I like all you guys, but I'm quite confused as what qualifies as Straussian. I'll keep my wing tips out of that flak cloud. As we pursue our national interests, the moral nature of other nations should absolutely inform our decisions. That's just prudence; if we invite communists into our free trade club they will eventually wreck it.
1 - the only Strauss I hear here starts with C-G-C - making me wonder if responding to you doesn't, by itself, beg the question.
2 - It seems to me that your inconsistency argument consists largely of strawmen created by lightly mis-reading what the H's wrote - neither is isolationist, both are voteries of the self-evident committed first to securing rights for Americans and only then to securing those rights for others; with SH, in particular, consistently allowing for the reality that the duty to defend the American ideal can confer a right, as well an obligation, to interfere against despotism elsewhere.
3 - and, of course, most of your work here is a somewhat tangential paean to a world of peace loving, deeply trust worthy, allies ringing in the twin evils of Russia and China. Sadly, however, all of this is wrong: it's not 1949 anymore; America's NATO allies are weak and self-serving; Russia is a European power (and the only major one which doesn't arrest people for wrong think); and the real threats to American interests are from aging sociopaths in Iran, China, and the Democratic Party leveraging religious and nationalist rhetoric for personal survival in the face of their increasingly obvious domestic failures.
https://paulwilks.substack.com/p/a-grand-jury-must-be-empaneled-to
I like all you guys, but I'm quite confused as what qualifies as Straussian. I'll keep my wing tips out of that flak cloud. As we pursue our national interests, the moral nature of other nations should absolutely inform our decisions. That's just prudence; if we invite communists into our free trade club they will eventually wreck it.
Sorry John, but:
1 - the only Strauss I hear here starts with C-G-C - making me wonder if responding to you doesn't, by itself, beg the question.
2 - It seems to me that your inconsistency argument consists largely of strawmen created by lightly mis-reading what the H's wrote - neither is isolationist, both are voteries of the self-evident committed first to securing rights for Americans and only then to securing those rights for others; with SH, in particular, consistently allowing for the reality that the duty to defend the American ideal can confer a right, as well an obligation, to interfere against despotism elsewhere.
3 - and, of course, most of your work here is a somewhat tangential paean to a world of peace loving, deeply trust worthy, allies ringing in the twin evils of Russia and China. Sadly, however, all of this is wrong: it's not 1949 anymore; America's NATO allies are weak and self-serving; Russia is a European power (and the only major one which doesn't arrest people for wrong think); and the real threats to American interests are from aging sociopaths in Iran, China, and the Democratic Party leveraging religious and nationalist rhetoric for personal survival in the face of their increasingly obvious domestic failures.