You're welcome. Also, I'm not sure how I got in my head that the essay on liberal education was delivered as a public adress. Could just be the tone of the piece, and its having been written on request from "The Fund for Adult Education." Anyway, I've corrected my comment. Maybe I'll re-discover whatever it was that got me imagining him delivering the statement at a convention of adult educators...

Philosophical politics as conceived by Strauss is richer than any reduction I might attempt here. (I think you might find Meier's Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem useful, and enjoyable, too, since you seem, like me, also to be an admirer of Strauss' writings on religion.) The lines on constitutionalism that I quoted from his essay on liberal education are followed by an even more frequently cited passage that demonstrates a consistency in Strauss' approach and temperament over 30 years, from the Schmitt essay in 1932 to an essay for a broad audience in 1962:

Moderation will protect us against the twin dangers of visionary expectations from politics and unmanly contempt for politics. Thus it may again become true that all liberally educated men will be politically moderate men. It is this way that the liberally educated may again receive a hearing even in the market place.

It's the "twin dangers clause" that gets quoted most frequently. It would have been shortly after originally offering it that Strauss would be writing to Republican Senator Charles Percy, with a letter full of advice on dealing with the Soviets. The letter featured prominently in the attempt to defame Strauss along somewhat the same lines that you seem to want to praise him.

I believe that much of the appearance of "studied ambiguity" in Strauss's work derives from his practice of attempting to elucidate an argument as its proponent understands it, and, when Strauss sees that the argument in question is a potentially important argument, attempting to put it in its strongest and clearest form. He disdains the easy victory relying merely on the opponent's weakness or error - since victory over a thinker is much less interesting, and much more common, than victory over a thought. When dealing with lesser works - as in his reviews of books by colleagues - the same approach can give an appearance of mercilessness, since there are so many weaknesses and errors to repair. (Strauss does on occasion indulge in a witticism at another author's expense, but maybe it relieves the pressure of his intellect.) This approach has as its chief benefit that it allows Strauss, and us with him, to follow a thought wherever it leads, including to effects that may seem to qualify as radical or immoderate, but that will pose little danger to the probity and self-possession of a mature thinker.

Against the vague suspicions that, for example, in denouncing tyranny, Strauss was secretly praising it, and whatever else some say they read between the lines, what Strauss says in plain English seems to me quite clear: The modern liberal democratic regime form has significant and definitive qualities in common with the ancient mixed regime, is likely as close to the latter as a mass society can manage, and "the classics," as Strauss would sometimes put it, would have approved of the project, while recognizing its flaws and vulnerabilities, and offering friendly criticism. He said things along these lines more than once. He said them in different ways and at different points in his career. They follow logically from his premises, as he demonstrated. They fit his temperament, and he put what he claimed to believe into action. I am not aware of anyone claiming otherwise who has managed to justify or perform a between-the-lines reading of Strauss in the same way that Strauss justified or performed his own readings of selected others.

Specifically on Strauss' essay on Schmitt, I find your recollection of the argument accurate in some respects, distorted or exaggerated in others. It's worth keeping in mind when it was written: early in Strauss' career, at a fraught political moment. In any event I don't believe "leave the land of liberalism entirely behind" encapsulates his view. It seems to me that it may encapsulate the German predicament, for Strauss a highly inconvenient situation that he was forced to leave behind in turn. That view and program of a complete departure from liberalism would, I think, be much closer to the anti-liberal position that he is critiquing not just for its dependency on (modern) liberalism or its entrapment within a "horizon" defined by (modern) liberalism, but for its embrace of an extreme for its own sake. He doesn't fault Schmitt for examining politics as determined finally by the lethality of human beings. but for embracing that concept arbitrarily or willfully as a kind of program, and for advancing the critique of liberalism destructively. One does not oppose an opposition as limiting, or move beyond it, by wholly adopting one of its terms, only by stealth.

In short, Strauss's approach to Schmitt, and to political life in general, fits more neatly under the Hellenic motto "Meden Agan." Strauss faults Schmitt for doing in his otherwise quite brilliant work what Schmitt went on to do in his real political-professional life, but which Strauss never did either in Germany or at any point in his later career. Of course Strauss could not have followed Schmitt's path in Germany if he had wanted to do so, a fact which creates suspicions among some observers that Strauss would have been a Nazi or at least a "conservative revolutionary" if he could have been, but the fact is also one that one might suppose would make an independent impression on him, and the supposition is borne out in Strauss' work. He understood that a certain kind of conservatism had no place for him or for the philosopher pursuing philosophy for its own sake at all. In later works, and throughout his career, Strauss resoundingly attacks the kind of intellectual who loses the ability to distinguish tyranny from its alternatives theoretically or practically, and who goes on to betray thought for the sake of a mere idea. In this sense the classical perspective that Strauss is already embracing in the Schmitt essay, and that he would go on to embrace more completely, qualifies as authentically conservative, a perspective that also tends to appear undecided or uninterested or ambiguous regarding numerous issues of great interest to nominally conservative politicians and their adversaries.

I take it that you have never picked up the Strauss anthology Liberalism Ancient and Modern, whose title alone ought to put in doubt your claim about the redundancy of the term "modern liberal."

I won't attempt to delve into Strauss' views. I have found that in my attempts to reply to your statements on justice, equality, and political orders I enter upon long excursions I have no hope at present of taking even to the first resting point, much less to completed journeys. So, I'll resort to etymology and quote the entirety of the On-Line Etymology Dictionary entry, since it's all useful, and since it includes an amusing bonus at the end:

liberal (adj.) Look up liberal at Dictionary.com

mid-14c., "generous," also, late 14c., "selfless; noble, nobly born; abundant," and, early 15c., in a bad sense "extravagant, unrestrained," from Old French liberal "befitting free men, noble, generous, willing, zealous" (12c.), from Latin liberalis "noble, gracious, munificent, generous," literally "of freedom, pertaining to or befitting a free man," from liber "free, unrestricted, unimpeded; unbridled, unchecked, licentious," from PIE *leudh-ero- (source of Greek eleutheros "free"), probably originally "belonging to the people" (though the precise semantic development is obscure), and a suffixed form of the base *leudh- "people" (cognates: Old Church Slavonic ljudu, Lithuanian liaudis, Old English leod, German Leute "nation, people;" Old High German liut "person, people") but literally "to mount up, to grow."

With the meaning "free from restraint in speech or action," liberal was used 16c.-17c. as a term of reproach. It revived in a positive sense in the Enlightenment, with a meaning "free from prejudice, tolerant," which emerged 1776-88.

In reference to education, explained by Fowler as "the education designed for a gentleman (Latin liber a free man) & ... opposed on the one hand to technical or professional or any special training, & on the other to education that stops short before manhood is reached" (see liberal arts). Purely in reference to political opinion, "tending in favor of freedom and democracy" it dates from c.1801, from French libéral, originally applied in English by its opponents (often in French form and with suggestions of foreign lawlessness) to the party favorable to individual political freedoms. But also (especially in U.S. politics) tending to mean "favorable to government action to effect social change," which seems at times to draw more from the religious sense of "free from prejudice in favor of traditional opinions and established institutions" (and thus open to new ideas and plans of reform), which dates from 1823.

Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. [Ambrose Bierce, "Devil's Dictionary," 1911]

On a personal note, I'll add that my family name, MacLeod, is tied to the same *leudh-ero ancient root mentioned as direct source of the ancient Greek eleutheros. I won't say I take pride in this fact. Whether one ought to do so, or can do so, and, if so, how one might do so, is in a way the subject of our discussion. "Liberty" can be a brute condition or condition of "licentiousness" or  it can be, in the ancient meaning that Strauss emphasizes, the condition "befitting a free man" rather than a slave. According to a philosophy of the noble and the base, "liberal conduct" (or "liberality") can be conduct befitting the noble spirit, or authentically noble conduct - a notion that, as I have frequently considered in these virtual pages, would oppose liberalism to democratism, in the manner of the ancient liberals, or at least the wise or wisely moderate among them, who opposed democratism or saw it as a degenerate basis for government except where properly balanced.

As for your interpretation of my comments on philosophical politics, I didn't claim that in seeking a hearing at all you are committing yourself to "the liberal political order," if the latter phrase refers to a specific so-called liberal order - the contemporary American one - or to a particular political tendency or movement within contemporary American political culture. I was not saying that, in seeking a hearing you are committing yourself to voting for Hillary Clinton if she faces some dastardly Republican two years from now, or that you are compelled to support Social Security, Affirmative Action, Obamacare, and the decision in Roe v Wade. I don't, however, exclude the possibility of such an argument being valid - in other words the possibility that the defense of philosophy may at some point require the support of one party over another, or the embrace of one issue position or set of positions over another, or may, as Strauss also suggests, lead to an adoption of classical "moderation" in politics, but, in above asserting your (not just your) final dependency on the liberality of others, I was mainly observing one way that the Straussian argument on behalf of liberal orders in general and even of "our liberal order" in particular comes into play: The democratic order also committed to the freedom of all and each, or the liberal-democratic order, affords the philosopher a necessary prerequisite to the conduct of philosophy in a way that competing systems or orders may not. In the essay "Liberal Education and Responsibility" (prepared for a lay audience), Strauss identifies with what he calls an "old saying," that "wisdom cannot be separated from moderation." He goes on to make a for him characteristic assertion of a type often set aside by his contemporary critics: "[W]isdom requires unhesitating loyalty to a decent constitution and even to the cause of constitutionalism."

Now, I wish I could spend the rest of today, or perhaps the rest of this year, expanding on this line of thinking, and in the meantime re-reading Strauss on "The Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy," checking his sources thoroughly, and refining my own thoughts further, but I can't. Thanks, however, for helping me to keep the candle burning a little.

Mr. McKenzie: You continue to use the word "oppressive" in such a way that you end up insisting on the justice or possible justice of injustice, except where you seem to be suggesting that some "human souls" may "more or less" be born with an inability to empathize with members of certain groups, to recognize them as eligible for justice. I think one way or another you're seeking validation or philosophical alibi for racism or for being a racist yourself. Since I'm not sure what exactly you're describing, however, I can't critique it. I'm not sure whether you're saying you don't and simply can't care about the ethnic "other," or whether you're saying you feel hostility toward the other. I think you're trying to say further that lacking sympathy or feeling hostility, whichever, ought to be accorded as much respect as any other position - that there's no "philosophical" basis for rejecting it.

As for the association of the "right or just" with "liberality" and "liberty" - two different things, I'm sure you're aware - and then "equality," I'm not sure "controversial" is the right word for this discussion in the philosophical tradition - not because there haven't been controversies, but because there has also been, as a central concern and from the beginning in Western philosophy, a careful examination of the relationship of concepts of the "just" and concepts of "equality," including the recognition of different types of equality.

For now, I'll observe that I don't think you will escape your own dependence on the same presumptions of liberality and equality. Today someone calling for anything else other than liberty, equality, and fellowship has to depend on the liberality of strangers and their presumption of an equal right to be heard. If you believe your arguments are good and valid, then you will have to depend on the openness to argument on the part of others, and on their willingness to apply fair standards, to treat all arguments as subject to the same criteria of validity - to treat arguments and therefore arguers equally.

Relatedly, there is an irreducible element of "equality" in "justice," as expressed in the earliest known fragment of Western philosophy, the statement of Anaximander's that I am fond of quoting, on things giving to each other "justice and recompense for their injustice." "Recompense" implies a counter-action commensurate (equal) to the harm: It restores balance - thus also, of course, the image of blind Justice holding the scales. She's blind so that she will treat the parties in a dispute equally, in pursuit of judgment capable of bringing or restoring balance - via equality before the law, civil and moral - to the two sides. Justice is meant to bring things back into line - into equality. How this argument turns into a natural law (or ontological) argument for an organization of society that might be called "liberal" - or actually for an approach to the organization of society with wide latitude for different particular applications - will have to be a topic for some other time.

"Oppression" in this context always implies injustice - or has, apparently, ever since the introduction of the word into English in the 14th Century. So you would be saying that you are incapable of distinguishing between justice and injustice or do not recognize any distinction between them - which would be the same as saying that you're incompetent for any inquiry at all. Doubt you mean that!

I think you make a valid point, and it's easy to imagine a number of arguments in favor of "prejudice," though much will depend, of course, on how we define the term. I think Mr. b-p means oppressive discrimination, though there are other problems with the question as he puts it, sooner or later leading to our initial exchange on this thread (and typical of many exchanges between us over the years).

Looking again at b-p's comment, we could also note that the presumption that "no one (other than white supremacists) would expect blacks to to be loyal to a slavery or segregation regime" may fail close scrutiny in other ways: It might be in fact that the white supremacists alone or most typically would not expect loyalty from blacks, while during the time of legal segregation blacks were among those most determined to demonstrate their patriotism and demand a right to defend the "regime" as a whole if not in all odious particulars, even serving in segregated units or under other forms of discrimination. There were even apparently some tiny number of "black Confederates" (takes all kinds!), even though it was against Confederate law up until nearly the end of the Civil War to enlist black soldiers. A common practice in other slave states has been to give slaves the opportunity to win their freedom through service.

Implying that "prejudice" has to be conceived also as something at least sometimes valuable that we give up or sacrifice? Not trying to be provocative or trap you or something - just want to be sure I understand your point.

onthudderhand, word is the Iz are a bit impressed that the PA kept a good lid on things during the recent fighting. Though one never expects anything to come of PA initiatives, I have to admit that I find the latest one sort of correct, since in effect it asks for the Palestinians to be recognized as wards of the IC, and the mess there to be the IC's to clean up.

Thank you, Mr. Phrog - that's the kind of thinking you can't hardly find nowhere else (cuz sooner later it's banned, but still).

The injustice or apparent injustice to which Mr. P would be referring would be all of the suffering of the Palestinians described in the deBoer post, under the assumption that it is gratuitous and inexcusable - not possibly justifiable.

Whether or not weakness "merits" non-survival - rather a Spartan view - it implies greater vulnerability. If a state is unjust, or seen to be unjust or deeply unjust, then it inspires rebellion and begins to lose the ability to command respect, trust, and commitment from within - to be able to distinguish itself even in its own eyes from a "gang of thieves." Some, like Mr P, seem to believe that the distinction is always false. People like Mr P see no reason to sacrifice their personal interests or beliefs for the sake of the life of the state/nation/community. When everyone or a critical mass begin to think that way, the state begins to dissolve, as everyone looks to private interest and alternative recourses.

As for "should" - that's the problem, also the problem for B Psycho's moralism.

Now wait a sec - I disagree with Mr P on many things, but he is consistent on this point. In his view if the state depends on injustice in order to survive, then it deserves to perish, and its dependence on injustice points to weakness. If all states depend on injustice, then, to him, that means all states deserve to perish: That's why he considers himself an anarchist. I don't agree with his perspective - beginning with his assumptions regarding justice - but what's funny about it?

We're at our usual impasse: That a state of affairs "should" be possible, in anyone's view, does not necessarily mean that it is possible, or that, even if it is, that a particular notion or set of notions about how to bring it about is a good and workable set of notions.