Know Your Enemy

Pull up a chair and pour yourself a drink! For the third installment in our occasional series on important conservative books, or important books written by or embraced by conservatives, we take up Leo Strauss's Natural Right and History, based on his 1949 Walgreen Lectures at the University of Chicago (where he taught for two decades) and published in 1953. To help us, we called on our friend Matt Dinan, a political theorist who's associate professor in the Great Books Program at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, Canada. If you've listened to previous episodes and wanted us to go deeper on Leo Strauss, the German-Jewish political philosopher who came to the United States after fleeing Nazism, "Straussianism," and what they might have to do with American conservatism and our present political moment, here you go.

After offering some background on Strauss and the context of Natural Right and History's publication, we discuss Strauss's patriotic appeal to Americans in the book's introduction, walk listeners through the chapters that follow (explaining what "natural right" is and why it's paired with "history" in the title along the way), and close out by exploring Strauss's ambiguous relationship to American conservatism—and more!

Sources:

Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (1953)

— On Tyranny (1963)

— Spinoza's Critique of Religion (1965)

Harry V. Jaffa, Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics (1952)

James W. Ceaser, "The American Context of Leo Strauss's Natural Right and History," Perspectives on Political Science, Spring 2008

Richard Velkley, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy: On Original Forgetting (2011)

— "On the Roots of Rationalism: Strauss's 'Natural Right and History' as Response to Heidegger," The Review of Politics, Spring 2008

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.

Last month, on May 14th, we were joined by nearly 800 listeners in New York City for the first ever Know Your Enemy live show, "Decline and Fall." The event was a fundraiser for Dissent, so we called in the big guns, our great friend Mike Duncan, to join us on stage. Many KYE listeners will be familiar with Mike, the brilliant and prolific host of the Revolutions and, especially relevant for the purposes of this conversation, History of Rome podcasts. We discuss how the right talks about decline, their hilariously ignorant invocations of Rome, our very symptomatic obsession with political decline and dissolution, the power of nostalgia and declension narrative—and then answer audience questions!

Thank you again to everyone who joined us in person, to Mike Duncan, to Patrick Iber and Rosalie Ryan and everyone at Dissent, to our intrepid producer Jesse Brenneman (who was able to fly in from Montana to join us), to listeners near and far who so generously continue to support Know Your Enemy!

Donate to Dissent here.

Photo credit: Jack Califano

Sources:

For quotes from conservatives about Rome's decline: Reagan, Nixon, Buchanan, Vance

Mike Duncan, The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic (2017)

James J. Walsh, The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries (1907)

Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Kate Wagner, "Fear of a Breakdown," Late Review, May 11, 2026.

D.W. Winnicott, "Fear of a Breakdown," Intl. Review of Psychoanalysis, (1974)

In this episode we have a conversation with reporter Jasper Craven about his new book, God Forgives, Brothers Don't: The Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood, which is a made-for-KYE feat of research that offers a fascinating way into perennial themes of this show: masculinity, U.S. empire, the relationship between violence and civilization, and the surprising camp of conservatism. Along the way we discuss Donald Trump, the mob, Peter Brian Hegseth, Graham Platner, and more.

Sources:

Jasper Craven, God Forgives, Brothers Don't: The Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood (2026)

— "Battle of the Sexes: Pete Hegseth's War on Women," The Baffler, Sept 2025

Dan Gilgoth, The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America Are Winning the Culture War (2007)

Dr. James Dobson, Dare to Discipline: A Pyschologist Offers Urgent Advice to Parents and Teachers (1970)

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.

As always, listeners asked more mailbag questions than we could respond to in one episode, so we continue answering them here for subscribers. In this second round we take up: a playlist of KYE's Straussian-related episodes; (Straussian) esoteric writing versus (French) death of the author and the art of writing (and interpretation); prose style—what it is, why it matters, its relationship to poetry, and the rhythms of Norman Maclean; a "Straussian" reading of Steely Dan; and why liberalism is (mostly) worth defending.

Thank you to everyone who attended our live event in NYC on Thursday! We had a great time. 

Sources:

Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952)

— Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958)

Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics (1987)

Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man," Poetry, Oct 1921

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories (1976)

— The Norman Maclean Reader (2008)

Edmund White, Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978)

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004)

W.H. Auden, "Friday's Child," (1958)

Sam Adler-Bell, "Can Liberalism Stop Being So Darn Liberal?" The New Republic, June 20, 2024.

Not only was May 6th the seven-year anniversary of Know Your Enemy, an occasion to celebrate your support of our work, but it's been nearly a year since we last opened the mailbag and answered listener questions. As always, we loved thinking about the topics you so thoughtfully and intelligently asked us to consider, and we take up a number of them in this episode: the future of the MAGA coalition and GOP politics post-Trump, the promise and perils of graduate school, novels we unexpectedly loved, our favorite places to read, how the left should understand liberalism, among others!

* BUY TICKETS FOR KYE x MIKE DUNCAN LIVE IN NYC *

Sources:

Katherine Miller, Margie Omero, & Adrian J. Rivera, "'Disappointed,' 'Surprised,' 'Betrayed': 11 Trump Voters on What Has Gone Wrong," New York Times, April 27, 2026

Christopher Caldwell, "The End of Trumpism," The Spectator, Mar 30, 2026

Helena Rosenblatt, The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century (2018)

Daniel Schlozman & Sam Rosenfeld, The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics (2024)

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (1981)

William T. Kavanaugh, "Killing for the Telephone Company: Why the Nation-State is Not the Keeper of the Common Good," Modern Theology, April 2004

Roger Scruton, Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life (2005)

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!