Andrew T. Walker@AndrewTWalker
Keeping the Soul of Conservatism
If you call yourself a political conservative, as I do—and for which I make no apology—it’s time for a family conversation about who belongs in our coalition and what moral boundaries still exist.
Conservatism in America is facing a moral test. Recent events—a POLITICO exposé of grotesque vulgarities in a Young Republicans chat and Tucker Carlson’s unserious interview with the antisemite Nick Fuentes—reveal a movement flirting with rot under the banner of “winning.”
Fuentes is a vile figure—morally repugnant and undeserving of respect or influence. One might argue that subjecting his views to public scrutiny could helpfully diminish his appeal. Fair enough, if genuine journalism were taking place. But Carlson’s interview wasn’t a scrutiny; it was a puff piece. Evil men, when given a platform, should be exposed and repudiated. That didn’t happen here.
I’m not suggesting we avoid hard conversations or police who talks to whom. When ideas are truly interrogated, public debate is a good thing. But pretending that racism or antisemitism deserve to be “heard out” does not signal open-mindedness or empathy toward the dissident Right. It signals moral decay.
At the heart of this debate lies a political tactic. Some on the Right insist conservatives always lose because we’re not united like the Left. We impose purity tests, they say, while progressives form a single power bloc. Hence the rallying cry: “No Enemies to the Right” (NETTR).
The slogan traces to the political theology of Carl Schmitt, who reduced politics to a friend–enemy distinction. Schmitt saw politics as the act of identifying those who threaten one’s way of life and rallying with those who share a common foe.
Today, “No Enemies to the Right” captures a mood: if we really want to win, stop clearing our throats and stop policing our side. It’s war, after all—and in wartime, niceties must yield to victory.
That mindset is a mistake. It’s incompatible with the Bible’s moral realism and corrosive to the conservative soul. I also do not think it is a sound political strategy. The NETTR principle will only serve to sully the conservative conscience and divide the coalition by perpetually re-negotiating the boundaries of who is in and who is out. Imitating the Left’s willingness to invite radicals into its coalition partly explains why progressivism is suffering historic levels of unpopularity—deranged extremists were let in, and the entire place became an asylum of far-Left mania.
Conservatives must care about the moral and intellectual character of our coalition. We do not care because we crave the Left’s approval—chasing liberal plaudits is a fool’s errand—nor because we enjoy tone-policing. We care because the health of our movement depends on the moral quality of those who represent it. Conservatism, at its best, rests on two pillars: truth and virtue. Truth gives order its compass. Virtue gives self-government its guardians. A people fit for liberty must also be a people of character.
The Left, by contrast, often drifts on unmoored foundations—its compass fixed to the winds of desire and power. That is what makes the Left the Left. However, conservatives cannot—and must not—mirror that posture. A movement that embraces “by any means necessary” may win a battle but will lose its soul. Such tactics define progressivism; they must never define conservatism.
The trouble with No Enemies to the Right is that it lacks a limiting principle. Once adopted, nothing is off the table—neither in who we include nor in what we justify. Imagine a group of neo-Nazis who also favor “liberty” for pedophilic behavior joining the crusade to “crush the Left.” By NETTR’s logic, they’re part of the team. Their depravity would not be excused—but it wouldn’t be excluded either.
What follows is predictable: without moral limits, the race to prove who’s most “based” devolves into a purity spiral of ever-deepening vileness. This is the opposite of Christian ethics, which rejects unprincipled pragmatism in favor of principled outcomes—even when those outcomes are difficult (Matt. 16:24; Rom. 3:8). What’s more, moral revolutions eventually eat their own, as well. No one is ever safe in a political context where the parameters for faithful allegiance are constantly shifting. But thank God that Scripture is our North Star, not the shifting winds of fallen man.
Maybe that makes Christianity look “weak” or “unaware of what time it is.” But neither Jesus nor Paul was woke, nor were they Third Way squishes. Jesus was the Son of God and perfect. Paul’s writings were done under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
An unwillingness to confront this darkness—where one standard applies to “us” and another to “them”—is biblical partiality (Deut. 1:17; Prov. 24:23; Jas. 2:9). The friend–enemy frame is foreign to Christian ethics, which refuses theological revisionism for political ends. For those who sneer that critics of NETTR “don’t know what time it is,” remember this: it is never time to sever Christian ethics from political life.
Let me be clear about what I’m not saying. We don’t always need to publicly denounce every misstep or person. Private, relational correction is proper. But we must be vigilant about who’s on the team. There must be a moral line somewhere. We cannot police the behavior of every member of our coalition, but we must uphold moral expectations and ensure that certain ideas are unacceptable. Anything less and we’ve become the moral revolutionaries we believed ourselves incapable of.
This is where the “Christian” in Christian conservative takes priority. Before we are Christian conservatives, we must be conservative Christians. We take Scripture seriously—so seriously that we see it as the inerrant, authoritative, all-sufficient guide for everything, including the morality that governs our political life.
On a day like Reformation Day, we remember that Scripture’s authority is seamless. It doesn’t bow to worldly categories of gender, race, class, or party. It speaks over them all. Sola Scriptura means precisely this: Scripture alone is supreme. Not our identities, not our experiences, not our political loyalties. God’s Word judges all human words—and never the other way around.
When we let cultural identity or political tribe dictate our theology—when we decide what to affirm or avoid based on allegiance—we’ve already abandoned Sola Scriptura. We have enthroned culture and politics where Christ should reign.
When we excuse moral compromise to gain or keep political power, we commit two errors: we dishonor the authority of Scripture, and we patronize our neighbors. Respecting our neighbors means treating them as moral agents capable of truth, not fragile egos to appease—especially the “disaffected” men of the online Right. I, too, want to see this segment healed. But as Jesus warned in Mark 8:36: What does it profit a movement to gain the Groypers and forfeit its soul?
True respect means treating people as capable of correction and reason, not coddling them through theological compromise. The Bible’s authority is not partial. It is total, seamless, and sovereign—over our categories, sensitivities, and political identities alike.
To be a conservative Christian once meant opposing abortion, defending marriage, and upholding the moral law. The new litmus test, disturbingly, is increasingly whether one welcomes the most rancid viewpoints as legitimate stakeholders within the movement. That redefinition of conservatism—and of Christianity—lowers the conscience to the gutter.
And yet, at least the conversation is happening. That’s good. It’s healthy to see the Right practice moral introspection within its own ranks.
Now, if only the Left, center-Left, and self-styled moderates calling for our accountability and moral reckoning on the Right would hold themselves to the same standard.
Which, of course, they won’t.
The Left remains an existential threat—but so does a Right that abandons its moral guardrails. Together, they’ll burn civilization down in a blaze of mutually assured destruction.
