Post by Sharon / Redsky

i get why Claremont is like that now, even if Jaffa would probably hate the current version of Claremont

The West Coast Straussians are prone to zealous partisanship in politics and the academy. The dominant figure among the West Coast Straussians is Harry Jaffa. Jaffa taught for many years at Claremont Graduate School and remains affiliated with the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. They are regarded as vehement and ideological, even by fellow conservatives, and they are unabashedly partisan. Jaffa writes: “The salvation of the West must come, if it is to come, from the United States. The salvation of the United States, if it is to come, must come from the Republican Party. The sal- vation of the Republican Party, if it is to come, must come from the conservative party within it.” West Coast Straussians regard themselves as combative—“combative as hell,” Thomas West, one of their number, writes. They not only dislike liberals, left- ists, and Democrats, they have fights to pick with the followers of other conservative figures: Frederick Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Willmoore Kendall. For these men—they are, as far as I know, all men—politics comes before philosophy.

aug 25, 2025, 3:57 am • 29 5

Replies

A pack of incel idiots.

aug 25, 2025, 4:08 am • 1 0 • view

Yes, the obsession with America as embodying a sort of civic religion, and progressivism as the great heresy from this unalterable faith. Of course, as you say, Jaffa would hate Neo-Claremont as the peddler of an infantile ultra-right authoritarianism, a kindergarten Nietzscheanism.

aug 25, 2025, 5:17 am • 2 0 • view

Not the point, but the thought of a supposed intellectual spending any time on a "follower of Ayn Rand" is very silly

aug 25, 2025, 1:26 pm • 0 0 • view