Leo Strauss on Machiavelli

Machiavelli believed that love of patria commits one to lexically preferencing what is best for the people of the common fatherland.

Strauss, hoping to mislead his students into thinking him smart, says 

It is misleading to describe the thinker Machiavelli as a patriot. He is a patriot of a particular kind:

No. He is like all Florentine patriots in that he would fight for Florence and wanted the best for it even if the fucking Pope excommunicated every one of its citizens. 

he is more concerned with the salvation of his fatherland than with the salvation of his soul.

So, he is a patriot first & a Catholic (or whatever) second.  

His patriotism therefore presupposes a comprehensive reflection regarding the status of the fatherland on the one hand and of the soul on the other.

No. It could be associated with any fucking reflections whatsoever. The thing is 'multiply realisable'. Strauss had shit for brains- or, rather, was working a con of a low-rent type so as to prosper as a pedant teaching worthless shite.  

This comprehensive reflection, and not patriotism, is the core of Machiavelli’s thought.

In the opinion of a shithead. We don't know what was the 'core' of that dude's thought. He probably didn't either. The question is, did he do justice to his own views in his writing? I think not. He didn't have the vocabulary to fit his intuitions. Also, he was trying to be 'controversial' to gain fame & wider currency for his work.

Comphensive reflection, and not his patriotism, established his fame and made him the teacher of many men in all countries.

No. People got that he was a patriot. He was simply saying (paraphrasing Caiaphas) 'it is expedient' that a few are killed rather than many perish. If you are gonna kill the King, also kill his sons & nephews etc. Otherwise, you may have to fight a war a few years down the line. As for Religion, don't get me started mate. Kill a few Bishops & the rest will fall in line. What came after Machiavelli was 'Political Arithmetic' of a Consequentialist sort. His own theory can be seen as strategic- i.e. game theoretic. It had nothing to do with the stupid useless shite Strauss had studied & taught. 

The substance of his thought is not Florentine, or even Italian, but universal.

Because thoughts are like that. Sadly, this is also true of farts. I am a British citizen buy my farts aren't British in any particular. Nor are my thoughts- which mainly circle around the trials & tribulations of Californian cheerleaders who slay Vampires. 

It concerns, and it is meant to concern, all thinking men regardless of time and place.

All men think. Machiavelli didn't think most men would find anything of interest, or concern, in his shite. He did want Medicis- & those they relied upon & trusted- to rate him as a thinker. 

To speak of Machiavelli as a scientist is at least as misleading as to speak of him as a patriot.

One could say 'he is doing 'political science'' in the sense that term was used at certain Universities.  

The scientific student of society is unwilling or unable to pass “value-judgments,”

Nonsense! You just refer to them a 'preferences' & ask if they can be aggregated in a Social Welfare Function. Strauss was as ignorant as shit.  

but Machiavelli’s works abound with “value-judgments.”

Political Philosophy is purely imperative though it may rely on particular 'concrete models'.  

His study of society is normative.

He doesn't study society. We may say he assumes a particular type of 'Structural Causal Model' for Society which is deficient in this or that respect. 

But even if we were forced to grant that Machiavelli was essentially a patriot or a scientist, we would not be forced to deny that he was a teacher of evil.

Anyone can tell lies. Did Machi teach people how to rape kiddies or cut throats or poison folk? Nope. Either they knew how to do these things already or they could gain such instruction from those who made a profession out of that sort of thing.  

Patriotism as Machiavelli understood it is collective selfishness.

Self-interest is not selfishness. The former may be 'enlightened' & lead to a better collective outcome. The latter is myopic & invites retaliation.  

The indifference to the distinction between right and wrong which springs from devotion to one’s country

There is no such indifference. It is not the case that the patriot says 'let's rape that kid. Alternatively, we could help it get home to its Mummy. I'm indifferent between these two outcomes coz I really really lurve my country.' 

is less repulsive than the indifference to that distinction which springs from exclusive preoccupation with one’s own ease or glory.

No. I am indifferent to the fate of kids being bombed far far away because there's fuck all I can do about it. I am not indifferent with respect to my country being indifferent in this matter because it has some power & I want it to use that power- along with the power of other neutral nations- to put pressure on the combatants to refrain from indiscriminate slaughter of innocent kiddies.  

But precisely for this reason it is more seductive and therefore more dangerous.

Strauss was German. Maybe he believed patriotism caused Germans to get a hard-on when they heard of foreign kids being raped  

Patriotism is a kind of love of one’s own.

German patriotism involved loving Polish or Ukrainian territory.  

Love of one’s own is inferior to love of what is both one’s own and good.

Nonsense! You may love your naughty daughter more than your angelic son.  She needs it more. 

Love of one’s own tends therefore to become concerned with one’s own being good or complying with the demands of right.

Rubbish! Strauss's brains had turned to shit because he was teaching worthless shite from 2000 years ago. A gangster may love his Mummy more than his goody-goody brother.  

To justify Machiavelli’s terrible counsels

i.e. the sort of shite that went down anyway 

by having recourse to his patriotism, means

whatever you want it to. 

to see the virtues of that patriotism while being blind to that which is higher than patriotism,

sodomy? 

or to that which both hallows and limits patriotism.

Sodomy.  

In referring to Machiavelli’s patriotism one does not dispose of a mere semblance of evil;

saying 'x is justifiable under y' isn't itself evil no matter how evil x is.  

one merely obscures something truly evil. 

Writing stupid shite doesn't obscure anything. 

Strauss was a refugee earning dollars by teaching & writing obviously stupid & ignorant nonsense. 

 The United States of America may be said to be the only country in the world which was founded in explicit opposition to Machiavellian principles.

Fuck off! 'No taxation without representation' is explicitly economic & consequentialist. The joke is that the UK got Bentham, of all people, to write a rebuttal to the declaration of Independence.  

According to Machiavelli, the founder of the most renowned commonwealth of the world was a fratricide:

Romulus & Remus. But that was mere legend. The US was founded on a fratricidal war between Loyalists & Patriots. Come to think of it, Benjamin Franklin's son was on the British side and was imprisoned & then exiled for it.  

the foundation of political greatness is necessarily laid in crime. If we can believe Thomas Paine, all governments of the Old World have an origin of this description; their origin was conquest and tyranny. But “the Independence of America [was] accompanied by a Revolution in the principles and practice of Governments”: the foundation of the United States was laid in freedom and justice.

Loyalists were expelled. They lost their property, if not their lives.  

“Government founded on a moral theory, on a system of universal peace, on the indefeasible hereditary Rights of Man, is now revolving from west to east by a stronger impulse than the Government of the sword revolved from east to west.”

Mere puffery! The 'patriots' didn't want to pay for British protection because they gambled they could do better on their own. Also, the Brits would have restrained them from expanding without limit. There were other 'protectionist' motives of a wholly economic type.  

This judgment is far from being obsolete. While freedom is no longer a preserve of the United States, the United States is now the bulwark of freedom.

It was the bulwark of Jim Crow when Strauss wrote this.  

Is the whole of Strauss's book ignorant shit? Yes. But it served its purpose. Strauss did well by it. He became the Guru of the 'neo-con' shitheads.