Gimme Land, lot'sa land

...under starry skies abover.... Don't fence me in!"
-old cowboy tune
Down defense of liberalism from OD board

Originally Posted by Macrobius
For the American imperial strategists invested deeply in the belief that through spreading terror they could take power. 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.
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Quote: (A White House and House GOP leader commenting on Howard Dean)..."Politically speaking, Deans' comments are going to help jog awake more Americans and remind them of which party want to protect them--and which one is just plain sissified and weak."
(U.S.News & World Report 12/7/05
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politic...cember2005.htm )

Comment on Quote "This GOP "protection racket" mind-set, not ordinarily stated so blatantly, is essentially the same point of view as that credited to Strauss and the neocons above. Dems (liberals, leftists) are "just plain sissified and weak"; anyone could see they can't protect mommy and the kidoos from Islamofascists. They want and need to be dominated. Of course this gives Jews tough-guy cred, with US boot, but it requires no more in the way of philosophical perversion than a Jeff Bewkes' substitution of Soprano he-man-for real life to explain. That's why they are the Re-pube-licans Let's not put intellectual shine on assholism.
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It is not much discussed, in the fora, that Leo Strauss was a student of Carl Schmitt, the Conservative Revolutionary (leaving aside, however, the usual slanders which would probably not be slanders in this forum, but are also not likely true). Strauss inherited Schmitt's interpretation of Hobbes, but in the manner of German students everywhere stood his master's doctrine on its head. In any event, he later decided Hobbes was an exoteric writer who stood in the (allegedly esoteric) Machiavellian tradition--not mentioned by the author of this piece. Strauss knew that Hobbes, in his youger years, was Bacon's amanuensis (ghostwriter, we would say today). Though no one I know has ever suggested Hobbes wrote Shakespeare.

Hobbes of course is on the mainline to Locke, Newton, and all that later became Liberalism and Conservatism. Anthony à Wood, the Oxford biographer, had the sense to see that in his day half the English gentry was corrupted by Hobbsian doctrine. (Strauss quotes this). Now there was a true conservative--no Bacon, Hobbes, Machiavel, Schmittism or Straussism for him!
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I don't get this, at all. What is "conservatism" if it isn't Hobbes notion of a 'state of nature'? -- with threat of "war of all against all" (leading to lives nasty, brutish and short) neutralized only by tacit consent of each to give up claim to unlimited authority only on condition everyone else does, also, and there is a power (the state) strong enough to enforce it. That is the "original sin" version of mankind, alright: there is nothing in them except vicious, animal instinct for self preservation to build a social order on. Now, that's conservativism, isn't it? Trust that the other guy will lay down his weapons if you do .. why that's bleeding heart liberalism! Only a fool ... or someone "just plain sissified and weak" ...
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All of which raises an interesting point -- if Straussian Neo-Cunning, the CR/ND, and Liberalism are all such close relatives, what's to choose between them? Strike the root.

?? Do you mean "RC"? -- and did it somehow escape you that neoconservatives, the group which this historically important resource thread is about, ARE THE ONES WHO PUSHED THIS PHILOSOPHY OF RAINING DEMOCRACY ON THE HELPLESS AND WEAK FROM THE SKIES, LIKE BOMBS; ... ARE ENEMIES OF EVERYTHING LIBERALISM OF THE GREAT TRADITION OF LOCKE, NEWTON, HUME, MILL, BRADLEY, RUSSELL, (JAMES, ROYCE, DEWEY) HARRE ... STOOD FOR. (and CONSCIOUSLY SO, AS IF WITH YOUR HELP...).

FOR ACTUAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, THIS LIST HAS NO PEER, PER NATION. (Germany comes closest, but they spazzed and mystified out after Kafka and Nietzsche, leaving essentially nothing, unless you include esoterics and gnostics (Heideggar, Barth; Brunner is OK)) NOTHING BUT CONTEMPT AND PITY ARE DUE THOSE WHO ALIGN THEMSELVES AGAINST IT ON PRINCIPLE. No leading world figure on the world stage, political or intellectual, does so.

No "conservative" has ever produced anything, except war. Nor believed in anything except control by fear and brute force; otherwise they would be liberal. Difference in childraising accounts for it, they say.

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I may be prejudiced, but that doesn't change the situation.
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TexasAnarch