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August
1, 2003
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Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing
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August
2, 2003
"My
Alma Mater is a Moral Cesspool"
Neo-Cons,
Fundies, Feddies and the University of Chicago
By FRANCIS A. BOYLE
Professor of Law,
University of Illinois School of Law
It is now a matter of public record that immediately
after the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001, U.S. Secretary
of War Donald Rumsfeld and his pro-Israeli "Neoconservative"
Deputy Paul Wolfowitz began to plot, plan, scheme and conspire
to wage a war of aggression against Iraq by manipulating the
tragic events of September 11th in order to provide a pretext
for doing so. Of course Iraq had nothing at all to do with September
11th or supporting Al-Qaeda . But that made no difference to
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the numerous other pro-Israeli Neo-cons
in the Bush Jr. administration.
These pro-Israeli Neo-cons had been schooled
in the Machiavellian/Nietzschean theories of Professor Leo Strauss,
who taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago
in their Department of Political Science. The best expose of
Strauss's pernicious theories on law, politics, government, for
elitism, and against democracy can be found in two scholarly
books by the Canadian Professor Shadia B. Drury: The Political
Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988); Leo Strauss and the American Right
(1999). I entered the University of Chicago in September of 1968
shortly after Strauss had retired. But I was trained in Chicago's
Political Science Department by Strauss's foremost protege, co-author,
and literary executor Joseph Cropsey. Based upon my personal
experience as an alumnus of Chicago's Political Science Department
(A.B., 1971, in Political Science), I concur completely with
Professor Drury's devastating critique of Strauss. I also agree
with her penetrating analysis of the degradation of the American
political process by Chicago's Straussian cabal.
Chicago routinely trained me and numerous
other students to become ruthless and unprincipled Machiavellians.
That is precisely why so many neophyte Neo-con students gravitated
towards the University of Chicago or towards Chicago Alumni at
other universities. The University of Chicago became the "brains"
behind the Bush Jr. Empire and his Ashcroft Police State. Attorney
General John Ashcroft received his law degree from the University
of Chicago in 1967. Many of his "lawyers" at the Department
of Injustice are members of the right-wing, racist, bigoted,
reactionary, and totalitarian Federalist Society (aka "Feddies"),
which originated in part at the University of Chicago.
Although miseducated at Yale and Harvard
Business School, the "Ivies" proved to be too liberal
for Bush Jr. and his fundamentalist Christian supporters, whose
pointman and spearcarrier in the Bush Jr. administration was
Ashcroft, a Fundie himself. The Neo-cons and the Fundies contracted
an "unholy alliance" in support of Bush Jr. across
the board. For their own different reasons, both groups also
worked hand-in-hand to support Israel's genocidal Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon, an internationally acknowledged war criminal. Strange
bedfellows indeed.
According to his own public estimate
and boast before the American Enterprise Institute, President
Bush Jr. hired about 20 Straussians to occupy key positions in
his administration, many holding offices where they could push
American foreign policy in favor of Israel and against its chosen
enemies such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians. It was
the Chicago Straussian cabal of pro-Israeli Neo-cons who set
up a separate "intelligence" unit within the Pentagon
that was responsible for manufacturing many of the bald-faced
lies, deceptions, half-truths, and outright propaganda that the
Bush Jr. administration then disseminated to the lap-dog U.S.
news media in order to generate public support for a war of aggression
against Iraq for the benefit of Israel and in order to steal
Iraq's oil. To paraphrase something Machiavelli once advised
his Prince in Chapter XVIII of that book: Those who want to deceive
will always find those willing to be deceived. As I can attest
from my personal experience as an alumnus of the University of
Chicago Department of Political Science, the Bible of Chicago's
pro-Israeli Neo-con Straussian cabal is Machiavelli's The Prince.
As for the University of Chicago overall,
its Bible is Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987).
Of course Bloom was another protege of Strauss, as well as a
mentor to Wolfowitz. In his latest novel Ravelstein (2000) Saul
Bellow, formerly on the University of Chicago Faculty, outed
his self-styled friend Bloom as a hedonist, pederast, and most
promiscuous homosexual who died of AIDS. All this was common
knowledge at the University of Chicago, where Bloom is still
worshipped and his elitist screed against American higher-education
still revered. In Ravelstein Wolfowitz appeared as Bloom's protege
Philip Gorman, and Strauss as Bloom's mentor and guru Professor
Davarr. Strauss/Davarr is really the eminence grise of the novel.
With friends like Bellow, Bloom did not need enemies.
Just recently the University of Chicago
officially celebrated its Bush Jr. Straussian cabal, highlighting
Wolfowitz Ph.D. '72, Ahmad Chalabi, Ph.D. '69, Abram Shulsky,
A.M. '68, Ph.D. '72, Zalmay Khalilzad, Ph.D. '79, together with
faculty members Bellow, X '39 and Bloom, A.B. '49, A.M. '53,
Ph.D. '55. According to the June 2003 University of Chicago Magazine,
Bloom's book "helped popularize Straussian ideals of democracy."
It is correct to assert that Bloom's rant helped to popularize
Straussian "ideas," but they were blatantly anti-democratic,
Machiavellian, Nietzschean, and elitist to begin with. Only the
University of Chicago would have the unmitigated Orwellian gall
to publicly claim that Strauss and Bloom cared one whit about
democracy, let alone comprehended the "ideals of democracy."
Does anyone seriously believe that the
Chicago/Strauss/Bloom product Wolfowitz cares one whit about
democracy in Iraq? Or the Bush Jr. administration itself, after
having stolen the 2000 presidential election from the American
People in Florida and before the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme
Court, some of whom were Feddies? Do not send your children to
the University of Chicago where they will grow up to become warmongers
like Wolfowitz or totalitarians like Ashcroft! Chicago is an
intellectual and moral cesspool.
Francis A. Boyle,
Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of Foundations
of World Order, Duke University Press, The
Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and Palestine,
Palestinians and International Law, by Clarity Press.
He can be reached at: FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU
Weekend Edition Features for July 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
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