Leo Strauss, that is -- the Godfather of CMC's Gov Department and political philosopher extraordinaire, whose essay "What is Political Philosophy" I've been perusing to supplement my strange new intellectual diet of gubernatorial scandals and waterfront development.
I make note of this only to direct your attention to some particularly juicy gems of wisdom I found. Among them:
"When [a positivist] says that democracy is a value which is not evidently superior to the opposite value, he does not mean that he is impressed by the alternative which he rejects, or that his heart or his mind is torn between alternatives which in themselves are equally attractive. His "ethical neutrality" is so far from being nihilism or a road to nihilism that it is not more than an alibi for thoughtlessness and vulgarity: by saying that democracy and truth are values, he says in effect that one does not have to think about the reasons why these things are good, and that he may bow as well as anyone else to the values that are adopted and respected by his society. Social science positivism fosters not so much nihilism as conformism and philistinism."
This, for anyone who wonders why Dostoevsky's stark "without God, all is lawful" warning doesn't always seem to compute in our friendly, live-and-let-live Western world. More later.
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