The discouraging findings of the Wall Street Journal poll reported in today’s Daily Chart sent me back to Leo Strauss’s long-unpublished 1941 lecture on “German Nihilism,” in which he offers these highly relevant observations:

Nihilism is the rejection of the principles of civilization as such. A nihilist is then a man who knows the principles of civilization, if only in a superficial way. . .  I said civilization, and not culture. For I have noticed that many nihilists are great lovers of culture, as distinguished from, and opposed to, civilisation. Besides, the term culture leaves it undetermined what the thing is which is to be cultivated (blood and soil or the mind).

The point is, I have argued persistently that today’s leftist are nihilists, but I had overlooked the way in which leftists presume themselves more “cultured” than everyone else (hence their contempt for the “uncultured” or “deplorable” American working class), even as they despise and attack the pillars of our civilization. In other words, today’s left hates our civilization, but forgets or ignores the fact that it is the basis for the cultural freedom and creativity they celebrate.

Strauss went on to ask:

I wonder whether the fact that Western man has lost much of his former pride, a quiet and becoming pride, of his being civilized, is not at the bottom of the present lack of resistance to nihilism.

(Hat tip: Alex Priou.)