,
12 tweets,
4 min read
Read on Twitter
1. If you haven't read @sohrabahmari's "illiberal" manifesto, you should, if only because it represents a view that shouldn't be dismissed. I disagree with much of it, but it's a challenging, important read and it distills a series of fundamental questions firstthings.com/web-exclusives…
2. What Sohrab captures well, that liberals tend to belittle, is how much Christian conservatives feel under attack. Sohrab's piece is reactionary, not in a pejorative sense but in a descriptive one. When he says "But they won't listen," referring to liberals, we should listen
3. But is the public order Sohrab is calling for a threat to me personally, as someone who doesn't share his conception of the Highest Good? Yes, maybe. That doesn't make it illegitimate, but it does mean that I probably shouldn't view it as a pure matter of intellectual interest
4. I'd love to live in Sohrab Ahmari's ideal state as a political scientist, but I'm not sure I'd like to live in it as a citizen
5. That said, Sohrab's understanding of the nature of politics seems to me to be the right one. I think paeans to civility and consensus can nurture an anti-democratic spirit. The paradox of consensus is that for it to come to be it needs to exclude those who would question it
6. But I take (and largely agree with) @SohrabAhmari's starting assumptions about the inherently conflictual nature of politics, and I reach an almost opposite set of conclusions, and this, I think, is where the key differences lie
7. If we take "enmity" as a given, there are then two possible directions to go in. One is to treat politics as a kind of long war, per below. The second is to find a way to "accommodate" and regulate enmity—by acknowledging that one side will never be able to defeat the other 
8. Because of the sheer diversity of belief in modern societies, foundational divides over the Good cannot be undone or transcended. And they *shouldn't* be transcended. They reflect, after all, legitimate differences on questions that are beyond the scope of “normal” politics
9. The only way, then, for one side to "win" and impose its preferences would be, in effect, through coercion. In other words, there is no democratic option that can produce the kind of decisive conservative victory that @SohrabAhmari is calling for
10. Where does this leave us? The alternative that allows us to manage enmity *within* the democratic process is "agonism," the foremost theorist of which is Chantal Mouffe. I discuss how we can apply and practice agonism in this @americanaffrs essay: americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/11/left-p…
11. Agonism, even though its major theorists are on the Left, can have intuitive appeal on the Right. Christian Pluralism is a more right-friendly framework that shares some agonistic principles. They're both suspicious of artificial consensus and embrace epistemological humility
12. Within a Christian pluralist frame, you could believe someone is damned (and what could be worse than thinking someone damned?). But then there is a choice, and there *is* the possibility of the suspension of judgement, as I discuss here: providencemag.com/2018/09/strugg…
