Why Strauss thinks something “critical” is lost

1. Moral content is emptied out. If the law is only a fence around private desires, it cannot speak authoritatively about better or worse ways of living.

2. Civic virtue withers. Citizens are turned into clients of the sovereign, focused on individual gain, not on common deliberation.

3. Natural right is... See more

And while traditionalists, taking their cues from Aristotle, Aquinas, and Burke, believed that man was naturally sociable and tended toward consensus, so long as there was the faithful transmission of an ethical tradition, Burnham saw only conflict. This bedrock belief in the “irrational” and violent core of man and the primacy of conflict over

... See more