

What if Leo Strauss was right? - jonathansizz
http://theweek.com/article/index/271006/what-if-leo-strauss-was-right

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api
I'm not that familiar with Strauss, but if this is what Strauss argued then...
umm... what's the controversy? I'm a bit surprised that anyone would _deny_
the existence of esotericism for various reasons including defensive. I
thought that was the whole point of Renaissance alchemists coding political
and philosophical speculation as secret formulae for transforming metals. Or
go wade through some late-19th-century occult revivalist texts and tell me
those are literal.

I also find the assertion that this practice ended rather dubious. Seems to me
that quite a bit of our politics is coded-- for example the use of "family
values" to refer to the desire to establish a Christian theocracy or increase
white fertility by outlawing contraception, or "social justice" as code for
wealth redistribution. One of the more obvious ones is how we use "defense" in
foreign policy to refer to offense. We routinely take more controversial ideas
and code them in bland-sounding rhetoric that "no true Scotsman" would find
any problem with. After all who's against families or justice or defending
ourselves?

If anything the idea that everyone communicates literally and that everything
can be taken at face value is crackpotty. Does anyone really think that?

