Inside Harper's Mind: A hyper critique of liberalism (or why the Prime Minister likes expensive military toys)

The following is excerpted from The Concept of the Political by Carl Schmitt, appearing in its original form in 1927, and expanded upon and published again in 1932.

In a very systematic fashion liberal thought evades or ignores state and politics and moves instead in a typical always recurring polarity of two heterogenous spheres, namely ethics and economics, intellect and trade, education and property. The critical distrust of state and politics is easily explained by the principles of a system whereby the individual must remain terminus a quo and terminus ad quem. In case of need, the political entity must demand the sacrifice of life. Such a demand is no way justifiable by the individualism of liberal thought. No consistent individualism can entrust to someone other than to the individual himself the right to dispose of the physical life of the individual. An individualism in which anyone other than the free individual himself were to decide upon the substance and dimension of his freedom would be only an empty phrase. For the individual as such there is no enemy with whom he must enter into a life and death struggle if he personally does not want to. To compel him to fight against his will is, from the viewpoint of the private individual, lack of freedom and expression. All liberal pathos turns against repression and lack of freedom. Every encroachment, every threat to individual freedom and private property and free competition is called repression and is eo ipso something evil. What this liberalism still admits of state, government, and politics is confined to securing the conditions for liberty and eliminating infringements on freedom.

We thus arrive at an entire system of demilitarized and depoliticized concepts. ...


Carl Schmitt critiqued the liberal assumptions of Germany's Weimar Republic (1919-1933), and joined the Nazi Party in March 1933, hoping to direct it along authoritarian lines.

Source: Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political. Tr. George Schwab. Comments by Leo Strauss. (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1976), 70,71.