WILLIAM E. CONNOLLYrelational sensibility attached to faith that needs work, not the admission that faith plays
an important role in life. But, James asserts, he writes in the first instance to other philoso-
phers, most of whom profess either to rise above faith or, more often, to bracket it when
they participate in the domains of science, literary theory, philosophy, social theory, and
public life.
James, like Strauss and me, is dubious about these latter claims. While many express
their faith with less relational modesty than need be, the intellectual class tends to repress
the role that faith plays in the intellectual enterprise itself. It is when you press the ubiq-
uity of faith upon the intellectual class that you see that faith need not always be every-
thing or nothing. There is a lot of room between denying faith a constitutive role in life
and making it into everything. When you see how faith commitments vary in intensity,
content, and imperiousness, you set the stage to explore what it takes to engender modesty
in the relations between faiths co-existing on the same territory. And when you include
yourself and your faith in the equation, rather than pretending to float above the fray,
you place yourself in a better position to commend the ethos to others.
Americanism and Terrorism
Let’s fast-forward from the age of Strauss to today. William Kristol, a leading Republican
publicist, Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush who
orchestrated the Iraqi invasion, and William Bennett, a leading publicist of neoconserva-
tism, all profess debts to Leo Strauss. I will focus on Bennett, who until recently served as
the most visible media spokesperson for Reagan-Bush-Bush Republicanism. Between Leo
Strauss of the 1950s and 1960s and William Bennett of the onset of the twenty-first cen-
tury, a host of events has transpired. There have been new movements in decolonization,
civil rights, feminism, gay/lesbian rights, sexual liberation, and ecology. On the register of
dramatic events, there has been an intensification of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the
rise of a global corporate plutocracy, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the emergence of
a neoconservative majority on the American Supreme Court, the intensification of a large
evangelical Christian political movement, the near takeover of the electronic news media
in the U.S. by the moderate and bellicose right, the rapid rise of neoconservative think
tanks, 9/11, the war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the Guanta ́namo Gulag, the invasion
and occupation of Iraq by an American-led coalition of the willing, and Abu Ghraib.
William Bennett is no Leo Strauss. Is he, though, one of the gentlemen Strauss says
philosophers need to help infuse virtue into the currency of public life? There is, in one
respect, a clear line of descent from Strauss’s philosophical politics, propagated through
readings of classic philosophers, to William Bennett’s political admonitions, delivered in
popular books, public speeches, and TV interviews. Bennett also sees relativism, self-
indulgence, and rootlessness all around him, particularly among those who support mul-
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