Greatest Danger to America is The Danger From Within - Video

Neoconservatism has changed the Republican Party since the days of Eisenhower and the teachings of political philosopher Leo Strauss has had a monumental influence on that change.http://youtu.be/3tON81U-A40

“Leo Strauss’ Philosophy of Deception: Many neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz are disciples of a philosopher who believed that the elite should use deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant masses.”
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The following is an excerpt from the book review of “Leo Strauss and the American Right” by Shadia Drury, professor of philosophy at the University of Regina.
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“Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat, and following Machiavelli, he maintains that if no external threat exists, then one has to be manufactured.” The fundamental political categories are “us” and “them.” A sense of perpetual crisis and war cements the society together with absolute loyalty to the gentlemen. But the categories “us” and “them” do not stop at external enemies. The sense of crisis makes the struggle against internal enemies an even more desperate war of “us” against “them.”

“Liberalism, as Drury makes clear later on, boils down to the belief not that everyone is equal, but that everyone should be given an equal opportunity to make what he can of himself.”

“It was the ideals of liberalism itself — secular politics, human rights, equal dignity, and human freedom — that he [Strauss] did not relish.”

“…Their job, at first, is to wean America away from its “love affair” with liberalism. To do this they will drive a wedge between liberalism and democracy….Democracy is the rule of the people, or rule according to the will of the people or the majority.” It can easily be used to suppress liberalism. By demagogic manipulation democracy, through a populist appeal, can be turned against liberalism.”

“The essential first task… is to produce ideology…to attack liberalism and gain power. Strauss’s hatred of liberalism is so virulent that he sees the struggle against it as a war, and in war all is fair. For this reason Straussians will use every dirty trick they can think of in the democratic arena in order to defeat liberalism. While doing so they will corrupt democracy itself. But since democracy is only a tool with which to defeat liberalism in order to institute the true Straussian hierarchical society, this is of little import. In the end they will jettison democracy if to do so is expedient.” 

William Hartung, Senior Fellow, World Policy Institute:
“This is not just a Republican takeover, this is a very specific wing of the Republican Party – it’s neoconservative, it’s unilateralist, it doesn’t believe in the rule of law, it doesn’t believe you have to tell the public the truth.”

Norm Chomsky, Author of “Hegemony of Survival”:
“And they happen to be an extremely arrogant, dangerous group of reactionary statists — they’re not conservatives.”

There was a time in America’s recent past when similar attacks on progressives, liberals, and liberalism, and democracy itself, arose. In 1934 men representing a clique of multi-millionaire industrialists and bankers who hated U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) with a passion, and saw his “New Deal” policies as the start of a communist take-over that threatened their interests sought to overthrow the American government and replace it with a fascist dictatorship. Behind the plan to bring fascism to America was the American Liberty League, a pro-business think-tank and ultra-right wing lobby group comprised of some of America’s wealthiest bankers, financiers and corporate executives

“Created in August 1934, this association of wealthiest corporate leaders said its goals were “to combat radicalism, to teach…respect for the rights of persons and property, and generally to foster free private enterprise.” It attacked government funding for poverty relief and social services and opposed all “burdensome taxes imposed upon industry for unemployment insurance and old age pension.”
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