The political philosopher most revered by neoconservatives, Leo Strauss, explicitly advocated such lies, as Philosophy and Political Science Professor Shadia Drury documented." Neither GG nor Drury in the article cited offer quotes that show Strauss explicitly advocating such lies. Why? Because such quotes don't exist.

Really? You're going to spout that BS? If you had actually read Strauss yourself, or been honest for that matter, you'll see two obvious errors with your post:

#1. Why doesn't he explicitly advocate the things Drury notes? An obvious answer is because he is engaging in esoteric writing. You see, folks, LS thought it was necessary to write at two levels: First, exoterically, for the masses who could only handle a kid's version of things; Second, esoterically for the initiated few who really understood how things worked. (If you want to claim I am making this up, I simply refer you to Stauss's paranoid book, Persecution and the Art of Writing.) D'uh. LS was being esoteric.

#2. An even bigger problem with your claim is that it is untrue. Read Drury's first book on Strauss where she actually anticipates this objection and lays out excerpt after excerpt...after excerpt from Strauss's work. HIS words, over and over again. Just like HIS words, as Thomas Dumm points out, implicate him in support for fascism.

If you're going to lie, Asiafile, as least aim for some nobility.

According to Stauss, a proper education:

"[D]emands from us the boldness implied in the resolve to regard the accepted views as mere opinions, or to regard the average opinions as extreme opinions which are at least as likely to be wrong as the most strange or the least popular opinions. Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity. The Greeks had a beautiful word for "vulgarity"; they called it apeirokalia, lack of experience in things beautiful. Liberal education supplies us with experience in things beautiful."

Only the properly educated (i.e., by Strauss or his followers, and those whom he sees himself following) have the boldness, the Platonic knowledge of beauty, the insight, to rule. The rest of us are vulgar, nothing more than masses to be overcome.

More Strauss:

We cannot exert our understanding without from time to time understanding something of importance; and this act of understanding may be accompanied by the awareness of our understanding, by the understanding of understanding, by noesis noeseos, and this is so high, so pure, so noble an experience that Aristotle could ascribe it to his God. This experience is entirely independent of whether what we understand primarily is pleasing or displeasing, fair or ugly. It leads us to realize that all evils are in a sense necessary if there is to be understanding.

You see, in Strauss' words, that the "pure" and "noble" need to do evil in order to make the world safe enough for the noble few to continue their higher calling. Sound familiar. Dick Cheney at al.?

Q: Mr. Cheney, polls show that Americans are against the war.

Cheney: So?

Strauss wanted his version of liberal education (in the traditional sense of the word "liberal"); why?

Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant. Liberal education is the necessary endeavor to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society.

A noble aristocracy as "counter-poison" to the masses, an aristocracy willing to do evil (e.g., lie!)within a "democratic mass society".

Strauss. In his words. Scary.

The defense rests.

No, it is not a case of right=lies, left=truth.

A number of Straussians and neocons see their political calling as saving America from itself. Democracy is dangerous in its exaltation of the masses. The masses are not to be trusted (as they/we are unlearned and vulgar). Simply put, Jeffersonian ideals of democracy are unnatural. Neocons see themselves as protectors of the natural order (with them, of course, at the top of the natural heap).

Simply put, neocons have a view of politics that requires the dissembling that they have become (in)famous for. This is a large scale dissembling, the creation of a noble lie big enough to sustain a framework behind which they can pull strings, philosophize, etc. Their goal is to make the City (political life and community) safe for philosophers (such as themselves).

Old-fashioned GOP conservatives (even somebody like Pat Buchanan) are actually like moderates, liberals, democratic socialists, and others in that they all agree in the reasonableness of the people, the basic (and salutary) possibility of democracy, and basic moral and political equality among people. The lies these people tell (and, as you suggest, all parties tell them) are the small lies ("I did not have sexual relations with that women,") that are meant to bring about success within a democratic system.

So, Straussians and neocons = Noble lies (at the scale of religion) in order to protect America from itself and make it safe for the elite...

Traditional conservatives, liberals, etc. = a belief in democratic possibility and faith in the people, small lies about sex, drugs, and bridges they'll get built.

Both sides lie, but the underlying rationale is very different. In this way of seeing things, Pat Buchanan and Rachel Maddow are closer together than Pat and Bill Kristol.

I don't know if you saw Representative Thaddeus McCotter (R) of Michigan on Hardball earlier this week. McCotter was talking about the Gates case. He opened by referring to Obama's admitted "bias", the bias toward his (Obama's) friend. Skip Gates. Throughout the rest of the interview McCotter dropped the bias-toward-a-friend angle and just spoke of Obama's bias. Obama's bias; Obama admitted he was biased; the President's bias; bias, bias, bias.

You don't think this was calculated to play into the Obama-is-a-racist claims that Rush, Beck, and others has been spouting? Sure it is. McCotter's arguments were laughable and scary at the same time.

It isn't just the GOP talkers on this thing. GOP members of Congress are hip deep in it as well.