1. This is a good thread and inspires some thoughts on Leo Strauss, James Burnham, the Simpsons, Lisa Simpson, Jebediah Springfield, & Carl Jung.
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1164297549869658112
2. One response to the problem @mattyglesias outlines (that any true history of a nation's founding would have to confront horrific crimes) is to myth-make. This is often done in an unconscious spirit but there are also major strands of conservative thought that advocates it
3. I think Leo Strauss' emphasis on esoteric/exoteric distinction, along with the Platonic tradition of the Noble Lie explains why Strauss encouraged his students to write edifying studies of the founders & Locke, even though Strauss' own heart was with ancients.
4. James Burnham, a Trostskyist turned W.F. Buckley mentor, came at politics from a different tradition (Machiavellianism) than Strauss. But Burnham also (influenced by Georges Sorel idea of social mythology) believed fictions were needed to hold society together.
5. Burnham, Congress and the American Tradition, 1959: "In ancient times, before the illusions of science had corrupted traditional wisdom, the founders of Cities were known to be gods or demigods." In other words, good societies are bound together by mythical foundings.
6. All these issues were played out in the great but problematic Simpson's episode Lisa the Iconoclast. Lisa discovers that town founder Jebediah Springfield was in fact a vile pirate. Town resists her discovery so she embraces the lie en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_the_…
7. This is tangential but a large strand of rightwing thought in last century (the line from Jung to Campbell to Peterson) has pursued the argument that myths are essential for social life, It's not the natural law argument of past but explicit embrace of myth.
8. But contra Strauss, Burnham & Lisa Simpson, I'm not sure that a noble lie is necessary. It's my democratic conviction that people are smart enough to have a complicated patriotism, that acknowledges both the achievements and crimes of the past.
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