Harper, Bush Share Roots
In
Controversial Philosophy
"You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe."
"You take the red pill and
you stay in Wonderland and I'll show you how deep the
rabbit-hole goes."
Source:
The Tyee.. November 29, 2005 by Donald
Gutstein
Close advisors schooled in 'the noble lie' and 'regime change'
Harper and Bush share neocon philosophy
What do close advisors to Stephen Harper and George W. Bush have
in common? They reflect the disturbing teachings of Leo Strauss, the
German-Jewish émigré who spawned the neoconservative movement.
Strauss, who died in 1973, believed in the inherent inequality of
humanity. Most people, he famously taught, are too stupid to make
informed decisions about their political affairs. Elite philosophers
must decide on affairs of state for us.
In Washington, Straussians exert powerful influence from within the
inner circle of the White House. In Canada, they roost, for now, in
the so-called Calgary School, guiding Harper in framing his election
strategies. What preoccupies Straussians in both places is the
question of "regime change."
Strauss defined a regime as a set of governing ideas, institutions
and traditions. The neoconservatives in the Bush administration, who
secretly conspired to make the invasion of Iraq a certainty, had a
precise plan for regime change. They weren't out to merely replace
Saddam with an American puppet. They planned to make the system more
like the U.S., with an electoral process that can be manipulated by
the elites, corporate control over the levers of power and socially
conservative values.
Usually regime change is imposed on a country from outside through
violent means, such as invasion. On occasion, it occurs within a
country through civil war. After the American Civil War, a new
regime was imposed on the Deep South by the North, although the old
regime was never entirely replaced.
Is regime change possible through the electoral process? It's
happening in the U.S., where the neocons are succeeding in
transforming the American state from a liberal democracy into a
corporatist, theocratic regime. As Canada readies for a federal
election, the question must be asked: Are we next?
The 'noble lie'
Strauss believed that allowing citizens to govern themselves will
lead, inevitably, to terror and tyranny, as the Weimar Republic
succumbed to the Nazis in the 1930s. A ruling elite of political
philosophers must make those decisions because it is the only group
smart enough. It must resort to deception -- Strauss's "noble lie"
-- to protect citizens from themselves. The elite must hide the
truth from the public by writing in code. "Using metaphors and
cryptic language," philosophers communicated one message for the
elite, and another message for "the unsophisticated general
population," philosopher Jeet Heer recently wrote in the Globe and
Mail. "For Strauss, the art of concealment and secrecy was among the
greatest legacies of antiquity."
The recent outing of star New York Times reporter Judith Miller
reveals how today's neocons use the media to conceal the truth from
the public. For Straussians, telling Americans that Saddam didn't
have WMD's and had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda, but that we needed
to take him out for geopolitical and ideological reasons you can't
comprehend, was a non-starter. The people wouldn't get it. Time for
a whopper.
Miller was responsible for pushing into the Times the key neocon lie
that Saddam was busy stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. This
deception helped build support among Americans for the invasion of
Iraq. Miller was no independent journalist seeking the truth nor a
victim of neocon duplicity, as she claimed. She worked closely with
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's
Chief of Staff and responsible for coordinating Iraq intelligence
and communication strategy. Libby is a Straussian who studied under
Paul Wolfowitz, now head of the World Bank, and before that, deputy
secretary of defense, where he led the 'Invade Iraq" lobby.
Wolfowitz studied under Strauss and Allan Bloom, Strauss's most
famous student.
Miller cultivated close links to the neocons in the administration
and at the American Enterprise Institute, the leading
Washington-based neocon think tank. AEI played the key role outside
government in fabricating intelligence to make the case for invading
Iraq. Straussian Richard Perle, who chaired the Defence Policy Board
Advisory Committee until he was kicked off because of a conflict of
interest, is a senior fellow at AEI and coordinated its efforts.
Miller co-wrote a book on the Middle East with an AEI scholar.
Rather than being a victim of government manipulation, Miller was a
conduit between the neocons and the American public. As a result of
her reporting, many Americans came to believe that Saddam had the
weapons. War and regime change followed.
'Regime change' in Canada
As in the U.S., regime change became a Canadian media darling.
Before 9-11, the phrase appeared in Canadian newspapers less than
ten times a year. It usually referred to changes in leadership of a
political party or as part of the phrase "regulatory regime change."
Less than a week after 9-11, the phrase began to be used in its
Straussian sense, as if a scenario was being choreographed.
From 19 mentions in Canadian newspapers in 2001, regime change
soared to 790 mentions in 2002 and 1334 mentions in 2003. With the
Iraq invasion accomplished that year, usage tailed off in 2004 (291
mentions) and in 2005 (208 mentions to November 10).
There's one big difference between American and Canadian Straussians.
The Americans assumed positions of power and influence in the
administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The Canadians
have not had much opportunity to show (or is that hide?) their
stuff. That may change with a Harper victory.
Paul Wolfowitz's teacher, Allan Bloom, and another Straussian,
Walter Berns, taught at the University of Toronto during the 1970s.
They left their teaching posts at Cornell University because they
couldn't stomach the student radicalism of the '60s. At Toronto,
they influenced an entire generation of political scientists, who
fanned out to universities across the country.
Two of their students, Ted Morton and Rainer Knopff, went to the
University of Calgary where they specialize in attacking the Charter
of Rights and Freedoms. They claim the charter is the result of a
conspiracy foisted on the Canadian people by "special interests."
These nasty people are feminists, gays and lesbians, the poor,
prisoners and refugee-rights groups who are advancing their own
interests through the courts at the expense of the general public,
these Straussians allege.
The problem with their analysis is that the special interest which
makes more use of the courts to advance its interests than all these
other groups combined -- business -- receives not a mention.
Deception by omission is a common Straussian technique. The weak are
targeted while the real culprits disappear.
Harper's mentors
Harper studied under the neocons at the University of Calgary and
worked with them to craft policies for the fledgling Reform Party in
the late 1980s. Together with Preston Manning, they created an
oxymoron, a populist party backed by business.
Ted Morton has turned his attention to provincial politics. He's an
elected MLA and a candidate to succeed Premier Ralph Klein. But he
did influence the direction of right-wing politics at the federal
level as the Canadian Alliance director of research under Stockwell
Day.
When Harper threw his hat in the ring for the leadership of the
Alliance, Tom Flanagan, the Calgary School's informal leader, became
his closest adviser. Harper and Flanagan, whose scholarship focuses
on attacking aboriginal rights, entered a four-year writing
partnership and together studied the works of government-hater
Friedrich Hayek. Flanagan ran the 2004 Conservative election
campaign and is pulling the strings as the country readies for the
election.
Political philosopher Shadia Drury is an expert on Strauss, though
not a follower. She was a member of Calgary's political science
department for more than two decades, frequently locking horns with
her conservative colleagues before leaving in 2003 for the
University of Regina.
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?
Drury believes so. Such thinking represents "a huge contempt for
democracy," she told the Globe and Mail's John Ibbotson. The 2004
federal election campaign run by Flanagan was "the greatest stealth
campaign we have ever seen," she said, "run by radical populists
hiding behind the cloak of rhetorical moderation."
Straus and 'Western alienation'
The Calgary School has successfully hidden its program beneath the
complaint of western alienation. "If we've done anything, we've
provided legitimacy for what was the Western view of the country,"
Calgary Schooler Barry Cooper told journalist Marci McDonald in her
important Walrus article. "We've given intelligibility and coherence
to a way of looking at it that's outside the St. Lawrence Valley
mentality." This is sheer Straussian deception. On the surface, it's
easy to understand Cooper's complaint and the Calgary School's
mission. But the message says something very different to those in
the know. For 'St. Lawrence Valley mentality,' they read 'the
Ottawa-based modern liberal state,' with all the negative baggage it
carries for Straussians. And for 'Western view,' they read 'the
right-wing attack on democracy.' We've provided legitimacy for the
radical-right attack on the Canadian democratic state, Cooper is
really saying.
A network is already in place to assist Harper in foisting his
radical agenda on the Canadian people.
In 2003, he delivered an important address to a group called Civitas.
This secretive organization, which has no web site and leaves little
paper or electronic trail, is a network of Canadian neoconservative
and libertarian academics, politicians, journalists and think tank
propagandists.
Harper's adviser Tom Flanagan is an active member. Conservative MP
Jason Kenney is a member, as are Brian Lee Crowley, head of the
Atlantic Institute for Market Studies and Michel Kelly-Gagnon of the
Montreal Economic Institute, the second and third most important
right-wing think tanks after the Fraser Institute.
Civitas is top-heavy with journalists to promote the cause. Lorne
Gunter of the National Post is president. Members include Janet
Jackson (Calgary Sun) and Danielle Smith (Calgary Herald).
Journalists Colby Cosh, William Watson and Andrew Coyne (all
National Post) have made presentations to Civitas.
The Globe and Mail's Marcus Gee is not mentioned in relation to
Civitas but might as well be a member, if his recent column titled
"George Bush is not a liar," is any evidence. In it, Gee repeats the
lies the Bush neocons are furiously disseminating to persuade the
people that Bush is not a liar.
Neo-con to Theo-con
The speech Harper gave to Civitas was the source of the charge made
by the Liberals during the 2004 election -- sure to be revived in
the next election -- that Harper has a scary, secret agenda. Harper
urged a return to social conservatism and social values, to change
gears from neocon to theocon, in The Report's Ted Byfield's apt but
worrisome phrase, echoing visions of a future not unlike that
painted in Margaret Atwood's dystopian work, A Handmaid's Tale.
The state should take a more activist role in policing social norms
and values, Harper told the assembled conservatives. To achieve this
goal, social and economic conservatives must reunite as they have in
the U.S., where evangelical Christians and business rule in an
unholy alliance. Red Tories must be jettisoned from the party, he
said, and alliances forged with ethnic and immigrant communities who
currently vote Liberal but espouse traditional family values. This
was the successful strategy counselled by the neocons under Ronald
Reagan to pull conservative Democrats into the Republican tent.
Movement towards the goal must be "incremental," he said, so the
public won't be spooked.
Source:
The Tyee.
"You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake
in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe."
"You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland
and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."
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