9/11

Remember 9/11 when you vote….

(Hey, I know 9/11 was a week ago, but if I post before the election, it’s timely enough, and this is a rather broad reflection on the serious topic of defense. )

My “serious” interest in politics antedates 9/11 by about two decades, but my introduction was related to “9/11″ issues of peace and safety.

My “serious” introduction to politics was with a couple of books in a class taught by a professor who became a mentor. The first book, The Concept of the Political, was used as a brief introduction that went way over my head, and which I didn’t study seriously until later. The book, first published in a preliminary form as an essay in 1927, was written by a scholar who eventually supported the Nazis, Carl Schmitt. The edition we used in class also contained an analysis of Schmitt’s essay by a Jewish scholar, Leo Strauss, who later fled the Nazis. At the heart of Schmitt’s work, Strauss saw the basic question, is government necessary? The critique reportedly was well-received by Schmitt.

If the answer to the question, is government necessary? is in the affirmative, then it seems an explanation is required. Why can’t we live without the overpowering force of government? One might say government is necessary for defense, because we have dangerous enemies. And this is how Strauss describes Schmitt’s “first word against liberalism.”

Schmitt’s work considers the nature of politics and focuses on the distinction between friend and enemy. Politics is not just about philosophic abstractions, but concrete oppositions that result in the identification of the enemy. Schmitt wanted to understand the “state” by understanding the nature of the political. He thought the common definitions and usages of “state” were inadequate. His thesis is that “the concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political.” So he aimed to understand “the political.”

9/11 illustrates that we live in a dangerous world. We are opposed by enemies. As Schmitt writes in his essay:

It is irrelevant here whether one rejects, accepts or perhaps finds it an atavistic remnant of barbaric times that nations continue to group themselves according to friend and enemy, or hopes that the antithesis will one day vanish. . . . The concern here is neither abstractions nor with normative ideals, bit with inherent reality and the real possibility of such a distinction. . . . But, rationally speaking, it cannot be denied that nations continue to group themselves according to the friend and enemy antithesis, that the distinction still remains actual today, and that this is an ever present possibility for every people existing in the political sphere.

Then, using distinctions in Greek, he distinguishes between personal enemies and public enemies as he considers the “often quoted ‘Love your enemies’ (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27).” He then writes:

Never in the thousand year struggle between Christians and Moslems did it occur to a Christian to surrender rather than defend Europe out of love toward the Saracens or Turks. . . . The Bible quotation touches the political antithesis even less than it intends to dissolve, for example, the antithesis of the good and evil. . . .

Strauss understands Schmitt’s polemic against pacifist humanitarianism to be directed against liberalism, against its lack of seriousness, or its attempt to make politics into something that’s merely entertaining.  Without serious disagreement, there is no conflict.  Without conflict there is no war.  Without war, we have peace.  And peace is the unquestioned goal of pacifist humanitarianism.

Schmitt understood there was a threat from modern liberalism.  He argued that a nation, not even a superpower, can “eliminate the distinction of friend and enemy.”  He concludes his line of thought about liberalism’s goal by writing:

It would be ludicrous to believe that a defenseless people has nothing but friends, and it would be a deranged calculation to suppose that the enemy could perhaps be touched by the absence of resistance. . . . If a people no longer possesses the energy or the will to maintain itself in the sphere of politics, the latter will not thereby vanish from the world.  Only a weak people will disappear.

While Strauss credited this “first word,”  he also critiqued Schmitt’s “seriousness,” his affirmation of the political, as merely a preliminary critique of liberalism. Strauss says that the affirmation of the political, the willingness to be serious and respect “all decisions leading up to the real possibility of war” is no different in kind than liberalism’s respect of all who “acknowledge the sanctity of peace.” Strauss says this affirmation of the political, this willingness to be serious and face conflict, has no name, at least not in the way that pacifist humanitarianism has the name of liberalism. But both liberalism and this “serious” approach to politics are mere affirmations, and are lacking a sound basis. The one affirms the goodness of avoiding conflict, while the other affirms the goodness of confronting the conflict, but neither has a foundation.

Strauss doesn’t read Schmitt’s affirmation of the political, of respect for a decision that may lead to war, to be Schmitt’s “last word” against liberalism. Strauss points toward Schmitt’s reference to “unpolluted knowledge” that “is never, except accidentally, polemical.” This knowledge is not to be gained from “political existence,” from the fact of political divisions in the world, but only by returning to “undefiled, not corrupt nature.”

This knowledge of nature stands in contrast to understanding that “an ever present possibility” of war “is the leading presupposition which determines in a characteristic way human action and thinking and thereby creates a specifically political behavior.” That is, a presupposition is not knowledge; it is only the “first word” in this argument.

Beyond the tentative character of the presupposition stands the question of whether existing states actually demonstrates that the “ever present possibility” of war “determines in a characteristic way human action and thinking and thereby creates a specifically political behavior.”

Government may be necessary, but not just because our enemies are dangerous, because man is dangerous. Government and politics may necessarily be the characteristic way of human action and thinking, without war being the underlying cause.

Consider again this election. Yes, we’re in a war. Does that determine how we think and act? Should war determine our actions?

Consider an issue that is not part of the war on terror,  but is part of a debate that reveals something of how we see ourselves and how we think and act.

Obama is said to support the barbaric action of denying care to babies that survive abortions. We tend not to think of abortion in terms of war (although Schmitt’s “first word” says that were we to think clearly, we would). Schmitt would say that the question does divide people and potentially could divide us into warring sides. But does that possibility of war determine how we think about abortion?

Does the possibility of war determine how we understand ourselves as humans?

I’m back to asking, as Schmitt did, what is man? Reagan said he believed that man is good.  While I don’t read Reagan’s words to mean that man is good enough for heaven, I do think that the innocent are good enough for protection and that we should not be prevented from doing what’s right–and we should be prepared to do what’s right.

Our elections are serious, but not just because we face dangerous enemies.  Rather, elections are serious because we face questions that challenge us to answer, who are we? Are we made in the image of God? Are we prepared to do justice? to defend ourselves and the innocent from the wicked?