page_title: Brian Patrick Mitchell
section_title: Political theory
hierarchical_section_title: Brian Patrick Mitchell / Political theory
caption_attribution_description: English: Four fundamental political inclinations based on their regard for rank (archy) and force (kratos).
context_page_description: Brian Patrick Mitchell is an American writer, political theorist, and blogger, known for his theory of political difference, theology of interpersonal relations, and critical analysis of gender integration of the American armed forces.
context_section_description: In 2006, while working as the Washington bureau chief of Investor's Business Daily, Mitchell published Eight Ways to Run the Country: A New and Revealing Look at Left and Right (ISBN 0275993582), improving upon a theory of political difference first presented by Mitchell in the short-lived journal Theologies & Moral Concerns in 1995. Eight Ways analyzes modern American political perspectives according to their regard for kratos (defined as the use of force) and archē or "archy" (defined as the recognition of rank). Mitchell rooted his distinction of archy and kratos in the West's historical experience of church and state, crediting the collapse of the Christian consensus on church and state with the appearance of four main divergent traditions in Western political thought:
  republican constitutionalism: pro archy, anti kratos
  libertarian individualism: anti archy, anti kratos
  democratic progressivism: anti archy, pro kratos
  plutocratic nationalism: pro archy, pro kratos
  Mitchell charts these traditions graphically using a vertical axis as a scale of kratos/akrateia and a horizontal axis as a scale of archy/anarchy. He places democratic progressivism in the lower left, plutocratic nationalism in the lower right, republican constitutionalism in the upper right, and libertarian individualism in the upper left. The political left is therefore distinguished by its rejection of archy, while the political right is distinguished by its acceptance of archy.
  For Mitchell, anarchy is not the absence of government but the rejection of rank. Thus there can be both anti-government anarchists (Mitchell's "libertarian individualists") and pro-government anarchists (Mitchell's "democratic progressives," who favor the use of government force against social hierarchies such as patriarchy). Mitchell also distinguishes between left-wing anarchists and right-wing anarchists, whom Mitchell renames "akratists" for their opposition to the government's use of force.
  In addition to the four main traditions, Mitchell identifies eight distinct political perspectives represented in contemporary American politics:
  communitarian: ambivalent toward archy, pro kratos
  progressive: anti archy, pro kratos (democratic progressivism)
  radical: anti archy, ambivalent toward kratos
  individualist: anti archy, anti kratos (libertarian individualism)
  paleolibertarian: ambivalent toward archy, anti kratos
  paleoconservative: pro archy, anti kratos (republican constitutionalism)
  theoconservative: pro archy, ambivalent toward kratos
  neoconservative: pro archy, pro kratos (plutocratic nationalism)
  A potential ninth perspective, in the midst of the eight, is populism, which Mitchell says is vaguely defined and situation dependent, having no fixed character other than opposition to the prevailing power.
  Eight Ways was largely ignored by the political mainstream but received favorable reviews from libertarians and paleoconservatives, who welcomed the attention and the critique. Anthony Gregory of the Independent Institute named Eight Ways "the best explanation of the political spectrum," saying it "makes sense of all the major mysteries."
caption: Mitchell's Eight Political Americans
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