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.).
6:08 pm on March 17, 2010