Some Questions Relating to Neo-crypto-conservatism: a Preliminary view?

Adorning Sparta: On A Re-conception of What it Means to Be an American

I should preface my observations here with two points. What I have sought to do in this essay is to suggest some lines of investigation that may assist certain governmental agencies or private researchers in providing what may be an important explanatory backdrop to certain events which occurred in the past and may have laid the groundwork for the future political horizon of the United States as well. Secondly, in naming as I have certain institutions and scholars of such institutions, I mean in no way to suggest that those scholars or those institutions possessed knowledge of any of what I suggest: I mean only to be providing "an"—n.b., not "The"—interpretation of the meaning and impetus for certain of these political facts. That interpretation could be wrong or misguided, and I put it forward in the spirit of inviting dispute (not violence, of course, for who would succumb to the argumentum ad bacculum: only those, I suppose, who have been able to say a complete, and not, partial "farewell to reason"—to make a personal confession, I, for one, am in the latter camp, seeing both the need to at some point relax the restraints of reason in the service of human well-being, but just as much the need to never surrender a "classical" conception of reason as a well moderated use of reason at least in the sphere of practice and action.
In the course of my academic work as a political science student, I encountered a number of significant questions arising from the work of what I have called the Chicago School or The University of Chicago. These questions—and indeed the nature and meaning of the work of, for example, The Committee on Social thought remains a mystery to me?—are in profound need of clarification; all the more so as it appears that they go to the very heart and meaning of our “liberal” democracy. But, more than this, these questions and the answers that are given to them may affect the very future and perpetuation of those institutions. One area of vital importance and critically in need of investigation is the purpose for which what has been come to be called the Carl Schmitt revival came about. Based on preliminary research on my part, I have rather seen this revival to be connected to an attempt, or perceived attempt to subvert the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights—which rights are in a variety of ways not only jeopardized, but already ineffectual at best, if not already completely vitiated. In view of the grave nature of this matter and the possibility that this institution in conjunction with others the names of which, I feel certain, would emerge in any fair-minded inquiry of sufficient force and scope, I am seeking to secure the signatures of United States citizens who are interested in furthering the preservation and integrity of our liberal and democratic institutions, and to the degree that those institutions have been already compromised—by, for example, the Patriot Act—we seek the redress of these wrongs: Up to and including, of course, well-documented incursions into the privacy of United states Citizens, nowhere more apparent than in the practice of secretive—possibly illegal—wiretapping as well as the video surveillance of citizens known to be interested in the question of the nature and direction of the future trajectory of our liberal democratic institutions. I would like to indicate what I take to be some (though this list is not exhaustive) of the areas that should be addressed—they are eleven in number plus one (which I will submit here in several sequeled installments due to "space"contraints):

1. The Nature and meaning of now deceased Professor Leo Strauss' work.

2. The relationship of his work to Neo-conservatism and to the crisis we face today in the Middle east.

3. A clarification of the connection of the first two issues in relation to the Committee on Social thought—with a view to determining what relationship this entire node of apparently politically motivated academic scholarship bears to a potential "project."

4. Supposing that some relationship or project can be discerned, what impact or connection does such a project bear to the long-standing relationship of the University of Chicago's devotion to the teachings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger.

5. What relationship do all of the above mentioned thinkers (unified or otherwise) have to our Liberal democratic tradition and heritage: In other words, is it sympathetic or subversive of it, and, if subversive in what way (in this connection it is interesting to consider what one of Leo Strauss' finest students says in the introduction to his interpretation to Plato's Republic, where Professor Rosen offers a cogent refutation of the Strauss-originated or inspired teaching that the Republic of Plato was meant as a comedy of sorts, not to be taken as a serious proposal for political action; and he also uses the terms "conspiracy" and "anti-democratic" in connection to the teaching of the Republic in addition to in another of his works enigmatically stated that Strauss taught his University of Chicago students that, "Philosophy had not begun yet!).

 

Jeffrey Neuzil, you are not allowed to create 18 consecutive threads with these copy and paste posts. You can post them consecutive in ONE thread and if people are so moved, they will comment on them but people generally stay away from this kind of stuff. My suggestion to you is that you get active in some already existing threads first and then post your own ideas.

Right now, I have these on soft delete but I will be deleting them permanently soon because the remnants of your 18 threads have bumped all the threads in U.S. Politics to the next page.

 

Bull****!

Why can I not provide a link to another site,say, myspace, where a complete version of the essay appears?

 

Why can I not provide a complete link to another site, myspace, where a full-length version of the essay appears; is there some Orwellian reason that disallows this?

 

Orwellian? Please tell me your not one of those.

Okay, I will allow you to link to the article so long as you provide some personal commentary/summary. Keep in mind that the point of this forum is to discuss politics and such here, not send them off of this site into myspace.

 

Hey Jeff,
Please dont take it personal, it is just the rules and there are reasons for them. They are in an effort to encourage further posts in a thread.

One thing I would encourage you to do is a quick search and find the member
Irishone21, drop him a message. He is a pretty nice guy and you both would probably get along very well. From what I have read so far, it wouldnt surprise me if you were his cousin or something.

 

Haha Bunz, sharp.

As USMC has already said, starting 18 threads is kind of unacceptable because it clogs the forum, and your unlikely to get a decent debate on them.

Secondly, providing links to essays I suppose is OK, but you must provide commentary, because this is a forum for political discussion. If people go around posting copy and pasted articles with no personal commentary it means you dont seem to have any intention of joining the debate and it doesn't kickstart if off.

What are you trying to achieve by doing this? Starting your own revolution? Sorry, but I far prefer Irishone. He seems to have a fair amount of intelligence in him, you cant even manage personal commentary but instead start ranting about censorship and bull excrement when asked to provide some.

 

Extensions of the themes I have initiated: More Reflections

My reason for raising issues of this nature arose out of my work on Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, which culminated in an M.A. thesis that I wrote on them at Northern Illinois University(titled "Theological Politics v. Philosophical Politics: Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss and the Reorientation of Political Science"; it is available at Northern Illinois University's Founders Memorial Library); after writing it, I had many more questions about the origins of the work that both Strauss and Voegelin did, and was especially interested in the question of the degree to which these thinkers were oriented in their thought by such thinkers as Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, Alexander Kojeve, and Friedrich Nietzsche. I then began work on this topic, and joined the department at NIU in pursuit of the doctorate in which program I am still enrolled (though I have taken a semester off). I have written a preliminary dissertation of about a hundred pages, but I am not satisfied with it: Although It gets, I feel certain, quite a good deal right about Strauss and his relationship to Nietzsche, it is wholly unsatisfactory to me as it stands; in addition to that I have written a long essay on Strauss, Heidegger, Neitzsche, Neo-conservatism and its relationship (quite intimate in my view) with German Idealism—which is more a questioning of these themes, and, itself, deeply flawed in its conclusions; nevertheless, I think that It provides a good starting point for examining the thought of this group of thinkers, and I try to show the relationship between them, the University of Chicago and the Vienna Circle: Nothing I say there is decisive, for political philosophy is questioning, not giving final answers; but without any starting points we would get nowhere—and there, in those works I have provided the beginings of what I hope eventually will be an interpretation of Western Political Philosophy, and its culmination in a certain kind of (in my view radical) German Idealism. Above all the provisional nature of this work is obvious, but I tend to write in a somewhat inspired manner and so am given to hyperbolic formulations (all of that needs to be kept in mind when the other material is read). My initial conviction—subject to modification—is that the thinkers of the University of Chicago created, in a sense, the political horizon of contemporary American and European politics;Strauss founded, or revived, the tradition of political philosophy, and Kojeve, in my view, founded (though Nietzsche is the fountainhead of both) Hermeneutics and the economics that today unifies Europe; if anybody should like to read these works they can find them on myspace at the following link, but again I would like to emphasize that they are provisional, and I have deep reservations about them, especially with respect to my Nietzscean view of Strauss; I think I too closely assimilated the one to the other in the preliminary dissertation work, and there is a Nietzsche essay there as well as some other writings(caution read with care, critical intelligence, not hostility:—http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&friendID=287982265