Anne Norton Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (2004)

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always-present, always-listening ear of the state, would be open
only to teachers and students. Perhaps the recording of what is
written and read, who meets with whom, and where and for what
purpose, who travels abroad and where and why and with whom
they meet, would be confined to the universities. Perhaps not.
Lord provides two justifications for the leader s autocratic en-
croachments on ordinary liberties. The first is contained in his
final chapter, Exhortation to Preserve Democracy from the Bar-
barians. We are threatened by the Chinese, the Muslims, multi-
culturalists, and unassimilated minorities. Who then are we ?
The Hasids of Brooklyn and Bala Cynwyd and the rambunctious
family of My Big Fat Greek Wedding are enemy aliens in Lord s vi-
sion of America. The Amish, speaking plattdeutsch and making
shoo-fly pie in Pennsylvania, and the trouble-making professo-
riate are all barbarians. Lord s second justification for autoc-
racy is now more familiar than it once was. Each of us must give
up our freedoms so that we all can be safe. Homeland security re-
quires it. Patriotism is the reason for the sacrifice of freedom.
No justification could be more ironic than these. Machiavelli s
final chapter is titled Exhortation to Take Hold of Italy and
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Liberate Her from the Barbarians. In it Machiavelli calls upon
his countrymen to liberate themselves from the unwelcome rule
of a foreign invader. Lord writes in support of those who have
made themselves foreign invaders and unwelcome rulers.
Strauss, however, explicitly rejected this aspect of Machia-
velli. To justify Machiavelli s terrible counsels by having re-
course to his patriotism, means to see the virtues of that patriot-
ism while being blind to that which is higher than patriotism or
to that which both hallows and limits patriotism. Patriotism
was a suspect virtue for Strauss. This should hardly surprise us.
The experience of Germany in the 1930s might well lead one to
suspect any appeal to patriotism alone. Patriotism, Strauss re-
minds us, can easily be used to obscure something truly evil.
But Strauss would have had stronger objections to Lord s appro-
priation of Machiavelli. The United States of America, Strauss
wrote, was the only country in the world founded in explicit op-
position to Machiavellian principles. While other countries
ruled by force, by the sword, in the United States, Strauss ar-
gued, it was not possible to clothe public and private gangster-
ism in the garb of patriotism. Lord holds to a less exacting stan-
dard. He has no qualms about recommending duplicity and
autocratic rule to the modern leader. He is a professor of strategy
at the Naval War College.
Another reading of Machiavelli holds that The Prince was writ-
ten not for the prince but for the people. The people would see the
depredations, the conniving, the cruelty of princes as Machiavelli
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laid these before them. The people would hear when Machiavelli
declared that a people who had once been free never lost the
memory of their liberty. Machiavelli wrote: Whoever becomes
master of a city accustomed to living in freedom and does not de-
stroy it may expect to be destroyed by it; because this city can al-
ways have refuge, during a rebellion, in the name of liberty and
its traditional institutions, neither of which, with the passing of
time or the conferring of benefits, are ever forgotten. Behind
the exhortation addressed to the prince to free his people from
foreign rule was another addressed to the people. Machiavelli
called on them to free themselves from the rule of princes, to re-
member Rome of the Republic, to recall their ancient liberty and
laws, and take government into their hands again.
Remembering our ancient liberty, our law, and our own re-
public, we might come to a different view of what modern lead-
ers need to know. We might remember that passage in which
Machiavelli instructs leaders to put their faith in the common
people rather than in elites. Elites, he argued, wish to oppress,
the people wish only to avoid oppression. We might decide that
preserving the republic and our own liberty is work not for our
leaders but for ourselves.
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9 On Tyranny
In the year 2001, in the wake of September 11, the United States
government began a war that was not a war. The war was said to
be against terror and terrorism. Terror and terrorism in Ireland,
Sri Lanka, and Kashmir went untouched. The forces of the
United States advanced on Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin
Laden. They never found the man who had launched the attacks
of 9/11, though they deposed the regime that had sheltered him.
Later a larger force invaded and occupied Iraq, searching per-
haps for a link to these attackers, perhaps for weapons of mass [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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