But policy was not enough. The disciples did not limit themselves to his doctrines and his interpretations; they imitated his manner and his dress. Those who could afford it bought their clothes at Lanvin and had their shirts made by Kisser & Asser. What is more, the students confided to their teacher details of their private lives, their loves and their deepest longings. He arranged their marriages and screened their friends. The guru was so "crazy about gossip" that he awarded points to the groupies who brought him the juiciest details. Nor did he give a damn about secrets--he felt absolutely no obligation not to gossip about his friends, including Chick. What kind of friend is that?

The novel is supposed to be about a great friendship. But what we learn from the novel is what friendship is not. Friendship presupposes equality, not to mention trust. But there is no equality between Chick and Ravelstein, let alone trust. The appeal of Ravelstein is the same as the appeal of Vela, Chick's unloving and unfaithful wife who was a chaos physicist. Chick liked her beautiful face and figure, but it was her "major-league" brain that kept him in awe. It seems that Chick is simply enchanted by the incomprehensible. Is Chick just one more adoring and subservient companion--a geriatric groupie? Or did Bellow intend to write a scathing exposé of Bloom?

Ravelstein did not just train his disciples, he "formed" them, "indoctrinated" them and divided them into "groups and subgroups": husbands, fathers, lovers, philosophers, bureaucrats. He alone was subject, they were his objects. None of them would be his equal. Not even Chick.

	Ravelstein agonized about which students to entrust with secret teaching.  But Bellow has no idea what the secret teaching is.

In short, we are presented with a portrait of a manipulator surrounded by mesmerized disciples and sycophants, lured by a secret doctrine that is "radically mysterious." Is this the portrait of a great educator? Hardly. But anyone who has been part of North American academic life for the last two decades can testify, to the accuracy of the portrait of Bloom as an educator. Students of Bloom, like students of Strauss, are groupies. They are cut from the same cloth, spout the same jargon and share the same picture of the world. They put on intellectual airs, but they are not very good at thinking. In fact, they are chronically incapable of critical reflection about the dogmas passed on to them by their guru. They are unwilling to question the fundamental assumptions of the guru. They regard the ideas of their teachers as incontestable and beyond doubt. Far from being well trained, the students of Strauss and Bloom are indoctrinated or confused.

To be indoctrinated is to be a true believer in simple doctrines. Such people make perfect party hacks because they are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure the success of their party and its dogmas. These sorts of people are small minded enough to believe that they are in possession of great wisdom, which is necessary to save the modern world from its folly. When simple-minded people take on such grand missions, they become morally unscrupulous. They begin to see vice and dishonesty as legitimate in view of the stakes at hand. When in positions of political power, these people are dangerous.

And as to the claim that many of these students have moved out of the academy and into important posts in government--that is a fact that has been well documented by journalists and scholars. And it is a fact that should give us pause.

The Straussians who remain in the academy, when they are not simpleminded ideologues, tend to be intellectually confused. The source of the trouble is the esoteric style of teaching. Bellow hints at this difficulty, but fails to grasp its implications. It is difficult to teach a secret doctrine. It is a contradiction in terms. How can it remain secret once it is taught? So there must be two doctrines, one esoteric, the other exoteric. But the two doctrines are not intellectually coherent or compatible. Because it is not easy to teach different doctrines to different students at the same time, it was inevitable that the two doctrines would get mixed up and students would end up imbibing an incoherent mixture. And that is precisely what accounts for the intellectual fuzziness of so many Straussians in academe. They are people who were not destined for the secret doctrine, but who have nevertheless imbibed parts of it in conjunction with the more sober exoteric teaching. The result is a chronic case of muddle-headedness.

Then there is Ravelstein's philosophy and politics. What sort of ideas was he busy inculcating? What is the secret doctrine? Bellow has no idea. He is totally out of his league, and he knows it. He considers Bloom an eagle while he is merely a flycatcher. He makes an effort to give us an account of the philosophy involved, but he fails. He reports what he considers some very deep conversations, but they are profoundly contradictory. Nevertheless, they give us a few examples of what is involved.

On one occasion, he tells us that Ravelstein was callous about the millions of peasants, kulaks and people who were slaughtered in the German concentration camps and the Russian gulag of the 20th century--these dispensable "losers" did not attract his attention. But at the same time, Ravelstein realized that as a Jew, he was meant for extermination, and that he and Chick had a special solidarity with the massacred victims of that century.

Another example is Ravelstein's ambiguous attitude toward religion. On one hand, he claimed that no philosopher could believe in God; on the other hand, he had a profound respect for "Jerusalem," which is Strauss's jargon for religious faith in general.

One more enigmatic contradiction is Ravelstein's fondness for nihilists, supposedly because they have no reason to be liars. The suggestion is that people who are not nihilists are liars. At the same time, Bellow informs us that Ravelstein's best-selling book was intended to undermine relativism, nihilism and historicism. Is Ravelstein a nihilist or a liar?

	Ravelstein was opposed to gay liberation; it would be unbearably common once it was out of the closet.

Bellow accurately reports what appear to be contradictions in Bloom's thought. But he has no idea that the contradictions he has observed are easily resolved by the duplicitous nature of the esoteric philosophy. There is one truth for the few, another for the many. One standard for others and a different standard for the supermen--moral truths for the many and nihilism for the few; religion for the many and philosophy for the few; family values for the many and unbridled pederasty for the few. That explains why Ravelstein, like Bloom, was opposed to gay liberation; it would be unbearably common once it was out of the closet and socially acceptable. The same is true for atheism and nihilism. They are delicious as long as they are the prerogative of the few. For Bloom, as for Strauss, the role of the philosopher is to spin lies that are supposedly salutary for the masses. It explains why Ravelstein enjoyed the company of nihilists--he must have gotten tired of his own lies.

What kind of politics does this sort of duplicity suggest? In my view, it is the basis of postmodern politics--a politics that dispenses with truth. Hannah Arendt once said that totalitarianism was the triumph of politics over truth. But she never imagined that this sort of politics would become business as usual. She never imagined that postmodern thinkers such as Leo Strauss and Michel Foucault would see no conflict between truth and power. Truth, especially moral truth, or what is usually called values, is but a function of power. The powerful are those who are able to make their values triumph. They are the ones who decide what is to be admired and what is to be despised.