Murray N. Rothbard vs. the Philosophers - Ludwig von Mises Institute

MURRAY N. ROTHBARD VS. THE PHILOSPHERS: UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS
94 ON HAYEK, MISES, STRAUSS, AND POLYANI
development, rather than a perversion or a diametric opposite.
Take, for example, the Strauss-Kirkian overlook that
while it is true that Aristotle and Plato were statists in their
approach to natural law, the Stoics were fine individualists. I
am glad to see that John Wild, in his Plato’s Modern Enemies
and the Natural Law, 44 agrees mainly with me, since
he includes Tom Paine in his good natural-law galaxy—and
no one is more anathema to the Strauss-Kirk types than
Tom Paine.
Getting back to the book at hand, this defect and virtue
are exhibited fully here, too. Strauss tilts lances at times
against positivism, historicism, and scientism, and against
modern democratic uniformity and conformity and its
assault on privacy. He is opposed to the social-engineering
amoralism of Machiavelli and to the pragmatism of Dewey.
He even slaps down his leftish Thomist colleague Yves
Simon for trying to maintain that Thomism implies democracy.
But we also find more evidence of his concrete political
position than was hitherto available, and much of it is
disturbing.
We find Strauss backing nationalism and national tradition
against cosmopolitans who prefer life and materialism;
we find him praising “farsighted,” “sober,” British imperialism;
we find him discoursing on the “good” Caesarism, on
Caesarism as often necessary and not really tyranny, etc. He
is suspicious, at least, of modern technology; in the fashion
of Thomism, he persists in identifying society and the State
(i.e., society with “political society”); he maintains that
virtue is more important than freedom (the first cry of every
statist); and he has the gall to talk about certain rulers not
being tyrants because they were “legitimate,” i.e., they were
in the proper line of monarchic succession.
So far, Leo Strauss has all the stigmata of the Kirkian
conservative at his worst; but the case is even worse than
44 John Wild, Plato’s Modern Enemies and the Theory of Natural
Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).