Four Political Theories and the Metaphysics of World-Making: 

A Letter to My Son in College

--Douglas Blake Olds (September 5, 2025)

ABSTRACT

Four political theologies, four world-makings. Schmitt’s state of exception says power is born in rupture: the sovereign suspends law and names enemies. Madisonian liberalism wagers on divided powers and consent to restrain the will. Marxism reads history as class struggle and entrusts a vanguard to midwife a classless order. Duginist revanchism rejects both liberalism and Marxism to enthrone mythic identity and sacred soil in the vanquished past. Different as they are, each presumes that most people sleep and a few must steer. My hope for you is a fifth way: eschatological accountability—a politics of ethical covenant, where Christian virtue trains consciences in repair, and public life is measured not by spectacle or growth but by justice for neighbor and earth.

 Schmittian Sovereignty:

Authority emerges through rupture—a sovereign decision in the face of perceived emergency. The sovereign defines enemies (who are propagandistically labeled as the source of the emergency); suspends law, and channels the will of a people seeking a return to "primordial virtue" (often coded as masculine, tribal, or mythic identity: vir- (Latin for "man") (-tus, Latin for substance or property). This is authority through exclusion and force, not consent.

Schmitt’s state of exception (Ausnahmezustand) makes rupture the source of sovereignty. Philosophically, 20th-c. talk of ‘the Event’ (e.g., Heidegger’s Ereignis) is a type of rupture that led him into Nazism, where he came into the field of Nazi jurist Schmitt’s move where a juridical and political decision suspends law from the sovereign's connection to a people's ontological will primordially occasioned and retrieved to restructure.

Madisonian Liberalism:

Legitimacy arises through deliberation, consent, and the division of powers. The system is structured to restrain centralized rule and encourage rational, procedural participation. Human nature is understood as fallen but improvable (or in the French Revolution soon after the American and detailed by Rousseau--humans are born good but deviate from that by fallen orders, like the ancien regime--Louis kings and the Roman Church). Enlightened politics of mutual self-interest aims at moral development over time. This liberalism was tied to the Enlightenment originating in Europe and advanced by Ricardo's ideas of free trade and Mills' philosophy of equality and tolerance.

Marxism:

Politics is class struggle—between labor and capital. An "awakened" political class (Leninism) organizes workers toward a classless, productive society organized by Soviets (ideological party members guiding the production function). Human nature is material and creative—Homo faber, the human as maker and worker. Authority comes from organizing production toward social justice, but rapidly is taken over by thugs emerging at the Soviet system—men of ambition who claw into the party with only the talent for crime; Stalinism.

Duginism / Revanchist Nationalism:

This "fourth political theory" rejects liberalism and Marxism in favor of ethnic identity, territorial expansion, and primordial cultural forms--peasantry, family, class organizations of warriors, priests, and agricultures (in this way it aligns with Spanish Francoism/fascism in the 1930s-1960s). It locates political glory in a mythic past and seeks to recapture it. In Russia, this manifests in the Russkiy Mir project, where the Orthodox Church, now tightly bound to the Kremlin in soviet KGB figures, promotes a pseudo-Christian imperial theology in service of Putin’s nationalism--where ironically Leninist sovietism ideology is rejected, but the Soviet Union's territorial borders are to be retaken (as in Ukraine) and expanded therefrom into Romania, Baltics, etc. hence why Europe is scared, and why its proposal of NATO expansion heightens tensions on both sides. I sent you a link to my blog on this subject in my last email.

China has its own ideas of its greatest territorial and cultural influence. Not so "primordially" grounded in the past as for Russia --though Confucianism plays a role in some circles to tie together, spiritually, its "managed nationalism" that ties central party management of industrial production

Common Assumption Across All Four:

Despite their differences, each of these systems assumes that “the masses are asleep” and must be led by an awakened elite, woke to realism(s):

For capitalists, it’s the market-savvy class/neoliberals (I have a detailed blog on these Homo oeconomicus, misguided cretins of "branding" and privatizing every dimension of collective and personal life).

For fascists, the leader aligned with a national essence somewhere in its cultural ascendence in the past, supported by capitalists in the present.

For Marxists, the class-conscious vanguard of labor, even if they routinely give themselves privileges (see the film, "On the Waterfront" on a American form).

For Duginists, the ethnocentric spiritual warrior caste attracted to a false past where glory is tied to territory, not to church, certainly not to ethics other than to compel and violently strive toward a false end, a false, violent telos.

Each defines human nature differently—fallen, distracted, false-conscious, or mythic—but in each case, a superior class must guide the rest (this was less open/patent/explicit in earlier Madisonian liberality, but has emerged/accelerated in the last 50 years in US tied to neoliberalism).

A Fifth Vision: Eschatological Accountability

In contrast to all four, I affirm a Christian political theology rooted in the Kingdom of God—a kingdom already made visible through the saintly remnant who embody its justice--the other-directedness and primacy of the Golden Rule. The path forward is not to reassert sovereignty of power centrality or old castes of priestly or nobility hierarchies,  nor roll back time toward a more violent ethic and culture, but to train people in righteousness, covenant, and intergenerational repair.

This is the true fourth political theory—not Dugin’s reactionary myth-making which is but a more fascist system of lie and blasphemy, but a vision of:

Ethical Accountability to eternity—that participates in the continuation of all creation, of neighbor and earth

Participation in divine justice 

Reorientation of political responsibility not toward wealth seeking but toward the deprived,  future generations, other species, and the health of creation

Theoria—observation divorced from embodied responsibility—led to the abstraction of systemic unaccountability that characterizes modernity since the mid-19th C. It is already giving way to poiesis: a creative, covenantal mode of repair, grounded in metaphysical responsibility and trained moral perception.

From 1800 to 1850, Western philosophy turned away from God’s world, its justice, rejecting metaphysical anchoring of grace as universal providence in favor of instrumental systems and the instrumental ethics they called for—that treated the sleeping masses and the fodder and means of the system's ends. The very basis of AI! That move brought the dominant political ideologies of today and which each theory intends to use AI to make their ends inevitable--their power-seeking of a transacted irreality (the topic of my second book). My first book (and blog posts) offers a detailed critique and constructive alternatives grounded in scriptural covenant and theological ethics that turns us from "theoria" (observation devoid of responsibility) to "poiesis"--repair of the damage of the unaccountable "systems" turning back from accountability--or at least tried to. And now with AI, accelerating these attempts.

These political theories are not just abstract debates. They shape the world we live in and how we imagine what is possible from our "theories" of human nature and potential. You will become the trainer of new leaders—those capable of guiding collectives not through domination or myth, but through accountable, covenantal participation in the divine metaphysics of humanity driven by heart/intention-first ties to the creation—repair and sustenance in the cycles of the earth and the throughput of generations. 

Concrete “repair” handles for developing an accountable political personality:

• Truth over brand: refuse partisan catechesis in fellowship spaces; host Scripture+neighbor testimony nights (Psalms 10/12/50; Matt 5–7) with action sign-ups attached.

• Restitution fund: student-run micro-grants for harmed campus workers/neighbors; tie it to Psalm 15 / Luke 19 (Zacchaeus).

• Sabbath from spectacle: one night/week device-off, body-on service (gardens, shelters, tutoring).

• Status confessionis test: before co-sponsoring any event or lending your person to a Frat space, ask: Does this call us to repair (expiation) or soothe by performance (propitiatory vibes)? If the latter, decline.

I look at the index of every book now for "ethics" virtue, golden rule, divine justice, metaphysics etc. Because if these are omitted, the book is devoted to a civilization that is disappearing. Its memories are shaped by self-interest rather than other-directed participation in the coming future.  Read my first book for the certain details of the Kingdom of God already arrived.

Once you get your heart/ethics right, there is no stopping your mind, energy, and talent. 

That's why I always lifted up my pride in your loving character, that for me at your age detoured into something less focused on others until I fitfully recovered it. Now perfected in Christian terms, though I still stumble with my habits of temper as impatience, as you've called out.

Stay awake! Keep your eyes on the streetcorners and your hands and feet in the wildlands. Ignore the top-down, false power of beastly compellings. Make your words your vow. Wherever you find the weak defended, accounts settled in mercy, and futures opened for the poor, the Kingdom is already at work. Go there. Help. Make that your character school by which collectives and peace are served.

Love, dad