A couple of weeks ago I posted a critique of the principle of "No Enemies To The Right". It was in response to a tweet by Charles Haywood in which he dunned me for criticizing Thomas Achord, the former headmaster of my kids' old classical Christian school, who was outed for having a secret online life as a racist, anti-Semitic misogynist. The thrust of my argument is that even as we on the Right fight the Left, we cannot be indifferent to some truly wicked ideas and people on our side. As someone who has advocated for classical Christian education for years, I was particularly troubled by Achord's stated goal (under the guise of anonymity) to be a Trojan horse for white nationalism within the CCE movement, in which he was a rising star. To this, Haywood replied, "No enemies to the Right!" In my response, I didn't mention him by name, only because I've met him once, and considered us friendly; I didn't intend to attack him personally, but did want to critique the principle.

Well.

Today Haywood burst his spleen showering invective on Self for all that. Read what he said. He mad, y'all. It's an extraordinary outpouring of vile, including ad hominem attacks, from deep in his Midwestern Führerbunker. Here are some highlights, with my response. Haywood writes:

What is our end? That is easy — winning. What is the winning condition? It is the total, permanent defeat of the Left, of the ideology at the heart of the Enlightenment, with its two core principles of total emancipation from all bonds not continuously chosen, and of total forced equality of all people. When this defeat is accomplished, Right principles, those based in reality and recognizing the nature of man, his limitations, and his capabilities, can again become ascendant.

Winning does not mean electoral victory such that Right principles may be voted into law, and then nullified or voted out again. It means the total, permanent elimination of all Left power, and, even more importantly, the total discrediting, both on a moral and practical basis, of all Left ideology. What is Left should be seen for what it is, evil, and it should be seen as not only destructive in practice, but laughable, the ideology of losers and idiots, or at most something from the discredited past, viewed with vague curiosity, as the cult of Mithras is today.

Gosh. To this end, Haywood believes that extremism in opposition to the Left is no vice. If the anti-Left cause has in it racists, Jew-haters, and misogynists, says Charles Haywood, so be it. We can sort that out later. More:

Why, then, do many putatively on the Right, such as Dreher, save their fiercest attacks for those on the Right? They complain, endlessly complain, about the Left and its evils, but never do they wield actual power against the individuals about whose behavior they complain, which could advance their claimed goals. Instead, they only wield what power they have against individuals whose beliefs they regard as to their own right. These are the same individuals as those targeted by the Left, and the more so they show any tendency to become leaders or network nodes on the Right. (In this case I have made no effort whatsoever to find out exactly of what Dreher accuses his target, because it does not matter. At all.)

You know, if there's one thing you can accuse me of, it's saving my fiercest attacks for those on the Right. I'm snarking, of course. Every day in this space I lay into the woke Left, and have done so for years. Only rarely do I criticize the Right, and that's only because I find the threats from the Left, which holds all the important institutions of power in this country, far, far more dangerous. In this case, a closeted right-wing extremist put a school that meant a lot to me at risk, and confessed that he wanted to work quietly to use one of the most important reform movements in our country as a platform for his hatred. And his podcasting partner Stephen Wolfe, author of a bestselling and much-discussed book on Christian nationalism, could not possibly not have known what Achord was up to -- and when Achord was exposed, did not denounce Achord's evil beliefs. That matters. Maybe not to a fanatic like Charles Haywood, but it matters to the CCE movement, it matters to conservatism, it matters to Christianity, and it matters to the future of our country. By his own admission, in that last line, Haywood doesn't care to have on his side the guy whose Goodreads account recommends some vivid volumes, including Hitler's memoir:

Understand that Charles Haywood is so filled with hatred of the Left that he happily claims a Nazi sympathizer as his ally, and says I'm a cuck for not being cool with that. In which case, Haywood does me a very big favor with his bilious invective. It is useful to get that learned. But I wonder: how would Haywood explain to his friendly Ethiopian-American interviewer in this podcast that it doesn't matter that the Right has among it activists who think black people are subhuman? Seriously, unless Haywood believes right-wing politics are properly about nothing but White Power, then he's got a big problem.

More:

Dreher is a prime example of this tendency on the supposed Right. He always talks lovingly about his friends on the Left, notably the odious David Brooks, and defends them to the last gasp. He does not seem to realize, or will not admit to himself, that his “friends” would gladly throw him to the wolves if he ever did anything such as, say, use a “slur” to refer to homosexuals, or state the obvious, especially in light of his obsession with the scandals surrounding Catholic clergy, that many homosexuals are created by homosexual abuse of children, and that homosexuals abuse children at a vastly greater rate than normal people. Yet never, ever, does he say anyone to his right is a friend. He runs from them in horror and hurts them when he can. In fact, the absolute limits of all acceptable rightward behavior for Dreher is set by reference to Dreher himself; anything to his right is ipso facto unconscionable, disgusting, evil, or all three.

This guy is crazy. I mean seriously, batshit crazy. Does that description sound like me? "Always talks loving about his friends on the Left"? Well, I do have friends on the Left -- a few; the leftist Charles Haywoods in my life cut me out long ago -- and I love them and respect them. Even if they are wrong. My habit on the occasion that I write critically about David Brooks is to point out that he is my friend, and I care about him, even though I think he's wrong about some important things. I do not intend to change, either. Unlike hotheads of Left and Right, I don't make or end friendships based on politics. And I trust that regular readers of this blog will be able to judge the accuracy of Haywood's assertion that I don't criticize homosexuals. If I called a gay person a "faggot," then I would expect to be criticized. I have gay friends too, and though I think gay sex is morally wrong (and all sex outside of traditional marriage is wrong), I respect them as I hope they respect me, even though they believe that my Christian belief about homosexuality is wrong. Despite what hardliners of Left and Right tell you, people cannot be reduced to their sexual desires, their political convictions, their race, or any such thing. I do not want to live in a world in which the people in power do that. The Left, by and large, does exactly this, which is the main reason I fight them. I would never want to replace Leftist totalitarians with Rightist ones.

After a short detour into blabbing about "manliness," tough-guy Haywood, a wealthy manufacturer of hair care and skin care products, says:

A third reason is a misguided attempt to be “ethical,” “moral,” and “just,” by positing moral equivalency between Left and Right. Of course, this does not explain why individuals on the Right are always those selected for the most aggressive attacks by Dreher and his ilk,

Man, if this doesn't reveal how unhinged this cat is, I don't know what to tell you. Readers of this blog will be surprised to learn that I make my "most aggressive attacks" against people on the Right. I write a lot here, so I can't remember everything I've said in recent years, but aside from the Achord mess, I can't think of the last time I mounted an aggressive attack on anybody on the Right. Princess, meet pea.

More:

Someone on the Right against whom a Dreher-esque witch hunt is launched is immediately subject to massive attacks not only by Left media, but by others supposedly on the Right who aim to thereby signal to their Left masters what good toadies they are.

I remind you that Charles Haywood makes that remark slamming me for criticizing a right-wing extremist who called black people "chimps" and tweeted things like this:

I remind you: Haywood declares that it doesn't matter that his allies on the Right advocate such things, and that we conservatives who do are useless cucks. The thing speaks for itself. Charles Haywood has stared into the abyss, and the abyss has stared right back into him -- and left an impression. For this is nihilism. It's a declaration that power is the only thing that matters. It's all about dehumanizing the enemy, just as the enemy dehumanizes us. God help us if the Charles Haywoods of the world get their hands on the Ring Of Power. I welcome his contempt for me as a badge of honor.

In one of my Achord posts, I wrote the following, which I'd like to reiterate:

Some of the responses to this essay on Twitter speak to why we can't just move on. I'm seeing a fair number of comments that say, sometimes literally, "Who cares? It was just Twitter. No enemies to the Right!" This is a corrupt ethic. The fact that many on the Left live this way does not make it any more justified. Every single one of us is going to have to answer to God for the way we have lived. Not one of us -- not me, not you, not Thomas Achord -- will show up unstained by sin. God's mercy through his Son's sacrifice is our only hope, but we will all have to give an accounting. If the Lord asks me one day, "Why did you say nothing when you found out that in your midst was a man quietly spreading race hatred, hatred of Jews, and spite towards women -- especially when this man was in a position of authority over young people who trusted him as a teacher?" It will not do to say, "Hey, Lord, no enemies to the Right!" Especially not if one is a Christian!

Charles Haywood, who writes at The Worthy House, is often really smart and insightful. What a pity that he has lost his mind to political fanaticism. It's even worse, though, that he is demonstrably well on his way to losing his soul.

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UPDATE: In related news:

People with extreme political views that favor authoritarianism — whether they are on the far left or the far right — have surprisingly similar behaviors and psychological characteristics, a new study finds. 

The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published the research by psychologists at Emory University — the first comprehensive look at left-wing authoritarianism. 

“We took the long history of research into right-wing authoritarianism and used insights from that to develop a conceptional framework and measures to test for authoritarianism in the political left,” says Thomas Costello, an Emory PhD student of psychology and first author of the study. “We found that in terms of their psychological characteristics and their actual behaviors, left-wing authoritarians are extremely similar to authoritarians on the right.” 

Right-wing authoritarians tend to aggressively back the established hierarchy, while left-wing authoritarians tend to aggressively oppose it. They are almost like mirror images of one another that both share a common psychological core, the researchers conclude. 

“Authoritarians have a predisposition for liking sameness and opposing differences among people in their environment,” Costello says. “They are submissive to people they perceive as authority figures, they are dominant and aggressive towards people they disagree with, and they are careful to obey what they consider the norms for their respective groups.” 

At its core, authoritarianism is likely about power, Costello adds. 

“It’s a mistake to think of authoritarianism as a right-wing concept, as some researchers have in the past,” he says. “We found that ideology becomes secondary. Psychologically speaking, you’re an authoritarian first, and an ideologue only as it serves the power structure that you support.”