Forgive my ignorance of great philosophical traditions, and the somewhat crass take I have on all of this. But from the way Strauss describes them, these post-liberal adolescents sound like what today we might charitably call "drama queens".
Strauss is, of course, much more eloquent in his illustration of their thinking, decscribing their objection to, "a world in which no great heart could beat and no great soul could breathe, a world without real, unmetaphoric, sacrifice, i.e. a world without blood, sweat, and tears."
Such overwrought patter, to me, bears the foul odor of the over-privileged life. The one whose material needs are all so thoroughly provided for that they want for crisis, conflict, and cause. That Strauss should describe them as young and economically secure is no surprise.
To them, newly inebriated with the strength and vigor of young adulthood, who can scarcely bother to notice the profound suffering inherent even in everday peaceful life and the myriad challenges it presents without the introduction of novel ones to satiate the nihilist's appetite for human theater, the only answer to such existential ennui is the raw exercise of power. Such is the danger in societies which fail to adequately corral and redirect the destructive passions of young men.
Most people in the world endure a daily, uphill struggle with only the dream of simple happiness to placate them. The ideal of material security remains just far enough out of reach that we have enough to occupy the bulk of our lives chasing it.
That we should have to, at the same time, contend with the destructive boredom of pampered aristocrats is perhaps the best argument one can make for an antagonistic posture toward the accumulation of wealth. Let's go back to soaking the rich like we did in the mid-20th century, if for no other reason to spare us all from the sociopathic whims of the otherwise idle minds of their progeny.
This is a very interesting and thought-provoking excerpt. I think the fact that Strauss emphasizes these thinkers' atheism is quite significant. My own view (quite contrary to contemporary Christian post-liberals) is that *only* religious believers can be satisfied with the limited aspirations of liberal government and its refusal to satisfy, or to try to satisfy, these people's yearnings for a higher, inspiring, soul-filling purpose. Religious believers can cherish and protect temporal peace and prosperity as genuinely valuable goods, without supposing that they are the highest goods. People whose hearts find rest elsewhere (to paraphrase Augustine) do not need to insist that political society still their restlessness. In any case, thanks for sharing this.
Timely. Wise. We are faced with the same dilemma today in finding an open cultural option that satisfies human nature’s most fundamental characteristics. What is a hero’s journey without an evil opponent? Forget the fact that we are our evil opponent’s evil opponent… If males are evolutionarily determined to Provide, Protect, and Procreate, then we’re required to have Scarcity, Threats, and Reproductive Competitors. Eliminating these leaves fundamental drives unrequited leading to angry, violent men. Anger may result from unmet expectations, but unmet, unconscious drives serve as well.
I agree with Francis that the "United States of 2025 is not Germany in 1941." But I sadly see a significant parallel between the US today and Germany in 1933, specifically the first three months of that year. On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor (head of government) in accordance with the procedures foreseen in the post-World War I German constitution. On February 27, the German parliament building (the Reichstag) burned in what was presented as a terrorist act carried out by a Dutch communist (later executed). In this climate, new elections took place on March 5 that gave the Nazi Party a majority in Parliament. And on March 23, that parliament passed the Enabling Act, granting Hitler dictatorial power. Historical analogies are always imperfect, and one should be careful with them. But it's worth noting: 1) the rapidity of the process of securing unlimited power; 2) the use of constitutionally-grounded institutions and authorities in securing said power; 3) how elections enabled the process; 4) the political exploitation of a terrorist act. (Will historians someday see the heinous attack against Jews in Boulder, Colorado as the US version of the Reichstag Fire?) I've been warned about the seductiveness of worry, but I'm really finding it hard not to worry -- a lot.
Sounds EXACTLY like today. Which supports the theory that history revolves in well known cycles. Civilizations practice openness and emphasize individuals which leads to narcissism, decadence, over-consumption, hedonism, and predation. The young view this in horror and retreat to the verities of religion and order. Or nihilism if they can’t stomach religion. The West (not just America) is spent, exhausted, and finished with the ME cycle. Progressives try in vain to retain the ME cycle - cutting against the grain of the larger zeitgeist which is moving toward order and sacrifice and community. They stand in front of this wave - not atop it. Their defeat is guaranteed.
How should we speak about liberalism and republicanism? I have realized these two ideas are about restraints on power. For what purpose do we need to restrain power? To be sure to secure some levels of individual sovereignty and political equality. Hannah Arendt speaks about the human condition; where humans labor, work, and act. The action is consequential. Humans are made to come together and contemplate, to act. To deny this is to deny the human from being human. That is why we have developed the ideas and action of restraints on power. If liberalism produces nihilists, then maybe liberalism needs restrained. Restrained to what though? What is the alternative? Hierarchy seems a dystopian fall from where we are today. Could Republicanism, mutual restraints on power, be the more advanced idea and action? Mutual restraints on power, while still securing the human condition, I hope is the alternative!
I've been asking myself this same question for a handful of years. It's good to know I'm not alone. (I have also been trying to figure out how to think about the relationship between republicanism and populism. Is republicanism a civically healthy version of populism, a way to constrain its excesses or something else?) It seems to me that the unique marriage of liberalism and republicanism is an essential part of what actually made America great. I wonder if a restoration of that marriage can help us find our way in the perilous moment. (Related--I've been slowly making my way through a really interesting and provocative account of American republicanism from one of the great Straussian thinkers, Thomas Pangle in his book The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke. Definitely worth checking out if you're interested in these questions. He also a short critique of Arendt and her understanding of American republicanism--which I don't think is totally right on--but has some real teeth to it.)
I don’t think the problem is limited to any particular political affiliation. Activists of whatever stripe need to justify their existence, maybe especially to themselves. This is especially bad because it has become relatively easy for activists to make a living at it.
Justice, fairness, equality, equity, ethical relativism, (Nietzche's bizarre) epistemological relativism. The problem is not all so complex as simply to have an agreed upon foundation for defining "reality." Well that is extremely complex ultimately. What do we really want reality to be? Plato's soul has reason and appetite constraining the real problem: Thumos or Spirit in the middle. We understand reason relatively easily: the application of universal truths to one another a pure logic a pure science of mathematics and geometry. "God never stops doing geometry" according to Plutarch on Plato. God is Reason in action. We understand Appetite relatively easily as well: the biological urges in their unreasonable inhuman force of biological replication. But Thumos is the tricky one. We each want respect, we each want dignity, we want status, we want to WIN! But this is neither reasonable nor is it necessarily biologically advantageous. The martyr dies and kills in pursuit of Glory, Thumos, Spirit. So society must control this uniquely human urge. Thumos must be under the domain of education. And controlling Thumos is the biggest part of Plato's Republic: How do we train our soldier/guardian class. Reason must guide Thumos which alone has the ability to control the animal in each of us. Equity opposes Thumos, victory seduces it. Only a life loving institutions can constrain thumos to pursue kindness over oppression. But the flagrant lies of Woke and DEI only inflame the most brutal urges of thumos. Judeo-Christian culture must be more than merely the "morality of paltry people" as Nietzsche describes it. We must be courageous enough to see that merit is real and morality is honorable. The West really is the BEST. And that is not simply because we created a palliative pop culture but because we also created Science and Beauty and a World that is life embracing beyond the wildest imaginings of Plato.
Forgive my ignorance of great philosophical traditions, and the somewhat crass take I have on all of this. But from the way Strauss describes them, these post-liberal adolescents sound like what today we might charitably call "drama queens".
Strauss is, of course, much more eloquent in his illustration of their thinking, decscribing their objection to, "a world in which no great heart could beat and no great soul could breathe, a world without real, unmetaphoric, sacrifice, i.e. a world without blood, sweat, and tears."
Such overwrought patter, to me, bears the foul odor of the over-privileged life. The one whose material needs are all so thoroughly provided for that they want for crisis, conflict, and cause. That Strauss should describe them as young and economically secure is no surprise.
To them, newly inebriated with the strength and vigor of young adulthood, who can scarcely bother to notice the profound suffering inherent even in everday peaceful life and the myriad challenges it presents without the introduction of novel ones to satiate the nihilist's appetite for human theater, the only answer to such existential ennui is the raw exercise of power. Such is the danger in societies which fail to adequately corral and redirect the destructive passions of young men.
Most people in the world endure a daily, uphill struggle with only the dream of simple happiness to placate them. The ideal of material security remains just far enough out of reach that we have enough to occupy the bulk of our lives chasing it.
That we should have to, at the same time, contend with the destructive boredom of pampered aristocrats is perhaps the best argument one can make for an antagonistic posture toward the accumulation of wealth. Let's go back to soaking the rich like we did in the mid-20th century, if for no other reason to spare us all from the sociopathic whims of the otherwise idle minds of their progeny.
This is a very interesting and thought-provoking excerpt. I think the fact that Strauss emphasizes these thinkers' atheism is quite significant. My own view (quite contrary to contemporary Christian post-liberals) is that *only* religious believers can be satisfied with the limited aspirations of liberal government and its refusal to satisfy, or to try to satisfy, these people's yearnings for a higher, inspiring, soul-filling purpose. Religious believers can cherish and protect temporal peace and prosperity as genuinely valuable goods, without supposing that they are the highest goods. People whose hearts find rest elsewhere (to paraphrase Augustine) do not need to insist that political society still their restlessness. In any case, thanks for sharing this.
Timely. Wise. We are faced with the same dilemma today in finding an open cultural option that satisfies human nature’s most fundamental characteristics. What is a hero’s journey without an evil opponent? Forget the fact that we are our evil opponent’s evil opponent… If males are evolutionarily determined to Provide, Protect, and Procreate, then we’re required to have Scarcity, Threats, and Reproductive Competitors. Eliminating these leaves fundamental drives unrequited leading to angry, violent men. Anger may result from unmet expectations, but unmet, unconscious drives serve as well.
I agree with Francis that the "United States of 2025 is not Germany in 1941." But I sadly see a significant parallel between the US today and Germany in 1933, specifically the first three months of that year. On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor (head of government) in accordance with the procedures foreseen in the post-World War I German constitution. On February 27, the German parliament building (the Reichstag) burned in what was presented as a terrorist act carried out by a Dutch communist (later executed). In this climate, new elections took place on March 5 that gave the Nazi Party a majority in Parliament. And on March 23, that parliament passed the Enabling Act, granting Hitler dictatorial power. Historical analogies are always imperfect, and one should be careful with them. But it's worth noting: 1) the rapidity of the process of securing unlimited power; 2) the use of constitutionally-grounded institutions and authorities in securing said power; 3) how elections enabled the process; 4) the political exploitation of a terrorist act. (Will historians someday see the heinous attack against Jews in Boulder, Colorado as the US version of the Reichstag Fire?) I've been warned about the seductiveness of worry, but I'm really finding it hard not to worry -- a lot.
Sounds EXACTLY like today. Which supports the theory that history revolves in well known cycles. Civilizations practice openness and emphasize individuals which leads to narcissism, decadence, over-consumption, hedonism, and predation. The young view this in horror and retreat to the verities of religion and order. Or nihilism if they can’t stomach religion. The West (not just America) is spent, exhausted, and finished with the ME cycle. Progressives try in vain to retain the ME cycle - cutting against the grain of the larger zeitgeist which is moving toward order and sacrifice and community. They stand in front of this wave - not atop it. Their defeat is guaranteed.
How should we speak about liberalism and republicanism? I have realized these two ideas are about restraints on power. For what purpose do we need to restrain power? To be sure to secure some levels of individual sovereignty and political equality. Hannah Arendt speaks about the human condition; where humans labor, work, and act. The action is consequential. Humans are made to come together and contemplate, to act. To deny this is to deny the human from being human. That is why we have developed the ideas and action of restraints on power. If liberalism produces nihilists, then maybe liberalism needs restrained. Restrained to what though? What is the alternative? Hierarchy seems a dystopian fall from where we are today. Could Republicanism, mutual restraints on power, be the more advanced idea and action? Mutual restraints on power, while still securing the human condition, I hope is the alternative!
I've been asking myself this same question for a handful of years. It's good to know I'm not alone. (I have also been trying to figure out how to think about the relationship between republicanism and populism. Is republicanism a civically healthy version of populism, a way to constrain its excesses or something else?) It seems to me that the unique marriage of liberalism and republicanism is an essential part of what actually made America great. I wonder if a restoration of that marriage can help us find our way in the perilous moment. (Related--I've been slowly making my way through a really interesting and provocative account of American republicanism from one of the great Straussian thinkers, Thomas Pangle in his book The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke. Definitely worth checking out if you're interested in these questions. He also a short critique of Arendt and her understanding of American republicanism--which I don't think is totally right on--but has some real teeth to it.)
I don’t think the problem is limited to any particular political affiliation. Activists of whatever stripe need to justify their existence, maybe especially to themselves. This is especially bad because it has become relatively easy for activists to make a living at it.
Justice, fairness, equality, equity, ethical relativism, (Nietzche's bizarre) epistemological relativism. The problem is not all so complex as simply to have an agreed upon foundation for defining "reality." Well that is extremely complex ultimately. What do we really want reality to be? Plato's soul has reason and appetite constraining the real problem: Thumos or Spirit in the middle. We understand reason relatively easily: the application of universal truths to one another a pure logic a pure science of mathematics and geometry. "God never stops doing geometry" according to Plutarch on Plato. God is Reason in action. We understand Appetite relatively easily as well: the biological urges in their unreasonable inhuman force of biological replication. But Thumos is the tricky one. We each want respect, we each want dignity, we want status, we want to WIN! But this is neither reasonable nor is it necessarily biologically advantageous. The martyr dies and kills in pursuit of Glory, Thumos, Spirit. So society must control this uniquely human urge. Thumos must be under the domain of education. And controlling Thumos is the biggest part of Plato's Republic: How do we train our soldier/guardian class. Reason must guide Thumos which alone has the ability to control the animal in each of us. Equity opposes Thumos, victory seduces it. Only a life loving institutions can constrain thumos to pursue kindness over oppression. But the flagrant lies of Woke and DEI only inflame the most brutal urges of thumos. Judeo-Christian culture must be more than merely the "morality of paltry people" as Nietzsche describes it. We must be courageous enough to see that merit is real and morality is honorable. The West really is the BEST. And that is not simply because we created a palliative pop culture but because we also created Science and Beauty and a World that is life embracing beyond the wildest imaginings of Plato.