According to Orwin and Tarcov, assaults flow from both the Left and Right, as well as from postmodernists who, apparently, do not have the decency to have a politics at all. Similarly, Morgenstern locates interpretive menace from so-called orthodox readings in the grip of a political agenda that simplifies and distorts Rousseau's thought by privileging the framework of the critic rather than that of Rousseau himself. Yet these authors too are implicated in a politics of interpretation. Second, while they may appear to be interpretively candid, their endeavours are often veiled behind requirements that somehow have been placed on the enterprise of political theory. Consider some of the demands facing political theory, especially political theory understood as a conversation with the great works of the past.
Students routinely wonder why they have to study thinkers dead for centuries.
Publishers have begun to ask similar questions about political theory. The value of scholarly contribution now recedes before a book's ability to generate undergraduate course paperback sales. Presumably those that address the issues of the day in a direct and meaningful fashion. In addition, editors of regional political science journals first ask theorists why non-specialists would care to read their essays, displaying zero tolerance for theory for theorists. Public perception of the academy contributes to these trends.