As you liberals shelter nervously in your mental health spaces I have a suggestion to help pass the time: Learn from the Enemy. The Nazis, to be specific. They will tell you where you went wrong, dear liberals.

First there is Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. In his Concept of the Political he is trying to understand our modern world. Here is how I interpret him:

The Political is Friend vs. Enemy, determined by Force.

The Moral is Good vs. Evil, determined by Persuasion.

The Economic is Useful vs. Harmful, determined by Prices.

The Aesthetic is Beautiful vs. Ugly, determined by Seeing.

Let me be clear: the world is infinitely more complex than that. Still, “make things as simple as possible, but no simpler,” said Guess Who.

The reason I bring up Carl Schmitt is to help analyze the post-election issue salad put out by co-author of The Emerging Democratic Majority Ruy Teixeira in the Free Press. Here is the 16-Point Plan he thinks Democrats should be pitching in the future (ruthlessly compressed and revised by me):

“Equality of opportunity,” not “outcome;” restore patriotism; “discrimination and racism are… bad,” but not the whole story; ditto “racial achievement gaps;” “calling out white[s]” for bias “is not right or fair;” legal, not illegal immigration; can’t get better policing by “defunding the police;” sex differences don’t equal sexism; trangenders cool, but not men in women’s sports and bathrooms; “free speech” is good, but “language policing” is not; solve climate change but keep “energy… cheap;” “make America more equal… but… also… richer; “degrowth” is stupid; make it easier to make things, not regulate them; need industrial policy to beat China and also help the “left-behind”-- remember “the New Deal.”

Now, my approach to Teixeira’s issue salad is to wilt it with Nazi Schmitt.

Just how many of those issues could or should be solved by politics? Schmitt says that with politics you inevitably divide the world into friends and enemies. If he is right then we should radically reduce the number of issues in the remit of politics and government because politics and government reduce to a war between Us and Them, and to the victor the spoils -- to hand out to his supporters. Politics encourages extremism, from far-right tiki-torchers to far-left race card players.

I’d say that most of the issues in Teixeira’s issue salad are really moral issues: what is good and bad for society short of actual enemies at the border and criminals on the streets. Now maybe you liberals are the most evolved and the most moral dudes in world history. Moral people get their way on climate and gender by moral persuasion rather than by force.

So much for Nazi #1. Now for Nazi #2, Nietzsche. My Nietzsche moment occurred when I saw North London luvvie Helen Lewis describing Nietzsche here and here as “the Nazis’ favorite intellectual.” Where I come from, that’s called “playing the Nazi card.” Nietzsche’s most famous saying is:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

Earth to liberals: The God of Equality is dead. The God of Civil Rights is dead. The God of Mass Media is dead. And you have killed them. You Liberals.

Very well. The liberal gods are dead. Then what? No problem, says Nazi Nietzsche. First, Decadence, the decay of the old order: can you spell gender craziness? Then Nihilism, a life without meaning: can you spell “brat” and “vibe”?

And that’s just the beginning. After Nihilism comes the Eternal Recurrence: can you spell Groundhog Day? Finally, the Revaluation of All Values and the Übermensch: a new Savior appears to create safe spaces, dry liberal tears, and give life meaning again.

If all this Nazi stuff makes you feel unsafe, dear liberals, then there’s Martin Gurri and his Revolt of the Public. I wrote about him two weeks ago just before the election:

Here’s what we know. With the rise of the internet the old Age of Mass Media when the rulers curated the news and the history is disintegrating.

Now we have the Age of Talk-Back, when nobodies can use the internet to push narratives, stories, histories, even conspiracy theories that challenge the regime Narrative.

So even though Kamala outspent Trump three to one, it didn’t matter, because there is X / Twitter and the Joe Rogan Experience and nobody trusts the Mass Media any more. But to our liberal friends, the “online media ecosystem” is a “radicalization funnel.” Inconceivable!

And now the Kidz are really getting into the MAGA memes thing.

How about Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt’s concept of the aesthetic as the distinction between the beautiful and the ugly, that I say is determined by “Seeing?” Just this: How beautiful, experts agree, is seeing Trump in a McDonalds drive-up window or riding in the cab of a garbage truck!

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill blogs at The Commoner Manifesto and runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: Public Domain