From a reader:

Dear Jonah and Andrew,
Thanks gentlemen for the Reason vs. Revelation death match. Kidding aside, it is a worthy conversation, although I think that there may be disconnect in it.
I think Andrew and Jonah might agree that 1) Religion as a ground for politics is a bad idea and potentially quite destructive, AND that 2) Believing that rationality is the only way of knowing the world is destructive and leads to dangerously grounded political orders also. Jonah’s claim seems to be more about ontology, or what COUNTS when you are thinking about the world. While Andrew is raising concerns about how political orders have been grounded. Perhaps I am missing a more important disagreement, however.
Below are some more thoughts on the matter (although of questionable merit and will likely have you asking, “what does this have to do with Carl Schmitt?”, the ramble below is how I came to the two points above):
Jonah says that the commitment to untainted rationality is likely to end in an ugly will to power in the political order, and Andrew says that the days of tainted rationality (and religious wars) can look an awful lot like a an ugly will to power situation also. I do think Andrew is correct except that some religions are more susceptible to ugliness than others, where as the extreme rationality approach is what it is. Carl Schmitt’s (A one-time nazi) Concept of the Political (1927 I think) suggests that the political is that which is non-negotiable, that for which you are willing to kill or be killed (or have men kill or be killed). Schmitt seems to lament the loss of content from the political that it is now just down to a version of humanism or human rights. These other things, religion, culture, language that used to be important [worth fighting for] have been sucked away. Leo Strauss criticized that view and argued that the remaining humanism is a legitimate political ground–and a safe one (he argued against Schmitt before 1933, I think, so it was not a reaction to the Holocaust but a warning of it). What does this have to do with your conversation?
Strauss’s insight that keeping religion out of the realm of that for which you fight in the political [violent arena by Schmitt’s definition] arena is a good idea, does not conflict with an understanding that pure rationality leads to a destructive will to power. Andrew and Jonah can agree that 1) Religion as a ground for politics is a bad idea and potentially destructive, AND that 2) Believing that rationality is the only way of knowing the world is destructive.
Best,

Me: A very thoughtful email. My only objections, for now, are that A) Schmitt wasn’t merely a one-time Nazi. In every meaningful sense once he became a Nazi he never stopped being one. He never expressed any remorse for the Holocaust even long, long after the details were known. The “crown jurist” of the Nazi Reich may have gotten into some intra-party squabbles and the like, but in his heart he remained a Nazi in the ways that count.

And B) I’m not positive the reader is exactly right about Schmitt’s definition of the political. My understanding is that Schmitt believed every thing was political even those things which we call apolitical — since to declare something beyond politics is itself a political act. Interestingly, Mark Lilla argues that Schmitt was fundamentally a theological thinker (which may play into my argument with Andrew more than the reader allows). But this may all be a trivial point and I am no expert on Schmitt (though I’ve been reading more by and about him lately).