Tribes, Kings, and the Seven Dictums of Left and Right Politics with Christopher Angle
Philosopher and author Christopher Angle joins host Michael D. Brown and co-host Liberty Jones to trace the political left and right back to tribal leadership, monarchy, and revolution, sparking a pointed debate over the Second Amendment, ethics, and whether power inevitably corrupts any system built on it.
A Philosopher Joins the Conversation
Michael D. Brown opens the broadcast by welcoming listeners to Shadow Politics and introducing his co-host, Liberty Jones, before turning to his guest, Christopher Angle, a philosopher, author, and host of The Philosophical Angle podcast. Brown, who spent eighteen years working to end the disenfranchisement of the District of Columbia, says he is eager to hear Angle explain why the country feels so divided. Angle answers that he has identified a set of dictums, principles he says govern how the political left and right behave, and that understanding them requires starting with anthropology rather than modern headlines. He traces politics back to early human tribes, where a member with more knowledge, strength, or age would naturally emerge as leader. Angle argues that leadership brings with it a desire for more resources than others in the group receive, a pattern he says appears across human and animal societies alike, and the discussion that follows builds outward from that starting point.
From Tribal Chiefs to Kings and Queens
Angle expands his anthropological account into what he calls the second dictum, Saint Augustine's principle of libido dominandi, the idea that individuals within any society will strive to dominate others. He describes how successful tribes grow into kingdoms, with leaders morphing into kings and queens supported by aristocracies who help enforce their rule over everyone else. Angle says this created a permanent divide between the haves, who enjoyed wealth and status, and the have-nots, the slaves, serfs, and proletariats who worked the land for centuries. He argues that the haves came to believe they alone carried divine favor, a belief reflected in the "divine right of kings" found across Western and Eastern cultures alike, including imperial China. Brown interjects to ask about revolution, noting that eventually the oppressed groups reach a breaking point. Angle agrees that is exactly where the historical arc is heading, setting up the discussion of the uprisings that follow, from England's Civil War era through the documents that reshaped politics in the centuries after.
Revolutions, Socialism, and the Rise of Totalitarian Control
Angle walks through the American and French Revolutions, arguing that they permanently weakened royal power because rulers could no longer simply issue edicts and instead had to win votes. He points to the 1815 Congress of Vienna, where Europe's aristocrats, shaken by the French Revolution, struck what he calls the fourth dictum, noblesse oblige, a bargain promising the have-nots basic security in exchange for loyalty, which he identifies as the origin of socialism. Angle traces that thread forward to the 1848 Communist Manifesto and then to twentieth-century regimes he calls its descendants, including Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany, Castro's Cuba, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and North Korea, all cases he characterizes as leftist because of their total control over society. He introduces a fifth dictum, Lord Acton's statement that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely, arguing that unchecked leaders lose their sense of ethics and cooperation, leaving only an end-justifies-the-means mentality that, he says, let Stalin starve millions in Ukraine while believing he was doing right.
Liberty Jones Challenges the Framework
Liberty Jones pushes back, agreeing that humans carry an innate tribal instinct but rejecting the idea that society must gravitate toward power-centered tribalism. She argues for a more reciprocal model of leadership, in which a leader earns respect through what they do for the group rather than through domination, and she questions Angle's claim that humanity inherently falls short of the glory of God, suggesting that idea has historically served to keep aristocracies in power. She calls the swing between left and right an organic pendulum of politics, one she believes society can navigate without violence. Later, when Angle explains that power is a form of negative energy that can block a person's priorities, Jones presses harder, asking how the system avoids being fatally flawed if the same elected leaders who are said to crave control are also the ones entrusted to deliver freedom and ethics. She illustrates the point with the image of a fox left in charge of a henhouse, and Angle concedes that kings and queens throughout history behaved exactly that way.
Ethics, Freedom, and a Clash Over the Second Amendment
Brown asks how ethics can be restored to a political culture where neither side seems to respect the other, pointing to the hostility he observes on social media. Angle answers that ethics grows out of cooperation, and cooperation grows out of freedom, defined as the ability to form a priority and then effectuate it in reality, protections he credits to the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The conversation turns pointed when Brown challenges Angle's reading of the Second Amendment. Angle argues the amendment exists to let citizens defend themselves against an oppressive government, given thousands of years of disarmed populations under monarchs. Brown disagrees, arguing the amendment's language about a well-organized militia shows it was meant to protect the state itself, since the young nation had no standing army, and that the founders saw government and citizenry as one and the same. Brown also raises current gun laws, noting that a sixteen-year-old in Texas can buy an AR-15 rifle but not a handgun, asking how such priorities can be shaped by ethics instead of fear.
Economics, Peace, and a Tribute to Close the Show
Angle shifts to economics, describing every transaction as an exchange of sacrifice for reward involving time, knowledge, energy, and risk, and arguing that free-market exchange, exemplified by buying a fried-egg sandwich at a deli, is itself the nature of peace. He says competition naturally pushes people toward divergence rather than conflict, and that the more transactions a society allows, the more efficient and peaceful it becomes. Brown asks why, if this is true, the country still feels so divided under current leadership, and Angle attributes it to the permanent tug between those who want more control and those who want more freedom. Liberty Jones closes with a question about living with humanity's mix of selfishness and generosity, prompting Angle to define evil as an unethical action paired with an unethical objective. Before signing off, Angle points listeners to his book, The Nature of Political Left and Right. Brown closes the broadcast by marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11th, urging listeners to thank firefighters and first responders, and dedicating P!nk's "What About Us" to the evening's conversation.
