Outrageous idiocy from a leftwing Canuck. She calls Leo Strauss a “Jewish Nazi” in the Boston Globe. The author of the article is more fair, but not by much. The relevant paragraph:Boston Globe.
Strauss also claims a large, if rather clubbish, following in the academy, especially among scholars of political theory and American constitutional history. And yet even those academics who know Strauss’s work best often sharply disagree about its fundamental meaning. There are East Coast Straussians, West Coast Straussians, and even some Straussian Democrats. Clifford Orwin, a professor at the University of Toronto strongly influenced by Strauss, describes him as a wise teacher who counseled prudence and moderation. But Shadia Drury, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary and the author of ”Leo Strauss and the American Right,” completely disagrees. For her, Strauss was nothing less than ”a Jewish Nazi” whose pretense of American patriotism and piety hid a cynical and extremist antidemocratic ideology.
I’m not a huge fan of Leo Strauss, to the extent I understand him, but this sort of thing is so infuriatingly idiotic it makes me want to become a Strausian.