'''Leo Strauss''' (politiek filosoof, die in neoconservatieve beweging die sinds de jaren zeventig belangrijk is in de Amerikaanse politiek. Zelf hield hij zich echter niet bezig met praktische politiek: hij concentreerde zich volledig op het schrijven van een groot aantal, zeer grondige tekststudies van de filosofen uit de traditie van de politieke filosofie van Plato tot Heidegger.

==Leven==
Strauss werd in 1899 geboren in een orthodox joods gezin in Kirchhain (nabij Marburg), Hessen als zoon van Hugo Strauss en Jennie David. 

Hij studeerde aan het beroemde Gymnasium Philippinum (waar ook Zionist. Strauss volgde verder wetenschappelijk onderwijs in Duitsland waar hij promoveerde onder Ernst Cassirer. Zoals vele andere Duitse studenten in die tijd die zich interesseerden voor filosofie volgde hij colleges van Martin Heidegger.

In New York. Van 1938 tot 1948 was hij hoogleraar politieke filosofie aan de New School of Social Research in New York. In 1944 werd hij Amerikaans staatsburger en van 1949 tot 1968 werkte Strauss als lid van de faculteit van de Universiteit van Chicago als hoogleraar in de politieke filosofie.

==Politieke filosofie==
In de eerste plaats moet opgemerkt worden dat Strauss geen actieve Plato, Aristoteles en Xenophon. Met name bekritiseerde hij het moderne liberalisme dat voorrang geeft aan individuele vrijheid ten koste van historische waarden zoals uitmuntendheid en deugd. 

Strauss argumenteerde dat het hedendaagse, relativistische liberalisme het logische gevolg was van de filosofische principes van het nihilisme dat hij als gevaar voor de maatschappij zag.

Terwijl het modern liberalisme gericht is op het nastreven van individuele vrijheid als hoogste doel, zag Strauss meer heil in een overheid die zich richtte op menselijke excellentie en politieke deugd. Hij merkte op dat denkers van de eerste orde, beginnend bij Plato, al bezig waren met de vraag  of goede en effectieve politici volledig eerlijk konden zijn en tegelijkertijd toch de beste doelen voor de maatschappij konden bereiken. Strauss vroeg zich continu af in welke mate vrijheid en excellentie samen kunnen gaan.

Met dit in het achterhoofd vraagt Strauss van zijn lezers om zich af te vragen of leugens om bestwil (Plato) geoorloofd zijn om de maatschappij bijeen te houden en te gidsen. Zijn sommige niet te bewijzen mythen gedoceerd door wijze leiders noodzakelijk om de meeste mensen doel en richting te geven en zo een stabiele maatschappij te verzekeren? Of kan een maatschappij zonder meer floreren op de basis van de ‘dodelijke waarheid’ (Nietzsche) beperkt tot wat we met zekerheid kunnen weten?

{{Infobox Philosopher 
|region = Western Philosophy 
|era = 20th-century philosophy 
|color = #B0C4DE 
|image_name =   
|image_caption = Leo Strauss 
|name = Leo Strauss 
|birth = September 20, 1899 Kirchhain, Hesse, Germany 
|death = October 18, 1973 Annapolis, Maryland.  , United States 
|school_tradition =  Continental Philosophy, Platonism, Conservatism 
|main_interests = Metaphysics, Epistemology, Greek philosophy, History of philosophy, Philosophy of religion,  Political philosophy, Nihilism, Continental philosophy, Politics 
|influences = Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, Kant, Rosenzweig, Nietzsche, Heidegger 
|influenced = George Grant, Harry V. Jaffa, Mark Lilla, Harvey C. Mansfield, Clifford Orwin, Thomas Pangle, Stanley Rosen, Eric Voegelin 
|notable_ideas = Esotericism 
}}
'''Leo Strauss''' (German-born political philosopher who specialized in the study of classical political philosophy. He spent most of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books. Since his death, he has come to be regarded as one of the intellectual fathers of neoconservatism in the United States.

==Biography==
Leo Strauss was born in the small town of Kirchhain, Hesse, Germany, on September 20, 1899, to Hugo Strauss and Jennie Strauss, née David. According to Allan Bloom's  1974 obituary in ''Political Theory'', Strauss "was raised as an Orthodox Jew," but in fact the family does not appear to have completely embraced Orthodox practice.<ref>Joachim Lüders and Ariane Wehner, ''Mittelhessen – eine Heimat für Juden? Das Schicksal der Familie Strauss aus Kirchhain'' (Central Hesse – a Homeland for Jews? The Fate of the Strauss Family from Kirchhain) 1989</ref>  

In "A Giving of Accounts", published in ''The College'' 22 (1) and later reprinted in ''Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity'', Strauss noted he had come from a "conservative, even orthodox Jewish home," but one in which there was little Jewish knowledge beyond a strict adherence to ceremonial laws. His father and uncle operated a farm supply and livestock business that they inherited from their father, Meyer (1835–1919), a prominent and outspoken leader of the Jewish community. Leo Strauss would dedicate his second book to his father.
 
After attending the Kirchhain ''Volksschule'' and the private, Protestant ''Rektoratsschule'', Leo Strauss was enrolled at the famous Cantor Strauss (no relation); the Cantor's residence served as a meeting place for followers of the neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen. Strauss served in the German army during World War I from July 5, 1917 to December 1918.

Strauss subsequently enrolled in the University of Jacob Klein but he also was friendly and intellectually engaged with Karl Löwith, Gerhard Krüger, Julius Guttman, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Franz Rosenzweig (to whom Strauss dedicated his first book), Gershom Scholem, Alexander Altmann, and the Arabist Paul Kraus, who married Strauss's sister Bettina (Strauss and his wife later adopted their child when both parents perished in the Middle East). With several of these old friends, Strauss carried on vigorous epistolary exchanges later in life; many of these letters are now being published in the ''Gesammelte Schriften'' (Collected Writings) as well as elsewhere, some in translation from the German. Strauss had also been engaged in an important discourse with Carl Schmitt, who was instrumental in Strauss's receiving a Rockefeller Fellowship. However, when Strauss left Germany, he reportedly broke off communication with Schmitt who failed to reply to his overtures, leading Strauss to ask his friend Jacob Klein whether Schmitt still answered his letters.

In 1931 Strauss sought to perform his post-doc (Habilitation) with the prominent theologian Paul Tillich, but was turned down. After receiving a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1932, Strauss left his position at the Academy of Jewish Research in Berlin for Paris. He returned to Germany only once, for a few short days 20 years later. In Paris he married Marie (Miriam) Bernsohn, a widow with a young child whom he had known previously in Germany. He adopted his wife's son, Thomas, and later his sister's children; he and Miriam had no biological children of their own. At his death he was survived by Thomas, his sister's daughter, Jenny Strauss Clay, and three grandchildren. Strauss became a lifelong friend of Alexandre Kojève and was on friendly terms with Raymond Aron, Alexandre Koyré, and Etienne Gilson. Because of the Nazis' rise to power, he chose not to return to his native country. Strauss found shelter, after some vicissitudes, in England, where in 1935 he gained temporary employment at University of Cambridge. While in England, he became a close friend of R. H. Tawney.
right|thumb|200px|The [[University of Chicago, the school with which Strauss is most closely associated.]]
Unable to find permanent employment in England, Strauss moved in 1937 to the St. John's College, Annapolis in 1970, where he was the Scott Buchanan Distinguished Scholar in Residence until his death in 1973.

==Philosophy==
For Strauss, politics and philosophy were necessarily intertwined at their roots. He regarded the trial and death of Socrates as the moment in which political philosophy (as understood by Strauss) came to light. Until Socrates' life and death in Athens, philosophers were relatively free to pursue the study of nature and politics. Strauss mentions in ''The City and Man'' that Aristotle traces the first philosopher concerned with politics to have been a city planner many generations before Socrates.  Yet Socrates was not a political philosopher in the modern sense, according to Stanley Rosen in ''Plato's Republic''.<ref>Stanley Rosen, ''Plato's Republic: A Study'' (New Haven: Yale UP, 2005) 6.</ref> Socrates did not  study political phenomena philosophically; rather, Socrates was the first philosopher forced by the polis to treat philosophy politically: "According to the traditional view, the Athenian Socrates (469–399 B.C.) was the founder of political philosophy."<ref>Leo Strauss, "Introduction", 1–6 in ''History of Political Philosophy'', ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, 3rd ed. (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987) 1.</ref> Thus, Strauss considered one of the most important moments in the history of philosophy to be the argument by Socrates and his students that philosophers or scientists could not study nature without considering their own human nature, which, in the famous phrase of Aristotle, is "political."<ref>"From these things it is evident, that the city belongs among the things that exist by nature, and that man is by nature a political animal" (Aristotle, ''The Politics'', 1253a1–3).</ref> The trial of Socrates was the first act of "political" philosophy, and Plato’s dialogues were the purest form of the political treatment of philosophy, their sole comprehensive theme being the life and death of Socrates, the philosopher ''par excellence'' for Strauss and many of his students. 

Strauss distinguished "scholars" from "philosophers" or "great thinkers", identifying himself as a scholar. He wrote that most self-described philosophers are in actuality mere scholars, cautious and methodical rather than bold. Great thinkers, in contrast, he described as bold but wary of pitfalls that remain undetected by scholars. Strauss contended that only great thinkers are able to face the deepest problems independently, but they disagree among themselves on fundamental points. Those disagreements give scholars a way to touch on the problems indirectly by reasoning about the great thinkers' differences.<ref>Leo Strauss, "An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism", 27–46 in ''The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism'', ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989) 29–30.</ref>

In ''Natural Right and History'' Strauss begins with a critique of the Natural Right in analyzing the thought of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.  He concludes by critiquing Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke. At the heart of the book are excerpts of classical political philosophy, such as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. A selection of Strauss's essays published under the title ''The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism'' offers an introduction to his thinking: "Social Science and Humanism," "An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism," "On Classical Political Philosophy," "Thucydides and the Meaning of Political History," and "How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy" are among his topics.  Much of his philosophy is a reaction to the works of Heidegger. Indeed, Strauss wrote that Heidegger's thinking must be understood and confronted before any complete formulation of modern political theory is possible. For Strauss, Plato was the philosopher who could match Heidegger.

Strauss partially approached the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard through his understanding of Martin Heidegger, which he placed under the general rubric of "existentialism", a movement with a "flabby periphery" but a "hard center" in the thought of Heidegger.<ref>Leo Strauss, "Relativism", 13–26 in ''The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism'', ed. Thomas L. Pangle, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 24.</ref>  He wrote that Nietzsche was the first philosopher to properly understand relativism, an idea grounded in a general acceptance of Hegelian historicism. Yet  Heidegger, in Strauss's view, sanitized and politicized Nietzsche. Whereas Nietzsche believed "our own principles, including the belief in progress, will become as relative as all earlier principles had shown themselves to be" and "the only way out seems to be...that one voluntarily choose life-giving delusion instead of deadly truth, that one fabricate a myth".<ref>Leo Strauss, "Relativism", 13–26 in ''The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism'', ed. Thomas L. Pangle, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 25.</ref>, Heidegger himself believed that the tragic nihilism of Nietzsche was itself a "myth" formed by mankind, not guided by the defective Western conception of Being that Heidegger traced to Plato. For Strauss, as evidenced in his published correspondence with Alexandre Kojève, the possibility that Hegel was correct when he postulated an end of history meant an end to philosophy and an end to nature as understood by classical political philosophy. Strauss was much more sympathetic to Nietzsche's idea of tragedy in this prospect than to Heidegger's belief that nihilism, properly understood, contained the possibility of mankind's salvation.

==Strauss on reading==
In Phaedrus), Strauss proposed that an esoteric text was the proper type for philosophic learning. Rather than simply outlining the philosopher's thoughts, the esoteric text forces readers to do their own thinking and learning. As Socrates says in the ''Phaedrus,'' writing does not respond when questioned, but this type of writing invites a kind of dialogue with the reader, thereby reducing the problems of the written word. It was therefore also a teaching tool and even a filter to help prevent the creation of Alcibiades-like students. One of the political dangers Strauss pointed to was that of students' too quickly accepting dangerous ideas. This was indeed also relevant in the trial of Socrates, where his relationship with Alcibiades was used against him.
right|thumb|100px|''Persecution and the Art of Writing''.
Ultimately, Strauss believed that philosophers offered both an "exoteric" or salutary teaching and an "esoteric" or true teaching, which was concealed from the general reader. For maintaining this distinction, Strauss is often accused of having written esoterically himself. This opinion is perhaps encouraged because many of Strauss's works are difficult and sometimes seem mysterious. Moreover, a careful reading will show that he also emphasized that writers using this "lost" form of writing often left contradictions and other excuses to encourage the more careful examination of the writing. There are many examples of this in Strauss's own published works, providing a source of much debate surrounding Strauss.    

Therefore, a controversy exists surrounding Strauss's interpretation of the existing philosophical canon. Strauss believed that the writings of many philosophers contained both an exoteric and esoteric teaching, which is often not perceived by modern academics. Most famously, he believed that Plato's Republic should never have been read as a proposal for a real regime (as it is in the works of Karl Popper for example). But, according to Strauss, this kind of exoteric/esoteric dichotomy had generally become unused by the time of Immanuel Kant. Similarly well known are his espousals of the philosophical credentials of Niccolò Machiavelli and Xenophon.

==Strauss on politics ==
According to Strauss, modern Enlightenment philosophy to Max Weber, a thinker Strauss credited with a “serious and noble mind.” Weber wanted to separate values from science but, according to Strauss, was really a derivative thinker, deeply influenced by Nietzsche’s relativism.<ref>Allan Bloom, "Leo Strauss" 235–55 in ''Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960–1990'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990) 238–39.</ref> Strauss treated politics as something that could not be studied from afar. A political scientist examining politics with a value-free scientific eye, for Strauss, was impossible, not just  tragically self-deluded. Positivism, the heir to the traditions of both Auguste Comte and Max Weber, in making purportedly value-free judgments, failed the ultimate test of justifying its own existence, which would require a value judgment. 

While good for the city and man?''

===Liberalism and nihilism===
Strauss taught that hedonistic "permissive modern society and philosophy, Strauss sought to uncover the philosophical pathways that had led to this situation. The resultant study led him to advocate a tentative return to classical political philosophy as a starting point for understanding our predicament and judging political action.<ref>Leo Strauss, ''The City and Man'' (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964) 10–11.</ref>
<!-- Deleted image removed: right|thumb|150px|Cover of ''The City and Man''. -->

===Noble lies and deadly truths===
Strauss noted that thinkers of the first rank, going back to Plato, had raised the problem of whether good and effective politicians could be completely truthful and still achieve the necessary ends of their society. By implication, Strauss asks his readers to consider whether it is true that Plato's ''Republic'' that are required for all governments. These include a belief that the state's land belongs to it even though it was likely acquired illegitimately and that citizenship is rooted in something more than the accidents of birth.  Seymour Hersh observes that Strauss endorsed noble lies: myths used by political leaders seeking to maintain a cohesive society.<ref name=Hersh>Seymour M. Hersh, [http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030512fa_fact "Selective Intelligence"], ''The New Yorker'', May 12, 2003, accessed June 1, 2007.</ref><ref>Brian Doherty, [http://www.reason.com/9707/fe.bailey.shtml "Origin of the Specious: Why Do Neoconservatives Doubt Darwin?"], ''Reason Online'', July 1997, accessed February 16, 2007.</ref>

According to Strauss, Karl Popper's ''Plato's ''Republic'' for a blueprint for regime reform. Strauss quotes Cicero, "''The Republic'' does not bring to light the best possible regime but rather the nature of political things – the nature of the city."<ref>Leo Strauss, "Plato", 33–89 in ''History of Political Philosophy'', ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, 3rd ed. (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987) 68.</ref>  Strauss himself argued in many publications that the city-in-speech was unnatural, precisely because "it is rendered possible by the abstraction from ''eros''".<ref>Leo Strauss, "Plato", 33–89 in ''History of Political Philosophy'', ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, 3rd ed. (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987) 60.</ref>  The city-in-speech abstracted from ''eros,'' or bodily needs, thus could never guide politics in the manner Popper claimed. Though very skeptical of "progress," Strauss was equally skeptical about political agendas of "return" (which is the term he used in contrast to progress). In fact, he was consistently suspicious of anything claiming to be a solution to an old political or philosophical problem. He spoke of the danger in trying to finally resolve the debate between rationalism and traditionalism in politics. In particular, along with many in the pre-World War II German Right, he feared people trying to force a world state to come into being in the future, thinking that it would inevitably become a tyranny.

===Ancients and Moderns===
Strauss constantly stressed the importance of two dichotomies in political philosophy: Greek philosophers, brought philosophy back to earth, and hence back to the marketplace, making it more political. The Moderns reacted to the dominance of revelation in medieval society by promoting the possibilities of Reason very strongly – which in turn leads to problems in modern politics and society. In particular, Thomas Hobbes, under the influence of Bacon, re-oriented political thought to what was most solid but most low in man, setting a precedent for John Locke and the later economic approach to political thought, such as, initially, in David Hume and Adam Smith.

Not unlike Winston Churchill, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Thomas Jefferson, Strauss believed that the vices of a democratic regime must be known – and not left unquestioned – so that its virtues might triumph.<ref> Peter Berkowitz, [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/717acusr.asp "What Hath Strauss Wrought?"] ''The Weekly Standard''.06/02/2003, Volume 008, Issue 37.</ref> However, insofar as his teaching suggested that the argument for the pre-eminence of democracy is not an apodictic principle – not self-evident or beyond contradiction – he has gained a reputation among some for being an enemy to democracy.<ref>Shadia Drury, [http://www.uregina.ca/arts/CRC/encyc_leostrauss.html "Leo Strauss"], ''Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (New York: Routledge, 1998)</ref>

==Religious belief==
Although Strauss plainly espoused the utility of religious belief, there is some question of his views on its truth.<ref>Dannhauser, Werner J. ''Leo Strauss in His Letters''  in [http://books.google.com/books?id=C-gJ5YwN_awC&dq Enlightening revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner],  edited by Svetozar Minkov and Stephane Douard, pp. 359–360 (2007 Lexington Books)</ref>  In some quarters the opinion has been that, whatever his views on the utility of faith, he was personally an atheist. <ref>Dannhauser, Werner J. ''Leo Strauss in His Letters''  in [http://books.google.com/books?id=C-gJ5YwN_awC&dq Enlightening revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner],  edited by Svetozar Minkov and Stephane Douard, p.360 (2007 Lexington Books)</ref>  Strauss, however, was openly disdainful of broad atheism, as he made apparent in his writings on Weber.  He was especially disapproving of contemporary dogmatic disbelief which he considered intemperate and irrational and felt that one should either be "the philosopher open to the challenge of theology or the theologian open to the challenge of philosophy." <ref>Deutsch, Kenneth L. and Walter Nicgorski [http://books.google.com/books?id=zG2tRJHEdLUC&dq Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker] pp. 11–12, 1994 Rowman & Littlefield</ref> Notwithstanding accusations of veiled atheism, one position is that Strauss, in the interplay of Jerusalem and Athens, or revelation and reason, merely sought to, as did Thomas Aquinas, hold revelation to the rigors of reason, but where Aquinas saw an amicable interplay between the two, Strauss saw two impregnable fortresses. <ref>Schall S.J., James V. ''A Latitude for Statesmanship: Strauss on St. Thomas'' in [http://books.google.com/books?id=zG2tRJHEdLUC&dq Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker],  ed. Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Nicgorski,  pp. 212–215, 1994 Rowman & Littlefield</ref>     Werner Dannhauser, in contemplating Strauss' letters, concedes that the matter remains enigmatic but cautions, "It will not do to simply think of Strauss as a godless, a secular, a lukewarm Jew."<ref>Dannhauser, Werner J. ''Leo Strauss in His Letters''  in [http://books.google.com/books?id=C-gJ5YwN_awC&dq Enlightening revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner],  edited by Svetozar Minkov and Stephane Douard, p.360 (2007 Lexington Books)</ref>  As one commenter put it:

<blockquote>
Strauss was not himself an orthodox believer, neither was he a convinced atheist. Since whether or not to accept a purported divine revelation is itself one of the “permanent” questions, orthodoxy must always remain an option equally as defensible as unbelief.<ref>Feser, Edward, [http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=NzE5MTRlZGY5YmY1MTUyOTZkYWY5NThmZGQ2NTNjOTU= "Leo Strauss 101"] (a review of Steven B. Smith's ''Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism''), ''National Review Online,'' May 22, 2006.</ref></blockquote>

==Critical views of Strauss==
Critics of Strauss accuse him of mendacious elitist), radical illiberalism and anti-democratic sentiment. Shadia Drury, in  ''Leo Strauss and the American Right'' (1999), argues that Strauss taught different things to different students and inculcated an elitist strain in American political leaders that is linked to imperialist militarism and Christian fundamentalism. Drury accuses Strauss of teaching that "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them." Nicholas Xenos similarly argues that Strauss "was not an anti-liberal in the sense in which we commonly mean 'anti-liberal' today, but an anti-democrat in a fundamental sense, a true reactionary. Strauss was somebody who wanted to go back to a previous, pre-liberal, pre-bourgeois era of blood and guts, of imperial domination, of authoritarian rule, of pure fascism."<ref name="Xenos_Logos">Nicholas Xenos, [http://www.logosjournal.com/xenos.htm "Leo Strauss and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror,"] ''Logosjournal.com''</ref> As evidence, Xenos cites Strauss's attempt in 1933 to gain favor with Charles Maurras, the leader of the right-wing Action Française, as well as a letter Strauss wrote to his friend Karl Löwith in 1933 in which he defended the politics of the right against the Nazis. Strauss wrote that "just because Germany has turned to the right and has expelled us (Jews), it simply does not follow that the principles of the right are therefore to be rejected.  To the contrary, only on the basis of principles of the right – fascist, authoritarian, ''imperial'' – is it possible in a dignified manner, without the ridiculous and pitiful appeal to ‘the inalienable rights of man’ to protest against the mean nonentity (Nazism)."<ref name="Xenos_Logos"/> [Empasis in original, parentheticals added for context and meaning]

Strauss is also criticized by some on the right, especially by paleoconservatives.  For example, Paul Gottfried expresses the viewpoint that Strauss' ideology is not really conservative or right-wing at all; for example: <blockquote>The Democrats are less inclined than the Republicans to push the war policies favored by the Straussians. Although this reluctance may be due to their preoccupation with social questions at home, the Democrats are less open than the Republicans to Straussian imperial projects at the present time, if not necessarily for the future. Moreover, the establishment Right and its Republican organizational structure have become scavengers, living off yesterday’s leftist rhetoric. What Claes Ryn calls the "new Jacobinism" of the neoconservative- and Straussian-controlled pseudo-Right is no longer "new." It is the warmed-over rhetoric of Saint-Juste and Trotsky that the philosophically impoverished American Right has taken over with mindless alacrity. Republican operators and think tanks apparently believe they can carry the electorate by appealing to yesterday’s leftist clichés.<ref name=Gottfried>Paul Gottfried, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/gottfried/gottfried90.html "Strauss and the Straussians"], ''LewRockwell.com'', April 17, 2006, accessed February 16, 2007.</ref><ref name=Gottfriedarch>Cf. Paul Gottfried, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/gottfried/gottfried-arch.html "Paul Gottfried: Archives"], ''Lewrockwell.com'', accessed February 16, 2007.</ref></blockquote>

Similarly, the late Samuel Francis charged Straussian ideology with influencing the views of a powerful cabal whose neoconservatism "serve[d] as a political formula for preserving the New Deal–Great Society regime, even as the real conservatism began to rip it apart intellectually and to win political battles against it with Richard Nixon, George Wallace, and Ronald Reagan."<ref>Samuel Francis, [http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/September2003/0903Francis.html "Principalities & Powers: The Real Cabal"], ''Chronicles'', September 2003, accessed February 16, 2007.</ref>

==Notable students==

Strauss is controversial not only for his political views but also because some of his students and their followers are themselves controversial public figures.<ref>D.L. Levine, "Without Malice but with Forethought: A Response to Burnyeat," ''The Review of Politics'' (Special Issue on the Thought of Leo Strauss) 53, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 200–18.</ref>