Ideas | How German analysts explain MAGA behavior

“When you pray with power, mercy and compassion will be like sin.”

Benjamin Cremer, a Wesleyan pastor and author based in Idaho, published this idea last year. I saw it last week and immediately sent it to my close friends with a note saying that this sentence encapsulates our political times. It helps define America’s moral divide.

Over the past decade, I have watched many of my friends and neighbors make remarkable changes. They went from supporting Donald Trump despite their hatred to rejoicing in his violence.

This is not a new observation. In fact, it is so obvious that it verges on the banal. The more interesting question is why. How is it that so many Americans seem to have abandoned any commitment to personal virtue – at least in their political lives – and have instead embraced the ruthless political battle of so enthusiastic that they believe you are immoral if you don’t join their crusade. if you don’t copy his style?

A question with multiple answers. In December, I wrote a column examining the question through a particularly religious lens. When a person believes that he has the eternal truth, there is a temptation to believe that he has the right to rule.

But there is a difference between giving in to temptation and developing other behaviors. And what we’ve seen in the last decade is that millions of Americans are building a different moral framework. And while it is certainly prominent and powerful in Trumpism, it is not exclusive to Trumpism.

A good way to understand this terrible political behavior is to read Carl Schmitt, a German political theorist who joined the Nazi Party after Hitler became Chancellor. I want to be careful here – I’m not arguing that millions of Americans are suddenly Schmittians, collaborators with one of the fascist regime’s favorite political theorists. Most Americans have no idea who he is. They will not accept all his ideas either.

One of his ideas, however, stands out today: his statement, in a book called “The Concept of the Political” in 1932, about “distinguishing friends from enemies” . The political sphere, according to Schmitt, is distinct from the private sphere, and has its own contradictions.

“Let us suppose,” wrote Schmitt, “that in the field of morality the ultimate distinction is between good and evil, between good and bad aesthetics, between the useful economy.” and unprofitable.” Politics, however, has “its own uniqueness”. In this field, “the particular political distinction to which political action and motivation can be reduced is that between friends and enemies”.

One of the shortcomings of liberalism, according to Schmitt, is the reluctance to distinguish between friends and enemies. It’s a fool’s errand not to draw. A lasting political community exists only when it is differentiated. This conflict with the outside is what makes society.

Schmitt is both descriptive and commanding here. If distinguishing between friends and foes is essential to the creation and preservation of political community, finding a home with your political opponents can be disastrous. It’s human nature, and it makes no sense to deny our essential nature.

Schmitt was partly right. Distinguishing between friend and foe is part of being human, and we are constantly tempted to succumb to it, justify it, and indulge it. Instead of resisting it, we want to find ways to correct it, often to maintain our self-image of moral and decent people.

It is also true that the distinction between friends and enemies is incompatible with the liberal democratic project. Pluralism seeks to create a community where historical enemies can live in peace and prosper together. If the distinction between friend and foe is an essential part of humanity, how can pluralism survive?

There was no more knowing than the founders that the American experiment is contrary to our basic nature. A century before Schmitt was born, they understood this fact well.

Our government was founded on the understanding that, as James Madison famously said in Federalist No. 51, “If people are angels, there is no need for government. If angels rule people, there is no need for external or internal control of government.”

The Constitution tries to improve the will to power as much as it can – as Madison said in the same article, “the will must be made against surplus” – but the founders knew that even the even an extensive system of checks and balances is not enough. For our system to work, virtue is necessary.

“We have no sovereign Government capable of combating the sufferings of mankind uncontrolled by morality and religion,” John Adams wrote in his 1798 Letter to the Massachusetts Militia, “Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, will break the strongest ropes of our Constitution. Like a whale in a net.”

Adams’ analogy of New England is perfect (his readers will know exactly what a whale would do in a net): Pluralism requires law and ethics to work, and without ethics it cannot succeed. law.

We forget that the founders focused not only on the form of American government—for all its faults, but on personal virtue. One of my favorite books of the past year was “The Pursuit of Happiness” by Jeffrey Rosen, president of the National Constitution Center.

The book describes how the founders viewed the pursuit of happiness not as a pursuit of pleasure or wealth, but as a “pursuit of virtue – as That is good, but not feelings good.” Benjamin Franklin, for example, listed temperance, quietness, order, resolution, thrift, industry, sincerity, justice, modesty, cleanliness, composure, chastity and humility as an essential element of virtue.

You immediately see the contradiction in Schmitt’s friend-foe policy. Virtue ethics certainly acknowledges the existence of enemies, but it still imposes moral obligations on our treatment of our enemies. The virtues Franklin lists aren’t just how you like your political tribe; they are universal moral obligations and apply to our individual conduct.

Show these good qualities, and your enemies can live with dignity and freedom even if they lose the political battle. When your enemies show similar good qualities, you can still enjoy a good life even if you lose. This is the social combination of pluralism. In a decent society, no defeat is the last defeat, and no victory is the last victory. And in all cases, your basic human rights must be upheld.

Dive too deeply into the distinction between friend and foe, on the other hand, and it can become lost it is immoral to treat your enemies with kindness if kindness weakens society in its fight against a mortal enemy. In the world of distinguishing between friend and foe, your ultimate beauty is found in your willingness to fight. The betrayal of both sides by rejecting the call for political warfare.

The difference between friend and foe explains why so many Republicans are especially angry at Trump’s opponents — especially when those opponents have conservative values. In distinguishing between friend and foe, ideology is secondary to loyalty.

You can see this principle at work in Trump’s decision to allow or waive sanctions on the January 6th rioters and revoke Secret Service protection from one of his national security advisers. ex-national, John Bolton, and from one of the former secretaries of state, Mike. Pompey. Friends can get away with violent crimes. Bolton and Pompeo have publicly criticized Trump, and now they are enemies who have to pay the price.

While Trumpists are among the most violent voices in the public square, ruthless violence is sadly common across the political spectrum, especially at the extremes. I have seen activists from the left completely destroy their opponents. Any departure from orthodoxy is regarded as evil, and evil must be completely eradicated.

And there is no compromise in abolitionist culture — from either the left or the right.

Because citizens depend on our ethics, we should teach ethics along with citizens. Sadly, we fail at both tasks, and our inferior nature tells millions of Americans that cruelty is good, if it helps us win, and kindness is bad, if it hurts our careers. This is the path of destruction. The prophet Isaiah said: “Woe to those who turn evil into good and good into evil.”

Woe to them, yes, but as friend-enemy politics dominates our conversation, tearing apart our families and communities and reshaping our morals, darker thoughts come to mind.

A tragedy for all of us.