Politics is War: Civility and Decency are Secondary Values

Sohrab Ahmari, Against David-Frenchism, conclusion:

Progressives understand that culture war means discrediting their opponents and weakening or destroying their institutions. Conservatives should approach the culture war with a similar realism. Civility and decency are secondary values. They regulate compliance with an established order and orthodoxy. We should seek to use these values to enforce our order and our orthodoxy, not pretend that they could ever be neutral. To recognize that enmity is real is its own kind of moral duty.

I have been coming to something close to this view over the last few years. If the Left sees politics as a form of warfare, we are fools to continue supposing it to be gentlemanly debate  under the umbrella of shared principles and values. Civility is for the civil; it is not for those who represent an existential threat.

An existential threat need not take the form of a threat to one's physical existence; a threat to one's way of life is an existential threat. This is because human life is not merely physical or biological; it is also cultural and spiritual.  It is our culture that values civility; a progressive threat to our culture of civility, being uncivil,  demands an uncivil response. Civility is like tolerance. Tolerance is a high value, but it has limits: one cannot tolerate the intolerant.