Friday, May 23, 2003

PAUL WOLFOWITZ AND LEO STRAUSS

William Pfaff's International Herald Tribune column “The Long Reach of Leo Strauss”, subtitled ‘Neoconservatives’, makes the case that Paul Wolfowitz’s political dispositions can be traced to the influence of political philospher Leo Strauss. Wolfowitz took his doctorate at the University of Chicago under Strauss’ direction. Strauss died in 1973.

Pfaff provides a germane thumbnail of Strauss’ views:


The ostensibly hidden truth is that expediency works; there is no certain God to punish wrongdoing; and virtue is unattainable by most people. Machiavelli was right. There is a natural hierarchy of humans, and rulers must restrict free inquiry and exploit the mediocrity and vice of ordinary people so as to keep society in order.

This is obviously a bleak and anti-utopian philosophy that goes against practically everything Americans want to believe.


Strauss’ thought is of public interest, Pfaff concludes, because “his followers are in charge of U.S. foreign policy. But he is more interesting than they are.”

Bruce 9:36 PM

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Thursday, May 08, 2003

DISAPPEARING PUBLIC COMMENT

Once upon a time, newspapers were discarded at the end of the day, or used to wrap fish, or start the fire. The Net and Web create a new world in which civic discourse is best served by observing the norm to post and maintain. But newspapers, even ‘newspapers of record’, are in business for profit. And guided by that aim, they put a price on their online articles after a day, or a week, or so. Of course, they could have remained offline altogether. But then--in this new world--they would have moved toward irrelevance.

Of all the articles they publish there are some, perhaps just a few, which speak to issues in public and social life of such consequence that they merit being maintained. I have two in mind right now, both recent New York Times editorials, which don’t seem to be available at their original URLs. When you use the original URL, you are shown a fragment from or about the editorial and asked to pay $2.95 to see it as a whole. One would think that the Editorial Board of the The New York Times would have a special interest in greater currency for its considered judgments. Could they consider designating a selection of each week’s articles and opinion pieces for the public realm? After all, but for the public realm they would have no stature at all.

The editorials which I have in mind, and which I encourage readers of this blog to seek out (if, for example, they have access through an institutional affiliation) are two:

22 April: “The War at Home”

26 April: “Searching for Iraq’s Weapons”

You might find the first by doing a Google search on “cornerstone of his presidential ambitions”. “Searching for Iraq’s Weapons” was (at least until recently) available at the Times’ International Herald Tribune site at

http://www.iht.com/articles/94615.htm

and “The War at Home” (but under the title “A Disaster on the Home Front”) could be found at http://www.iht.com/articles/93918.htm.

The URL

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/20/opinion/20SUN1.htm

will take you to the request for $2.95 for the first, and for the second one can go directly to

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20B17FF3E590C758EDDAD0894DB404482

These are important, current commentaries which deserve as broad an audience as they could achieve. There should be no impediment to their being cited, read, quoted, reproduced, taught, and critiqued. And critiqued they should be. The 20 April 2003 editorial, for example, offers the unexamined hope that “Bush” bring about “a democratic Iraq”, something which is surely beyond his talents and persona. But in a world of Fox News and CNN, I won’t cavil.

Bruce 1:34 AM

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Monday, May 05, 2003

PAUL KRUGMAN ON CAUSES

Take a look at Paul Krugman’s 29 April 2003 column in The New York Times, in which he offers these views on motive for the Iraq war, and then suggests that in a democracy officials have a duty to tell the truth:

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Matters of Emphasis


By PAUL KRUGMAN

“We were not lying,” a Bush administration official told ABC News. “But it was just a matter of emphasis.” The official was referring to the way the administration hyped the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States. According to the ABC report, the real reason for the war was that the administration “wanted to make a statement.” And why Iraq? “Officials acknowledge that Saddam had all the requirements to make him, from their standpoint, the perfect target.”

A British newspaper, The Independent, reports that “intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war.” One “high-level source” told the paper that “they ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat.”

Sure enough, we have yet to find any weapons of mass destruction. It’s hard to believe that we won’t eventually find some poison gas or crude biological weapons. But those aren’t true W.M.D.’s, the sort of weapons that can make a small, poor country a threat to the greatest power the world has ever known. Remember that President Bush made his case for war by warning of a “mushroom cloud.” Clearly, Iraq didn’t have anything like that—and Mr. Bush must have known that it didn’t.

Bruce 5:46 AM

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