/lit/ - Literature

>Read a book you ignorant chud
>NOOOO NOT THAT ONE!!

>>22839676

>>22721498
>Continued:
"The cure for this problem of discrimination against Jews, Strauss
indicates in the preface, was “political Zionism,” a solution that he
backed in principle. What had to be done at the same time, however,
was to make life tolerable for those Jews who, like Strauss, did not
embrace the Zionist option. Their alternative was “liberal democracy,”
by which the writer meant something more fortifying than freedom as
that term would be understandable to nineteenth-century European
bourgeoisie or contemporary libertarians. Strauss may have favored
a strong democracy, of the kind that has appealed to Jaffa, Berns,
and Bloom. This democracy would be actively committed to universal
principles and would see itself in a tradition of democratic heroes
stretching back to Lincoln and the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

This sanitized or virtual Right has found a powerful voice in Harry
Jaffa’s Claremont Institute, a foundation that combines a generally
interventionist approach to dealing with America’s undemocratic enemies
abroad with generally progressive positions on racial and immigration
questions. After thirty years, this foundation is a well-endowed
presence in the movement conservative community, and figures who are
affiliated with the Institute, like Charles Kesler and William Bennett,
appear frequently on network TV, including the Today show.

The Institute’s position on Israel is one of unqualified support for
the nationalist coalition now ruling the Jewish state. The Claremont
Review of Books and the speeches of Jaffa strongly suggest the
inseparability of “conservative values” from both the crusade against
“Islamofascism” and a categorical endorsement of the Israeli Right.
The Jaffaites also emphasize the indispensable role of public education
in promoting “democratic values.” Far from being advocates of a diminished
state presence, Jaffa and his followers happily espouse the kind of strong
government that is thought to aid their foreign policy and value instruction.

Although Strauss was close to Jaffa and spent considerable time
with him in the 1960s, there is no proof that he would have approved
of his student’s political plan in all its details. What is being suggested
is that Strauss’s concern about chastening the Right and his favorable
view of the Anglo-American liberal democratic regime, and especially
Churchill, animated such projects as the Claremont Institute. Without
Strauss’s teaching and example, their own mission might have been
less inspired, if not entirely unthinkable."

"All that is being argued is that their critics have unfairly attributed to
the Straussians extreme right-wing positions in international affairs,
which the latter do not seem to hold. Their support of Jewish nationalism
may be the exception, but even here the reason given for their
Zionism is not ethnic nationalism but the fact that Israel is a liberal
democracy like the United States."