Strauss’ students seem to see echoes of the Noble Lie doctrine nearly everywhere in political thought–from Plato (of course) in the Allegory of the Cave and the Myth of Er in the _Republic_, to Machivelli’s emphasis on the necessity of balancing appearances vs. the effective truth in the _Prince_ and the _Discourses on Livy_, , and from the modern Social Contract Theory of Locke and Jefferson to Nietzsche’s Horizons of Meaning, a foil against the ‘true but deadly doctrine’ of the incomprehensible quality of a perspective in toto from the _Use and Abuse of History for Life_.

What is disturbing to many is the apparent efforts of those who call themselves Straussians (as opposed to students of Leo Strauss–I am using Anne Norton’s distinction from her _Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire_) to use this tension to aggrandize political power.
One could assert that those who use this tension thus would be equivalent to the men who were dragged out the Cave but who found their way back in _before_ they came to full knowledge in the light of the sun from Plato’s Allegory in Book VII. If this be so, and if Plato is to be taken at his word, then such men are dangerous, for without the love of wisdom they can be naught but tyrants.