“I will not yield. I will not flinch. I will defend the right to vote, our democracy, against all enemies both foreign, and yes, domestic.” This was President Biden in Georgia earlier this year promoting two voting-rights bills, which have now joined the graveyard of half-accomplishments and near-achievements that has come to characterize his administration. The speech presented the “insurrection” of January 6 as one of the “before and after” events in American history—in an American democracy healing from the trauma of having “a dagger held at its throat,” the battle lines between the allies and enemies of democracy have never been more stark.

The rhetorical thrust of Biden’s speech stems from his univocal use of the word “enemy.” The enemies of democracy do not differ in kind but only in number. There is no essential difference between the protesters who entered the capitol on January 6, the authoritarian regimes in Moscow and Beijing, and the Republican state legislators aiming to curb voter fraud. Each is an example of the same enemy, separated only by time and space.

Biden’s speech is instructive in revealing how liberals perceive themselves in the post-Trump era. In the Year of Our Lord 2022, to be a liberal Democrat is to be conscious of yourself holding fast athwart the enemies of democracy. This posture is largely reactionary. As the right began to shift (at least ostensibly) from a fusionist conservatism to a post-liberal nationalism, the liberal-left responded by further entrenching itself as the party of the status quo. By placing themselves in polemical opposition to the domestic enemy (i.e., Trumpian nationalists), they have recommitted themselves to fighting liberalism’s enemies both at home and abroad.

And of course, liberalism is the true point of contention, not democracy. Liberals have effectively employed a “motte and bailey” argument for over a century to blur that distinction. “Democracy,” in liberals’ parlance, is always understood to mean liberal democracy, until accusations of cultural imperialism come flying in, at which point the draw bridge is raised, and suddenly “democracy” is presented as simply a value-neutral, procedural mode of governance. Any polemical opposition to the former sense of democracy can be sophistically presented as an attack on the latter. This is precisely why liberals can, with a straight face, declare that a majority of voters electing illiberal governments in Hungary and Poland is a loss for democracy.

As those countries illustrate, a post-liberal right need not be anti-democratic. Democracy, as Aristotle reminds us, is one of many forms of rule, each of which is oriented towards some idea of the common good. Liberalism on the other hand, as authors such as Patrick Deneen have demonstrated in recent years, is an ideology that feigns value neutrality. In reality, it contains a series of substantive judgments that run afoul of classical conceptions of both the common good and the highest good. The nationalism of the new right, while possessing limitations in its own right, at least understands that foreign-policy disputes should proceed first from a concern for the common good of the nation and not international ideological agreement.

Ideology has an insidious tendency to make wars fought in its name appear more just, when in reality, they are often more barbarous. When two nations are at war over a conflict between their respective interests, there is no imperative to destroy the enemy, only to defeat him. This is not to say wars of interest are just—most if not all of them have been unjust—but a war fought over a particular good need not entail universal annihilation of the enemy. The same cannot be said for wars fought for ideology, where the advancement of one, contra others, often demands total war. Ideologies make universal claims and thus necessitate the universal destruction of the enemy.

Neoconservatives have always advocated for war in the name of ideology. At the time of neoconservatism’s inception, the nation was in the midst of a real, concrete civilizational struggle against a rival power. A reasonable case could be made that, in that situation, neoconservatism provided a helpful framework to conceptualize the already-existent conflict. However, with the sudden collapse of the USSR, neoconservatism suddenly became an ideology without an enemy. Since then, neoconservatism has been in a state of existential angst, searching for a new opponent to justify its existence. Of course, a respite was granted in the fall of 2001, but after 20 years of wars—the longest of which ended in a quagmire notorious even by the standards of declining empires’ failed military campaigns—neoconservatism’s raison d’être is threatened yet again.

Thankfully, a new enemy presented itself in the early days of 2020. The nationalist opponents of liberalism, and thus “democracy,” are to be held responsible for the decline of an order buckling under the weight of its own internal contradictions. As the liberal left more and more conceives of its domestic political struggle as ideological (rather than a matter of mere policy disagreement), it will be increasingly committed to pursuing parallel ideological struggles abroad. Meanwhile, Bush-era Republicans, in the name of democracy, will continue to form PACs and nonprofits throwing their support behind Democratic candidates with cringe-inducing ads and ill-conceived campaign stunts.

As Bill Kristol is reunited with the party his father left behind, the most pressing question going forward is what becomes of the Republican Party he has left behind. There has been much talk of an emerging post-liberal right that embraces both nationalism and realism. But there has also been much to suggest that, in reality, this alleged paradigm shift is all smoke and no fire—a clever rhetorical ploy to convince the youth that GOP senators are more radical than they really are. A Republican Party that continues to embrace interventionism in the service of liberal ideology will accelerate its spiral into irrelevance, and continue to play the role of the loyal opposition.

Of course, the alternative for the GOP is to become in deed the enemy they are perceived to be in the liberal psyche. Americans are tired of sending their children to die in the name of an ideology that ceased working in their interests decades ago. An American right that embraces a politics of the common good domestically and a foreign policy of advancing the nation’s interests abroad is not only better equipped to defend itself against the liberal left—it could actually win.

Ethan Mack is a writer living in Washington, D.C.