The Idea of Neutrality in Politics

We all know that the political is the distinction between friend and enemy. Or, as Curtis Yarvin now puts it:

When we say that the essential political distinction is the distinction between friend and enemy, we say that the military and the political are one.

As he says: "The political war is a cold war." And the military war is a hot one. Then, he adds:

One of my strongest beliefs is that everyone should turn their military emotions off—whether or not they are at war.

Why? Because "the test of humanity is the power to overcome animal emotion." As compared to chimps. In other words, when you are in a conflict you need to think, tactically and strategically. And that means keeping your inner beserker in check.

Except when you are actually fighting in an actual battle.

You may remember, in reading The Last Kingdom books by Bernard Cornwell, our hero Uhtred of Bebbanburg always gets into a battle rage during a battle. Everything blacks out except the fight. But the rest of the time he is strategizing.

Thus there is "neutrality." It helps humans escape the eternal conflict of the friend vs. enemy distinction.

Neutrality made it possible to address the outsider civilly, as neither friend nor enemy, but united under law—owing the due duties and respects due to a stranger under law. Neutrality is the source of all true peace—universal friendship is universal conquest. 

Neutrality. That's the point of law, of prices, of the market, of contracts, of buyers and sellers. You don't think of other people as enemies -- or as friends. That, of course, is one of the reasons why our lefty friends have a problem with law and the market and capitalism. It takes all the emotion and the fun out of things. And if you believe in politics as the road to justice -- really believe in politics -- then every human on this planet is either a friend or an enemy. They are either an ally of the oppressed peoples or a white oppressor enemy. One or the other.

But under neutrality, if a guy kills your wife, you don't make him and all his family an enemy. You just call the cops.

And it makes complete sense that our lefty friends get emotional about everything, whether it's the monstrosity of reversing Roe v. Wade or insisting that trans women are biological males or else. The whole point of logic and reason is to carve out a region in interpersonal dynamics that is free of emotion. The whole point of politics is to classify everyone as friend and enemy. You are either with us or against us. Everyone is either one or the other.

Another thing that Yarvin stresses is that in politics and war today your enemy is not really another human being. The enemy is the system or the regime: a machine, if you like. There is no point in killing people in a rage; they are just servants of the regime, part of the system. So that

the humans who operate this machine may be (and I believe are) entirely innocent and even well-meaning. They are just cogs in it. On the day after it breaks, they will be harmless—like former Stasi officers.

Or former Nazi apparatchiks. Believe me, the day after Germany falls in 1945, just about every Nazi gets it: he realizes he was just a cog in the machine. An he gave the best years of his life away, for nothing.

The point is that all the Sturm und Drang of the liberal race war and gender war and trans war is fake, fake, fake. There is no "essential conflict between black and white, red and blue, rich and poor, male and female, etc, etc, etc."

All these cold civil wars are epiphenomena of a broken political system.

Our liberal friends have to gussy up their identity politics, their armory of pejoratives, because their system is failing, broken. And they can't believe it. And so they regress to the primitive, as described by Mircea Eliade in The Myth of the Eternal Return.

The primitive... cannot conceive of an unprovoked suffering; it arises from a personal fault... or from his neighbor's malevolence... but there is always a fault at the bottom of it[.]

And the fault cannot lie with us. No. In politics the fault always lies with the other guy, the enemy. 

Ain't that the truth about our liberal friends. Bless their hearts.

Ukraine and Carl Schmitt's Enemy Thing

I was reading a frightening piece today, "The Architects of Our Present Disaster" by Benjamin Braddock, about how we coulda shoulda made peace with Russia after the Cold War. On 9/11, for instance, Condoleezza Rice spoke with Vladimir Putin:

[S]he called President Putin and told him our military would be going on high alert. He told her that he knew and that he had ordered his forces to stand down. Then he asked if there was anything he could do to help. Rice recounted that she had a moment of reflection: “The Cold War really is over.”

Wat! Vlady baby asked if he could do anything to help?

Only Rice and her successors didn't make peace; they didn't write a new Treaty of Westphalia. In fact, it is clear that, all along, Russia has been an opponent. And pretty clearly, Russia right now is an enemy. I've been reading articles in places like Quillette -- "Ukraine and the pro-Putin Right" -- that clearly show that the global ruling class regards conservatives that don't go full-on anti-Putin as traitors. 

Braddock goes on to detail all of the meddling we've been up to in Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the post Cold War era. And what good has it done?

I would say the same about the domestic politics in the US since the end of the Cold War: what good has it done?

Let's make the problem bigger. What good has politics ever done?

Because politics is always about an enemy. Says Nazi Carl Schmitt. If there isn't an enemy, there isn't any politics.

So if you are a ruling class, what's the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything" if you don't have an enemy?

You can see the enemy thing in the COVID experience. The Dem governors were all in on the war against COVID, ordering people around with mask mandates and vaccination mandates.

(I was to a vegetarian restaurant over the weekend -- after WA Gov. Inslee ended his mask mandate -- and the dears at the restaurant still had a mask mandate and still required proof of vaccination. It's funny, isn't it, how our liberal friends, who believe in Peace and all that, just love to be in charge and issuing orders. And following orders.) 

I don't think that the Dem Governors were consciously wanting to be little Hitlers. It's just that if you are a liberal you think that politics is the royal road to justice. And so you always think, like the generals in World War I, that one more Big Push should do it. Because once you have made an issue political, you have required that you have an enemy to fight. And once you have an enemy you have to continue the fight until the enemy is defeated. If there wasn't an enemy then you wouldn't need government force and a political life-or-death narrative.

That's why liberals are so into the pejorative thing, calling people racists, sexists, homophobes. If you make an issue political it is because you need to fight for it, and that means you need an enemy. And what is the first thing you so with an enemy? You call them a nasty name. By the way, what's with the liberal thing on Trump's Mean Tweets? Isn't that what you liberals are doing every day of the week? Isn't the slogan on every protest sign the peaceful protest equivalent of a Mean Tweet? You tell me.

Back to Ukraine. I don't like Putin. I don't like his invasion of Ukraine. I don't like all the NATO and EU saber rattling. I don't like the proposed NATO summit.

Why not? Because I think that all the players are fools and knaves, and whatever they do, chances are they will Make Things Worse.

Why do I think that? I've come to this notion gradually over the years, as my reading has given me what I consider to be a greater depth of understanding of human affairs than you get by ingesting the usual narrative.

Maybe it's all just a conceit on my part. But one thing that reading books does for you. It gives you a means of judging the world from a different position than the ruling-class narrative. If you only consume regular media then you will be signed onto one or another of the received wisdoms of the day.

And that's not good.

Politics and Enemies

I was reading a piece on Britain's far Left when I came to this:

I sensed the anti-democratic tendencies of the far Left when I first met Corbyn’s Labour Party in 2015. It was obvious in the way they spoke about their enemies, which they define as anyone who has ever disagreed with them... The violence of their language offered a creeping kind of dehumanisation of the enemy who is also — crucially — a voter: someone to be seduced by a serious politician is, for them, only someone to be despised.

And so, of course, violence against the enemy is no problem.

Violence was always acceptable if it was against your enemy: the rhetoric itself made it necessary. I heard many far Left cheerleaders call the throwing of milkshakes and eggs acceptable if they landed on the wrong kind of politician, and what comes after that? Quite recently a far Left journalist celebrated a policewoman being knocked off her horse. I saw a journalist attacked at a far Left meeting last autumn; they applauded when the victim left the room. At the last campaign rally in 2019, a Jew was physically attacked for carrying an anti-Corbyn banner.

Did I mention that Nazi Carl Schmitt wrote that the political is the distinction between friend and enemy? And that Curtis Yarvin writes that "there is no politics without an enemy?"

I am also around a liberal for a couple of days listening to ordinary by-the-ways about "affordable housing" and thinking to myself that, yeah, we have an affordable housing problem Because Liberals.

But the funny thing is that such people Have No Idea of the malevolence and the chaos that their Hundred Year reign has caused.

Because all problems are caused by the Other Guy, the racist-sexist-homophobes of which you've heard tell. We are the Good Guys.

Anyway, in the middle of the night I came up with two new maxims:

If you want more politics, you are really saying you want more enemies.

The more politics, the more enemies.

Am I right, or am I right? And that brings me back to Mircea Eliade:

[S]uffering proceeds from the magical action of an enemy, from the breaking a taboo, from entering a baneful zone, from the anger of a god -- and when all other hypotheses have proven insufficient -- from the will or the wroth of the Supreme Being. (p.97) The primitive... cannot conceive of an unprovoked suffering; it arises from a personal fault... or from his neighbor's malevolence... but there is always a fault at the bottom of it[.]

And that is exactly how our lefty friends think of suffering. If the homeless are homeless or there is a shortage of affordable housing, then there must be a fault. And chances are the fault is the malevolence of racist-sexist-homophobes.

UPDATE: Here's some more on the enemies front. Reporting on the Battle of the Bouncy Castle up in Canada, Giles Hoffman notes how the Canadian regime needed enemies.

Every conflict now is largely an information war and a public relations battle. The regime has a well-oiled propaganda machine, and they curated footage with spurious themes. For the regime, it was insufficient to have opponents; they needed enemies, which is why so much effort was expended to portray the demonstrators as dangerous ultra-nationalists and racists. 

Hey, no problem. There is no politics without an enemy. 

From Changing the Future to Changing Next Week

Last week I wrote generally about "How Do You Change the Future?" 

How? Well, you wait for disaster. You wait for climate change policies to wreck the economy, for the entitlement programs to fail even worse. For the racist-sexist-homophobe pejoratives to make people angry.

But that is all pie in the sky.

Now we are going to see how it works "on the ground."

Because right now we are seeing the collapse of the climate change narrative because the Russian invasion of Ukraine is upending the global energy market and causing gas and oil prices in the US to double. Yes, climatistas, no doubt the world will come to an end with a 1.5 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures in a century or so. Meanwhile, what about the contractor using gasoline for his truck that he uses in his construction business?

Because right now we are seeing general inflation in the economy because of the Federal Reserve's money printing and the government's COVID handouts.

Because right now ordinary Americans get to see how lefty peaceful protesters and lower-class criminals get released on bond -- or even no bond -- prior to trial, but January 6 protesters are held in solitary confinement for months.

And today I was reading that Democratic donors are shifting from contributing to congressional races in 2022 to contributing to Democratic governor races. They figure that Congress in 2022 is a lost cause, but they have to hang onto some governorships.

“My entire donating life has always been centered around Congress, but I really think that if you care about democracy, you need to worry about these governors’ races,” said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic donor and lobbyist. “This is critical for us to win in 2024.”

Oh no! Democracy! I wonder what "democracy" means to a lobbyist.

I was re-reading about how in 1934 -- just in time for the mid-terms -- the FDR administration went after businessmen. They sicced the Justice Department on businessman and electric utility magnate Samuel Insull. And kept going after former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon on federal income tax avoidance charges: again and again, even after he was dead. Gosh, those New Dealers sure were nice guys. And by frightening all the businessmen, I'm sure they really helped get the economy back on its feet.

I wonder if the next GOP president will go after the Dem grifters and cancel culturists and wokeys and teach them a lesson?

Actually, I hope not. Because if the ordinary middle class is going to be setting the political agenda in the future, I hope that the ordinary middle class is not interested in revenge and retribution. The ordinary middle class is not that interested in power. Unlike our liberal friends, for whom politics is life.

But it is interesting to wonder how the leaders of the ordinary middle class will treat the rest of America, if they get the power. I hope that they behave better than our liberal friends have behaved over the last century.

But maybe not. Because there is no politics without an enemy: that's what Nazi Carl Schmitt says, and I believe him. And, really, what do you do to an enemy? At the very least, you teach them a lesson. If you are a Democrat, you sue them and impeach them and harass their aides and supporters. If you are a Commie you send them to the camps.

I hope that we can be better than that.

In Politics You Never Admit You Were Wrong

For years I've used Crane Brinton's Anatomy of Revolution as a way of understanding politics, that when things go wrong, the activists amp it up and start canceling their opponents: Reign of Terror.

But I can see, back when I started writing about reigns of terror, that I didn't have the key insight that drives political activists to destroy the opposition.

The problem with politics is that you can never admit you were wrong. Or made a mistake. Or shoulder the blame.

Obviously, this is crazy. Human life, every human life, is one mistake after the next. Successful people, happy people, are the kind that realize that "Houston we have a problem" and work like mad to solve the problem.

If fixing mistakes is one of the key skills for a happy and successful life, why don't politicians admit their mistakes?

I think it is because politics is always about fighting an enemy. As in: Nazi Carl Schmitt, that the political is the friend - enemy distinction. As in: Curtis Yarvin, that there is no politics without an enemy. 

Think of it.

• If you've been leading the fight to an enemy for years, can you turn around and say: wow, this enemy is not as bad as we thought?
  
  
• Can you admit that your strategy for fighting the enemy was all wrong, and so now it's back to square one?
  
  
• Can you admit as President Roosevelt in December 1941 that you screwed up the intelligence and the Japanese were able to cruise a force half way across the Pacific to bomb Pearl Harbor?

Obviously not. 

If you admit any of these things, then there is only one thing to do, and that is to resign. So the only way to hang onto your political leadership is never to admit being wrong. And the political system accommodates this. After a couple of presidential terms, the voters typically decide it is Time for a Change. What they are really saying is: you promised Heaven on Earth, you failed to deliver, and so you are outta here.

This approach allows us to understand the present moment.

• If you have spent the last two years pushing mandatory masks and mandatory vaccinations and the science starts to show that you were wrong, then you have a bit of a problem.
  
  
• If you have been pushing entitlement programs for the last century and the entitlement programs are broke, then maybe your brilliant plan was not o brilliant.
  
  
• If you have been enacting welfare programs and the result is that lower-class men don't work much and lower-class women don't marry much, and the young men of these families are violent criminals and only aspire to rapping, then maybe you have a problem.
  
  
• If you passed civil rights laws half a century ago, and you elected the First Black President fifteen years ago, and blacks are still poor and criminal and violent, then maybe you have a problem.

Do you see the point? The last thing that any politicians does is admit he screwed up. The last thing that any ruling class does is admit that its programs and policies were and are a disaster. 

Because once you admit your mistake, there is only one thing to do, and that is to resign.

• Would any politician of your acquaintance admit a mistake and resign?
  
  
• Would our educated ruling class ever admit a mistake and resign?

There is a reason for this, and I use Nicholas Wade and his Before the Dawn to illustrate it. Male chimps defend the troop's territory from other male chimps. But when there are no more male chimps left, then the troop ceases to exist and the females are absorbed into another troop. Same thing with human hunter-gatherer bands.

So, for males, politics -- the pursuit of the enemy -- really is a matter of life and death, or at least status vs. oblivion.

But what do humans do when they are oppressed by rulers that are screwing everything up? There seem to be several alternatives.

1. Exhaustion. That's how most reigns of terror and great purges end.
2. Bouncy castles. Truckers get together and set up inflatable castles in the capital city.
3. Scapegoat. We all come together and select a scapegoat and make them responsible for everything. As in "time for a change" elections.
4. Revolution. The ruling class is ejected and replaced by a new one.

I sure would like it if our problems could be solved by something less than bloody revolution.

But here is a new concept: Any problem that is less than life-or-death shouldn't be the responsibility of politicians and politics. Because almost every human activity is likely to go wrong and require people to get together and fix it. It needs people with a "Houston we have a problem" attitude.

And politics is the one human activity where you can never admit you were wrong and then get together and fix it.

Enough of Enemies; Enough of Loot and Plunder!

The fact is that one of the instinctive roles of male humans is to defend the territory. Because the territory has food on it. Defending the territory and its food is a matter of life and death.

But, since the Industrial Revolution food is something humans buy with money. Therefore, access to or control of food-bearing territory is not a matter of life and death.

If we apply Nazi Carl Schmitt's dictum that the political is the distinction between friend and enemy, we can see that it used to make complete sense. Friend is someone that shares the food-bearing territory and fights to defend it; enemy is someone threatening to take away our food-bearing territory.

So when, e.g., Frederick the Great of Brandenburg invaded Silesia in 1740 it was not about defending Brandenburg's food-growing territory but it was about increasing the area of food-growing territory over which Fred could rule and tax. It worked out well for Our Fred, and he was a decent flute player that liked to play music of an evening. Of course, it could be that he sent the wrong message to the future rulers of Germany.

Then came the Industrial Revolution.

Then came Stalin. He starved the peasants of the Ukraine so he could buy industrial equipment from the West. Way to go, Joe.

Then came Adolf Hitler. He believed that Germany needed Lebensraum to grow food for its people. In the East. But Germany was an industrial nation that could buy its food as long as it wasn't in a world war.

Not a good idea, Adolf.

Now, of course, ever since World War II, our global elite has decided that nations and national leaders are literally Hitler, and it is their sacred duty to stop Literally Hitlers anywhere they rear their mustachioed heads.

But, our global leaders are still acting like male humans defending their territory. All across the world leaders during the late COVID emergency have been acting like male humans defending territory, issuing orders to the troops -- er, ordinary citizens -- to keep in line, to wear their uniform masks, get their vaccinations. Or else go to the brig. Just like the GIs in World War II.

And after the War on COVID our leaders are proposing to bravely lead us to Build Back Better with a whole raft of programs to dish benefits out to the people. And mobilize for the Next World War, the Green New Deal that will decarbonize the world before it's too late.

Needless to say, those that get on board with the new World War Green will be handsomely rewarded. Others will pay for their armed insurrection.

The thing that keeps bothering me is that, whether we are talking about hunter-gatherer bands in the Amazon rain forest or the cult followers of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, proprietor, we are talking about the same thing.

First there is the enemy to be defeated before it's too late. And then there are the glorious perks to all the faithful friends and followers.

In other words, whenever politics is involved it is always about the enemy, and then always about rewarding the followers. Just like in the Amazon rain forest. Just like with feudal lords and their retainers. Just like the Soviet leaders and their nomenklatura. Just like western leaders and their loyal deep state.

But, you only need to mobilize against the enemy when your life depends on the continued possession of food-growing territory. If you are growing food to sell, if you are making stuff to sell, if you are doing anything in the modern economy, you don't need to defend your food-growing territory. What is more, it doesn't make any sense to invade a country and plunder its resources and sell its inhabitants into slavery. They will benefit you much more doing what they are already doing and selling it to you. That's because 80 percent of wealth in the modern economy is "intangible capital" which is a fancy way of saying the knowledge and skills of humans.

Do you understand what I am saying? I am saying that the modern state with its compulsions, its endless partisan squabbling, its gigantic loot and plunder operation -- that in the developed world means something from one third to one half of gross domestic product -- is an echo from the past, the past of primitive humans that lived and died on food-growing territory that they defended with their lives. That's why I call it the Great Reaction.

Loot and plunder? The last major loot and plunder operation that I know of was the looting and plundering of eastern Germany by the Soviet Union after World War II. How did that work out, Joe Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Mikhail Gorbachev?

See my point? If you are in the enemy plus loot and plunder game you ain't doing yourself a favor. Although of course, you do get to drive your enemies before you and hear the lamentation of their women. If that's how you get your jollies.

The next Big Thing for humans is to get beyond the primitive culture of enemies and loot and plunder for the friends.

But I don't know how we get there.

ABC of Politics: Enemy

What do we mean by politics and the political? What do activists mean when they determine to Struggle for Justice? Or revolutionaries when they plot an armed insurrection to overturn the old regime? Or Black Lives Matter when they declare that equality never hurt anyone? Or Trumpists when they resolve to Make America Great Again?

A few months ago I read Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political. I was hesitant, at first, because Carl Schmitt is famous as a "prominent member of the Nazi Party" and there is a reluctance in polite and educated circles to risk any pollution with Nazi associations. 

But the day came when I overcame my inhibitions and ordered Nazi Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political. I have to say that the book changed my life, because it changed forever my understanding of politics and government. 

After starting The Concept of the Political noting that nobody seems to have seriously defined the political before him, Schmitt comes out and says, in Chapter II:

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be traced is the distinction between friend and enemy.

The point about an enemy as compared to other humans, Schmitt points out, is that "conflict" is possible with an enemy. And not just conflict, as he writes in Chapter III:

The terms friend, enemy, and conflict… refer specifically to the real possibility of physical killing.

The guy that pointed me towards Schmitt is Curtis Yarvin, who states that 

[P]olitics is human collective action—against humans. There is no politics without an enemy.

This puts the notion of "limited government" in a new light. For it suggests that politics and government should be limited to questions where the friend and enemy distinction is inescapable. It suggests that government should only be involved in issues where the "other" really is an enemy, a existential threat to our way of life, where we accept that conflict, killing, or a fight to the death, is likely to be needed. 

Schmitt's definition of the political raises an awkward question, that the problem with any politics is that it is liable to descend from a frank and open discussion of the issues into a partisan food-fight where the parties come to experience each other as enemies. Perhaps we need a "no first use" approach to politics similar to the enlightened approach to nuclear warfare: politics is only appropriate if "we" have been attacked by an enemy.

Or, to put it another way, in connection with an "issue" involving politics or government over which the members of a society are divided, is it possible to avoid coming to consider people who vote against our program or vote against our candidate as enemies, and treat them as such?

When do we ever consider, in respect of some political issue or government program, whether we really want to treat opponents of our magnificent ideas as enemies?

For instance, if the education of children is decided by politics, then immediately the question arises about what to do with people that resist the government's policy on education. Recently we have seen, in the United States, exactly what happens. Government leaders in the federal government have decided that parents opposed to its policy may be subject to police surveillance and accused of "violent extremism." 

In other words, the leaders of the United States federal government experience parents opposed to their policy as enemies. This is not remarkable, for it is a short step for anyone in politics to go from considering political opponents as mere nuisances and to experiencing them as enemies.

That's because once a topic becomes political, it enters the friend vs. enemy distinction and starts down the road to conflict and the "real possibility of physical killing."

So what does the political, and the distinction between friend and enemy, come from?

Absent any better ideas it starts, I would argue, with the territorial culture of the chimpanzee. According to Nicholas Wade in Before the Dawn, the main job of chimpanzee males is to patrol the border to defend the food-yielding territory in which the females bear and raise young chimps. More territory equals more food equals more baby chimps; less territory equals less food equals less baby chimps. Every male chimp beyond the border is an enemy.

The same is clearly true with humans in the hunter-gatherer and agricultural eras. Anyone that threatens our land is a threat to our life, and an enemy.

But that has all changed with the industrial era. Food is not something you grow any more, it is something you buy. It does not matter where the food is grown or who grows it. Who is the enemy now? Is there really an enemy any more?

Let us rehearse the history of the enemy. In the hunter-gatherer era all men were warriors and defended their territory from the enemy. But in the agricultural era most men became farmers, and only a few men defended the border from the enemy; we call them "marcher lords." Marcher lords had a grand old time fighting each other down to the Hundred Years War and finally in the Wars of the Roses so that Shakespeare could make them into colorful characters to strut and fret upon the Elizabethan stage: other marcher lords as enemies.

In the 17th century began the age of religious wars: Roundheads versus Cavaliers, The Thirty Years War. And the Protestant Dutch invaded England in 1688 to create a counter-force against Catholic France. Rival religions as enemies.

In the 18th century we had class wars with the rising bourgeoisie feeling its oats in the American and French Revolutions. The enemy is not a rival lord but the class of lords in general.

In the 20th century humans graduated to world wars, which were about what? Defending food-growing territory? Teaching emperors with gold-braid uniforms and knightly stars a lesson? Creating Lebensraum? Teaching Nazi racists a lesson? Teaching communists a lesson? Enemies have become ideological, people with a different idea of the good and the just.

I would argue that, ever since the dawn of agriculture, the enemy-at-the-border concept has been less and less relevant. It was certainly irrelevant when Rousseau wrote in A Discourse on Inequality that

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, thought of saying "This is mine" and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.

Do you see all the "tells" in this sentence? First of all, it uses the code-word "enclosed," as in enclosures of common land that was a political issue right up until agricultural land ownership didn't matter any more. Then, Rousseau assumes that the people in society can resolve questions of ownership without resort to conflict. So, we are way beyond chimps and hunter-gatherers. The idea of property and property issues settled by legal procedure is already in place and taken for granted. This "first man" is not a founder at all, he already lives in a "civil society." The other people are not "simple enough to believe him," but already live in a society where ownership is a matter of common sense and routine. What's your problem with ownership, Jean-Jacques, a bourgeois born and raised in the city of Geneva?

But politics demands an enemy. Do we need an enemy?

Let us follow the enemy experience down the ages.

Let us propose that the chimp or hunter-gatherer band threatening our food-yielding land is a genuine enemy.

Let us concede that Danes longshipping up the rivers of Saxon England and raping and pillaging English villages are genuine enemies.

Let us say that all feudal feuding up until the dawn of the industrial era is understandable; the other noble and his feudal host is an enemy.

But are rival religions really enemies?

And was the German industrial state a genuine enemy of the French industrial state in 1914? What exactly would be the point?

But there is no politics without an enemy.

What about internal politics?

Is the capitalist the enemy of the worker he employed in the two centuries that real per-capita income has increased by 30 times?

Is the male patriarch really the enemy of all women?

Is the white oppressor really the enemy of the oppressed peoples migrating across the world to partake of white oppressor culture and jobs?

And is the white supremacist really the enemy of the black aspiring rapper?

But there is no politics without an enemy.

I think we humans need to face up to the fact that politics, the cult of the enemy, is vieux jeu, because in the world-wide market economy there are no enemies, because we are no longer chimpanzees competing for food, or marcher lords competing for fiefs, or religions and ideologies competing for state power, and land is not life any more. Life today is not growing and defending the food supply; it is doing and making things that other people will buy.

But there is no politics without an enemy.

The Current Racial Frenzy Will Abate, But...

 George Will has a piece out prophesying the end of the current race frenzy: "National conservatives and racial identitarians have a common enemy: Individualism." But our problems will not be solved with the race frenzy abatement, because the nationalist right is almost as bad as the racist left. Both the nationalist right and the racist left are united in a war against individualism. Individualism, is something new under the sun, he says, invoking Michael Oakeshott.

Modernity’s greatest achievement, which was the prerequisite for its subsequent achievements, was the invention of the individual. Oakeshott argued that, in the 14th and 15th centuries, conditions emerged that were “favorable to a very high degree of human individuality,” meaning “persons accustomed to making choices for themselves.”

And the conditions were particularly favorable in Italian cities.

Well, I can understand that Buckley-era conservatives like Will would look askance at Trump-era populist conservatism; it's centered on the identity and the economic interest of the very ordinary middle class American rather than the business-owning middle class of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

Indeed, in 2021, U.S. “national conservatives,” who are collectivists on the right, recoil against modernity in the name of communitarian values, strongly tinged with a nativist nationalism and with a trace of the European blood-and-soil right.

Really? I have a better idea, a higher idea, that floats above the decaying remnant of Buckleyism and the eternal lefty search for the transformative community that will lead directly to justice do not pass go.

It is this.

All politics is built around the friend-enemy distinction. The point in any politics is to define who is one of "us" and who is one of "them," the enemy that "we" might have to fight and kill.

Once the size of human community has expanded beyond the hunter-gatherer band of the kindred the big man and the politicians and the clerics have to come up with a new narrative that explains the new community. Enter the age of "tribalism." And I maintain that all tribalisms are fake tribalisms, a likely origin myth and  "story so far" that explains and exalts "our community" and unites the community with feeling of belonging together.

In particular, I suggest, almost all political identities are forged by the veteran soldiers in the army, the brothers in arms that founded the state that we descendants come to think of as having existed for all time.

What is "nativist nationalism?" It is, presumably the tribe of people in a contiguous nation state that are native to the place. As opposed to more recent arrivals who maybe don't yet identify as natives, but as an immigrant community that still identifies in part with its identity in the old country. It is not hard to understand that the natives of a country would be suspicious of more recent arrivals, and vice versa.

And it is not surprising that politicians and priests would take advantage of this.

Obviously, this is the story of politics in the United States at least since the Irish started arriving in the 1840s in consequence of the potato famine. Immigrant groups arrived in steamships from Europe and coalesced in immigrant "ghettos" for a generation or two. And soon after they arrived the local political machine started to organize them into its own personal vote bank. 

Obviously the left has invented a new form of tribalism based not on place but on class and race. To me, this is just another opportunistic "fake tribalism" that teaches a group of people to feel an identity that just happens to benefit the educated ruling class that wants to unite various lower-class groups into a political army to fight against the middle.

And this is the game of all political ruling classes, to conjure up some kind of "fake tribalism" to unify the people you want to unify into a political identity, and then lead them to war against some enemy, foreign or domestic.

It is telling that the current leftist politics based on race or the slightly less racist notion of "oppressed peoples" has arisen in a time when an appeal to workers as a class is not as politically useful as, say, back in the 1930s.

But whatabout nativist nationalism and race identitarians?

Well, I would say they they are both led by political leaders that experience themselves as creative individualists.

In other words, I would say that all "individualists" are upper class people that see themselves as transformative and creative leaders. On the conservative side these might be people that see themselves as intellectuals imagining a political framework of limited government, or business start-up entrepreneurs imagining how they are going to transform the business world, or lefty political activists imagining how they are going to bend the arc of history towards justice.

And so all this fits into my reductive Three Peoples theory, where the nativist nationalists are people in the Responsible middle class who identify with nation and the race identitarians are lower class Subordinates who identify with their non-American national origin or class or race rather than with the larger political community. And Individualists are all members of the Creative class imagining that they are doing a great thing.

But I could be wrong.

Alternatives to Politics and the Enemy

 If politics is the friend/enemy distinction, that "there is no politics without an enemy," then the interesting question is: "whatabout the alternatives."

And obviously the alternatives to the war against the enemy is something a bit less bloody. Such us religion and the good / evil distinction, and law and the legal / illegal distinction. And economic exchange and the trusting / cheating distinction.

But then an email acquaintance proposed the following:

Politicians need an enemy.
Corollary:  The enemy must be more feared than government.

That's a good point. Because clearly government likes to swing its weight around. I'd say it is pretty clear that since the January 6 riot our ruling class has -- deliberately or instinctively -- come down like a ton of bricks on the "armed insurrectionists" and also anyone in the Republican political sphere that might feel like lending them a hand, right Speaker Pelosi? Because, what with the resources of the government you can sure make life unbearable for any government critic or Outer Party partisan. As in bankrupting them.

Actually, there must be a further corollary to "politicians need an enemy." Clearly, practical politicians in the ruling class's Inner Party would really like it if members of the Outer Party had a healthy fear of the Inner Party.

And that is obviously what Our Nance and the Cancel Culture are all about. They are not interested in persuasion any more. Just intimidation.

Which tells us that they have given up on persuading us of the glory of their arc of history bending towards justice. Just shut up and fall into line, peasants.

But my point is that, really, we humans should attempt to spend as much time as possible outside the political world and its friend  enemy distinction. Because treating other people as the enemy implies physical conflict and ultimately the possibility of killing.

And the point about conflict and killing is that it is very expensive. Particularly for men. That is why, I have read, primitive tribes do not go in for pitched battles and the risk that the entire male warrior group could be killed off. When the males are all eliminated it means the end of the tribe, and the women are absorbed into the neighboring tribe.

You know, just like German women after World War II becoming GI war brides.

Primitive tribes prefer a nice surgical dawn raid to a pitched battle. More civilized, old chap.

And so also religion, which deals with malefactors by naming, shaming and shunning, rather than by conflict and killing. More civilized, old chap.

And law, which short-circuits the revenge and reparations culture with a legal trial, rules of evidence, and a final disposition of an argument over land, inheritance, wimmin, and a deal gone sour. More civilied, old chap.

And the market economy, which, as indicated by the Science™ of trust and the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, rewards acts of trust and penalizes acts of deceit. Notice that the market economy is gentler than the religious game of naming, shaming and shunning, and the expensive law game of trials and lawyer bills.

Amazing, innit, that the most civilized version of the friend-enemy distinction should be the one thing anathametized by our lefty friends. I wonder why? Is it because, at heart, they are primitives, or at least reactionaries, as in my Great Reaction.

Hey, you gotta say, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat are most keenly experienced in the political sphere, where all is won and lost in the decisive battle. So I understanding my lefty friends having a certain hankering, a certain nostalgia, for the good old days.

But I say that the destiny of mankind is to civilize conflict and disagreement. Because that is the whole point of social animals.

If you want excitement, then build a spaceship and go to Mars. Hey, Elon Musk may have a job for you.

Religious, Legal: How Different from the Political?

Ever since reading Nazi Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political, that reduces to Curtis Yarvin's maxim that "there is no politics without an enemy," I have been thinking about the other social distinctions. But first, Schmitt on politics:

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be traced is the distinction between friend and enemy.

But whatabout the others? Schmitt mentions various others, "moral, aesthetic, and economic." The distinction in the moral is between "good and evil" and in the aesthetic between "beautiful and ugly," and in the economic between "useful and harmful, or, for example, profitable and unprofitable." I think we need a table.

Social Category	Positive	Negative
Political	Friend	Enemy
Moral	Good	Evil
[Religious]	[God]	[Satan]
[Law]	Legal	Illegal
Aesthetic	Beautiful	Ugly
Economic	Useful	Harmful
Economic	Profitable	Unprofitable
Economic	[Collaborator]	Competitor

Note that I have inserted some ideas of my own -- with square brackets -- in respect of the religious. And in respect of an economic collaborator. Schmitt makes it clear that "enemy" in the political sense is a public, or collective, enemy.

In Section VIII of The Concept of the Political Schmitt criticizes "liberal thought" for trying to imagine that the political is not really about friend vs. enemy. "The enemy is no longer called the enemy but in return he is set up as a threat to peace[.]" In other words, "liberal thought" confuses the issue of the political and the enemy. Schmitt thinks that

Liberalism does not radically deny the state, but on the other hand it has not found a positive theory of state or its own state reform, but only sought to sequester the political on the basis of ethics, and to subject the political to the economic; it has created a doctrine of the separation and balance of powers, i.e., a system of checks and balances of the state that cannot be called a state theory or a constructive political principle.

 So what does all this mean when it's at home?

I think it means that the political is the biggie. If there is a political issue then nothing else matters. There is an enemy, and everything is secondary to the question of the enemy.

But then we get to the problem that, on the one hand the "liberal thought" of the Enlightenment wanted to bury the political in its doctrine that there really is no issue that makes us think of the "other" as the enemy. And there is the left that reduces all questions to the political, and thus to the friend / enemy distinction, and thus reduces everything to a fight with the enemy.

And there is the critique of Buckley conservatism, that it amounted to a rhetorical standing aside history shouting Stop, when it should have considered the Left as an actual enemy, against whom conflict was possible, as with the Soviet Union.

So, I would say that all the lines in the table above, other than the political, are questions of social distinctions for man-the-social-animal once the question of the enemy has been dealt with, and the enemy has been defeated; they are all disagreements about values, and good-vs-bad behavior.

But is the left really all about the political and the definition of the "other" as the enemy? It is interesting that the left always plays at conflict, as with its "activism" as a stand-in for revolution. As I say, the left's activism is really play-acting at revolution, as the medieval romances were play-acting at rough-tough feudal lords when the lords had become soft courtiers and needed the nostalgic recollection of the bad old days when men were men, and would just as soon cut off a chap's head before breakfast as eat a haunch of venison.

And when the left is in power, whether in the Soviet Union and Maoist China, or today when the woke left is in power in the US, it treats the populace not quite as enemies, but definitely as subhumans -- slaves really -- who need regular applications of the cowhide whip.

I wonder: should we call the left's bluff, and suggest that if they are really serious about revolution and the elimination of white supremacists and armed insurrectionists they should put their money where their mouth is.

Now, I like to say that the Age of the Political is over, in that I don't believe that the "other" is ever really an enemy since life on this Earth is no longer about securing food-growing land against other claimants for said food-growing land.

But I understand that there are bound to be reactionaries that still hanker for the good old days of enemies and revenge, and want to drive their enemies before them and hear the lamentation of their women.

It still comes down to the question, of how to deal with lefties that think of us as the enemy while we think of them as spoiled brats.

Men, Women, Politics, and the Public Square

According to one of the exit polls last night, the voters that moved most towards the Republicans from Democrats was white women.

Which means, I suppose, that while women don't like mean tweets, they really don't like men in the women's bathroom.

I suppose that this is the reason why, they say, the most important thing in a political candidate is "likability." Kennedy was likable, Nixon was not.

Guess what kind of voter thinks that likability is important.

Or let's get back to my pal Nazi Carl Schmitt who says that politics about the friend / enemy distinction. But I prefer Curtis Yarvin who makes it real simple and says: "There is no politics without an enemy."

See, in my belief system women don't have "enemies;" they only have women that they don't talk to, of whom they have said "I can't believe she said that."

Put it another way: in the Carl Schmitt friend / enemy distinction the point about the enemy is the possibility of "conflict," or violence, or killing. In the "conflicts" that women have the most extreme result is really no more than "never talking to her again." Obviously, in the male case, fisticuffs, or worse, is always a possibility. Anyway, in the US, male murder offenders outnumbered female offenders by about 7 to 1.  And if you factor in that blacks are 55 percent of murder offenders, then how many white women murderers does that leave you?

What I mean is that, if politics is about the enemy, and for white women the enemy is almost certainly no more than that woman down the street that she is not talking to, then politics is really a guy thing. Because the enemy is almost certainly male, and only the guys are going to put it to a fight.

That's why women hate the mean tweets.

Mean tweets are a part of the male Culture of Insult, which we may consider a polite form of dueling, or a civilized form of conflict. We modern men trade insults instead of fists. It's a guy thing. But for women mean tweets don't make sense: "I can't believe he would tweet that."

When women don't like something they complain; when men don't like something they trade insults: thus the women's Culture of Complaint and the men's Culture of Insult.

But when prices are spiraling into the stratosphere and grocery-store shelves are empty, and little Susie is getting attacked in the school bathroom, that's different, because all of a sudden the protected world in which a woman can go about her vital day-to-day business is no longer protected.

I say that "women expect to be protected" and when they discover that the current protector isn't protecting them, then they go get another protector. So if the gubmint isn't providing a safe neighborhood and a functioning economy, and safe schools for little Susie, then women start talking to the neighbor women and pretty soon they all come to the conclusion that they are all going to vote for the other guy.

But it's worse than that.

I say there is no need for politics, because there really isn't an "enemy" any more, some Viking band that will sail up the river and kill all the men and take all the grain -- and the silver from the church -- and sell the women into slavery at the main European slave market in Dublin. If you, the Russkies, loot the factories in eastern Germany and take all the machines back to Russia what good does it do you? The Soviet Union still collapses 45 years later.

What? No enemies? No need for politics? Tell me it ain't so!

That's why our liberal friends, who believe in politics like a religion, have to conjure up fake enemies, like the "armed insurrectionists" of January 6, and the violent extremists that are upsetting education bureaucrats at school-board meetings, and the white oppressors that are systematically oppressing oppressed peoples despite the best efforts of the allies. And that is to say nothing of "climate deniers," the foul enemy that is preventing noble ecological heroes from tackling climate change.

But here's the problem. We men, we few, we band of brothers, are programmed to be ready at a moment's notice to jump up and fight the foe. But if there isn't any foe, then what do we do?

The answer is simple. We have to fake it. If you are a liberal you conjure up fake political enemies and mount on your charger and set your wokey lance and charge the enemy oppressor. For everybody else you become a road warrior and battle the other road warriors for market share. Road warriors are guys that create products and services; liberal social justice warriors just divide everyone into battling tribes.

For women? They go to college and decide they want to get into "activism." So they get a job in HR and start forcing CRT on the employees and the kiddies.

This is not that hard.

Which Enemy is Best?

Government and politics are all about enemies and war. Oh, and the necessary loot and plunder to reward the victorious soldiers and/or voters.

But which enemy? That, it seems to me, is the critical question. Here are a few of my maxims to clear the underbrush.

Politics is all, and only, about rallying the men to fight against the foe — external or internal enemy — in the present emergency.

There is no politics without an enemy. — Curtis Yarvin

Four political strategies: Unite the country against a small country for a quick win; unite the country against a big country for a world war; unite half the country against the other half for a civil war; unite most of the country against a small minority for a witch-hunt.

Of course, Yarvin's maxim comes straight from our pal Nazi Carl Schmitt. I have thoughtfully summarized his book The Concept of the Political for your convenience. Schmitt says that the "specific political distinction... is the distinction between friend and enemy."

On my "four political strategies" above you can see that the wise and thoughtful political leader will choose war against a small country, or uniting the country against a small minority, in his war for political supremacy.

That, it hardly needs be said, is what Literally Hitler did in Germany in 1920-33. The National Socialist German Workers Party was clearly attempting to cover as many bases as possible in the "friends" department. And the "enemy?" It was the small minority, the Jews.

Earth to aspiring politicians: Do Not Mess with the Jews. Just sayin'.

But obviously, the rule still applies. The best way to unite a political entity is to unite it against a small minority. But if it can't be the Jews, then who?

Back in Marx's time it made sense to unite the workers against the capitalists. The workers were many and the capitalists were few. Even the "bourgeoisie" was relatively small, compared to the masses coming off the farm and into the factories. Read this German Commie writing of his years of street fighting in Germany in the 1920s. He is a Richard Krebs, quoted in The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans.

I was proud to be a worker and I despised the bourgeois... Policemen were enemies. God was a lie... Every employer was a hyena in human form[.] (p.239)

Hmm. Maybe now we understand why our lefty friends have taken out after the police in recent years. When you think about it, it makes sense. It is better to get young blacks riled up against the police than against the whole of white society. Because the police are a small minority.

Of course, George Wallace in the 1960s had a line about "pointy-headed intellectuals" and Spiro Agnew in the 1970s had a line about "nattering nabobs of negativism." And Donald Trump had a line about the "swamp." These political practitioners are all taking out after a small minority.

Now our liberal friends have succeeded in making it toxic to stigmatize many of our small minorities in the United States, from LBGT to Muslims. They prefer to stigmatize the small minority of "far-right" conspiracists. 

But then, of course, their Ally narrative stigmatizes "white oppressors." I suppose the idea is that these "white oppressors" are some small minority way up there in the Bohemian Grove or some such. But in practice it means stigmatizing all whites as beneficiaries of "white supremacy." I wonder if this is a good idea, strategically. Personally, I think that the anti-white ideology of white liberals and lefties will one day bite them back.

Note my maxim about "unite half the country against the other half for a civil war." It is the Ally narrative that sets up the "white oppressors" -- half the country -- as the enemy. And that is why we have people talking about a "cold civil war."

I still don't know what the cunning politician should do to rally the whole American nation against a small minority enemy. But then I'm not a politician: what do I know.

The "Houston We Have a Problem" Moment

I see that I have been blogging on really one topic for the last week or so: Ruling Class in Crisis.

Today, I got to read a Zman piece at Taki's where he complains about democracy not being democracy.

The stated point of the political system is to make it highly responsive to the will of the voters, but temper that will with the limits of constitutional order...

In reality, the system is entirely unresponsive to public will. 

This in the context of the ruling class uniting against Trump during the 2016 election and thereafter and showing him the exit in 2020.

I think that Zman wants to think that this is a failure of the system, but I don't think so.

I think that the notion that the results of an election are supposed to change the direction of the country is to misunderstand politics and government and ruling classes.

Really, an election gives the ruling class a gut check on what the people are thinking, and whether the "natives are restless." Most of the time the ruling class shrugs its shoulders and keeps on carrying on. Because any ruling class believes that it is ordained by God or Gaia.

But from time to time, the election result will cause ripples in the corridors of power. And then the question is: do we have a problem here? Do we wise rulers need to make a course correction? Or do we need to teach the plebs a lesson? 

Or, does the ruling class say, realizing that things are really going south, that they had better get their act together, right now. In other words the classic moment when the fuel cell on Apollo 13 blew up and everybody had to get real serious about how to keep the astronauts alive and safely returned to Earth.

And, if you remember, the explosion took place on the outward journey to the Moon, and NASA had to figure out how to keep the astronauts alive for the rest of the journey to the Moon, around the back, and then the return journey back to Earth.

Now I would say that the Trump 2016 election was a "natives are restless" moment that the ruling class decided to ignore. In fact, what with the increasing ruling-class devotion to climate change and systemic racism, I think we can safely say that our rulers doubled down and teach the plebs a lesson.

I do not say that the ruling class "decided" to double down. The double-down just happened "organically" in the social space of the ruling class.

But I would say that, from the point of view of the ruling class, the current Biden administration multiple organ failure means that we are rapidly approaching a "Houston we have a problem" moment.

Hey, I wonder if we will look back and say that the Death of Colin Powell from COVID at age 84 was the turning point. Because Colin Powell was fully vaccinated, you see. And that rather puts the ruling-class narrative that universal vaccination is The Answer in question. Good Little Girls all over will be asking "Is It Safe, Mr. President," and they will not trust the answer.

See, I think that the ruling class is being really stupid about a whole lot of things. A wise ruling class would have trimmed its sails decades ago. Let's review a few issues: And put it in a table, because I am an en-guin-eer.

Issue	Ruling Class Narrative	The Science	Sensible Policy
Climate Change	OMG end of the world, unless we act now.	Earth is presently in an interglacial period in a multi-million year Ice Age.	OK, let's do a few nice things like ramp up nuclear power
Systemic Racism	We must fight for the oppressed peoples against the white oppressors	All humans are tribal, but ordinary middle-class commoners are not that tribal, unless you get them riled up. And they certainly ain't responsible for the travails of the oppressed.	Let's be nice to blacks, and help them transition from underclass to middle class
Entitlement Spending	Hey kids: free college! Hey seniors free dental and eye care!	Big government entitlement programs make society vulnerable to unexpected shocks. The market system is an emergent social phenomenon that has worked wonders.	Hey, you don't get elected without offering free stuff. But there are limits, indicated by hyper-inflation.
Education	Let's teach kids all about oppression and intersectionality with CRT. Because "equity."	Education as a government monopoly eventually ends up as a system that pays teachers salaries and pensions and teaches children nothing.	For now, let's put the money for education in the hands of parents so they can get the education they want. If they care.
Class Conflict	OMG, those deplorables, bitter-clingers, and insurrectionists!	In any society larger than a village there will be differences between classes, races, religions. Any ruling class needs to recognize that ordinary people have a right to live their dull lives in peace.	The ruling class should not force its religion and its culture on the rest of society. It just leads to trouble right here in River City.
COVID-19	Mandatory Lockdown, Mandatory Vaccination. Follow Orders	It's an epidemic, just another corona virus, and it will work its way through the human population until its propagation withers due to acquired immunity.	Do some stuff to make women "feel safe" but don't overdo it Remember the health scientists are bureaucrats and their #1 concern is to keep their salaries and pensions.
Government Finances	Hey, who cares! We can print our way out of it.	Except in time of war and disaster, the government should run a surplus and pay down its war debt.	Hey, you gotta hand out goodies to the rubes, but wise rulers keep the loot and plunder down to a low roar.

I realize that there is a necessary great gulf fixed between the ruling class narrative and my proposed "sensible policy." The great gulf exists because of the nature of politics and government.

As I say, politics is division and government is force. But humans are social animals. Go figure.

But this means that, following Nazi Carl Schmitt, the political is the "friend vs. enemy distinction." That means that in politics you always have the Enemy. And the Enemy, by definition, is a threat to all we hold dear. So, sensible practical people will understand that the less that gets decided by politics in any society the better. Unfortunately, every political leader, whether they realize it or not, gets to act like Shakespeare's King Henry V at Harfleur: "once more unto the breach" etc. They can't help it, the poor dears.

At some point, our ruling class is going to wake up one morning and realize, OMG, "Houston we have a problem." I hope they will decide to change course, rather than double-down again.

My judgement is that the sooner the better, for all Americans.

What Should We Teach the Ruling Class to Do?

My line on ruling classes is that human nature programs the leaders of society to be warriors, fighting the existential foe to save the tribe from extinction.

And I say, following Nazi Carl Schmitt, that politics is about friend vs. enemy. In other words if you are in politics your game is identifying and making war on an enemy. Otherwise you have nothing to do.

That's how I understand the ruling class's current obsession with climate change and systemic racism. Climate change empowers the world's ruling class to lead to lead the whole world against the existential threat of runaway warming. Because fossil fuels. Think about it. It's really a natural, because it avoids the little problem that any problem less than global warming would mean that the enemy is some nation state: Russia or China or some such.

And systemic racism allows the educated ruling class to make war on bigots and racist-sexist-homophobes. What could be funner?

My judgement is that both climate change and systemic racism are less about fighting real enemies and more about finding something for the ruling class to fight against. Because the ruling class is political and politics needs an enemy, per Nazi Carl Schmitt.

Now, I would say that to have the ruling class fighting climate change and systemic racism is an improvement. After all, our ruling class in the last century has been in the business of world wars, starting with college president Woodrow Wilson sorting out Europe in 1917-19. And rich-kid FDR sorting out the world in 1941-45. And various warrior presidents sorting out the Commies in 1948-89.Two generations of young men were sent to war; fortunately most came back. I have come to believe that it was all ruling class conceit and baloney, but that's just me. And if our ruling class is currently all worked up about systemic racists, maybe cancel culture is better than a full-on Reign of Terror or Great Purge or Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

But can't we think of something better for our rulers to do? Some way for them to be heroic warriors without actually having a fighting war that wrecks the economy, or a fake war like climate change that wrecks the economy.

Hey I know! How about a war on bureaucracy! A war on useless schools that fail to teach the children of "oppressed peoples" how to wive and thrive in the modern world! A war on racial quotas and DEI? But, of course, there is one little problem. These wars do not establish the ruling class as the political heroes beloved by their grateful peoples.

But just as we have progressed from leaders as actual military fighters -- as in the days of Henry V -- to politicians that leave the fighting to generals that leave the fighting to actual lieutenants and corporals, and now to the fight against climate change that has no real fighting at all, I don't see why we can't make national heroes out of guys that clean up the mess in the bureaucracy. You know, like Donald Trump promised to clean up the Deep State.

And I don't see why we can't make heroes out of the men and women that stand up to the lefty cancel culture "activists," rather than making heroes out of "activists" that are tilting at the windmills of racism-sexism-homophobia in a world where you are a complete fool ever to even roll your eyes at one of the "oppressed peoples" of whom we'eve heard tell.

This is all to say that my idea of the most heroic and noble thing in the world is not to be a warrior hero, real or fake, but a sacrificial hero, someone who sacrifices his life on the border between Order and Chaos so that the rest of us may live. I call it "A Vision of the Good Life Better Than the Left."

Hey! Sounds like a great idea. The only question is what is the Next Step.

And I have No Idea what to do next.

The Intersection of Politics and Religion

I wanted to start this piece with a reference to an article I read a day or two ago about the intersection of politics and religion, and how problematic that is. But I can't find it.

Obviously politics and religion are inevitably intertwined. And that is as clear to me as ever since I read Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political where he defines the political as friend vs. enemy and the moral as good vs. evil.

Let us define an enemy as someone who is a physical threat, who might visit violence upon us.

Let us define an evil person as someone who is something less than a physical threat to us: someone who is a moral threat to the community.

The point is that an evil person is not necessarily an enemy, although an enemy is probably evil.

The problem is that the more anyone mixes up politics and religion the more likely they are to consider an evil person to be an enemy.

And the point about an enemy, as Carl Schmitt makes clear, is that "conflict," ultimately leading to killing, is inherent in the notion of "enemy."

We humans can argue all day about whether the chap down the street is evil or not. And that is pretty harmless, until we bring politics and government into the equation. Because government is force, and politics is Us vs. Them, Friend vs. Enemy, and ultimately the only safe thing to do with an enemy is to kill him. 

And that's the problem with our progressive friends. Once you have decided that the job of government has to do with justice, righting wrongs, then pretty soon you are labeling the unjust as people that need to have their heads chopped off. Hello Stalin, Hitler, and Mao.

Obviously, there is no complete separation of the political and the moral, or church from state. But I'd say that the whole point of the moral is to influence humans into doing pro-social acts short of actually threatening them physically to get their act together.

Put it another way. The reason he humans experience a thing called "guilt" is probably God's way of helping us avoid a lot of violent conflict. When we feel guilty we probably decide not to do something evil, or regret actually doing something that we come to understand as evil.

Inevitably the two -- the political and the moral -- will intermix, and there will always be a tendency for humans to regard someone they experience as evil as nothing less than an enemy.

And let us connect this with my notion of male honor and female honor that I got years ago from James Bowman's Honor: A History. Honor in men is courage, standing in line with the brothers against the enemy. Honor in women is chastity, or being a good little girl, as I like to sneer. "Don't be evil," as Google says. But you can see that honor in women also means holding together with the other women in the community and "not talking to" someone who is acting against the mores of the community.

So the question always comes down to this: is the obnoxious guy down the street causing enough of a problem to classify him as an enemy, and invoke the power of the state to compel him to observe social norms?

Does he have a couple of wrecked cars and a bunch of trash on his property? Is he building a mega-mansion that is three times the size of every other house on the block? Does he have loud parties that go on into the middle of the night? Does he steal the odd dahlia in high summer?

Then obviously there are things that have to be agreed if things are to work: driving on the right. Then there are nice-to-haves: keeping businesses out of a residential district. Then there smelly factories on the downwind end of town. Then there is the issue of pollution, factories that are not just smelly but emit substances that actually harm other living things. In other words what the economists call "externalities," activities that harm other people. And if you want to carry it to the limit, then there is the question of climate change, where fossil fuels are going to cause irreversible changes to the climate.

Hey! It's complicated!

But I would say that the "tell" is when the normal argument about good and evil escalates into the designation of the evil person as an "enemy."

And I would say that our liberal friends are a little too quick to designate political opponents as enemies. 

But I understand why. When you have merged politics and religion, as many of our modern belief systems do, then the difference between and evil person and an enemy becomes at best confused and at worse erased. The evil one is an enemy and the enemy is evil.

And what can you do with an evil enemy, except destroy him? Or her.

The Tell: It's Just a Waste of Time to Talk to Those Guys

Remember back in the day when "all good people" were concerned about The Workers? The general tone was that, even though the workers were rather over-inclined to use violence, they had a point. Life was rough for factory workers, and they were often treated like virtual slaves, or as economic and disposable commodities. Their "rage" was understandable. So all good people were open to acceding to the just demands of the workers. Even if they were a bit rude and crude.

Now, I get the feeling, these days, that "all good people" don't give a damn about the just demands of ordinary middle class people. The current violence in southern Australia over COVID vaccination is a case in point.

As I understand it, the government of Victoria, capital Melbourne, is planning a strict COVID regimen.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has announced that anyone who does not “take the jab” will not be permitted to work, shop, attend any venue or participate in the Melbourne economy.  Vaccination passports and identification will be required for all functions of life. 

And then Andrews paused the construction industry for two weeks to flatten the curve of a upsurge in COVID cases.

Construction union workers went to their union leader to protest this attack on their livelihood, but the union leaders refused to advocate for the workers. The leaders were not down with the workers and their demands; they were pals of the rulers and the rulers' agenda. So the workers took to the street.

Hello, union leaders! The whole point of legitimating unions, which are in fact a conspiracy against the consumers, is that they moderate the "rage" of the workers into legitimate channels. So if you tell your members to get lost, what is the point of you?

And then the government of Victoria. Sending in the police and using aggressive tactics:

Thousands of heavily outfitted and well-armed jackboots -with armor plated MRAP vehicles in support- confronted the protest groups throughout the Melbourne metro area.  The police deployments forced the groups to assemble at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance where a stand-off took place between the protestors and thousands of police units surrounding them.  Once they had the protestors surrounded, the police began tightening the perimeter, until they eventually opened fire with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Now, I am one week away from reading Carl Schmitt and his notion of the political as a "friend-enemy" distinction in which conflict -- killing -- is always the final possibility.

So when a government soft-pedals BLM protests, when e.g., "Melbourne police units who took a knee during last years Black Lives Matter protests in Melbourne," the rulers are saying that BLM activists are on the "friend" end of the "friend-enemy" axis. 

When a government cracks down on construction worker protests, when e.g., "Once they had the protestors surrounded, the police began tightening the perimeter, until they eventually opened fire with tear gas and rubber bullets" the rulers are saying that construction worker protesters are on the "enemy" end of the "friend-enemy"axis.

Obviously, we had the same thing here in the US. BLM and AntiFa protests are regarded by the rulers as understandable and are accommodated. BLM and AntiFa protesters are typically released from custody the day after an arrest.

Compare that with the reaction to the January 6 Capitol riots. Our Democratic friends called it an "armed insurrection" and many of those arrested are still in jail in solitary confinement. 

Using Schmitt's analysis, the situation is obvious. BLM and AntiFa protesters are regarded as "friends" by the ruling class. Trump voters are regarded as "enemies."

Our liberal friends are very sensitive to issues related to nuclear power. They think it is way too dangerous to allow the use of nuclear power to generate electricity.

But I would say, after reading, learning, and inwardly digesting Cart Schmitt's Concept of the Political, that all politics is nuclear. And the point of electoral politics is to institutionalize the conflicts of politics into safe channels, to turn civil war into the sham fight of an election; to turn the looting and plundering of a village into the routine taxation of workers so that the politicians can use the proceeds to reward their supporters.

So, liberal friends. You are all in a tizzy about the dangers of nuclear power, but are perfectly happy with the nuclear nature of politics.

I use my reductive Three Peoples theory to understand and to throw further light upon this. You might call it the Three Peoples Approach to Politics.

I would say that the People of the Subordinate Self band together under a leader that promises to deal with the rulers on their behalf.

I would say that the People of the Responsible Self organize organically among themselves when dealing with the rulers.

I would say that the People of the Creative Self see themselves as the wise and evolved priestly class called by God or Gaia to impose their wisdom on the heathens.

I think that our present ruling class really has No Clue about the dangers and follies of its present war upon the ordinary middle class. It seems to me that on issue after issue, the ruling class thinks that it is just a waste of time trying to reason with the deplorables. So they don't. So they lie and cheat and issue lockdowns and vaccination mandates and masking orders. As though the ordinary American people are just peasants and serfs.

I think that our rulers are making a gigantic mistake. I think that the one thing that every scion of the ruling class should be doing is making a genuine attempt to understand where the ordinary middle-class Trump voter is coming from.

Instead, it seems, the moderates in the Democratic party are allowing themselves to be bullied into moving left by the current generation of progressive activists, for whom politics is a religion. And they find themselves forbidden to talk and negotiate with the leaders of the ordinary American middle class. Indeed, I suggest that the story of Donald Trump is the story of the ruling class and educated America doing "whatever it took" to get rid of Trump. Trump, clearly, is the "enemy."

But Trump is merely the leader of ordinary middle-class America. If you make war on Donald Trump you are making war on ordinary middle-class America.

Is that really what you want, dear liberal friends?

Doughnut Economics: Springtime for Activists

The "tell" in Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist by Brit academic Kate Raworth is right at the beginning when she describes the dilemma of a well-born Chinese woman.

Yuan Wang arrived at Oxford University to study economics. Born in China and raised in Yorkshire... [she] was determined to make a difference in the world.

She thought that economics was the way to do it, but soon got "frustrated."

She found the theory -- and the maths used to prove it -- absurdly narrow in its assumptions.

See, that's the basic religious and cultural meaning of "life, the universe, and everything" for the well-born youngster. They want to do something creative, to make a difference. I call it Activism Culture.

And that is the underlying agenda of Doughnut Economics. How can we activists deploy economics to make the world a safer and a juster place, given that the two big problems are the Ecological Ceiling of planetary pressure or a Social Foundation of human well-being?

Well, current macroeconomics does not represent a useful knowledge base for dealing with an Ecological Ceiling of planetary pressure or a Social Foundation of human well-being. Something new is needed, and it must not be based on the economics of old that just wanted to increase GDP. The economics of Paul Samuelson and his hydraulic Circular Flow diagram just isn't going to solve climate change or transition from exponential economic growth to a sustainable economy and society.

The big problem with Kate Raworth is that economics cannot tell humans what to do. It is only an analytical tool to help humans get an idea of what might happen if they change the economy in accordance with the demand of well-born activists. Let's look at the seven things she thinks economics should be about in the 21st century. And my critique.

Proposal	Raworth's Justification	My Opinion
Change the Goal from GDP	to the Doughnut	Any "Goal" is political or religious
See the Big Picture	beyond market to "embedded economy"	But this is no longer economics but the entirety of human knowledge
Nurture Human Nature	with socially adaptable humans	This is religion, changing humans' experience of life's meaning
Get Savvy With Systems	understand complexity	Good idea, and recognize that no government or globalist plan will understand complexity to the depth it needs to
Design to Distribute	create economy that is distributive by design	You mean double down on the welfare state? Economics can probably help you understand that this is doomed to failure
Create to Regenerate	recycling by another word	Well, yeah. If you work on externalities, the cost of our actions on other people, you can help
Be Agnostic About Growth	because it won't last forever	I think it is fair to believe that when growth tapers off, or even declines, today's and tomorrow's economics have No Idea what to do about it.

OK. How many of these seven things come within the purview of any economics? The point about economics is that it is an attempt to understand the market and human action in a market system. And one aspect of that is to understand how government action affects the market and the behavior of market participants. One of the conceits of economics is that it is "value free." Thus Hilary Putman and his The End of Value-Free Economics. But economics tries not to impose its values on human interactions; it just tries to understand them. But anybody at all serious about economics tends to realize that as soon as you start imposing your values on human interaction, by government or by church, you pretty soon experience negative economic impacts as people find it harder to live their ordinary day-to-day lives 

The bottom line about Doughnut Economics is that it is not really about economics. It is all about politics. That has been the faith of left-wing believers since at least Marx, that by political means it is possible to create a juster society. So the honest thing to do would have been to call the book Doughnut Politics: 7 Ways to Think Like a Lefty Activist. Or, if you like, Doughnut Activism: 7 Ways to Change the World.

Of course, politics is not really mentioned in Doughnut Economics, not as such. But when you imagine the human world as a doughnut with an Ecological Ceiling and a Social Foundation, and if you experience penetrating the Ecological Ceiling of planetary pressure as causing an "overshoot of pressure on Earth's life-giving systems", and if you experience a fall through the Social Foundation below as "a lack of life's essentials such as food, education and housing" there is an unsaid assumption that educated and caring people -- activists -- are called upon to do something about it. And how are they going to do it? Obviously, by their domination of the political, cultural and secular religious institutions of global society. They are going to tell the rest of us what to do, because they know.

Suppose Raworth is right, that we have to Do Something about climate change and lack of justice in food, education, and housing. But is there is one thing we know it is that top-down direction of the economy does not work. Then the question becomes: what do we do when the elite and activist supervision of things environmental and social falls short of the mark? For instance, just this week I read about a minor cock-up on the doughnut front. In western Europe there was a lack of wind in the North Sea last week, worst in 20 years. That meant that natural gas plants had to step in and generate electric power to make up for the power that the wind turbines weren't generating and that meant that natural gas prices went through the roof and that meant that fertilizer factories closed down and that meant that carbon dioxide supplies for the food industry were cut off and that meant that grocery stores may run out of food.

Golly who knew?

See that's the problem with our current global ruling class. They know, they know, that they are the smart ones, and they know, they know, that their solutions to the world problems are what it is going to make the world Build Back Better. And the best way they know is to change things with politics and government.

But that is not how the world works. The world is "one damn thing after another," as someone said. Economics is the study of just how, with one damn thing after another and the help of the price system and the individual efforts of millions of people, somehow humans manage to struggle on from day to day. And, in the last 200 years, increase real per capita income by 3,000 percent. It asks: how did that happen? Not because of wise, knowledgeable elites and academics but by anybodies with a new idea changing the world, and fixing mistakes on the way, mistakes that you and I never hear about.

Kate Raworth and her student Yuan Wang beg to differ. They have a better idea. Maybe they do. But what happens when there is a small glitch in the Matrix, the most windless week in the North Sea in 20 years? Well, then the market system and its pricing steps in. And you may not like the result.

Now, at the end of Doughnut Economics on page 258 Raworth has "Table 2. The ecological ceiling and its indicators of overshoot" including Climate Change,Ocean Acidification, Freshwater Withdrawals, and so on, as compiled by Steffen et al. "Planetary boundaries: guiding human development on a changing planet," an article in Science in 2015. For each indicator Steffen et al. have proposed a planetary boundary. For carbon dioxide it is "at most 350 ppm" and we are at 400 ppm and rising.

Well? Is rising CO2 a problem? Experts say it is. And anyone that disagrees, including retired experts, is stigmatized as a "science denier."

This, of course, is the way it has always been in human history until quite recently. Anyone that challenged the received wisdom, as promulgated by elite academics and soothsayers was stigmatized, and perhaps executed as a heretic, an evil opponent of the Truth.

Or, as Bryan Magee writes in Philosophy and the Real World: An Introduction to Karl Popper,

[A]ll, or almost all human societies of which we have knowledge seem to have an interpretation of the world which was articulated in some myth or religion, and in primitive societies any questioning of its truth is usually punished by death.

Obviously this approach to human society has not changed much. The method of Soviet Russia and Maoist China was to direct society from the top and to punish, often by death, those that objected.

But our era has thrived on an opposite idea, that Magee calls "the era of criticism." In this notion all theories, scientific, economic, and political, should be constantly tested and criticized. And out of the criticism we will discover and develop new theories that resolve the problems -- and there will be problems -- in the current theories.

Kat Raworth imagines that her Doughnut Economics is a critique of "neoliberal" economics that she represents as coming from the folks that formed the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947. Maybe. Only I get the feeling that she has never read the books by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek and Co. Reading Doughnnut Economics I do not detect the least whisper that she knows anything except the mainstream economics that goes from the classical economists to Marshall to Keynes to Samuelson. Samuelson is the guy she goes after. Well, I never paid Samuelson no nevermind, because I think his macroeconomics misses the point. I experience western macroeconomics as a crude effort to help welfare-state politicians avoid crashing the economy, and not really providing an insight into the way that the capitalist economy works. So how do you like them apples?

Let's get back to the big issue, climate change, the basic justification for Raworth's Rule of the Experts.

For instance, the UN's IPCC has sponsored the development of dozens of computer climate models. All of them predict significant warming of the planet, year on year. But the models all "run hot." They have predicted higher temperatures that have transpired in the record.

So? Well, in Magee's notion and Karl Popper's notion, we now start to subject the models and their assumptions to rigorous critique and try to figure out why they have prophesied an increase in temperatures in excess of the actual record. Is it because they misunderstand the way the climate works? Is it because they can't simulate the intertropical convergence zone? Is it because the models aren't detailed enough? Who knows?

And anyway, is it a problem if temperatures increase? And how would we know? The temperature record shows that the Earth has been quite a bit warmer than the present, as recently as the Roman Warming and the Medieval Warming. On the other hand, the Earth is presently in an "interglacial" period in the middle of an Ice Age in which CO2 in the atmosphere has been down to 180 ppm. And scientists say that C3 photosynthesis stops at about 150 ppm, meaning all the plants die.

But let us assume that the scientists are right and that global temperatures are increasing and the reason is the increase in CO2 due to burning of fossil fuels. If we do nothing, what happens?

Well, what happens is that humans adapt to the new climate. We move grain agriculture northward. And if the deserts move northward from Africa into southern Europe we migrate northward. And if the sea level rises we move cities inland. Is it possible that we encounter a real crisis where millions of humans perish? Certainly. And there will be wars and rumors of wars and frightful outcomes. Kinda like things have ever been.

But what we do not know is if the outcome from doing nothing is worse than the option of letting our educated betters decide for us.

For instance, our betters tell us, on the one hand, that we are running out of fossil fuels, and on the other hand that fossil fuels are going to change the climate. Well, if fossil fuels run out, that will take care of that, right? No more warming from increased CO2. And it's not as if we don't have the knowledge and technology to create nuclear fission plants. And it is not as if we are probably close to effective nuclear fusion energy.

See, the problem with the whole Ecological Ceiling thing is cui bono. Who benefits? And the answer is that a climate crisis benefits people like Kate Raworth that seem to go from international conference to international conference advising corporate execs on the right and proper way to respect the Ecological Ceiling.

Just as the problem with the Social Foundation thing is also cui bono. "Doing something" about social problems, for the last century, has been all about politicians buying votes from the proposed beneficiaries of programs to prop up the Social Foundation. Because justice.

Now my particular prejudice is that I believe that politics and government and elite academic ukases are the wrong way to deal with almost everything. Carl Schmitt says politics is about friends vs. enemy, and killing the enemy if necessary. It is all the other things, from work and markets and social interaction and religion and culture that really make the human world go round.

So my question to the Kate Raworths of the world is: are you really sure that your doughnut model -- even if it is a sensible understanding of the human world -- can really be managed with politics? And do you think that the stigmatization of people that disagree with you as enemies, that is inevitable in politics, is going to solve anything?

I'm sure you have never thought about such question in such terms. Of course not, because nobody ever taught you to think like that.

And anyway, Carl Schmitt was a Nazi. So there.

Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political

Carl Schmitt is known to us as a prominent Nazi. He joined the Nazi party in 1933, and called for burning of books by Jewish authors. He was appointed State Councillor of Prussia by Göring. The SS gave him trouble in 1936 but he retained his professorship at the University of Berlin till 1945.

But Schmitt is also the author of penetrating political analyses, and has attracted the interest of people like tech billionaire Peter Thiel and neo-reactionary Curtis Yarvin.

The Concept of the Political was first published in 1932. This analysis is from a translation by C.J. Miller published in 2020. The book is short: eight chapters in 63 pages.

I.

Schmitt starts by noticing that nobody has ever defined the political. Mostly it is used to contrast with other antitheses such as "politics and economics, politics and morals, politics and law" and even the antithesis between politics and civil law. He observes that

In general, “political” is in some way equated with “state,” or at least related to the state. The state then appears as something political, to political as something related to the state[.]

Sometimes the political is understood in legal opinions in a technical sense, for instance in the concept of "political association" or "political assembly." In the progress from the absolute state of the 18th century to the limited state of the 19th century to the democratic state of the 20th century the understanding of the state and society changed as people began to deal with the penetration of the state into all social affairs. 

II.

So what is the political? Schmitt sets forth the following definition.

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be traced is the distinction between friend and enemy.

It is easy to compare the friend-enemy distinction to others, such as “good and evil in the moral; beautiful and ugly in the aesthetic”. But it is a mistake to imagine that the political is related to these other distinctions, because only in politics does disagreement lead to conflict.

[The enemy] is just the other, the stranger… so that in extreme cases conflicts with him are possible.

Conflicts, he points out, cannot be decided by "a general norm," nor by the the decree of a 'disinterested' and therefore 'impartial' third party." Only the participants in a conflict can decide 

whether the otherness of the stranger in the concrete case of conflict means the negation of their own form of existence, and whether he must be repulsed or fought off in order to preserve their own way of life in accordance with their being.

Of course, the enemy is easily thought of as "evil." But the "evil" need not be the enemy. The political, and its "friend-enemy" distinction, is independent of other distinctions.

III.

Although the political is independent of other distinctions, people have tried to soften the friend-enemy distinction: in business, liberalism has softened the enemy into competitor. In a moral world there are hopefully only debate opponents. But, aside from hopes and aspirations, the friend-enemy distinction is something apart.

Thus the enemy is not a competitor or opponent in the general sense. He is also not a private opponent whom one hates with a feeling of antipathy. The enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collective of people confronts another fighting collective. The enemy is always a public enemy[.]

The political is the most extreme kind of human antagonism, and any antagonism "becomes more political the more it gets to the extreme point." And, of course, the more extreme that political antagonisms get within a state, the closer they get to civil war.

The word “conflict,” he writes, “does not mean competition” or “debate” or the routine “struggle” of life. It means killing.

The terms friend, enemy, and conflict… refer specifically to the real possibility of physical killing.

IV.

What about religion? According to Schmitt, when a disagreement between religions escalates into a “religious war,” the war is political, because the opposing religions experience each other as enemies. Same with the Marxist “class struggle.” It may start out as economic or cultural, but when it escalates to civil war -- or world revolution -- we are talking about the classes experiencing each other as enemies, not merely as ordinary exploiters or average wage earners.

Of course, the political is not the source of absolute power: the state dare not abolish the right of workers to strike. And various associations can combine in an alliance against the state. But whatever power associations may have

Neither a church, nor a trade union, nor an alliance of the two would have prevented a war that the German Reich under Bismarck wanted to wage.

And whatever the power and influence of different sectors in society, it remains that the "possibility of grouping friend and enemy" is "decisive in relation to the other associations."

V.

The state -- as political entity -- contains enormous power, waging war with human lives at its disposal to send out and kill other people. But the point of its power is to create the "normal state" where "peace, security, and order" obtain. But this leads to the need to identify "internal enemies" as genuine threats. This could mean "ostracism, banishment... the declaration of the enemy within the state" that can escalate to actual civil war. At this point, of course, the "constitutional" state is dissolved until the struggle is decided.

A member of a church may die for his faith, but only as a "private matter." An "economically oriented society" can deal with "troublemakers" by non-violent means, for to kill people for an economic purpose "is horrible and insane." But conflict is different. War is not "normative", it is "existential," and "a real struggle against a real enemy, not in any ideals, programs, or norms."

Thus, the idea of a just war is nonsense, or political propaganda. So is the idea of "outlawing" war. If a people is determined to maintain its existential existence, then it must be prepared to decide for itself who is a friend and who is an enemy, and act upon this decision.

If a people fears the toils and risks of political existence, another people will relieve it of these toils by taking over its "protection against external enemies"and thus its political rule[.]

Either a people provides for its own protection or it must be obedient to another that secures protection for it. A people that has subcontracted its protection to another is not long for this world for "a weak people disappears" as a political entity.

VI.

Because the political "presupposes the real possibility of the enemy" it means that the idea of a world state is nonsense. It would require a world in which nobody feared an enemy. And a world without enemies would be a world without politics. Thus "humanity cannot wage war" because the notion "excludes the concept  of an enemy." So, whenever a state wages war in the name of "humanity" it "wishes to cheat" according to Proudhon.

Thus the idea of the League of Nations (or the United Nations) as an association of humanity is nonsense. It is a club of nations, an "intergovernmental association which presupposes the existence of states." And if a "world state" ever existed, the next question is "who will be given the terrible power of an economic and technical centralization covering the whole world?"

VII.

There is an ongoing question of whether man is good or evil, but Schmitt asserts that political theories are clear on this

[T]he strange... observation remains that all genuine political theories presuppose man as evil... as a dangerous and dynamic being.

Indeed, it is by recognition of this that a thinker reveals himself as a political thinker. Schmitt quotes Hegel and Lenin to show how they understand the nature of the "enemy" the "people" and the "conflict." Except, of course that for Lenin the "people" is a class.

Political thought and political instinct thus prove their worth theoretically and practically in their ability to distinguish friend from enemy.

On the other hand the inability to make the friend-enemy distinction "appears as a symptom of the political end". And he proposes the Russian nobility before the revolution, the "relativist bourgeoisie" and the ancien régime aristocrats of France as people that did not see who the enemy was.

VIII.

Although "liberal thought" pretends to ignore the state and politics and imagine human interaction in terms of "ethics and economics, intellect and business, education and property" and care only about the individual, in its actions liberalism smuggles power and politics in the back door.

[It] no longer knows war, but only executions, sanctions, punitive expeditions, pacifications, protection of treaties, international police, and peacekeeping missions. The enemy is no longer called the enemy but in return he is set up as a threat to peace[.]

Thus a war is turned into a "'crusade' or 'the last war of mankind' using an array of propaganda". So, "this allegedly apolitical and apparently even anti-political system either serves existing groupings of friends and enemies, or leads to new ones, and is unable to escape the logic of the political." 

One can say that, since Carl Schmitt, the Nazi, published The Concept of the Political in 1932, nothing has changed.