The underlying premise of consensual government is that the people in the society, at least participating in its governance, can and will debate the issues facing the people in the society. By debate, it is understood that sharp disagreement will erupt and personal squabbles will inflame any disagreements. After all, men are not angels. In the end, a consensus will form and all sides will accept it. Everyone involved may not be ruled by reason, but trusted men in a civil society are reasonable.

If you think about how a democracy must work, the assumption of reasonableness becomes clear. If it is fifty percent plus one that carries the day, the winner must acknowledge that a large minority will not like the result. That means showing the other side respect, so they will return the favor when they carry the day. On the other hand, the losing side has to accept the will of the majority. Of course, it also means all sides have to be ready to revisit the issue if the majority got it wrong.

If you wanted to characterize the current crisis in America, a way to frame it would be a war on reasonableness. It’s not a war on reason, as in objective reality. At all times and all places reasonable men have been motivated by superstition and nonsense. What matters is the reasonableness, moderation and openness to alternatives, especially from those with unpopular opinions. It is among those willing to reconsider the consensus, where solutions are found when the consensus fails.

This war on reasonableness is most obvious in the reaction to Nick Fuentes and his young followers. Reasonable people can disagree with their opinions and reasonable people can oppose their tactics. Reasonable people must also acknowledge that young people are prone to getting carried away. Reasonable men cut young guys a little slack, because they remember what it was like to be young. In the case of the groypers, they are challenging authority, which is what we expect from young people.

Unreasonable people condemn these young men to eternal damnation for daring to question official dogma. When someone accuses Fuentes of being a fascist, he is saying Fuentes is evil and therefore outside of civil society. That is the intent of using the word “fascist” or the phrase “holocaust denier.” Regardless of the pedantic quibbles about the nature of fascism and the facts of the holocaust, the intent when using those phrases is to anathematize, to declare the accused of being evil.

This is not a reasonable response to a fellow member of society. This is a call for society to exterminate the invader, like a call to the immune system of the body. They want these men removed from society as if they are a disease. It is a hysterical response by people unwilling to concede an inch to dissenters. This is how a winner take all game is played. Those with power utterly and completely subjugate those without power, in order to make sure they never challenge power.

If you are on the other side of these calls to exterminate you, how can you come away thinking there is a bargain to be had with these people? How can those in dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy want to cut a deal with people who want them dead? The start of any deal is reasonable parties willing to compromise and reach consensus. What is the middle position when one side opens with a demand for your head? Do you agree to give up an arm? A leg? Live as a pariah?

Even when you move away from the howler monkeys taking to social media to declare fatwahs on the dissenters, those who claim to be reasonable, stake out the most unreasonable of positions. When some sober minded pundit claims that race is a social construct, a statement in direct contradiction to observable reality, that’s not a reasonable position no matter how calmly stated. That is making a concession to the unreasonable in advance, in order to appease them.

In fact, indulging these crazy assertions from the woke crowd is a war on reason and reasonableness. It is an effort to socialize pathology, spreading the disease to the whole of society. It is akin to the doctor spreading the cancer to the whole body, so that the patient stops noticing the tumor. When this is what passes for reasonable debate, it marginalizes the alternatives, thus normalizing that which is abnormal and anathematizing those who still cling to the normal.

Many of the paid spokesman that the Nick Fuentes crowd have targeted love to wave around the Declaration of Independence. The open lines are their opening and closing statements on all things political. They indulge the sentimentality, without understanding the intent.  That document was a statement by reasonable men, no longer willing to bargain with unreasonable men. Irreconcilable differences existed between the colonists and England. The only solution was separation.

This is where the war on reasonableness must lead. Good men seeking compromise will indulge the unreasonable for as long as they can, perhaps long beyond where they should, but eventually they stop indulging the unreasonable. At that point, there are but two choices. One is peaceful separation and the other is those reasonable men embrace unreasonable solutions to the unreasonable men in their midst. Ranse Stoddard gives way to Tom Doniphon to end Liberty Valance.

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