CONSPIRACY SECRETS REVEALED!!: The origins of my latest New Republic Online essay can be found in my posts about the Straussian meme here and here.

Click here for an online version of Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in World Politics."

Here's a link to the Washington Post story quoted in the essay.

Propagaters of the "neoconservative cabal" argument include Pat Buchanan and Tam Dalyell. Robert Lieber's essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education does an excellent job of collecting the quotes of others who push this argument, such as William Pfaff.

As for the Straussians, the Boston Globe had a story this past Sunday on Strauss' influence on world politics. Here's Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article -- and here's an interview with Hersh that touches on Strauss as well. Le Monde also ran a piece on the Straussians that pre-dated both the NYT and Hersh -- here's a translated version. Josh Cherniss has a series of excellent posts -- here, here, here, here and here -- that provides considerable background on Straussian thought and its relative incompatibility with neoconservatism.

Finally, for those conspiracy-mongers reading this a looking for some way to dismiss my claims, let me provide some ammunition. I teach in the very same political science department where Leo Strauss taught and Paul Wolfowitz studied forty years ago. In 1994, I briefly worked with Abe Shulsky, one of the Straussians highlighted in the New Yorker article. Last night, I attended a talk that my overlord -- I mean, respected commentator William Kristol -- gave for the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.

Oh, and I'm Jewish.

UPDATE: Justin Raimondo provides a traditional conservative rebuttal. Man, that guy can link.