On Having Enemies

 

He had many enemies himself.

Xerxes the left-wing columnist asks, in his latest effort, “Why, oh why, does America always seem to need an enemy?”

This reminds me of an Analect of Confucius. Asked about the appointment of officials, Confucius said,

“If a man has no friends, it is necessary to make inquiries.
If a man has no enemies, it is necessary to make inquiries.”

If America did not always have some enemies, this would be prima facie evidence that it was a bad actor.

All conspicously moral people have enemies. Indeed, anyone who does anything conspicuous will have enemies, merely due to envy. Churchill, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Lincoln—highly controversial and often hated, in their day. Some might recall that Jesus was crucified.

Pursuing his theme, Xerxes laments that the US attacks “Even though most of those enemies had neither the desire nor the ability to invade -- let alone conquer -- the United States of America.”

That is a non sequitur. Self-defense is not the only just grounds for war. You could make this same accusation against the police—constantly harassing people who have done them no harm. Or of anyone who, say, energetically opposed slavery in the US South, given that they were not themselves enslaved. Or objected to Hitler killing Jews, if not themselves Jewish.

They came for the Jews, and I did nothing.
For I was not a Jew.

Not to claim that the USA is always moral or in the right in its foreign engagements. But engagements must be considered one by one. It seems to me a stretch to suggest the US was in the wrong fighting Japan or Germany in WWII.

A discussion of Trump in his comments section is oddly related.

Quoted respondents denounce Trump as a liar, a reprobate, a conspirator, a grifter, a buffoon. Yet none give an example of anything Trump has ever done, or even said, to justify these epithets.

It cannot be that these writers are simply trapped in news silos, unaware of the need to justify their claims to others. They have to know that large numbers of people voted for Trump; they often mention this, lamenting the fact. 

So why do they feel no need to justify their own claims?

The most likely explanation is that they see people who disagree with them as not worth talking to, not worth persuading, their opinions not worth considering. “Deplorables.” Subhuman, with no right to opinions; or they see themselves as superhuman, with the right to pass judgement. 

This attitude is disturbing to anyone who has read Crime and Punishment; it is also the core argument to justify slavery, or the Nazi Holocaust.

They came for the Jews, and I did nothing.
For I was not a Jew.

The alternative explanation is that they know that their position is untenable—they simply assert, and go ad hominem, because they do not dare discuss it. We must assume, in this case, that the real reason they hate Trump is disreputable. We must guess what it is.

But let’s go to the bottom line. Apply Confucius’s principle to Trump. Trump has both fierce detractors and fierce supporters. 

This is actually the sign of a good man.