There is no “Other” in a republican state.
There is no idea more corrosive to the republican tradition—nor more hostile to the virtues it claims to uphold—than the belief that some among us are the other.
Not foreign enemies.
Not rival states.
But neighbors, citizens, workers, taxpayers—people who live under the same laws, bear the same burdens, and are subject to the same consequences—recast as something fundamentally apart.
That idea is not merely immoral.
It is anti-republican at the level of first principles.
What the Enlightenment Actually Settled
When Immanuel Kant asked:
“What must be true about us for knowledge to work at all?”
he was not engaging in abstract metaphysics. He was identifying the condition that makes truth possible in human society.
The answer, once seen, is devastating to every politics of exclusion:
- Human beings share the same cognitive structure
- Reason operates under universal limits
- No person has privileged access to truth by birth, blood, or category
- Knowledge works only if the rules apply to everyone
The Enlightenment is not rooted in optimism about human goodness.
It is rooted in skepticism about human authority.
That is why republics replace lineage with law, revelation with argument, and caste with citizenship.
Why “The Other” Is a Category Error
To declare someone the other is to make an epistemic claim, not just a social one.
It asserts—explicitly or implicitly—that:
- some people are less capable of reason
- less entitled to participation
- less qualified to be taken seriously
That is not a political opinion.
It is a rejection of the very conditions under which truth, law, and legitimacy function.
Once you accept that some citizens are categorically suspect, you have already abandoned republicanism. What remains is hierarchy wearing democratic language.
Citizenship Is Not a Moral Ranking
A republic does not require virtue to grant rights.
It requires lawful presence and mutual obligation.
- Living here
- Paying taxes
- Obeying the law
- Not being a felon under due process
That is not leniency.
That is the bargain.
The moment you introduce “citizen tests” beyond this—racial, cultural, ideological, religious, or aesthetic—you are no longer refining the republic. You are replacing it with a gatekeeping regime that answers to identity rather than law.
Every such test has always been used selectively.
Every one has eventually been weaponized.
None survive scrutiny because they violate the Kantian constraint: rules must be universal to be legitimate.
Racism Is Not Just Evil — It Is Irrational
Racism is often condemned as immoral. That is true, but insufficient.
It is also epistemically incoherent.
It assumes differences of worth or capacity that cannot be justified under shared standards of reason. It requires protected assumptions, insulated from challenge, enforced by power rather than evidence.
That is why racism cannot survive open inquiry.
It must be propped up by myth, fear, and authority.
A republic committed to truth cannot tolerate that—not because it is offensive, but because it breaks the machinery of knowing itself.
Why Division Is Always a Power Play
The language of “us” and “them” is never neutral.
It is always preparatory.
Once people are divided into moral categories:
- unequal treatment becomes defensible
- unequal voice becomes reasonable
- unequal justice becomes inevitable
This is not an accident of history.
It is the mechanism.
republican Virtue is not unity of identity.
It is equality of standing under shared rules.
Anything else is regression.
The Hard Line That Actually Holds
A republic can survive disagreement.
It can survive pluralism.
It can survive conflict.
What it cannot survive is the claim that some citizens are less entitled to reason, voice, or protection because of who they are.
That claim is not conservative.
It is not traditional.
It is not realistic.
It is pre-Enlightenment tribalism smuggled into modern language.
The Republican Conclusion
If knowledge works only because we share the same human conditions of reason, then:
- No race has privileged truth
- No culture has exempt authority
- No citizen is epistemically inferior
The republic stands or falls on that fact.
There is no other.
There are only citizens—and those who would like to rule them without answering questions.
And we already settled that argument.
