Discussion Group Report

What is the intellectual basis of "Bushism," the orientation toward foreign and domestic policy of the Bush administration? Concerns and fears are being leveled by the left about it, and they represent an attempt to break the hegemony of the "neocons" (neo-conservatives), which began with George W. Bush's presidency and has infiltrated a patriotic America since September 11, 2001. Their central complaint is that the ideology of the "Straussians"--of the special role America is to play in the 21st century--is one on which the actions of Donald Rumsfield, Dick Cheney and Bush are based. This concern is discussed in "The Leo-Conservatives," an article by Gerhard Sporl in the German publication Der Spiegel, 32/2003. The Straussians have been students of Leo Strauss, a German Jew who came to the United States in 1932 and became a very popular professor at the highly regarded University of Chicago. "He was," says Sporl, "the only German immigrant to establish a philosophy movement that became widespread in the U.S., a movement whose influence extends to within today's inner circles of power in Washington.

The Straussians "are viewed as a group of neo-conservative conspirators, as a small, elite order guiding the Bush administration--and when its path becomes crooked, providing it with a good conscience. They can be found among the justices of the Supreme Court, and they work at both the White House and the Pentagon. Although most of them have learned their particular way of thinking from Strauss, they are more power-conscious than the master was. They want to change and not just interpret America."

Paul Wolfowitz, the Bush administration's hawkish idea man, and other Straussians are part of an avant-garde of the conservative revolution that essentially despises the idea of a liberal democracy. Strauss despised the Enlightenment and viewed democratic liberalism as a sinful political movement. He maintained friendly relations with Carl Schmitt, a critic of parliamentarianism and a spiritual precursor of the Nazis. According to historian August Winkler, certain parallels exist between the "conservative revolution" prior to Hitler's rise to power and the current situation in the United States. In Winkler's view, the Straussians have found in Bush Junior what Schmitt ultimately sought in vain: "access to the ruler."

Strauss saw World War I and the constant threat to the German Weimar Republic following the war as historical proof that the Enlightenment, with its positive view of human nature and its faith in progress, was an illusion. He also believed that faith in a liberal democracy as the governmental and social order of the future was invalid. And he remained true to this theory until his death. Yet his theory has been received with surprising enthusiasm many years later in America, says Sporl.

Strauss says religion is the opium of the people, but it is an indispensable opium. Religion serves as a binding agent in a stable social order. Liberal democracies such as the Weimar Republic are not viable in the long term, since they do not offer their citizens any religious and moral footings.

"The practical consequence of this philosophy is fatal," states Sporl. "According to its tenets, the elites have the right and even the obligation to manipulate the truth. Just as Plato recommends, they can take refuge in 'pious lies' and in selective use of the truth."

Straussians, such as Wolfowitz and other proponents of the Iraq war, are now suspected of simply having used the Strauss political principles for their own purposes. "When seen in this light," opines Sporl, "the partly fictitious reasons for the war against Saddam Hussein represent the philosophical heritage of an emigrant from Germany." Strauss was deeply pessimistic and tended to believe that history could only bring decline and decay. The professor was satisfied with only considering the problems because he did not believe they could be solved.

The true godfathers of the neocons are the Kristol family. Irving Kristol coined the classic sentence, "A neo-conservative is a left-winger who has been ambushed by reality." Kristol's wife, Gertrude Himmelfarb, criticizes the loss of civility and the Protestant work ethic, permissive morality and the sexual revolution but sees these as the consequence of unfettered liberalism in democratic America. Irving Kristol knew America as more or less religious people, primarily Catholics or Protestants, a mundane form of piety that was organized into countless sects and represented a political power base for reborn Republicans.

Originally the neocon ideology discovered that the politically decisive battles in America are waged around cultural values. The neocons say the state should stay out of the economy but not the bedrooms of its citizens. More recently the greatest battles have been about abortion and the death penalty, homosexuality or sex before marriage--the moral battles of a Christian-minded country suspicious of liberalism as an ethos. For this reason, which judges are appointed to the Supreme Court is of critical importance, since they are ultimately responsible for determining the degree of liberalism that prevails in America. The arch-conservative Clarence Thomas is considered a Straussian.

The first phase of the neocon revolution came to fruition under Ronald Reagan, says Sporl. The second phase is now taking place under George W. Bush, the born-again Christian who knows exactly how important religion is--to the patriotic cohesion of his nation and to his reelection, for which he desperately needs the votes of the well-organized Christian groups. Foreign policy is now at the center of the neocon revolution. The highest honor for being a Strauss creation belongs to Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Pearl, who have been arguing for the complete exercise of power by the world's only superpower and for war as a political tool ever since the end of communism. But these two neocons are students of a different professor, Albert Wohlstetter, who taught the theory of security policy and made a lasting impression on them. Aggressiveness instead of passiveness in foreign policy and the will to change instead of the old status quo way of thinking are his ideas and represent the conditions of the new Pax Americana.