Bill Kristol condemns lying for political ends: Seriously
Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
(updated below - Update II)
On Fox News yesterday, NPR's Juan Williams -- who, just by the way, dutifully spouts GOP talking points more reliably than any Fox commentator other than Karl Rove -- condemned President Obama for telling "lies" about the Gates controversy. That prompted this observation from Bill Kristol, in which he head-pattingly quoted Williams:
Amid all the blather about "teachable moments," I don't recall anyone else making this simple but profound observation: "You can't have a teachable moment if it's based on a lie." Another way of putting it might be to say that it's not a "moment" that's teachable, it's the truth that's teachable.
So a moment in which everyone colludes to obscure the truth (which seems characteristic of most "teachable moments" in contemporary America) is not a moment of teaching; it's a moment of deception, of misdirection, of obfuscation. Call it an obfuscatable moment.
It's hard to remember a statement in American politics as deceitful and obfuscating as this one from Bill Kristol, pretending to condemn politically-motivated lies. It's not hyperbole to say that the central political tactic of neoconservatism is the "noble lie" -- exactly what Kristol self-righteously condemns here. The political philosopher most revered by neoconservatives, Leo Strauss, explicitly advocated such lies, as Philosophy and Political Science Professor Shadia Drury documented:
[Strauss] therefore taught that those in power must invent noble lies and pious frauds to keep the people in the stupor for which they are supremely fit. . . . Like the Grand Inquisitor, he thought that it was better for human beings to be victims of this noble delusion than to “wallow” in the “sordid” truth. And like the Grand Inquisitor, Strauss thought that the superior few should shoulder the burden of truth and in so doing, protect humanity from the “terror and hopelessness of life.
(Continued here.)
Salon.com
(updated below - Update II)
On Fox News yesterday, NPR's Juan Williams -- who, just by the way, dutifully spouts GOP talking points more reliably than any Fox commentator other than Karl Rove -- condemned President Obama for telling "lies" about the Gates controversy. That prompted this observation from Bill Kristol, in which he head-pattingly quoted Williams:
Amid all the blather about "teachable moments," I don't recall anyone else making this simple but profound observation: "You can't have a teachable moment if it's based on a lie." Another way of putting it might be to say that it's not a "moment" that's teachable, it's the truth that's teachable.
So a moment in which everyone colludes to obscure the truth (which seems characteristic of most "teachable moments" in contemporary America) is not a moment of teaching; it's a moment of deception, of misdirection, of obfuscation. Call it an obfuscatable moment.
It's hard to remember a statement in American politics as deceitful and obfuscating as this one from Bill Kristol, pretending to condemn politically-motivated lies. It's not hyperbole to say that the central political tactic of neoconservatism is the "noble lie" -- exactly what Kristol self-righteously condemns here. The political philosopher most revered by neoconservatives, Leo Strauss, explicitly advocated such lies, as Philosophy and Political Science Professor Shadia Drury documented:
[Strauss] therefore taught that those in power must invent noble lies and pious frauds to keep the people in the stupor for which they are supremely fit. . . . Like the Grand Inquisitor, he thought that it was better for human beings to be victims of this noble delusion than to “wallow” in the “sordid” truth. And like the Grand Inquisitor, Strauss thought that the superior few should shoulder the burden of truth and in so doing, protect humanity from the “terror and hopelessness of life.
(Continued here.)
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