He taught that power was everything. The masses need to be fooled by the power elite. The world belongs to the strong and powerful, and fairness does not enter the equation.
The neocons were highly influenced by Strauss' work.
Here's a fine introduction, by DU's Eloriel, from an old post:
<ttp://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=7200&forum=DCForumID70&archive=>
* Though he died in 1973, Leo Strauss's influence probably began to be felt most keenly in the 1980s, right on through to today.
* Strauss, a German Jew, was entirely comfortable and even supportive of fascism, but left Germany in 1938 because of Nazism's rabid and brutal anti-Semitic focus. Strauss preferred what he called "universal fascism" which was a fascism that included Jews. One of Strauss's students, neo-con Michael Ledeen, has even referred to himself as a "universal fascist."
* Strauss was a philosopher, not a political scientist, who focused on the classics (esp. Plato) but who was infuenced by Germans who also influenced Hitler's thinking including Nietsche and Heidegger.
* A number of neo-cons, including Paul Wolfowitz and many others who populate the halls of the Pentagon and a good many Washington think tanks as well as the halls of academe across the country, studied under Strauss or his more prominent protogees such as Alan Bloom.
* Other prominent Straussians include William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Victor Davis Hanson (who seems to a primary influence of Donald Rumsfeld), Richard Perle, Daniel Pipes, Gary Schmitt the founder of PNAC, Abram Shulsky who runs the OSP at the Pentagon (the ones who came up with all that "proof" of WMD in Iraq, despite CIA protestations to the contrary), Robert Bok, Clarence Thomas, Alan Keyes, illiam Bennett, and many others. (A complete list of Straussian students and followers would be quite a boon!)
* What is most pertinent about Strauss and his students and protogees is a set of principles which one can readily see operative in this administration. There are several articles that outline these principles very well. An understanding of what the Straussians believe is imperative to understand what is going on in this administration.
Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception
<
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15935> Rule One: Deception It's hardly surprising then why Strauss is so popular in an administration obsessed with secrecy, especially when it comes to matters of foreign policy. 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."snip
Second Principle: Power of Religion According to Drury, Strauss had a "huge contempt" for secular democracy. Nazism, he believed, was a nihilistic reaction to the irreligious and liberal nature of the Weimar Republic. Among other neoconservatives, Irving Kristol has long argued for a much greater role for religion in the public sphere, even suggesting that the Founding Fathers of the American Republic made a major mistake by insisting on the separation of church and state. And why? Because
Strauss viewed religion as absolutely essential in order to impose moral law on the masses who otherwise would be out of control. At the same time, he stressed that religion was for the masses alone; the rulers need not be bound by it. Indeed, it would be absurd if they were, since the truths proclaimed by religion were "a pious fraud." As Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine points out, "Neoconservatives are pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers."
"Secular society in their view is the worst possible thing," Drury says, because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, precisely those traits that may promote dissent that in turn could dangerously weaken society's ability to cope with external threats. Bailey argues that it is this firm belief in the political utility of religion as an "opiate of the masses" that helps explain why secular Jews like Kristol in 'Commentary' magazine and other neoconservative journals have allied themselves with the Christian Right and even taken on Darwin's theory of evolution.
Third Principle: Aggressive Nationalism Like Thomas Hobbes, 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."
Not surprisingly, Strauss' attitude toward foreign policy was distinctly Machiavellian. "Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat," Drury wrote in her book. "Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured (emphases added)."
"Perpetual war, not perpetual peace, is what Straussians believe in," says Drury. The idea easily translates into, in her words, an "aggressive, belligerent foreign policy," of the kind that has been advocated by neocon groups like PNAC and AEI scholars - not to mention Wolfowitz and other administration hawks who have called for a world order dominated by U.S. military power. Strauss' neoconservative students see foreign policy as a means to fulfill a "national destiny" - as Irving Kristol defined it already in 1983 - that goes far beyond the narrow confines of a " myopic national security."
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