Political theorist Anne Norton, author of
Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire, gives a brief history of the Neocons, including their ideological roots which can be traced to an honest-to-God Nazi, Carl Schmitt, the
"Crown Jurist of the Third Reich.""Neoconservatives are wont to describe this particular ability to distinguish friends from enemies to Thucydides but it belongs to Carl Schmitt, often called, ‘the Crown Jurist’ of the Third Reich.
Schmitt regarded the distinction between friend and enemy as the foundation of politics, and along with this he argued that sovereignty came not from the people but from the decision, that is to say, the capacity of the ruler to decide matters. And that that arbitrary power was the foundation for sovereignty.
These ideas came to neoconservatism both directly through Carl Schmitt and through
Leo Strauss who has taught many of the most prominent neoconservatives in the present administration and indeed in neoconservative think-tanks throughout the city, and indeed, throughout the country.
Neoconservatives have employed this ideology as a rationale for the expansion of executive power. Europeans regard neoconservatives with special skepticism and they do so, as you might have already realized, because they know its progenitors all too well. And the desire for the combination for traditional values, the desire for the expansion of executive power, the ambition to create a new world order, and the identification of a providential enemy, are all parts of a very familiar past.
The shadows of German National Socialism and nineteenth century European empires fall very heavily on the neoconservative project."
My roll-your-own transcript
here.Complete official transcript available for download
here.Anne Norton's segment is an excerpt from Rep. Cynthia McKinney's 2005 Congressional Briefing, "The 9/11 Commission Report One Year Later - A Citizen's Response: Did They Get it Right?"
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