00:01:19.640Well, let's be gracious. It's easy to misunderstand. You know, if you talk about a
00:01:27.100friend-enemy distinction, people immediately put that in a personal context. And if you're
00:01:33.720Christian, then you immediately go to Jesus saying, well, love your enemies. And so it0.93
00:01:40.780becomes a category error of not really understanding, you know, it becomes a little
00:01:46.620bit of an English translation error. We've simplified these concepts, and so I think we
00:01:55.640miss both what Jesus is talking about, and we miss what Schmidt is trying to discuss. And honestly,
00:02:03.120Schmidt, I think, has a very critical insight into what Jesus is actually saying about this
00:02:11.760concept of enmity itself. When Boring came out, I just wanted to react to that because
00:02:21.240it plays upon that very populist American political, let's make everything so dumbed
00:02:34.020down that you don't get any of the meat of the argument. And so I think he was playing on,
00:02:41.480Schmidt isn't telling you, hate your enemies. That's not the idea. He's asking, he's, and my
00:02:51.100particular opinion is Schmidt is not a political philosopher. He is a political scientist. He is
00:02:58.500trying to describe what is, how do things work. He is a political, he's trying to explain the
00:03:08.300engineering behind these mechanisms, as opposed to Hobbes, Strauss, Plato, Socrates, which were
00:03:18.440more on the philosophical side of things. This is really Strauss's criticism of Schmidt, and we can
00:03:24.440get to that later. But Schmidt is not saying, hate your enemies. He's asking what distinguishes
00:03:31.180a genuinely political association from economic, aesthetic, religious, or private
00:03:38.120association. So in other words, Schmidt is trying to say what is a public enemy as opposed to a
00:03:47.640private enemy, and is that public enemy endangering your way of life? And if so,
00:03:56.120that is to be opposed politically. And then he asked the question, is the modern understanding
00:04:03.220of politics designed to limit your ability to face that? And so that's really what's going on
00:04:13.940with Schmidt. It's not this, you know, anybody who doesn't, anyone who disagrees with you
00:04:21.300at any level is just an enemy and you should destroy them. That's not what's going on in
00:04:28.180Schmidt. Matter of fact, later on, especially in Nomas of the Earth, Schmidt goes to great lengths
00:04:35.400to explain that dehumanizing of even the existential enemy is dangerous to the soul
00:04:45.320of the of the regime of of of that which is political people tend to gloss over that but
00:04:51.960that's critical in in schmidt's thought right and he's presenting this point in opposition to the
00:04:59.800liberal assumption that the entire purpose of politics is to maximize freedom and leave people
00:05:09.320alone he's saying that that simply isn't true and that liberalism will develop its own
00:05:17.400set of enemies just like any political order so he's thinking about this in the in us in that
00:05:23.720there is a political system that system maintains order ideally it constrains the strong and
00:05:31.720protects the weak and within that system there are enemies who are trying to upend it and so you must
00:05:39.320have a distinction within the political you can't go to a perfectly post-political utopia
00:05:47.360that's right well and i think he would be i i think the i think you can definitely argue
00:05:55.400you know schmidt is in the hobbesian school right without hobbes you don't get schmidt
00:06:01.060And without the classical understanding of politics, going back to the Socratic turn, you don't get Hobbes.
00:06:13.580And so I think Schmidt would say that bourgeois liberalism is, in modern terms, is like an autoimmune disease for the state, because in trying to neutralize conflict and bring it to the level of discussion or argument,
00:06:37.360what you've done is you've legitimized that which ultimately will destroy the way of life.0.91
00:06:45.540And this is ultimately very Christian. Look, Schmidt was not perfect. I'm not here to gloss0.96
00:06:52.460over the real problems that Schmidt has, but this is a very Christian idea. The Christians were first,0.99
00:07:02.800Before they were called Christians, it was called the way. Christianity is not simply propositional. It's not just some idea of justification by faith. It is a way of life.
00:07:20.700It is, in that sense, a form of ethnogenesis in that it creates its own, and I'm using the classical understanding of ethnos as opposed to race as a common custom language, you know, presupposition, so to speak.
00:07:40.600um so so schmidt is is operating within that paradigm that the purpose of the politeia of
00:07:50.660the regime is to protect away he goes on to say uh later that it is the battle against antichrist
00:08:00.040in each particular distinctive people groups unique way of battling antichrist in whatever
00:08:08.140they understand that, which is to be protected. Again, this is a very, without overstating it,
00:08:19.760again, Schmidt's relationship with the church was not consistent, to put it mildly, but the paradigm
00:08:30.620within which he is working is a Christian paradigm. And he makes that clear, again,
00:08:37.500he writes somewhat esoterically. Again, he's in political, not to go completely Straussian on this,
00:08:46.060but he's in, this is a tumultuous time he is writing in, first during Weimar.
00:08:53.040And let's be clear, he's writing early in the Weimar times in order to bolster Hindenburg
00:08:59.960against the rising populism of Hitler and the National Socialists. It's later that he says,
00:09:09.340well, they're in charge. I got to kind of align with them. So anyway, there's a lot of moving
00:09:13.980parts here, but he writes somewhat esoterically. Then later in No Most of the Earth, the veil is
00:09:21.480completely removed. And he says, look, this is all about, this is, he re-solidifies his relationship
00:09:29.100to the kingship of Christ and the leadership of the church. And it's a very interesting,
00:09:37.120it's a hard read. It's not enjoyable. This isn't like reading Nietzsche, where you're on this
00:09:43.480amazing adventure agree with Nietzsche or not it's this is not Dostoevsky uh he's uh Schmidt is not a
00:09:51.360a uh page turner but it's but it's very uh uh it's it's uh it's well it's well written in the
00:10:00.180sense of it's it's ideologically dense yeah fair enough because it and it is resting I mean the
00:10:10.320point that you made that there is in every society an order a regime a polity that is there to
00:10:19.100protect the way of life of a people and well liberalism just tries to destroy that but yes
00:10:26.780that that's the ultimate that's the stated goal of the state so to speak yes yes uh and and we
00:10:34.360will get to the problems of liberalism, but I absolutely want to go there with you. But that
00:10:41.540idea seems to be fundamental, that the liberal assumption is that we can all just get along if
00:10:49.040there are the right tools in place, if socioeconomic factors are addressed across the
00:10:57.100board, shall we say, without acknowledging the reality that actually different peoples want to
00:11:03.740live differently. And within any given polity, there are always revolutionary forces trying to
00:11:11.780upend it, and forces that are trying to exploit it in a way that leads to its demise. So the
00:11:19.420thinking of Schmitt seems to take human nature a little more seriously than, say, the liberal
00:11:27.480assumptions. Well, yeah, you're dealing with the very reality. Is humanity, I mean, this gets into
00:11:34.840basic questions. Is humanity perfectible? Is that perfectibility a matter of scientific process
00:11:44.980and progress? This is what later another, you know, the managerialism was really a post-Marxist
00:11:55.540way of trying to perfect humanity, to scale humanity, under the assumption that human
00:12:03.140beings are fungible, which should offend everyone. Just by nature, we know that humans are
00:12:12.020individually, they are unique. But then as a Christian, it is incredibly offensive.1.00
00:12:22.180You know, did the Lord Christ die for sin or for sins? And that, if it's just a concept, then, you know, not to get too far into that, but Schmidt would argue, would agree with Hobbes and with classical Christian thought and the thought of the West, that humanity is ultimately flawed.
00:12:48.760that's why men need to be governed, that that government, therefore, within the shell or the
00:12:55.720protection of that government, men can be free because they do reflect God's image. But it is
00:13:05.640not perfectible, that humanity is, that only the divine can perfect humanity in the eschaton,
00:13:20.040so to speak. So while we're here and working these things out, you can't limit, artificially
00:13:27.240limit the government and take these very real problems and take them to the level of parliamentary
00:13:35.100discourse. Schmidt talks about this in the crisis of parliamentary democracy, but I want to get back
00:13:41.540real quick. We didn't completely finish on this friend-enemy thing because there's a distinction
00:13:48.920here that a lot of folks miss within the teachings of Christ that Schmidt hints at. He knows he's not
00:13:55.640a theologian, but he makes a very important point, and it's this distinction between the public and
00:14:03.320the private enemy. When Jesus is speaking of loving your enemies, he's speaking clearly from
00:14:10.180the context of a private enemy. That private enmity is real, but you should love that enemy.
00:14:18.780Why? Every time Jesus is speaking to an individual, he gives them, he treats them with dignity and
00:14:26.580with respect. He takes their questions seriously. He spends, it seems to be, all night discussing
00:14:34.420with Nicodemus these great questions as to the purpose of Israel, and so on and so forth. The
00:14:42.540rich young ruler, on and on. But when he deals with a group that is opposed to his efforts,
00:14:49.520He goes at them with complete rhetorical destruction. There is no holding back. And again, this is a picture of the difference between private and public enmity.
00:15:03.200And Schmitt, this is part and parcel of Schmitt's understanding, and he, the political enmity, is wholly within this public sphere.
00:15:21.020And when we confuse, well, it's just when we confuse those two categories, you end up taking the, you end up cutting the legs off of the state's ability to preserve the way of life.
00:15:36.060We see this, for instance, in America, you have polities rising up everywhere that are not Western, much less Christian.
00:15:48.680And therefore, with multiple ways of life, you turn internal politics becomes existential.
00:15:58.460And that is revolutionary and destructive.
00:16:05.700I think the, I mean, a couple of comments on Christ saying love your enemies.
00:16:14.100Love your enemies does come with look at the beam in your own eye.
00:16:21.900So fix yourself, see yourself as your enemy sees you.
00:16:27.420Fix what you have genuinely done wrong towards your enemy.
00:16:31.420But then if they remain your enemy, they are still your enemy.
00:16:34.660because then that enmity is is based on god essentially and different definitions of what
00:16:42.160is good and what is right and someone with a completely different definition of what is right
00:16:47.320in a real sense cannot be your friend uh or definitely cannot be your political friend
00:16:55.260because their purpose is to upend the system that you believe is right
00:17:01.120and therefore if that your aim is to protect a system that you believe is is just and uh serves
00:17:10.160the soul and the souls of those around you then that person is by definition your enemy even if
00:17:17.080you have a friendly enough relationship with him as an individual so there are these distinctions
00:17:22.920that that you are clarifying which are extremely important and it does come to questions of
00:17:30.060assumptions about human nature at the end of the day as as you correctly said if human nature is
00:17:35.800perfectible then all it needs is some tweaking through managerialism uh the state taking more
00:17:42.880and more control of your life in order to make you a better person well yes then there should
00:17:48.900be universal there should be a global order that makes us all better but if our belief is actually
00:17:58.400that isn't possible, we are afflicted with original sin just as we are blessed by divine
00:18:04.080grace, then the entire thing changes. And so it goes to a question of not just political theology,
00:18:13.360but literal theology. It goes to a question of actual theology, which is where Schmitt has a lot
00:18:23.040of contributions yeah i think i think we get to liberalism uh well let's just put it very basically
00:18:31.960does good and evil exist do those exist as um you know to be platonic do those is there a form of
00:18:42.940the good? And is there an opposition to that? You know, the Bible begins with the story of
00:18:54.840a mountain garden or orchard where in the middle is a tree of life and a tree of the knowledge of
00:19:01.300good and evil. And this is, I know you didn't have me on here to discuss basic Christian theology,
00:19:07.780but go with me for just a second. Oh, definitely. It's interesting that God says every tree
00:19:17.420that is here is good for food. And then later he makes what seems like a probationary limit on the
00:19:29.220tree of the knowledge of good and evil that one day you will eat from this, but not yet. There's
00:19:34.620this question of maturity that is necessary in order to ascertain what is good and evil.
00:19:43.000Well, this matches our experience. There are certain things a four-year-old understands and
00:19:49.400certain things that a four-year-old does not understand. There are certain things a 15-year-old
00:19:55.440understands and certain things that it takes till you have some gray hair, maybe, to understand.0.72
00:20:01.040And so that, but good and evil and its existence and the pursuit of the knowledge of that is part and parcel of the understanding of the West, of Christianity.
00:20:17.300and honestly, I don't think this is controversial. All the great religions understand that good and
00:20:27.260evil exist, that you don't murder, that you don't talk bad about mama, that you don't steal,
00:20:34.720that coveting is going to lead you into a bad place. These are things that just are. This is
00:20:43.160reality. And what liberalism does is it says that reality, we can kind of wink at that.
00:20:54.580And ultimately, what that leads to is a type of positivism that says law isn't a revealing
00:21:05.740or reaching for what is true, it is a decision that makes the most people happy. And if humanity
00:21:16.440is flawed, that happiness, therefore, based on happenstance, is flawed as well. So this is the
00:21:27.480real question we're trying to get at, is the purpose of the politeia, of the regime, to pursue
00:21:34.680the good, or is it just to enforce the common will? And that's really what is at stake here.
00:21:46.320If it's just the common will, then you're just spinning your wheels in the ditch on the side
00:21:53.820of the road. Now, the question that immediately comes to this is, well, Ron, you just sound like
00:22:03.900a progressive. You sound like a Hegelian progressive if we're just, you know. And no,
00:22:11.400just because the left has distorted the idea of the good doesn't mean we abandon what is good.
00:22:20.840Politics is a continual fight. It just is. And that's what Schmidt is trying to recover,
00:22:27.960this the fact that it is serious now there's questions is that does does seriousness
00:22:35.740automatically lead to a pursuit of the good this was Strauss's question to Schmidt and they were
00:22:41.960friends I find that profoundly interesting by the way right here's the Schmidt and and Strauss
00:22:48.680were were you know Schmidt helped Strauss escape Germany and get to America and find a teaching
00:22:54.980position. That's interesting to me. But anyway, that's ultimately the value in wrestling with
00:23:04.740these ideas is, what are we pursuing here? Is it good? Is good worth pursuing? If you are a
00:23:13.540Christian and say, no, it's just procedure to find the will of the people without any limit,
00:23:21.340I got a real problem. I just have a problem with that. I think that's demonstrably fallacious.
00:23:29.900Yes. No, absolutely. Absolutely. If you enjoyed this preview,
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