One of the things I want to explain in my forthcoming book on Leo Strauss and his influence on the American right is how some of his students (and students of students) ended up embracing the figure of Donald Trump and advocating for him or another likeminded Republican president to rule as a 'Red Caesar.' I hope to show both that this way of thinking about present-day politics partially follows from certain assumptions they inherited from Strauss (along with certain moral convictions they erroneously thought his writings validated) and that Strauss would not endorse such judgments himself. The term 'Red Caesar,' which journalists covering the American right began to cite in the aftermath of the insurrectionary uprising of January 6, 2021, comes from a 2020 book by Michael Anton with a characteristically measured and not-at-all-hysterical title of The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return. Anton is, of course, the author of the notorious 'Flight 93 Election' essay from September...
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