Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association Trashes Latest Straussian ‘Vindication’ of Lincoln

This prestigious journal sneers at and trashes what it calls “Straussian hysteria” that “endlessly rehashes Jaffa” and nothing more; “distorts the historical record”; “giving lax attention to historical context”; “borders on offensive”; whose author is in a “hagiographic haze”; a book that is “impossibly superficial”; an “unnecessary distortion” and nothing more than “a set of op-ed pieces.” 

There is “nothing new here”; a book that is “replete with straw men”; a “standard Straussian polemic” no different from the one “articulated by Harry Jaffa in the 1950s”; and, “in typical Straussian fashion,” the author “shadowboxes with imaginary fifth column nihilists.”  The author “has problems with . . . historical reality” in a book that “would not pass muster for undergraduate work.”  (Thanks to Phil M.).

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6:08 pm on March 17, 2010