Log24

Meditation for the High Holy Days:

Noble Lies or Criminal Fraud?

On Noble Lies:

“Leo Strauss, who for many years taught an esoteric reading of Plato at the University of Chicago, believed that an educated elite could rule through deception. A circle of his former students, now in appointed public office, are in a position to make Strauss’s teaching national practice.”

— America, the Jesuit weekly, July 7, 2003

(“Words are events.”– Walter J. Ong, S.J.) 

On Criminal Fraud:

“There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas…. This whole thing was a fraud.”

— Sen. Ted Kennedy on the Iraq war, Sept. 18, 2003

“Nothing could be a more serious violation of public trust than to consciously make a war based on false claims…. [The Bush administration’s] handling of intelligence and its retaliation against its critics may have been criminal.”

— Gen. Wesley Clark, Oct. 3, 2003

On the Good versus the True

According to one reading of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance– a book that deals with, among other things, the reading of Plato at the University of Chicago (see the Jesuit remarks above)– the Good is the enemy of the True.  This is a reading that may well appeal to Bush supporters, who would of course like to be on the side of the Good.  Let them recall two Middle Eastern sayings:

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,”
 
 and

“Satan is the father of lies.”