Organizing Reds? A New Straussian Project

When your political philosophy lacks any concept of the good, there is no limit to what you might be led to support.

This is one reason we are launching American Reformer. https://t.co/zGq12G9bQ8

— Nate Fischer (@NateAFischer) August 7, 2021

What danger from the Claremont Institute/West Coast Straussians?

“Beauchamp’s Vox screed recalls a National Review feature article written by David Frum in March 2003 which raked myself and many of my paleoconservative friends over the coals,” writes Dr. Paul Gottfried. https://t.co/bY0Q2650lu

— Chronicles Magazine (@ChroniclesMag) August 7, 2021

The ideas of radical equality held by the Claremont Institute’s founder are inadequate to combat the left.

Grant Havers weighs in on the debate between the Claremonters and paleoconservatives on America's founding values:https://t.co/RbxWtw2tSr

— Chronicles Magazine (@ChroniclesMag) August 6, 2021

Lincoln's appeal to the “natural rights” of all human beings at the height of the Civil War does not contradict his assumption that people already schooled in biblical morality, as opposed to “unassisted reason,” are best able to understand moral duty. https://t.co/RbxWtw2tSr

— Chronicles Magazine (@ChroniclesMag) August 6, 2021

A Review of Michael Anton's The Stakes

“Anton concedes that civic nationalism is not a replacement for the bonds of kinship, shared history, common language and faith, but a buttress to strengthen those loyalties and sources of identity.” https://t.co/GNU8vCooeo

— Chronicles Magazine (@ChroniclesMag) July 15, 2021

A Straussian Fantasy

And a poor understanding of the Constitution:

The U.S. Constitution’s letter gives nearly all powers of government to the states, and reserves unmentioned ones “to the people.” Surely that includes powers over bathrooms, marriages, who competes with whom in sports, etc. It certainly includes power over elections. Customarily, we have regarded counties and cities purely as legal creatures of the states, enjoying only such autonomy as the states may concede. Though a federal statute granting broad autonomy over such matters to the states’ constituted sub-units and giving enough likeminded people the power to form units that enjoy such autonomy would run against more than a century of court decisions, it finds no barrier in the Constitution’s letter. Congress and the president can do this.

"The oligarchy that annihilated or perverted the American Republic’s institutions rules not simply to secure privileged access to wealth. It is equally, if not principally preoccupied with crushing the way of life of whoever are not its members or clients..." - Angelo Codevilla

— The American Mind (@theammind) June 22, 2021

Ant Middleton Gets an Endorsement

Interviews like this with men like @antmiddleton will give your better “self-help” than all the social science and Oprah-type bullshit people in the west now cling to:https://t.co/OuOslT6BJk

— Matthew J. Peterson (@docMJP) June 21, 2021

Michael Anton Calls for a Truce and an Alliance Between Straussians and Paleos

As someone more on the paleo side of these old divides, I think Michael Anton is fair and persuasive here: https://t.co/N8SWke9mGp

— Helen Andrews (@herandrews) May 3, 2021

Lincoln and the DOI do not define what it means to be American; rather the DOI is understood properly within the Anglo-American political tradition which paleos claim to uphold, and is not the same as Straussian nationalism. Lincoln is judged negatively by that same tradition. One can claim that the Anglo-American political tradition is increasingly irrelevant thanks to deliberate mass miseducation and demographic change. Reds will have to decide whether they will and how they will defend their identity and culture. ("Find your tribe.") History and culture is passed on by a community or a people, and regardless of whether individuals are convinced by one side in academic squabbling over history, the DOI, etc., they need to find a group with whom they share a culture, and prepare for imperial collapse. In imperial collapse, Straussians and paleos will have to decide how much their view of history really matters, if they find themselves among people unsympathetic to their view, though I think that paleos will have, at least for a while longer, a better chance of persuading Reds.

The Future of ConInc.

Welcome the newest members of the Claremont family, the 2021 Publius Fellows: @tylerafagan, J. G. Amato, @njhochman, William Bock, @OliviaIngrassia, Christina Eastman, @marlo_safi, Elizabeth Haney, @ssharmaUS, Babs Hough, @mikhaelsmits, Daniel Kane, Casey Wheatland & Carlos Roa!

— Claremont Institute (@ClaremontInst) April 8, 2021

Just surrender already. ConInc. has accomodated feminism and diversity, and is already starting to embrace LGBQT. What is left?

I Applaud Josh Hammer for This

Conservatives have many reasons to oppose further gun restrictions. But stepping a back a bit, our arguments on behalf of protective gun ownership would be easier if society weren’t also so obsessed with belittling the notion of a robust manliness. https://t.co/44AvRiSJEF

— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) March 26, 2021

Straussian Nerd Tries to Take Down BAP

Nerd v. Jock.

"And what of the Bronze Age Pervert? Who is this curiously-named fellow, what does he believe, what is his relationship—if any—to Leo Strauss, what is this movement he claims to lead, and who are his followers?"

Answers to these questions here:https://t.co/SG9wUp7PBF

— C. Bradley Thompson (@CBradleyThomps1) December 23, 2020

Brion McClanahan on Cameron Hilditch

NRO's silly Calhoun "scholar." - https://t.co/GhSEbAjVYJ pic.twitter.com/ENtNLtixFw

— Brion McClanahan (@BrionMcClanahan) October 30, 2020

The Results of ConInc. "Meritocracy"

Cameron Hilditch.

@CameronHilditch has a funny idea of a fascist. https://t.co/1mIfkw3UOJ

— Declan Leary (@declanleary) October 28, 2020

AmConMag

Grove and Cheek respond to Hilditch Regarding Calhoun

Last week, the Irish Jaffaite @CameronHilditch published a Calhoun hit piece at @NRO that @jaynordlinger praised for putting to end the "BS" that Calhoun is an important American conservative thinker. @LeeCheek and @JohnGGrove1 take him apart. https://t.co/RbbKKUryJX

— Brion McClanahan (@BrionMcClanahan) October 19, 2020

"We Just Need More Civic Nationalism!"

"Partisan divisions don’t run neatly along the lines of particular policy issues: instead, we are split on the meaning of patriotism itself. For that reason, it’s likely that K-12 civics classrooms will be added to the list of flashpoints for cultural conflict." - Clare Basil

— The American Mind (@theammind) August 18, 2020

American Mind

By contrast, the Right often places greater emphasis on content civics, implying that a clear account of one’s history and an understanding of American institutions is sufficient for cultivating civic virtue.

Both approaches to civic education are inadequate because both are flip sides of the same coin. Each shares the aim of answering what it means to be a citizen, before answering the far more pressing and profound question, namely: what it means to be human. Answering this question is not a distraction from civics education. It is a necessary precondition for beginning to understand American citizenship.

What is Man?

This distinction between man qua man and man in his capacity as citizen is neatly delineated in theory in Aristotle’s Politics. But it is blurred by our regime’s own tendencies and political practice. Our civic order is centered not on the accidental qualities of the citizen body—important as they are in political practice—but on the essence of what it is to be human. As the Declaration of Independence states:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

It is because this document provides the cornerstone of our regime that the task of citizenship in the American republic is particularly demanding, for it presupposes an understanding and assent to what we hold man to be at his most basic level: created equal and endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights.

Yet, when K-12 reformers focus exclusively on civics—whether it be defined by activism or by content knowledge—they easily neglect exploring this more fundamental understanding embedded within out conception of citizenship: the understanding of what human begins are. Educating an American citizen demands first and foremost that one examine the truth of this statement from the Declaration and consider its implications for the political order.

An Example of Leadership from the Ivory Tower

“That Democrats would seriously demand the institutional deconstruction of checks & balances & federalism as the price for national peace is no longer far-fetched...everything possible should be done to take the Podesta Gambit off the table quickly.” Andrew Busch explains.

— The American Mind (@theammind) August 18, 2020

American Mind

Finally, at the intellectual level, those who are committed to the Electoral College, a federal republic, and checks and balances must make the case for them, and those who want to see the United States remain united need to dust off their Federalist and their Lincoln and begin making the constitutional and political case for unity and against secession.

And if that is not enough? Would the author be content for others to do the dirty work of using force to maintain the union? Academics.Clown face

An Integralist's Take on Strauss

An oldie from The Josias.

Have the Principles of the Right been Discredited? Leo Strauss’s Rome and Ours, by G. Sanchez https://t.co/GEPXC6D1TB

— The Josias (@josias_rex) August 16, 2020

Straussians on Identity

Our latest episode of the American Mind Podcast is up: Identity, Nationalism, and Road Trips

Listen here: https://t.co/1fCvym6MO8

— The American Mind (@theammind) July 31, 2020

"Why should black Americans identify with American slave holders? Why should they identify with the slaves? Why not identify as Americans, proud of the heritage that they inherited? One that embraces the fulfilment of equal justice." - @rpwwilliams

More: https://t.co/1fCvymonFG pic.twitter.com/0AByl6VqpN

— The American Mind (@theammind) August 3, 2020

podcast page

Claes Ryn's Contribution to the AmConMag Special Issue

Claes Ryn: American exceptionalism fans imperial designs. We must reject it. Patriotism - love of our piece of earth and its traditions - is incompatible with empire. https://t.co/g1Iscr1Tuv

— The American Conservative (@amconmag) July 25, 2020

AmConMag

Gottfried Responds to the West Coast Straussians

Looking for Moral Foundations (in All the Wrong Places) by Paul Gottfried

Straussian Genealogy Needs to Go Away

An essential text to understand the current moment, and how we arrived here, is Leo Strauss's "Three Waves of Modernity." Published in 1975, it was a distillation of his thinking about the political crisis of the modern world, namely ideologies of liberalism, Marxism and fascism.

— Patrick Deneen (@PatrickDeneen) June 14, 2020

Straussian genealogy is a poor substitute for actual historiography, even if some Roman Catholic intellectuals have appropriated it. The problem is sin leading to the development and rise of the state; there's no need to replace historiography with the fallacy of reification.

Straussians Riding Their Proposition Nation Hobby Horse

“What Martin Luther King Jr. called a 'creed,' Lincoln called a 'proposition,' and Jefferson called a self-evident truth—the idea that ‘all men are created equal’—is, as Lincoln thought, the central idea from which all other American ideas radiate." https://t.co/90lnXe8esX

— The American Mind (@theammind) June 3, 2020

A Straussian Attempt to Appropriate the Alt-R

The essay takes Straussianism as the baseline for comparison. One might even say that it is trying to make Straussianism palatable to the alt-right. Still, at least it recognizes the validity of some of the alt-R. (And implicitly acknowledges that movement conservatism is weak.)

“Over the last 170 years historicism, which knows no partisan boundaries, has undermined the principles of the American Founding.” @AmSavage1776 explains: https://t.co/JHl0KgLYa8

— The American Mind (@theammind) June 2, 2020