To the Straussians, rationality does not provide an adequate basis for a stable social order. To the contrary, the Age of Enlightenment has ushered in the crisis of modernity, in which nihilism – the moral vacuum left behind by the death of God – inevitably leads to decadence, decline and, ultimately, genocide.

That logical leap from Jefferson to Hitler might seem like the intellectual equivalent of Evel Knieval’s outlandish attempt to jump the Snake River canyon on a rocket-powered motorcycle. But it’s essential to the Straussian world view – just as it provides the crucial angst that gives neo-conservatism such sharp political edges.

When Newt Gingrich equated feminism with the destruction of Western civ, he was echoing (in his dumbed-down way) Strauss’s lurking fear that the liberal American state would steer the same course as the Weimar Republic – a political Titanic on a collision course with a totalitarian iceberg. Deprived of the moral certainty provided by religion and tradition, the masses are vulnerable to crazed political adventurers who would fill the nihilistic void with their own crackpot ideas – like, say, the international conspiracy of Communists and Freemasons. They might even be worse than Tom DeLay. Or, as Drury laconically puts it:

Strauss . . . does not disagree with Marx that religion is the opium of the masses, he just thinks that people need their opium.

What gives Straussian thought its special flavor – a bitter blend of hypocrisy and cynicism – is the fact that Strauss himself didn’t believe in the eternal “truths” he championed. He was a nihilist, in other words – but one who believed only the philosophical elite could be trusted to indulge in such a dangerous vice. In exchange for this privilege, the elite has a special obligation to uphold the “noble lies” the ignorant masses must live by if society is to survive.

What’s more, Strauss not only thought this – he believed the ancient philosophers agreed with him, which is why their texts shouldn’t be read literally – at least not by the privileged elite. It seems that Strauss, like Madonna, had a thing for Kabbalism. He believed his Greek role models had endowed their Great Books with two very different meanings: one for the elect and one for the masses (like first class and coach, in other words, but with extra frequent flyer miles for the PhDs.) But these secret meanings had been carefully concealed, so as not to scare the children with the awful truth – or, more accurately, the awful lack of truth. They could, however, be deciphered by wise and virtuous philosophers who understood and shared the classical world view – by Leo Strauss, in other words.

As Drury points out, people who go looking for hidden meanings usually find them. And everywhere Strauss looked – in the works of Plato, Aristotle and Nietzsche – he found . . . Leo Strauss, staring back up at him from the page. A philosophical case of “incestuous amplification,” in other words, a tendency the Straussians have emulated unto the present day, and not just in the Pentagon’s E ring.

The ridicule of the Straussians in the academy is connected to their unquestioning devotion to a set of ideas that they cannot or will not defend except to those who are already converted . . . For they do not want their ideas discussed openly or even known to anyone outside the charmed circle of initiates.