Features January 2020
On the notion of a “liberal international order.”
The enemy is an idea—at least in part.
But who speaks of “enemies” anymore? Isn’t the human race beyond such low, petty, potentially violent concerns?
No. It will never be. It cannot be. As long as there will be man, he will have friends and enemies—individual men no less than groups of men.
Lately a group of dishonest men have taking to dismissing this concern as “Schmittian,” after the German political philosopher Carl Schmitt. But this is just their way of calling their own enemies “Nazis.” These sophists forget—or deliberately obscure—that Schmitt’s core insight follows Plato, who gives three definitions of justice in Book I of the Republic, the central being that justice is helping friends and...
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