From a reader:

Dear Jonah, It was impossible to come of age when and where Leo Strauss did, and not be influenced by, and indeed indebted to, Nietzsche. But Strauss was most certainly not a follower of Nietsche--read only the final pages of Strauss's essay "What is Political Philosophy" to understand that Strauss saw Nietzsche as the culmination of Western Nihilism, and genuinely pitied him for it. Strauss, and Eric Voegelin too, had a similar take on Nietzsche: admiration for his boldness, understanding for his predicament, and pity for his inability to believe in something greater than himself. I think Voegelin said something to the effect that "no man ever wanted and needed to believe in God as much as Nietszsche did, but he could not bring himself to do so." A follower of Neitzsche's could never be conservative.

The influence of Nietzsche is comparable to the influence of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Hegel, or Kant. People don't directly state their indebtedness to him any more than you or I credit water for the wonderful state of our health.

From a reader:

How dare you post a time waster! I'm trying to study for my law school exams! I'll sue...eh, never mind. Let's settle, I won't sue if you keep posting Simpsons quotes. I wish there was a Simpsons casebook that outlined the law using Simpsons episodes as mock litigation.

I've got to go, Nietzsche bad, Ayn Rand good (I have a "Who Is John Galt? bumper sticker on my truck just to annoy people, but I'm thinking of making a "Goldwater/Miller '64" sticker), God better.

In summation, you're wasting all my time, you're not Just What I Needed.
From Hell's Heart, I Stab at Thee.

Faithful Reader in Alexandria,
John

Several readers point out that Leo Strauss was indebted to Nietzsche. Fair enough. Though I do think it's one thing to admire a philosopher and agree with some of his descriptions and its another to buy into his prescriptions. It's also worth noting that Strauss' influence has been significant in America and upon American conservatism (and not just on the "neocons" -- Willmoore Kendall, after all, was an acolyte of Strauss'). But, Strauss himself hardly comes out of the American tradition or the Anglo-American conservative tradition generally, even if his influence on both has been large. Anyway, I thought this email was very useful:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

Of course, the relationship is complicated and Strauss is no ordinary conservative, but I think that it's fair to say that Strauss took Nietzsche and Nietzsche's critique of rationalism very seriously. The best sources are Werner Dannhauser's Nietzsche's View of Socrates and Lawrence Lampert's Leo Strauss and Nietzsche. The Amazon link for the latter is here.

For the former (out of print), it's here.

It's also probably worth looking at what Allan Bloom has to say about Nietzsche, to whom there are more explicit references in The Closing of the American Mind than there are to, say, Plato.

Shadia Drury (who has become a poisonous nutty Strauss-hater, as opposed to merely a poisonous Strauss-hater) also, if memory serves, insists upon the Nietzscheanism of Strauss and his students (especially the "East Coast" variety.

The response to the argument that Straussianism is a kind of Nietzscheanism begins with Strauss' respect for America, amply documented in Deutsch and Murley's Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the Study of the American Regime. I've also written on Strauss and America in Lawler and McConkey's Faith, Reason, and Political Life Today; my contribution is entitled "Leo Strauss, America, and the End of History."

Here's the Amazon link to Deutsch and Murley.

Here's the link to Lawler and McConkey.

Best wishes,

Joe Knippenberg
Oglethorpe University
Atlanta, GA

Since I'm still alone, from a reader:

If you can stomach another Simpson's food quote, I can't believe no one has mentioned my favorite:

Flanders wins tickets to the big football game between Springfield and Shelbyville on a radio contest. Homer hears and immediately jumps off the couch and looks up to curse God.

Homer: "Oh, God, why do you mock me?"

[enter Marge with broom in hand]

Marge: "Homer, that's not God. That's a waffle that Bart threw on the ceiling."

[Marge knocks down waffle with broom. Waffle falls into Homer's hands]

Homer [to waffle]: "I know I should not eat thee, but........[takes bite]....Mmmmmm.....Sacrilicious"

Uh, oh. Maybe I stepped in something? From a reader:

Not a good point, rather idiotic. Rand denounced Nietzsche, repeatedly and in no uncertain terms. Why do conservatives insist on insulting Ayn Rand? I will be reading along, and out of the blue, totally out of context, some dig at her will appear. Stop it. It's like Terry Jeffrey insisting that you cannot be moral unless you believe in God - offensive and stupid.

From a reader:

Dear Jonah:

The influence of Nietzsche is comparable to the influence of Plato,
Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Hegel, or Kant. People don't directly state
their indebtedness to him any more than you or I credit water for the
wonderful state of our health. Nietzsche is one of those great
philosophers--like Napoleon's a great general--who is in the water we drink
and the air we breath, and that is as true for liberals as it is for
conservatives.

All the best,

Brian [name/address withheld]

Me: I certainly take Brian's point and largely agree with it. However, leftwing philosophers and intellectuals do more than accept our/their debt (or burden) from him. They embrace him. Foucault, for example, called himself a Left-Nietzschean. Derrida, Sartre all those dudes were in constant -- and generally favorable -- dialogue with Nietzsche. Right? What I want to know if there are any American conservatives who've behaved similarly.

I had forgotten about her (as I often do). A reader notes that Ayn Rand was indebted to Friedrich and that a symposium is actually soliciting papers on the subject.

This is a good point. But, again, while Rand was certainly a figure of the Right, her connection with the conservative movement was, uh, complicated.

From a reader:

Your "corner" discussion prompted a thought. Paul Wolfowitz was a big admirer of Bloom who, as you know, kissed the hand of Strauss. Azar Nafisi (Author of "Reading Lolita in Terhan") acknowledges "Paul" in her book for introducing her to a work [actually by Strauss]. I wonder how all of the women's rights groups and quasi intellects reacted when they discovered it was Paul Wolfowitz, the evil incarnate, she was thanking. This truly underscores the irony of what is just.

Tom [Name withheld]
Chicago

PS-How can certain crusaders for women's rights be so up in arms with regard
to equal admission to Augusta Country Club and not expand that determination
globally in areas where women are treated as sub human?

Okay, another egghead bleg (EggBleg?). It is widely accepted that Nietzsche was a philosopher of the Right (though he was by no stretch of the imagination a conservative). Some have even called him the author of rightwing atheism. I don't want to get into what Nietzsche was or wasn't. But what I am curious about is if any philosopher-poli-sci-historian types (or just really well-read podiatrists for all I care) out there can point to any American conservatives who've taken-up Nietzsche as a major influence or hero. Of course, there's Mencken. But Mencken's relationship with and influence on American conservatism is complex and not necessarily direct. Is there anyone else? I looked in the index in Nash's The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America and he doesn't even appear there. Nor does his name appear in the index of The Conservative Tradition in America -- a great book by Charles Dunn and J. David Woodard.

I know Nietzsche remains very popular on the American and European left but I'm interested to know if anyone on the American (or British) right has written anything substantive claiming him as a man of the right. I don't mean simply defenses of him against the most slanderous charges (it was his sister who was the real anti-Semite etc etc).

Anyway, any insight would be appreciated.

Anne Norton is clearly a boob (that happens to be the professional opinion of about a dozen scholars and professors who've written me). More to the point, here's an account of Rossiter's troubles from his son (note: it's a PDF). It certainly doesn't sound like Norton consulted Caleb Rossiter. It's nice to know that in some areas, reporters are actually more reliable than "scholars," because a reporter would have at least bothered to fact-check such stuff. [If you're lost, again, scroll down.]

In response to my Thanksgiving column:

A friend just forwarded me your recent article praising our military and I wanted to say thank you. My husband deployed today and it's difficult to stomach that he is fighting for a cause that many Americans are so harshly against and probably know very little about, other than the little that the media shows. My family is giving up being together for the holidays because it is our job to defend and serve our country. I feel like a lot of our countrymen, whose rights are fought for by our military families, do not appreciate nor acknowledge such sacrifices. Thank you for validating their fight. Thank you for remembering.

(Scroll down for the discussion from yesterday) From a friend:

Ugh! The Foer piece is totally goofy. He says Nock shaped the spirit of today’s conservatism -- and then says Nock wouldn’t recognize conservatism today. Despite the incoherence of that argument, Frank’s employing as much rhetorical gymnastics as he can to make an exceedingly tired liberal argument born of liberal conceit and blinders: Nock (you could substitute a bunch of “weird uncles” here, by the way, Nock was hardly alone) provided intellectual cover for conservative hatred/bigotry, and while Nock’s intellectual influence has melted away, the hatred and bigotry remain. Clever.

Frank needs to look at progressive intellectual history. Turn of the century progressives, mostly affiliated with Ivy League schools and Bloomsbury circles were racist and elitist, arrogant to boot. The difference between those progressives and conservatives like Nock is that Nock distrusted the state to remedy the problem of so many subhumans jostling about, making life so unpleasant for guilt-addled elites. The progressives thought the state could engineer all those subhumans they loathed in a manner more to their liking – or at least make things less untidy. If it’s a choice between conservative haters and liberal/progressive haters, I’ll take the ones mistrustful of the state any day.

The whole point – or a whole point, there are many -- of Buckley’s influence is that it stripped the Nockian influence, such as it was, away – root and branch (Hayek and the neocons had similar effect). The same cannot be said for the legacy of Ivy League progressives and the left – the root remains firmly entrenched in liberal political soil today.