During an episode of” Real Time with Bill Maher”, James Carville, a Democrat and political strategist, expressed his opinion that Speaker Mike Johnson and another” Christian patriots” are a bigger threat to America than al- Qaeda. In a more recent diatribe on X, Carville urged young people to acknowledge the potential disastrous effects, at least in his eyes, of no supporting Biden in the November election:
If Trump, and Roberts, and Alito, and Gorsuch, and Thomas, and Leonard Leo, and the Heritage Foundation— if they get a hold]of power], there will be no government left, there will be no rights left, you will live under theocracy, you’ll end up ]with ] Christian Nationalism. My counsel to show these young people is to get off your motherf**king a** and get voting because you should voting like your whole future, and the whole future of this United States depends on it because, quite honestly, it does, and that’s not an exaggeration.
This polarizing and vociferous language is used by Carville only. President Biden and numerous other Democrat lawmakers have repeatedly called” a threat to this state” and” a threat to the brick and mortar of our political organizations” in response to Donald Trump’s leadership and influence.
Also supposedly democratic Democrats like Carville and Biden are now using this vilification of Republicans as an existential risk that must be completely eradicated from British politics. But far too many Republican leaders and traditional experts insist that the solution to this fanaticism is to beat liberals in the “marketplace of ideas” while mocking their own allies for their conceited lack of civility in the face of eliminationist rhetoric. This is not the way to win an election, significantly less save America from communist dictatorship.
The unwillingness of some leaders on the right to confront Democrats immediately is challenging to , stomach, but,  , this rhetoric should come as no surprise,  , given the intellectual origins of remaining- wing politics. Although his social revolution was also keen to use violence to advance its political goals, communist hero Mao Zedong briefly described politics as “war without bloodshed.” Consequently, the “wokeness” we see unfolding in all aspects of National living bears striking similarities to Mao’s social revolution, including the use of political violence as evidenced throughout the 2020 George Floyd protests and, more recently, within the” Free Palestine” action.
In this way, one might assume that the Republican Party may accept Democrats ‘ promises and wake up one day and know” when it is,” but regretfully that is not the case. Conservative gatekeepers behave as though any person on the right who uses political will to overthrow them is dangerous, and the left is only using its power to intimidate, harass, and also put people in jail. Instead, they make dated and ineffective appeals to reformers and counteract the” three-legged stool” of conservatism. To say this idea is naïve would be an insult. It would be more accurate to say that this is handled opposition language.
Like it or not, our politicians then ultimately revolves around discerning “friend” from “enemy” — and rewarding the past and immediately engaging the first. In his 1932 publication The Concept of the Democratic, European philosopher Carl Schmitt introduced the phrase “friend/enemy.” According to his theory, political entities define themselves by identifying friends ( allies ) and enemies (adversaries ), a differentiation that profoundly influences political decisions and actions. The fundamental foundation of modern politics lies in this difference between power dynamics and political dynamics.
This does not just involve social conflicts or rivalries, as is crucial to keep in mind. We’re not talking about social conflicts over marginal tax rates or financial tariffs like we used to have in our earlier political discourse. What would be an extensional risk to one part or another is directly addressed in the friend/enemy distinction.
The emphasis on an external attack significantly lessened the power of domestic political conflicts in America during the Cold War and the start of the war on terror, especially when juxtaposed with the philosophical worries of nuclear conflict or major terrorist threats. However, the subsequent fall of the Soviet Union and the growing disillusionment with the war on terror, in addition to Donald Trump’s and Barack Obama’s election, have given American politics a fresh start:
The enemy within.
Whether it was when Obama designated working- class Americans in the Midwest as people who” cling to guns or religion” and have “antipathy to people who are n’t like them” or Hillary Clinton designating Trump voters as a “basket of deplorables” or, as mentioned earlier, President Biden likening “MAGA Republicans” as extremist threats to the nation, the escalation by Democrats designating their political opponents as the “enemy” has been deliberate.
That said, while it’s vital to designate who the “enemy” is within this binary, it is equally important to identify who is a friend. Once again, the left excels at this.
One of the most egregious historical instances of how the left “rewards friends” without regard for their moral failings is with the Weather Underground, a far-left terrorist organization that the FBI designates as one of the world’s far-left. The University of Illinois had no problems hiring him as a professor after his charges were dropped due to misconduct by the FBI, and he also participated in a string of political bombings that injured and killed innocent people.
Eventually, no doubt due to his radical leftist beliefs, Ayers even found a way to cross paths with then- presidential candidate Barack Obama. Friends of ideologies frequently find themselves circling the same political circles. Most recently, Bill Ayers has been seen at a campus protest offering the violent” Free Palestine” movement his public support.
And if you believe that the distinction between a friend and an enemy is limited to political theory, you should be aware that many supposedly mainstream liberal organizations are directly funding the campus protests as well as other left-wing pro-violent organizations like Antifa and environmental activists who have been obstructing roads around the country. This is a highly coordinated effort that uses specific methods to defy the law and order in an effort to advance radical political goals.
In an interview with Univision about Latino voters, Obama specifically made reference to the friend/enemy distinction in a moment of brutal honesty.
If Latinos do n’t vote in this election and instead of saying,” We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re going to reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,” I believe it will be harder. And that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on Nov. 2″, he said.
In spite of numerous internal contradictions, Obama’s statement demonstrates how identity politics can be very effective at identifying who is a friend and who is an enemy. It also demonstrates how the friend/enemy dynamic can be expressed in political alliances.
If you’re in a war and only your opponent is going on the offensive, you’re guaranteed to lose. Conservatives must utterly embrace the possibility of gaining and retaining political power in this friend/enemy binary in order to succeed and win in the current political environment. Like it or not, in politics, as in warfare, the distinction between friend and foe is an indispensable guiding principle, intricately shaping the contours of our modern political landscape.
For those on the political right, recognizing and embracing the friend/enemy distinction is n’t a mere choice, it’s a strategic imperative.
