Leo Strauss and his proteges, the "Straussians,"

are again in the news. Jeet Heer writes in the May 11 Boston Globe:

Odd as this may sound, we live in a world increasingly shaped by Leo

Strauss, a controversial philosopher who died in 1973. Although generally

unknown to the wider population, Strauss has been one of the two or

three most important intellectual influences on the conservative worldview

now ascendant in George W. Bush’s Washington. Eager to get the lowdown

on White House thinking, editors at the New York Times and Le Monde

have had journalists pore over Strauss’s work and trace his disciples’

affiliations. The New Yorker has even found a contingent of Straussians

doing intelligence work for the Pentagon .

In the International

Herald Tribune, William Pfaff calls Strauss "the main intellectual

influence on the neoconservatives," listing as Straussians: "Deputy

Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Abram Shulsky of the Pentagon’s Office

of Special Plans, Richard Perle of the Pentagon advisory board, Elliott

Abrams of the National Security Council, and the writers Robert Kagan

and William Kristol."

In her 1988 book The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, Shadia Drury

argued that Strauss was not really a cultural conservative committed to

natural law and transcendent truths; he was actually a nihilist who promoted

conservatism as a golden lie for the masses. Some of John Gunnell’s articles

from the 1970s and 1980s had reached similar conclusions. In my 1995 book,

Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis

of the Humanities, I sharpened this analysis somewhat by arguing

that:

1. Nietzsche was a duplicitous or esoteric author, teaching public doctrines

   (such as Will to Power and Eternal Return) that he did not believe,

   because he feared the impact of the nihilistic Truth; and

2. Strauss was systematically and profoundly influenced by Nietzsche’s

   conclusions and methods of writing. Thus he was a Nietzschean, if anyone

   deserves that title.

Then, in Something to Hide (1996), I

published a comic novel about a conspiratorial group of nihilists/conservatives,

loosely based on Leo Strauss. However, given the level of suspicion that

Straussians now provoke in some quarters (e.g., among followers of Lyndon

Larouche), I should say that I find the actual Straussians curious and

sometimes interesting, but not dangerous or malevolent.

Here is the section from my 1995

book in which I assemble evidence for the hypothesis that Leo Strauss

and Allan Bloom were Nietzscheans.

At the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University, I spent the

day with a large group of young elected officials: city councilors

and state legislators from all over the USA who are under the age of 35.

(A few young U.S. Representatives were due to appear after I left.) The

morning session was essentially a set of focus groups, one of which I

was fortunate to be able to observe. I was especially struck by the degree

of guilt that these young people feel. They are torn among family, paying

jobs, civic obligations such as nonprofit boards, constituent service,

and legislative work. "Guilt" was a word that they used frequently

and passionately.

Today the Democracy Collaborative

convened scholars at the University of Maryland and community activists

from Prince George’s County to talk about working together. I participated

in a session on the arts, which generated numerous concrete, practical

ideas connected to the Prince George’s

Information Commons. There are ideas afoot in the County to develop

it as an arts center with a strong African American aspect, profiting

from the University’s presence. The people who met today may be able to

help by collecting information about existing arts assets and displaying

them either on maps or public databases (or in other ways). I also think

it would be useful to survey existing arts groups about their partnerships

and collaborations, in order to construct a diagram of the arts network

in the County. (Network mapping software can do this very nicely.)

I spoke over the weekend at the National Asian Pacific American Legal

Consortium’s conference of "community partners"—mostly

local groups that litigate or organize on behalf of civil rights for

Asian and Pacific Americans. There is some concern that this population

will be overlooked by those who try to increase (or even merely to study)

youth civic engagement. After all, the total numbers are relatively small;

there is an absence of data; the "model minority" stereotype

implies that Asian youth are doing fine on their own; and the population

is very heterogeneous, making research difficult. However, Asian and Pacific

American youth are by some measures the

least likely to vote. Moreover, research on this population is inherently

interesting, since members come from many diverse countries of origin

by many routes and for many reasons. Finally, democracy would benefit

from the participation of more Asian and Pacific American youth, even

if their numbers are comparatively small.

A person whose name sounds nothing like mine emailed me today

with this question: "My mother, long gone, would sometimes call people,

including me, her son, ‘Peter Levine’ in what seemed to me whimsical fashion.

Now, decades later, and curious about what she meant by that, I typed

in the words at Google and found no reference to such a person in literature

or history that might fit. Since your name came up at the head of the

list, I thought I would write and ask if you could shed any light on who

she may have been referring to. My mother was born in 1901 in Arkansas,

had a seventh grade education, and was not well read. I suspect she picked

up the expression through conversation or story telling."

This just goes to show you—you never can tell why someone will visit

your website.