From the book “Leo Strauss and the American Right” by Shadia B. Drury (pp. 11-18): With Strauss, “tradition is the conscious creation of philosopher-lawgivers-prophets — or what Nietzsche called Supermen. These are men of great sagacity who know just what sort of remedy their times need and they are ready and able to provide it in the form of some glorious myth, noble lie, or pious fraud . . . an elite that is intoxicated with its own self-admiration . . . an elite that makes a virtue of lying and dissembling.”
“In Strauss’s view, the trouble with liberal society is that it dispenses with noble lies and pious frauds. . .”
“The state must use its coercive force,” says Strauss, to uphold a “single authoritative truth” and “to suppress contending visions.”
This goes a long way in explaining all the lies, myths and fairy tales about Lincoln that have been spread by Harry Jaffa and the rest of the Straussian cabal. The Lincoln Myth is the ideological cornerstone of neocon statism.
6:10 pm on June 18, 2003
