The American Enterprise: The Second Time as Farce

The Second Time as Farce
By Joseph Knippenberg

I woke up last Tuesday and had to pinch myself. Those diabolical Straussians—students, and students of students, of the late Leo Strauss (1899-1973), a German Jewish émigré and political philosopher whose measured praise (and criticism) of liberal democratic toleration has been deemed insufficiently fulsome by his critics—had added another government to their collection. The shadowy anti-democratic elitists behind George W. Bush could look northward to Ottawa and find kindred spirits behind newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

At least that’s what some hysterical Canadian pundits told me.

The villains of their piece are the “Calgary School,” a group of academics, mostly political scientists, who teach at the University of Calgary, and with whom Harper has been associated since the late 1980s.

Here’s what the pundits have to say.

Members of the Calgary School are un-Canadian: Deriving its inspiration from the works of Friedrich von Hayek, Eric Voegelin, and Leo Strauss, the Calgary School “does not take its lead from the indigenous Canadian tradition. The sooner that Canadians realize that the Calgary School and tribe are American Republican conservatives, compradors and apologists for the empire, the sooner we can say that such a clan is not deeply Canadian in any significant sense.”

The Calgarians would Americanize the Canadian political system: “Most of the group’s policy prescriptions—from an elected senate to parliamentary approval of judges—would have one effect: they would wipe out the quirky bilateral differences that are stumbling blocks to seamless integration with the United States.”

The Calgary School has a secret agenda: “Strauss recommended harnessing the simplistic platitudes of populism to galvanize mass support for measures that would, in fact, restrict rights. Does the Calgary school resort to such deceitful tactics?” Of course: “Harper has a scary, secret agenda.” In a speech given to Civitas, a “secretive organization, which has no Web site and leaves little paper or electronic trail,” “Harper urged a return to social conservatism and social values, to change gears from neocon to theocon.”

Wrapping it all up is long-time Strauss critic Shadia Drury, a professor at the University of Regina, quoted in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s (actually Toronto’s) national newspaper: “The Calgary School ‘is a Canadian appropriation of American neo-conservatism’…. Their thinking represents…’a huge contempt for democracy,’ and this election campaign [of 2004] ‘the greatest stealth campaign we have ever seen,’ run by radical populists hiding behind the cloak of rhetorical moderation.”

Finally, if you like your analysis even less nuanced, there’s this Canadian blogger’s take: “The hidden agenda is no myth. All of the neo-cons mentioned, but particularly the members of The Calgary School, are adherents of the teachings of Leo Strauss. One of the most notorious of Strauss’ students was Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Strauss’ philosophy was less a philosophical pursuit and more of a manifesto. He believed that in order to protect people from themselves government should be made up of an elite group of philosophers who hide the truth and present a palatable falsehood in order to pursue their agenda—the so-called “noble lie.” He argued that those governing must conceal their views for two reasons—to spare the peoples’ feelings and to protect the elite from possible reprisals.

“There is no reason to believe that the members of The Calgary School have suddenly changed their devotion to the Strauss philosophy. In fact, there is every reason to believe that during an election campaign it is strengthened.

“Should Harper actually win the election on the 23rd, you can be assured that writers of policy, the advisors in the Prime Minister’s Office and the framers of legislation will be a group of racist, homophobic, anti-feminist bigots; those we now know as The Calgary School.”

Of course, if you take a close look at the evidence, matters get more complicated. The piece most frequently cited by the pundits is Marci McDonald’s “The Man Behind Stephen Harper,” an extended profile of political scientist Tom Flanagan, described as “Harper’s Karl Rove.” McDonald can’t seem to decide whether Flanagan and his colleagues are social conservatives or purveyors of a “Rocky Mountain brand of libertarianism.” She variously cites as among Flanagan’s formative influences Eric Voegelin, Friedrich von Hayek, Leo Strauss, and “bio-politics,” which looks to primate behavior as a clue to understanding human behavior in social groups. How this all fits together in one person’s mind is anyone’s guess. Hayek claims not to be a conservative. Voegelin and Strauss conducted a long correspondence in which they disagreed more often than they agreed, though I suspect that they might have agreed in finding the study of primates unhelpful in understanding human political behavior.

Other members of the Calgary School might be a little easier to pin down. Barry Cooper is a widely published Voegelin scholar, who claims to have read everything Strauss wrote but not to be a Straussian. Rainer Knopff and F.L. “Ted” Morton are prominent constitutional law scholars who studied with Walter Berns and Allan Bloom, both students of Strauss, at the University of Toronto. Morton, currently a member of Alberta’s legislative assembly, is said to be a social conservative because he holds the following view: “Societies require, in my opinion, a certain self-generating ethical glue…that is generated most naturally and most effectively in the traditional, two-parent family.” Radical stuff, that is, at least if you live in a country that has rapidly been approaching gay marriage and the possibility of legally sanctioned polygamy.

Much of the noise about the Calgary School’s alleged Straussianism has been traced to one source, the University of Regina’s Shadia Drury, who has made her career by writing increasingly shrill and implausible screeds purporting to expose the anti-democratic elitism (and ultimate nihilism) of Leo Strauss and his students. Her work has often impressed those who haven’t actually read Strauss, especially if they’re fond of conspiracy theories and have a visceral hatred for conservatives. Her commentary on the Canadian scene, warning of “radical populists hiding behind the cloak of rhetorical moderation,” is hard to square with her picture of Strauss and his students as anti-democratic elitists. What are those Straussians—elitists who manipulate the credulous people by lying, or radical populists? Apparently, Drury can’t decide.

Fortunately, there are more measured accounts of Canadian conservatism and the Calgary School available. For example, political theorist David Koyzis praises the Calgarians’ solicitude for political institutions and interest in reinvigorating pluralistic alternatives to the monolithic Canadian welfare state, while worrying that their “rugged individualism” might weaken the very “civil society” they in other respects seem to wish to shore up. John von Heyking downplays Harper’s social conservatism, arguing that, with Conservatives holding the reins of power in Ottawa, “Canadians can expect changes in the ways government is held accountable and minor changes in taxes and healthcare, but no changes to social policy including same-sex marriage and abortion.” The biggest change in social policy is likely to be a national childcare voucher, empowering parents, which is certainly preferable to a national network of government-run day care centers, the preferred Liberal alternative. Two veteran Canadian political observers call attention to the great diversity in Harper’s coalition, which includes, among others, libertarians, populist/democratic conservatives, social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and “Red Tories” (a uniquely Canadian category, which emphasizes a traditional paternalistic concern for social welfare, often connected with a mistrust of the untrammeled individualism and free market orientation said to characterize the U.S.). It will, they observe, be no easy task holding this disparate coalition together. Too pronounced a move in the social conservative direction, for example, runs the risk of alienating the libertarians.

In the end, you may be disappointed (or pleased) to learn, there is no monolithic Straussian cabal poised to unite Canada and the U.S. in a North American theocracy, real or pretended. There is, however, a very smart and interesting group of Canadian public intellectuals who enjoy one another’s company and enjoy arguing with one another, as well as with their more typically liberal and leftist Canadian colleagues. They seem to have the ear of the Prime Minister, but they don’t speak with one voice. Canadian political discourse, long dominated by Liberals from Ontario and Quebec, will be diversified, and hence less ossified and sclerotic. It could be interesting and edifying to watch, from our vantage point south of the border.

But the “Straussians” will no more control Ottawa than they do Washington, D.C.

Joseph Knippenberg is a professor of politics and associate provost for student achievement at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. He is a weekly columnist for The American Enterprise Online and a contributing blogger at No Left Turns.