relevant article in the weekly standard.
A challenge to your basic assumptions.
"..Despite its wild implausibility, the scenario is in one important respect true. And that has to do with the influence of Leo Strauss on a generation of neoconservative thinkers, some of whom are active in our politics (and some of whom can even be found writing in these pages)."
"Strauss also shared Churchill's famous praise of democracy as the worst regime except for all the others that have been tried from time to time. Although he regarded modern democracy as flawed, it is, Strauss suggested, the form of government best suited to the protection and enjoyment of human liberty, and therefore should be defended wholeheartedly."
"Finally, Strauss was not a proponent of American empire--but he did teach the importance of American strength in defense of liberty. Writing in the midst of the Cold War, as a refugee from Nazi Germany and as a student of tyranny, Strauss insisted that totalitarians of the left and the right posed a profound threat to liberal democracy--a threat that liberal democrats tended to underestimate because of their habit of supposing that all individuals and nations are as open to reason and persuasion as liberal democrats consider themselves to be. Strauss encouraged liberal democracies to be strong in defending themselves and forceful in conducting a foreign policy in accord with their principles."
"He was the kind of friend who makes one better by constantly exhibiting, through example and argument, the look of excellence. Not always an easy sort of friend, but the sort of friend, you would think, whom true liberals in every time and place would appreciate."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/717acusr.asp