Friend-enemy politics is inevitable when two factions are locked in existential opposition and have nothing in common as is increasingly the case in broken Liberal Democracies like UK and USA.
Thanks for the comment. What do you make of the examples I gave in the article? Are people who oppose Trump's tariffs (including many conservatives) the "enemies" of people who support them? Should they try to get them cancelled, if they can?
"While superficially compelling, this is not a realistic model of social behaviour. After the spate of recent firings, did you encounter any leftists saying, “Fair enough, we deserved that. We really ought to think twice the next time we engage in cancel culture”? I just saw scores of people poking fun at the right’s hypocrisy and running victory laps for having insisted the right never cared about free speech."
I think it is well to consider that modern western societies are beyond this point, because it reveals an underlying intend at cooperation and compromise.
All that is gone, and hence hypocrisy is simply a tool to win a zero sum game. It *may* have been seeded during Gingrich's term as Speaker, and metastasized gradually from there. Concurrently, each succeeding generation seems to have devalued ethical consistency in favor of gratifying one's own social whims--many of which are fickle and transient--consequences to social stability be damned.
I'm approaching 80. All this is becoming very, very evident to me by way of comparison over this time frame. Regrettably, it will require a period of protracted existential trauma on a massive scale to force a re-set back to mutual cooperation between opposing parties just simply to survive. Right now, each political/ideological party truly believes that yep, it *can* have it all.
...and not to dramatize, I think it will require a bit of Hell to press the re-set button.
Honestly, I don't see anything like a de-escalation as working. The window for that was Biden's election, and all that happened was a doubling down of inane woke positions.
Obama made Trump 1 possible, Biden made Trump 2 inevitable.
While I partially agree with your premise, there has been a huge 'ratcheting effect' of Federal power over the past few generations.
My grandparents grew up in a 'leave me the F*#k alone' relationship with the Government.
LBJ's Great Society caused the tendrils to invade everything we do.
I have nothing personally against most Federal employees. I just wish them to not be paid for by my taxes. The government exists to defend the borders and insure domestic tranquility. Every thing on top of that is superfluous.
The add-on agencies i.e. Education, Environmental, Homeland Security can be disbanded with no ill-effect. The Dept of Veterans Affairs should be folded into the DOD. Hopefully the DNI can be brutally downsized.
I would love to have a country where 5-7 cabinet positions ran things and the states were left alone to manage our local issues.
So, is there a 'payback' behavior happening now? Probably. Will it end when a certain limit is reached? Dunno. There is a massive amount of ill will in the population. The trannies rating to kindergartners has left a lot of us hoping for tumbrils and Madame Guillotine.
A National Divorce has been discussed. I am more and more in favor of the discussion. It appears that a non-military petitioning would allow 2 or more formed countries to peacefully co-exist.
Principles are not some foolish self-handicap. Often they can be a strategic advantage. Amongst elites especially there's people who genuinely care for things like freedom of speech. You can turn these people to your side by being more principled than your enemy.
If you become as vacuous as your enemy why would anyone ever defect?
"During the period from roughly 2010 to 2024, which has become known as the Great Awokening, radical progressives attempted to co-opt every major institution in society for the purpose of advancing their ideological agenda."
Well kinda. As I have contended in the past, it is not 'radical progressives' acting alone, but acting at the direction of the power elite (Deep State). The purpose of this is to sow societal disruption to affect descent, thus destabilizing the populace and making control easier.
"A map of more and less corrupt countries is shown above. As you can clearly see, Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand are among the only places where citizens do not perceive a high level of corruption in the public sector."
WTF! This is a perfect case of perception not born of reality. This is almost laughable, particularly in the case of the United States, undoubtedly the most corrupt country on the planet. There are three possibilities here: either those controlling the United States are especially adept at deceiving the public, the populace is stupid on a stick, or both.
There is a sinister sect pushing this framing to forge an actual civil war with the end goal of “eradicating leftism”, whatever that means is ambiguous but used alternatively for the devil.
The Left-Right divide can amount to existential stakes. Immigration, for example, is THE issue because it determines who gets to decide all the other issues.
"There is a sinister sect pushing this framing to forge an actual civil war with the end goal of “eradicating leftism”, whatever that means is ambiguous but used alternatively for the devil."
Indeed, there is a 'sinister sect', some call it the Deep State. But their goal is not to eradicate leftism, but to secure total control of the populace and continue the plutocratic oligarchy that we live under.
Some reference points are missing in some of the more glib comments. The liberal schmucks used government agencies to go after opponents including a serving President and a Presidential candidate. When Trump discussed the networks he said repeatedly that they violated their agreement which they signed when they got their broadcast license. Though the fairness doctrine is gone, though it should never have been removed, there is still a public affairs responsibility and their level of proved bias for the Democrat party is in the mid ninety percent range and does not include the Kimmelisms. Vance is discussing nongovernmental activity by suggesting that complaints be made by employees about Kirk hatred being touted in the workplace. Boycott or boycott-lite pressure is needed when liberals do massive organized boycotts through their institutional populations in governnment employee unions, teacher unions and many other unions. Nothing wrong with an equal and opposite reaction. There is a difference and the unschooled Noah Carl needs to know that.
"Vance is discussing nongovernmental activity by suggesting that complaints be made by employees about Kirk hatred being touted in the workplace".
If Kamala Harris had gone on a major podcast after, say, the Buffalo Shooting, and told her supporters "if you see someone being racist" you should "call their employer", would you have regarded that as unobjectionable?
No I would not. But the reason is that generally speaking everything is racist in the liberal mind. They see it as structural so there is no way to get away from that net but to be racist against whites, the superstructure. Still it would not be something that would be using government agencies to do the work, at least as understood by the way you stated the case.
"Vance is discussing nongovernmental activity by suggesting that complaints be made by employees about Kirk hatred being touted in the workplace."
Bull shit! Vance is a government official who is promoting action against free speech, thereby abrogating the First Amendment. But a non-governmental entity is not required to allow free speech.
Adding a point on Bondi. She quickly clarified her remark that she meant threatening hate speech. But bedwetters refuse to allow her the almost immediate correction she made and one which was sincere as she had discussed threats in speech many other times.
"Adding a point on Bondi. She quickly clarified her remark that she meant threatening hate speech. But bedwetters refuse to allow her the almost immediate correction she made and one which was sincere as she had discussed threats in speech many other times."
The SCOTUS does not accept the term 'hate speech'. 'Hate speech' is free speech.
You don’t agree with your friends about everything, and neither do your enemies. But everyone knows who their friends and enemies are.
Liberal proceduralism works as an intra-elite management tool when everyone accepts the same framework. But when your enemies hold power, clinging to procedure is a trap — and that’s why the Right has been losing for so long.
Thanks for the comment. What do you make of my Israel example: are pro- and anti-Israel conservatives "friends"? If you read Mark Levin's tweets about Tucker Carlson, they seem about as scurrilous as anything any leftist has said about Carlson.
In the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder, leftists, from basement-dwelling freaks to academics to congressmen, made it abundantly clear they want us dead. It seems reasonable to regard people who want you dead as enemies. The debate as to how we respond should be focussed on tactics.
Thanks for the comment. Beyond some comments posted online in a country of 340 million people, what evidence is there that "leftists" want "us" dead? Even if there were as many as 10,000 comments, that it is still much less than 1% of the population. Most mainstream leftist and liberal commentators publicly condemned the murder.
"So far, this outburst hasn’t come close to the level of cancel culture or ideological co-option that prevailed during the Great Awokening."
Should've ended with that. The whole premise of the article is void. Writing out your own counter argument doesn't render it false.
Following the principle of being harmless led to the free-speech-guy with a bullet through his neck. On the other side ABC gave in to terrorist attacks and threats, so the guy who lied about a political murder can spread his terrorist-supporting narrative, while the actual victim stays dead.
If you argue for being harmless and "principled", you condition the left into the mindset that terrorism works. And terrorism does work, if you don't retaliate against terrorists and their supporters. How many stages of defect-cooperate do you need to live through, until you default to the RIGHT option defect-defect? We know that the other sides defects, why – for god's sake – do you insist on "cooperate"?
How many liberals, who went "right" because of so called free speech, moved back to the left, after they assassinated one big conservative voice and defamed him? If there are such cases, it proves that they are just partisan leftists who tried to grift.
"Attorney General Pam Bondi mentioned going after people for “hate speech”."
Where is your principled argument, that she was unanimously attacked by everyone for that? Is there even one equivalent case, where the whole left pundit sphere attacked an official who threatend to go after people for "hate speech"? No.
This articles reeks of false equivalency.
"Indeed, the relevant literature suggests that one of the best ways to promote cooperation in public goods games is for the players to establish rules or norms as a way to disincentivise defection."
How's that working out for conservatives? Has this ever worked? That is the past and current strategy of conservatives and it made the left the de facto tyrannt. If the other side thinks, you'll never defect, they should in theory never defect themselves. However, the left always defected to gain power and pissed on conservatives.
Schmitt's principle is proven right, whether liberals with rhetorical skills like it or not. And at the moment conservatives conserve the decay by allowing terrorists and terrorist supports to live in peace and without consequences.
"And terrorism does work, if you don't retaliate against terrorists and their supporters."
I am not suggesting that right-wing governments shouldn't take action against "terrorists", but making distasteful comments about someone's death is not "terrorism". There have been several racist mass shootings in recent years. Does that mean people should be cancelled for engaging in whatever speech the left considers "racist"?
"This articles reeks of false equivalency."
I explicitly stated at the outset, "this outburst hasn’t come close to the level of cancel culture or ideological co-option that prevailed during the Great Awokening", while also agreeing that "the left started it".
"How's that working out for conservatives?"
It was working out quite well: wokeness was clearly on the back foot. And any long-term threat from wokeness is going to be exacerbated by any right-wing behaviour that reinforces the idea it's appropiate to censor "offensive" speech.
Friend-enemy politics is inevitable when two factions are locked in existential opposition and have nothing in common as is increasingly the case in broken Liberal Democracies like UK and USA.
Thanks for the comment. What do you make of the examples I gave in the article? Are people who oppose Trump's tariffs (including many conservatives) the "enemies" of people who support them? Should they try to get them cancelled, if they can?
–NC
"While superficially compelling, this is not a realistic model of social behaviour. After the spate of recent firings, did you encounter any leftists saying, “Fair enough, we deserved that. We really ought to think twice the next time we engage in cancel culture”? I just saw scores of people poking fun at the right’s hypocrisy and running victory laps for having insisted the right never cared about free speech."
I think it is well to consider that modern western societies are beyond this point, because it reveals an underlying intend at cooperation and compromise.
All that is gone, and hence hypocrisy is simply a tool to win a zero sum game. It *may* have been seeded during Gingrich's term as Speaker, and metastasized gradually from there. Concurrently, each succeeding generation seems to have devalued ethical consistency in favor of gratifying one's own social whims--many of which are fickle and transient--consequences to social stability be damned.
I'm approaching 80. All this is becoming very, very evident to me by way of comparison over this time frame. Regrettably, it will require a period of protracted existential trauma on a massive scale to force a re-set back to mutual cooperation between opposing parties just simply to survive. Right now, each political/ideological party truly believes that yep, it *can* have it all.
Luxury beliefs, indeed.
Indeed, the empire is on a crap slide to hell.
...and not to dramatize, I think it will require a bit of Hell to press the re-set button.
Honestly, I don't see anything like a de-escalation as working. The window for that was Biden's election, and all that happened was a doubling down of inane woke positions.
Obama made Trump 1 possible, Biden made Trump 2 inevitable.
While I partially agree with your premise, there has been a huge 'ratcheting effect' of Federal power over the past few generations.
My grandparents grew up in a 'leave me the F*#k alone' relationship with the Government.
LBJ's Great Society caused the tendrils to invade everything we do.
I have nothing personally against most Federal employees. I just wish them to not be paid for by my taxes. The government exists to defend the borders and insure domestic tranquility. Every thing on top of that is superfluous.
The add-on agencies i.e. Education, Environmental, Homeland Security can be disbanded with no ill-effect. The Dept of Veterans Affairs should be folded into the DOD. Hopefully the DNI can be brutally downsized.
I would love to have a country where 5-7 cabinet positions ran things and the states were left alone to manage our local issues.
So, is there a 'payback' behavior happening now? Probably. Will it end when a certain limit is reached? Dunno. There is a massive amount of ill will in the population. The trannies rating to kindergartners has left a lot of us hoping for tumbrils and Madame Guillotine.
A National Divorce has been discussed. I am more and more in favor of the discussion. It appears that a non-military petitioning would allow 2 or more formed countries to peacefully co-exist.
Thanks for the comment. Steve Sailer made a strong case that a national divorce is neither practical nor desirable: https://www.takimag.com/article/lets-not-break-up-the-usa/
—NC
Yes, the empire will fall on its own.
The death throes of an empire are never pretty.
Good article.
Principles are not some foolish self-handicap. Often they can be a strategic advantage. Amongst elites especially there's people who genuinely care for things like freedom of speech. You can turn these people to your side by being more principled than your enemy.
If you become as vacuous as your enemy why would anyone ever defect?
Thanks Noah, great article.
"During the period from roughly 2010 to 2024, which has become known as the Great Awokening, radical progressives attempted to co-opt every major institution in society for the purpose of advancing their ideological agenda."
Well kinda. As I have contended in the past, it is not 'radical progressives' acting alone, but acting at the direction of the power elite (Deep State). The purpose of this is to sow societal disruption to affect descent, thus destabilizing the populace and making control easier.
"A map of more and less corrupt countries is shown above. As you can clearly see, Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand are among the only places where citizens do not perceive a high level of corruption in the public sector."
WTF! This is a perfect case of perception not born of reality. This is almost laughable, particularly in the case of the United States, undoubtedly the most corrupt country on the planet. There are three possibilities here: either those controlling the United States are especially adept at deceiving the public, the populace is stupid on a stick, or both.
There is a sinister sect pushing this framing to forge an actual civil war with the end goal of “eradicating leftism”, whatever that means is ambiguous but used alternatively for the devil.
The Left-Right divide can amount to existential stakes. Immigration, for example, is THE issue because it determines who gets to decide all the other issues.
"There is a sinister sect pushing this framing to forge an actual civil war with the end goal of “eradicating leftism”, whatever that means is ambiguous but used alternatively for the devil."
Indeed, there is a 'sinister sect', some call it the Deep State. But their goal is not to eradicate leftism, but to secure total control of the populace and continue the plutocratic oligarchy that we live under.
we gonna end up like south korea where every former president ends up in jail. For US each party change most of the former cabinet will be arrested.
Some reference points are missing in some of the more glib comments. The liberal schmucks used government agencies to go after opponents including a serving President and a Presidential candidate. When Trump discussed the networks he said repeatedly that they violated their agreement which they signed when they got their broadcast license. Though the fairness doctrine is gone, though it should never have been removed, there is still a public affairs responsibility and their level of proved bias for the Democrat party is in the mid ninety percent range and does not include the Kimmelisms. Vance is discussing nongovernmental activity by suggesting that complaints be made by employees about Kirk hatred being touted in the workplace. Boycott or boycott-lite pressure is needed when liberals do massive organized boycotts through their institutional populations in governnment employee unions, teacher unions and many other unions. Nothing wrong with an equal and opposite reaction. There is a difference and the unschooled Noah Carl needs to know that.
"Vance is discussing nongovernmental activity by suggesting that complaints be made by employees about Kirk hatred being touted in the workplace".
If Kamala Harris had gone on a major podcast after, say, the Buffalo Shooting, and told her supporters "if you see someone being racist" you should "call their employer", would you have regarded that as unobjectionable?
—NC
No I would not. But the reason is that generally speaking everything is racist in the liberal mind. They see it as structural so there is no way to get away from that net but to be racist against whites, the superstructure. Still it would not be something that would be using government agencies to do the work, at least as understood by the way you stated the case.
"Vance is discussing nongovernmental activity by suggesting that complaints be made by employees about Kirk hatred being touted in the workplace."
Bull shit! Vance is a government official who is promoting action against free speech, thereby abrogating the First Amendment. But a non-governmental entity is not required to allow free speech.
Adding a point on Bondi. She quickly clarified her remark that she meant threatening hate speech. But bedwetters refuse to allow her the almost immediate correction she made and one which was sincere as she had discussed threats in speech many other times.
"Adding a point on Bondi. She quickly clarified her remark that she meant threatening hate speech. But bedwetters refuse to allow her the almost immediate correction she made and one which was sincere as she had discussed threats in speech many other times."
The SCOTUS does not accept the term 'hate speech'. 'Hate speech' is free speech.
There is nothing Realist about you. You are a wailing libertarian it seems.
"There is nothing Realist about you. You are a wailing libertarian it seems."
That is deeply hurtful...I consider it hate speech...I am calling Pam Bondi right now.
I do not consider myself in any of the political camps. I believe in government based on merit.
You don’t agree with your friends about everything, and neither do your enemies. But everyone knows who their friends and enemies are.
Liberal proceduralism works as an intra-elite management tool when everyone accepts the same framework. But when your enemies hold power, clinging to procedure is a trap — and that’s why the Right has been losing for so long.
Thanks for the comment. What do you make of my Israel example: are pro- and anti-Israel conservatives "friends"? If you read Mark Levin's tweets about Tucker Carlson, they seem about as scurrilous as anything any leftist has said about Carlson.
—NC
In the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder, leftists, from basement-dwelling freaks to academics to congressmen, made it abundantly clear they want us dead. It seems reasonable to regard people who want you dead as enemies. The debate as to how we respond should be focussed on tactics.
Thanks for the comment. Beyond some comments posted online in a country of 340 million people, what evidence is there that "leftists" want "us" dead? Even if there were as many as 10,000 comments, that it is still much less than 1% of the population. Most mainstream leftist and liberal commentators publicly condemned the murder.
—NC
Noah Carl is an enemy. No doubt about it. Been reading his tripe since Covid times. Ugh
"So far, this outburst hasn’t come close to the level of cancel culture or ideological co-option that prevailed during the Great Awokening."
Should've ended with that. The whole premise of the article is void. Writing out your own counter argument doesn't render it false.
Following the principle of being harmless led to the free-speech-guy with a bullet through his neck. On the other side ABC gave in to terrorist attacks and threats, so the guy who lied about a political murder can spread his terrorist-supporting narrative, while the actual victim stays dead.
If you argue for being harmless and "principled", you condition the left into the mindset that terrorism works. And terrorism does work, if you don't retaliate against terrorists and their supporters. How many stages of defect-cooperate do you need to live through, until you default to the RIGHT option defect-defect? We know that the other sides defects, why – for god's sake – do you insist on "cooperate"?
How many liberals, who went "right" because of so called free speech, moved back to the left, after they assassinated one big conservative voice and defamed him? If there are such cases, it proves that they are just partisan leftists who tried to grift.
"Attorney General Pam Bondi mentioned going after people for “hate speech”."
Where is your principled argument, that she was unanimously attacked by everyone for that? Is there even one equivalent case, where the whole left pundit sphere attacked an official who threatend to go after people for "hate speech"? No.
This articles reeks of false equivalency.
"Indeed, the relevant literature suggests that one of the best ways to promote cooperation in public goods games is for the players to establish rules or norms as a way to disincentivise defection."
How's that working out for conservatives? Has this ever worked? That is the past and current strategy of conservatives and it made the left the de facto tyrannt. If the other side thinks, you'll never defect, they should in theory never defect themselves. However, the left always defected to gain power and pissed on conservatives.
Schmitt's principle is proven right, whether liberals with rhetorical skills like it or not. And at the moment conservatives conserve the decay by allowing terrorists and terrorist supports to live in peace and without consequences.
"And terrorism does work, if you don't retaliate against terrorists and their supporters."
I am not suggesting that right-wing governments shouldn't take action against "terrorists", but making distasteful comments about someone's death is not "terrorism". There have been several racist mass shootings in recent years. Does that mean people should be cancelled for engaging in whatever speech the left considers "racist"?
"This articles reeks of false equivalency."
I explicitly stated at the outset, "this outburst hasn’t come close to the level of cancel culture or ideological co-option that prevailed during the Great Awokening", while also agreeing that "the left started it".
"How's that working out for conservatives?"
It was working out quite well: wokeness was clearly on the back foot. And any long-term threat from wokeness is going to be exacerbated by any right-wing behaviour that reinforces the idea it's appropiate to censor "offensive" speech.
—NC