# Have conservatives given up on democracy? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 10, 2006, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861 "2006-02-10T14:40:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/41 "2006-02-11T19:32:32Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#): > > That’s not one of the basic tenents of neoconservative thought. And a simple contradiction isn’t an argument. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/42 "2006-02-11T19:37:56Z")
> [@Crotalus](#): > > As usual, you missed the point. **Furt** was not defending conservatives with a logical fallacy. The fact is that holding power has a tendency to cultivate anti-democratic ideas. The writers of the US Constitution were quite aware and wary of this, and did their best to prevent it structurally. That doesn’t stop those in power from trying. It is not a tu quoque fallacy to state this, or to suggest, as **Fish** did, that FDR went a long way down this road. I didn’t miss Furt’s point, it just wasn’t the same point you are making. His post simply said > [@furt](#): > > The same argument is made by conservatives about liberals. > > FWIW, they’re both right. This is in fact a simple tu quoque. Perhaps he MEANT to suggest the same thing you are suggesting, but he certainly didn’t say anything of the sort. I agree that there is a general tendency for those who hold power to see Constitutional limits to their power as simple hindrances to be worked around. That’s part of the general background noise of our system. My OP lists a lot of other ideas, etc., that worry me wrt conservatives’ general approch to democracy. The existence of the “background” noise doesn’t change any of my concerns. ---
**Author:** ![Sequent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Sequent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sequent)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/43 "2006-02-11T19:41:08Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#): > > Change “Federalist” to “yeast”, “John Adams” to “baker” “FDR” to “baking soda” and this could be about baking bread. Hahahaha! Nicely done, **EC**. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/44 "2006-02-11T19:44:17Z")
I did a search on Google for the terms “Strauss” and “neoconservativism” I got over 61,000 hits. Rather interesting for a person who has little or nothing to do with neoconservatism. ---
**Author:** ![Sequent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Sequent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sequent)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/45 "2006-02-11T19:45:41Z")
From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism) > [@](#): > > In his semi-autobiographical book, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography Of An Idea, Irving Kristol cites a number of influences on his own thought, including not only Max Shachtman and Leo Strauss but also the skeptical liberal literary critic Lionel Trilling. The influence of Leo Strauss and his disciples on some neoconservatives has generated some controversy. Some argue that Strauss’s influence has left some neoconservatives adopting a Machiavellian view of politics. See [the entry on] Leo Strauss for a discussion of this controversy. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/46 "2006-02-11T19:48:19Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I also find this “people are unfit” comment very funny. There’s a thread on this board right now about how Bush won the 2004 election, and in it people bemoan the fact that voters were too stupid to disregard Bush’s distracting tactics about gay marriage and terrorists and see him for the fool he is. > > Which is it? Are the people to be trusted to vote, or not? Or are the people only to be trusted when they vote Democratic, because that’s obviously in their best interests, and not when they vote Republican, because as any idiot can see, that’s a poor choice? There is no real contradiction between wanting voters to be smarter about how they cast their vote, and still thinking they should have a right to vote. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/47 "2006-02-11T19:49:48Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#): > > I did a search on Google for the terms “Strauss” and “neoconservativism” I got over 61,000 hits. Rather interesting for a person who has little or nothing to do with neoconservatism. I did a Google search as well. Results: 13,400,000 for iraq and weapons of mass destruction. I guess that proves Bush was right all along. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/48 "2006-02-11T19:53:24Z")
> [@Try As I Might...](#): > > Isn’t that the difference between a representative democracy (which we don’t have) and a democratic republic (which we do have)? > > The fact is people don’t rule in this country and they don’t have many decisions they can make. We don’t have a democracy. We elect others to decide on how to govern within our constitutional boundaries-especially at the federal level. The problem is, Rove and his clients don’t even want people to have a fair chance to elect their representatives. If the people can’t even elect their representatives, we don’t have a republic, either. It’s just another authoritarian state hiding under a different label to conceal its fundamental fascism. ---
**Author:** ![Sequent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Sequent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sequent)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/49 "2006-02-11T19:57:20Z")
The wiki [discussion page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Leo_Strauss) is, curiously, much more interesting than the actual entry. There have been several telling changes to the content: > [@](#): > > For the record, the following was removed from this article by 68.77.108.147 as his only edit. > > “[Strauss was greatly influential on] the American neo-conservative movement. Several of his former students, such as Paul Wolfowitz, now hold high positions in the Bush administration.” was changed to “Strauss was greatly influential in America”. And the following was completely erased: > > Strauss believed that in Plato’s Republic, the representative of Plato’s true thinking on politics and society was not Socrates, as is generally thought, but Thrasymachus. Strauss believed that Plato used Socrates (who argued that justice was the implementation of goals that led to the greatest harmony, and thus to happiness) to display skill in making the weaker argument appear better, whereas Thrasymachus’ argument that justice was the exercise of power was the argument that Plato actually believed to be the stronger one. ---
**Author:** ![Sequent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Sequent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sequent)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/50 "2006-02-11T20:03:07Z")
Sigh. Can we leave Google stats behind as a research tool? I did a search on “Bush Hitler” and got over 7 million hits. I also did a search on myself + fallibility and got NO hits. Hmmmm… ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/51 "2006-02-11T20:23:05Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#): > > Ah, the old ad hominem. When come back bring argument that’s not so … flabby. What argument? I’m just informing you that you’re a creep. But I’m sure you hear that all the time. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/52 "2006-02-11T20:24:25Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I did a Google search as well. > > Results: 13,400,000 for iraq and weapons of mass destruction. > > I guess that proves Bush was right all along. No, what it proves was that the Republicans in power made a very strong effort to link Iraq with weapons of mass destruction, not that they actually possessed them. Anyway, I knew this would come up, so here are a few samples from my search: [Strauss’ policy of deception and neoconservative policies](http://www.alternet.org/story/15935/) [Quote: “Shulsky received his doctorate from the University of Chicago studying under Strauss, who attracted a cult following of neocons with his theories about politics and human nature.”] ([http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2004/0402nsai.php](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2004/0402nsai.php)) [Quote: “There is a growing awareness that a reclusive German émigré philosopher is the inspiration behind the reigning neoconservative ideology of the Republican Party.”] ([http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6750.htm](http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6750.htm)) [Here’s a tasty quote – As anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of how to use Google could discover in a moment, the neocons’ enemies have long been aware of Strauss’s cult and its baleful influence. Libertarians are naturally horrified by the Straussian devotion to the benevolent dictatorship of a self-appointed elite, and we at [antiwar.com](http://antiwar.com) have not spared Strauss and his followers their fair share of abuse. While Shadia B. Drury’s 1999 book, Leo Strauss and the American Right, provided a critique of Strauss’s influence from the left, paleoconservatives such as Paul Gottfried were among the first to raise the alarm. But I’ll leave it to my old friend Burt Blumert to capture the essence of the antagonism that has long existed between the followers of Strauss and the Old Right gang centered around [LewRockwell.com](http://LewRockwell.com): “Neocons, as ex-Trotskyites, are bad enough, but those who follow the pro-pagan Leo Strauss are deadly. He advocated the Big Lie. Forgive me for all the gory details, but these people – with their other leaders like Bill Buckley and Irving Kristol and the help of the CIA – perverted the American right into loving the welfare-warfare state.”]([Trotsky, Strauss, and the Neocons, by Justin Raimondo](http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j061303.html)) Gee, this is fun. Here’s another: [The book is “Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire,” by Anne Norton. Norton, who teaches at Penn, traces the (neoconservative -ec) movement’s origins to Leo Strauss, a German Jew who came to America as a refugee in 1938. According to Norton, Strauss’ theories of politics, which he taught at the University of Chicago, inspired a generation of students and teachers across the nation. Some of them went on to become government officials, like Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of the Iraq war, and Abram Shulsky at the Pentagon; and Leon Kass, chairman of Bush’s Council on Bioethics.](http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/goldsborough/20041005-9999-mz1e4golds.html) I could go on and on. But I think my point is made. There are MANY people who maintain that Strauss was the prime mover behind neocon ideology, and it’s reasonable to accept that notion as fact. Sorry, guys. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/53 "2006-02-11T20:28:10Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > What argument? I’m just informing you that you’re a creep. But I’m sure you hear that all the time. Your opinion is duly noted and given all the weight it deserves. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/54 "2006-02-11T20:29:28Z")
> [@Sequent](#): > > The wiki [discussion page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Leo_Strauss) is, curiously, much more interesting than the actual entry. There have been several telling changes to the content: I had noticed that thre Wiki article appears to have been written by someone with an agenda. ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/55 "2006-02-11T23:21:15Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#): > > I could go on and on. But I think my point is made. There are MANY people who maintain that Strauss was the prime mover behind neocon ideology, and it’s reasonable to accept that notion as fact. Sorry, guys. There are many people who maintain that they have been abducted by aliens, is it reasonable to accept that notion as fact? I think that the only thing this thread demonstrates is that spending one’s evenings masturbating to cartoons is not conductive to critical thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2006, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/56 "2006-02-12T00:23:29Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#): > > I also believe the neoconservative belief that the government should be secretly controlled by a small group of knowledgeable people (i.e., people who know the ‘right’ things, therefore think the ‘right’ things) is fundamentally undemocratic and leads inevitably to government by cabal. Well, this _is_ dangerous stuff. You get together a group of ideologues who believe their ideas are best for not only the country but other nations, work to undermine established governments, use faulty intelligence if not lies to drag the U.S. into a long, wasting conflict, and presto, you’ve got Vietnam. Google “Kennedy”, “Johnson”, “Brain Trust”, “advisers” etc. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2006, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/57 "2006-02-12T01:16:02Z")
> [@Weirddave](#): > > There are many people who maintain that they have been abducted by aliens, is it reasonable to accept that notion as fact? I think that the only thing this thread demonstrates is that spending one’s evenings masturbating to cartoons is not conductive to critical thinking. What a truly conservative notion. If someone engages in any public discourse about sex at any time, you need only point that out in any argument, however unrelated to sex it might be, and your cause is won. Sure, most people just think it means the person trying to make such a point is an idiot, but to a lot of conservatives, it’s apparently persuasive. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2006, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/58 "2006-02-12T01:19:16Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Well, this _is_ dangerous stuff. You get together a group of ideologues who believe their ideas are best for not only the country but other nations, work to undermine established governments, use faulty intelligence if not lies to drag the U.S. into a long, wasting conflict, and presto, you’ve got Vietnam. > > Google “Kennedy”, “Johnson”, “Brain Trust”, “advisers” etc. Yeah, and look how well THAT turned out! ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2006, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/59 "2006-02-12T03:12:00Z")
EC you make it so easy. Those of your posts that are not slobbering attempts to hijack threads into your own masturbatory fantasies are regurgitated crap from whatever left wing blog caught your attention on any given day. When challenged on the ludicrous nature of your OP, your response is to frantically Google even more blog and op-ed articles and link to them claiming they somehow “prove” your point. You’re so narcissistic that you apparently haven’t even noticed that only one poster, BrainGlutton, agrees with your premise at all, and that posters from all across the political spectrum seem to think you’re nuts. You proudly proclaim your proclivity for greasing your knuckles to anime on a daily basis, so I merely theorized that this activity actively contributes to your inability to do anything other than channel reeder on these boards. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2006, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861/60 "2006-02-12T03:54:32Z")
> [@Weirddave](#): > > EC you make it so easy. Those of your posts that are not slobbering attempts to hijack threads into your own masturbatory fantasies are regurgitated crap from whatever left wing blog caught your attention on any given day. When challenged on the ludicrous nature of your OP, your response is to frantically Google even more blog and op-ed articles and link to them claiming they somehow “prove” your point. You’re so narcissistic that you apparently haven’t even noticed that only one poster, BrainGlutton, agrees with your premise at all, and that posters from all across the political spectrum seem to think you’re nuts. You proudly proclaim your proclivity for greasing your knuckles to anime on a daily basis, so I merely theorized that this activity actively contributes to your inability to do anything other than channel reeder on these boards. The thing I find mildly disturbing, Weirddave, is your focus on sex in a discussion which otherwise has nothing to do with it. You should really get your act together on this, man. It’s embarrassing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-given-up-on-democracy/343861.md?page=4)