moderns" could justify, wars that Norton aptly characterizes as "wars of the Last Man": ("We watch if we choose; or we change the channel. ... The war is easy, the war is comfortable. Yet the war is made by people in the grip of fear." [pp. 155-156].)

Yet practioners of democracy persist, inquiry and discussion are still free, and by being a confident interlocutor, Norton makes her exemplary practice as important as the content of her arguments. Without evident hope of persuasion, it nevertheless appears as if Norton conscientiously leaves room for "Straussians" to be recalled to their better natures as "students of Strauss," as children of democracy and beneficiaries of intellectual freedom. Without expecting them to share her own politics, she calls them, with the rest of us, back to philosophy, to citizenship, to responsibility, to a civil regard for a forgotten conservatism of limits and circumspection.

This is a serious work by a thoughtful citizen and student of political philosophy. No doubt even some of those who disagree with her will acknowledge that she deserves the respect due to a worthy interlocutor and a generous teacher.