OPINION: Democracy and Its Friend/Enemy Distinctions

Fighting fire with fire is what democracies do — and why democracies fail.

By Shaun Kenney
COLUMNIST

The University of Virginia enjoys a near-exact copy of Raphael’s School of Athens — nearly a copy only because the original is owned by the Vatican which has a certain allergy regarding exact copies of their collections. In their wisdom, a near-exact copy was produced that is precisely four inches smaller than the one found in the Apostolic Segnatura.

The room where Raphael’s most famous work was originally designed for the library and study of Pope Julius II only to be converted to use by the Vatican’s equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court — quite literally the Courts of Grace and Justice.

Politicians are often quick to mention that politics itself is not and never will be the School of Athens. The late Virginia State Senator Russ Potts used to quip that politics ain’t beanbag, which is true only in the sense that beanbag at least had a certain set of rules and a culture of honor. After all, who would beanbag someone twice in an elevator?

The Problem With “Defending Democracy”

Of course, Raphael’s painting was there for the consideration of an audience, initially popes and cardinals only to yield to those presenting their cases before the court. One of those lessons is in the upper left, where among the people are two characters. The man to the right? None other than Socrates himself enumerating his case before the mob. Within the midst of this mob, a man clad in armor with his hand on the hilt of his sword. Who is this individual? Some believe him to be Alexander the Great, others Pericles — and others believe him to be Alcibiades (Pericles heir).

Yet no matter who you believe this person to be, the warning is clear. Democracy killed Socrates, killed Phocion, and nearly killed Aristotle who warned in the Politics that democracies are corrupted by demagogues before degenerating into tyrannical government — quite literally a demos (mob) kratia (brute force).

Raphael’s warning to the waiting room at the Vatican was that the passions of the mob could very well put to death men such as Socrates. Aristotle himself fled Athenian democracy precisely so that the city could not sin twice against philosophy — and the punishment for Athens was ultimately to be ruled (ἀρχή or arche) by tyrants.

The man to the left of Socrates? Historians disagree whether it is Pericles, Alcibiades, or Alexander the Great himself — but all agree upon the warning as exemplified by the only person looking back at the viewer (and the only woman) in the work, that being the philosopher and scientist Hypatia of Alexandria. So much for one of the many warnings to those waiting in the Courts of Grace and Justice.

This backdrop is offered because we are seeing the rise of illiberalism in defense of democracy, first in trickles and now at a torrent.

One could go back and forth with individuals to blame or which party started it — the exercise is useless for the present time. Yet the real danger is that too many of our present-day politicians are imitating the emergency of the times rather than exercising both intellect and restraint. Bill Maher — prophet of the times — remarked not terribly long ago:

They say in politics, liberals are the gas pedal and conservatives are the brakes. And I’m generally with the gas pedal, but not if we’re driving off a cliff.

One supposes this is the case in an environment where democracies by their very nature are premised not upon the idea of self-governance but of the infiltration and expansion of power (again, ἀρχή) until either met with resistance or fizzles out.

That’s the catch.

When people use the term “defending democracy” they might use it in a benign sense, but if they are a true student of history or the classics, the imparting thought is that democracy (sic) can be defended by any means available or possible. We heard it in the floor speeches in the Virginia General Assembly in defense of re-redistricting in violation of the rules of fair play.

Their rationale? Other people violated the rules of fair play — somewhere else — and now the gloves come off.

The EnSchmittification of Everything

Whether you have heard of Carl Schmitt or not is almost immaterial. Carl Schmitt has most certainly heard of you — or better still, has an angle on how you are going to behave in a crisis.

Two aspects to Schmitt’s political philosophy:

1. All politics is built upon the friend/enemy distinction, and efforts by liberalism (lowercase-L) to either mask or ignore this distinction are ultimately doomed to failure.

2. The state of exception is where the political dwells, where extra-constitutional or extra-normative actions are taken by an executive power only to be justified or codified later as the new normal.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, some pretty sharp minds have been working to bring this into the American constitutional framework for some time.

Consider then-President George W. Bush’s line during the 2002 State of the Union Address where he tells the American public:

We have entered the next phase of the war, with a sustained international effort, to rout out terrorists in other countries, and deny al Qaeda the chance to regroup in other places. Across the world, governments have heard this message: You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.

(Applause.)

And for the long-term security of America and civilization itself, we must confront the great threat of biological and chemical and nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists or hostile regimes. We will not allow the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten America or our friends and allies with the world’s most destructive weapons.

When Bush defended his decision to keep Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, his rationale was simple and direct: “I am the decider, and I decide what is best.” Guess where that comes from? You guessed it — Schmitt and decisionism — where executive power in the face of an enemy protects friends and then makes decisions under circumstances defined as exceptional by God-knows-whom.

Of course, the Obama administration played fast and loose with the idea of exceptional and extraconstitutional acts and executive orders only for the first Trump administration to do likewise, followed by the Biden administration, and followed yet again by the Trump administration in the face of exceptional dysfunction in Washington.

The problem with this isn’t that politics — and justice — is reduced to the simplistic notion of helping one’s friends and punishing one’s enemies. In fact, it is a classic Platonic definition of tyranny. We know what always happens to tyrants in Virginia — right?

The real problem with Schmitt and this whole friend/enemy distinction is threefold:

1. First and foremost, politics isn’t predicated on fear — we aren’t born in fear nor do we work alongside and with one another in fear. High trust societies aren’t predicated in fear; families aren’t predicated in fear; human relations aren’t predicated in fear.

2. Second, all those edgy teens giving up on liberalism (and I mean liberalism in a classical sense and teens in a grown-adolescent-pretending-to-be-a-man critique) are doing it from third base. No less a slouch than Leo Strauss pointed out the errors Schmitt makes — that it is ultimately a liberal’s critique of liberalism, that his criticisms are effects of what liberalism does but not what liberalism is.

3. Last and perhaps most important for us is that what Schmitt is defining here is not democracy vs. civilization but rather democracy vs. democracy — it’s not the friend/enemy distinction but rather the enemy/enemy distinction. If both sides seek to behave like Athens and impose their ἀρχή (arche or power) on the other, you get a sort of dysfunction that Thucydides compared to tuberculosis and civil war — στάσις or stasis.

Yet if the left is the gas pedal and conservatives are the brakes, where does that leave us as a political body? Well — it ultimately means that if those who want to defend democracy are truly serious about what they are saying, then we are back to Aristotle and what best defends democracy — the rule of law and constitutional process.

Federalist 10: The Undefeated Argument

This is something James Madison and Alexander Hamilton would have instantly understood because they had the education to know better. The whole purpose of Federalist 10 was to remedy the old problem that power is the only morality in politics, or as Thucydides writes:

For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretenses …. holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Madison responds in Federalist 10:

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

It would be easy to bore you with the question whose justice and which rationality are we defending when we talk about democracy. The catch is getting out of the trap of friends and enemies but keeping the larger perspective in frame. Call it the Virginia Way or just plain good government, but defending democracy is going to inevitably raise the question of whose values and whose reasoning?

Running roughshod over good process with bad process for the sake of expediency? That’s how we get to where we are today. As the demagogues know, the best way to destroy a democracy is to abandon constitutional order. If we really are so worried about “no kings” then the treatment of the loyal opposition as enemies — memes and all — can be met with its polar opposite for sure, but let’s not pretend this is the sort of discourse and government Virginians deserve.

For Virginia Republicans, the siren song of fighting fire with fire is going to be strong indeed — especially in the face of a political left that has little inclination much less need to either consider our voices or enlist our advice. Yet remember that we don’t have to fight left-wing progressives with right-wing progressives. We can actually offer a better path forward and commit ourselves to constitutional process and good ideas.

The last time we did this? We were rewarded with the presidency of Ronald Reagan and governors the caliber of George Allen — and if Virginia Republicans are going to have heroes and leaders again, the party of ideas needs to come shining through rather than wallowing in the muck and on the terms of the muckrakers.

Shaun Kenney is one of three co-founders of the Fredericksburg Advance, and a member of the Board of Directors. This piece originally appeared in the Republican Standard.

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