“The whole question is—who will overtake whom?”- V. I. Lenin,1921
For communists like Vladimir Lenin and all other totalitarians, both of the “left” and “right,” the only question to be answered in matters of state is one of wielding the political power to destroy your political opponents.
Robert Bolt’s screenplay A Man for All Seasons elucidates an opposite principle of governance. In the script, Sir Thomas More is urged by his son-in-law William Roper to arrest Richard Rich, and as England’s Lord Chancellor, More has the raw political power to do just that. But More deferred from Roper’s suggestion, saying it would be a corruption of his office, arguing that even though Rich is about to betray him (and in fact perjured himself at More’s trial later) Rich had not yet broken any law. In the film version of the play, Roper and More continue to argue:
William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
This clash of views of how the state should wield power relates to public reactions to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of ICE and Border Patrol officers. First, it must be observed that any death at the hands of law enforcement is a failure of law enforcement. Much of MAGA was focused in the weeks after the shooting on the fact that Pretti had kicked out a tail-light of an ICE van a week earlier, and that Good drove her car in the direction of an ICE agent (who had stepped into her path). But Pretti could have been a child molester and a murderer, and the principle would have been the same. It’s not the job of the police, ICE or any executive branch official to execute anyone in the name of the American people and the law. To the contrary, it’s their job to arrest law-breakers and bring them in alive to courts for juries to make that judgment. That neither ICE or Border Patrol officers did not do so in these cases is an absolute proof of the failure of their role in governance.
The general MAGA reaction that Pretti and Good got what was coming to them is telling about how Republican politics in America has descended into a form of right-wing Leninism. After a man is flat-out murdered in the streets, on his knees, they reply, “But hey, look how the victim kicked off a $65 tail light on a police cruiser last week!” How, even if you feel very strongly about enforcing federal immigration laws, does that even enter into the conversation in a rational world intent on keeping government within its constitutional boundaries? It’s a lot like a woman getting raped and all people on the sidelines afterward can talk about is how she had been caught shoplifting the week before. It’s entirely beside the point.
Another MAGA counter-argument is to ask, “Why is the focus on the killing of Pretti and Good, and not victims of crimes committed by illegal aliens?” This is an argument easily dismissed. The people who killed Pretti and Good are paid directly by tax dollars, and paid to do a particular job which they did not do. Meanwhile, other people like Laken Riley were killed by criminals who were not acting in the name of the people (and unlike Pretti and Good’s killers, they’re likely be prosecuted as Laken Riley’s killer was). That’s the reason there should be higher focus on law enforcement killings; any killing by government officials should be given maximum scrutiny.
Now, people might argue, without evidence, that the illegal immigrant criminal “is also subsidized by taxes through welfare.” That’s probably not true; other than the heavy welfare users in the class called “refugees,” a legal immigrant class. The amount of welfare consumed by other immigrants, legal or illegal, is practically zero (and overall, even with refugees mixed in, is less than citizens). But the real distinction is easy to make here. Nobody says “I voted for this” when it comes to random immigrant crime. But MAGA did directly vote for the government whose guns caused the deaths of Pretti and Good.
Government officials deserve no inherent respect among a free people, but require vigilant oversight. Police are not an exception to this rule.
The mark of the free man is that he gives every benefit of doubt to the citizen when a citizen is charged by the government official, and every manner of skepticism at the actions of the government official. This is why the jury is asked to convict the citizen only if there is no reasonable doubt of guilt. And that presumption of innocence is not happening at all on the MAGA-right these days.
The Leninist Right-Wingers
It’s only a small step from viewing all your political opponents as inherently bad people to believing people with whom you disagree deserve death at the hands of the state. The left-wing Leninists are easy to identify; they were the ones who publicly cheered the death of Charlie Kirk or lamented the bullet that grazed Trump’s ear wasn’t a few inches further to the right. Leftist Leninists have always existed. What’s new on the American political horizon is the rise of right-wing Leninists.
It needs to be stipulated that there’s no meaningful difference between the left and the right, as described in the public sphere today. Sure, there are some real differences on peripheral social issues. But as a general rule, if you hear someone described as “far left,” it only means the person saying the term disagrees with the described person’s politics on some issue (and often as little as one issue) and personally identifies with the right-wing. Likewise, if someone is “far right,” it’s only because the speaker disagrees with that person and personally identifies as left-wing. This is why Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was described by Attorney General Pam Bondi as “this guy [with] Trump Derangement Syndrome,” even though Massie had endorsed Trump three times for president and continues to support most of the policies Trump campaigned on in 2024.
Today, if you identify as “left,” there’s a good chance everyone you disagree with is a horrible person and a Nazi. And if you identify as “right,” everyone you disagree with is a horrible person and a Marxist commie agitator. There’s no need by the “leftist” to prove any actual ties to a Nazi-affiliated group or show any actual racism or anti-semitism; all the opponents are blindly lumped into this category. Likewise, the Leninist right groups all their opponents into the same “communist” or “socialist” category, even if they don’t want to nationalize any industries (the very definition of socialism), have no affiliation with any real communist or socialist party and have never read anything by Karl Marx. Everything the “right” disagrees with is dumped into the Marxist/communist/socialist bucket.
The goal of this massive propaganda campaign is to make every political campaign and every political issue existential, that all freedom will be lost unless we back the preferred party and preferred leader unquestioningly.
The politics of personal destruction goes back to the Clarence Thomas hearings and the Monica Lewinsky scandal. So it’s not new. What is new is that regular people who don’t hold office are now the targets, whether it’s famous political organizers like Charlie Kirk (and now his widow Erica) or even ordinary working people caught up in news events like Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
The difference here is that in the Republican Party the indifference to life goes right to the top. No top Democrats celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death—perhaps only because of their political skills and not any modicum of principles—but nearly all the top Trump administration officials danced on the graves of Good and Pretti.
It shocks the conscience to see how easily some people accept murder. And it’s a growing culture of death.
Someone might counter that my example at the beginning of this piece of Sir Thomas More doesn’t play well: The historical fact is that More was beheaded after the perjured testimony of Richard Rich. But the larger point stands. England’s common law survived, however imperfect, and in a much more vigorous form than it would have had England’s top law enforcement officer tore down the law altogether in a quest for personal vengeance against his political enemies. England and its common law system became the example of liberty that America’s Founding Fathers imitated and improved upon precisely because More didn’t take Roper’s advice to cut down every law in England to get at his political opponents.
The idea that your political opponents should be killed is the ultimate black pill; it’s an admission of the complete defeat of liberty. And if enough people adopt it, it guarantees that absolute defeat. Those black-pilled individuals (including those who head political parties) should stop pretending to be on the side of liberty. They’re not. When you cut down all the laws to go after your political opponents, then there’s already by definition no liberty to save.
