The Rise of Bilateral Smash Mouth Politics

Unprincipled power politics is all fun and games until the other side begins to play

Progressives are the party of secular materialism. One of the entailments of that worldview is that universal moral principles do not exist, and politics, like all human relations, boils down to power. For decades, the Democrats have been having a ball playing unprincipled smash mouth power politics in which they adhered to universal principles on only an instrumental basis.

An aphorism attributed to Louis Veuillot sums up progressive’s approach to politics: “When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.”

Progressives do not value universal principles of justice as such. They value them only when they are useful as a tool in their power game. Take freedom of speech. They are all for it when they are pushing a curriculum for third graders that normalizes sexual deviancy. But they will rush to the barricades if a Christian teacher wants to talk about his faith to those same school children. I am not saying that conservatives always act according to the universal principles they espouse. They obviously do not. But there is a huge difference between failing to adhere to a principle and denying that principle exists in the first place.

Here’s the thing about unprincipled smash mouth power politics. It’s all fun and games until the other side starts to play. What do you get when that happens? You get Donald Trump. Democrats complaining about Trump’s lack of principle is amusing. It’s like a boxer with brass knuckles under his gloves complaining that the other fighter has horseshoes under his.

Progressives have enjoyed a nice long run of unilateral smash mouth. But it was inevitable that eventually Republicans would wake up and realize they were being played for chumps and start playing the smash mouth game too. And now our politics is rapidly devolving into mere tribalism. And as recent events have shown the war between the tribes is escalating into actual violence as leftist activists take it to the next level.

There is a price to be paid for giving up on the concept of universal moral principles. We are starting to pay it.