Welcome back to The Old Paths. I’d like to introduce you to The Wade Show with Wade Stotts. He’s an online commentator with a pretty good Twitter presence and YouTube following.
His recent video entitled “Why Everything Is Political Now” went somewhat viral on Twitter and I thought I’d recommend it. In it, he introduces his audience to Carl Schmitt, a 20th century political theorist and jurist who coined the famous friend-enemy distinction in politics. Simply, put, a friend is someone who doesn’t want to change your way of life, and your public enemy is someone who does.
It’s a simplified framing that informs a lot of my political thinking, along with other right wing Zoomers. You can hear me say things like “way of life” on The Morning Show, and my support for figures like Donald Trump stems from the view that Trump is not desiring to change my way of life. Even Nikki Haley and many other GOP figures are desiring to change my way of life, and in my view, that categorizes them as the enemy that needs to be sent into political obscurity the way of Bushites like Jeb Bush and Liz Cheney. Â
The Schmittian Concept of the Political is not foreign to historic Christian thinking, either. At American Reformer, one writer retcons Schmitt with the 16th century Reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli who distinguishes between Christ’s instruction for the private individual to turn the other cheek toward his enemy, but the magistrate or sovereign is not to turn the other cheek toward a public enemy. For the magistrate and sovereign is burdened by God to defend a people and their way of life.
Stotts puts the Schmittian framing into a contemporary context, and I think, offers the Right a way forward. The Left has been operating with this understanding a lot longer, and it is to the Right’s benefit for the retrieval of an older, pre-modern way of political thinking. For politics is quite simple: reward your friends, and punish your enemies.
Grant Allen can be reached by email at grantallen@iheartmedia.com. If you’re interested in reading his other posts, check out his archived content or learn more about him by checking his short bio here.