Schmitt seems to be influential among those who hold to “No Enemies to the Right.”
Thought experiment: Is there a distinction between Mormons and Muslims, such that we should consider fighting against the latter but not the former?
Question: Is there a reason to fight Muslims other than that the Muslim “intends to negate his opponent’s way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one’s own form of existence”?
To be clear, “fight” here means seek to kill, according to Schmitt, but I’m not advocating we slaughter Muslims, whether local or foreign. Yet Muslims seem to be a place where we can agree things are even more existential than the Left’s current machinations.
I think I’m not persuaded by either Schmitt or the author of this article. It seems like following the author to his logical ends would lead Christians to a purely pacifistic position. I’m unconvinced that Jesus’s instruction to “love your enemies” was intended by Him to lead us to pacifism.
But it does mean something, which means I find Haywood’s hostes/inimicus distinction a little too cute by half for my tastes, not least because the Greek won’t hold it, as the author points out.
As to your Muslim question, there’s no doubt that Muslims have repeatedly posed a lethal threat to Christendom in both a political and an ecclesiastical sense for centuries. I don’t condone everything that “Christians” did in response to this, but my own personal ethic of warmaking doesn’t require waiting for an enemy to lift his sword against you personally before you do something about it.
And frankly in 2026, I question the premise that Muslims in general pose a greater threat to me than the American Left. While I have no doubt that the Ayatollahs (e.g.) wish me ill, there is much less immanence to their threats than to the American Left’s threats against me and my children. Having lived through some 30 years or so of American politics, and particularly the Biden Administration, there is no doubt in my mind that the American Left proceeds from a Schmittian frame and that I and those I hold dear are clearly on the “enemy” side. This makes Schmittian politics appealing to me.
Though your injunction from a few weeks ago, Pastor Joseph, to “fear not” has stuck with me.