One of the hard parts of Carl Schmitt's writing is determining what he calls the 'political'. Tracy Strong writes in the introduction to The Concept of the Political that to Schmitt it is "the arena of authority rather then general law and requires decisions which are singular, absolute and final". Since that is his definition of the political it is easy to see how Schmitt made the leap to believing that the only determinant of true sovereignty is a governor who operates under a state of exception.

The executive is the only presidential or parliamentary position that has any constitutional allowance for singular or absolute action. Unsurprisingly the executive is a position that republicans distrust the most and seek to place the greatest restrictions on through constitutionalism, bills of rights, separation of powers and check and balances. Not to mention popular elections and term limiting.

When state of exceptions do occur under constitutional system they are usually done so with the legislative and judicial willingly surrendering their authority into the executive so that the president or prime minister becomes the sole governing authority. Under republican doctrine this is tyranny and unacceptable. At this point liberal republican government collapses and is replaced with the arbitrary whim of the executive.

Schmitt believed that the crisis in liberalism was that it had no political. Liberalism and democracy supposedly finds temporal truths through compromise, horse-trading, bartering and all the messiness of a system comprised of free individuals acting in their self-interest. This is repugnant to Schmitt as the temporal nature of democratic truths lack the absolute truth of authority - which must be final (according to Schmitt).

He writes:

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.

Schmitt's complaint is that liberalism reduces the enemy to a competitor in the economic sphere and a debater in the political sphere - which by Schmitt's definition of the 'political' removes the absolute nature of authority. To Schmitt, this is a crisis of political legitimacy that liberalism suffers.

Schmitt is actually arguing that liberalism denies absolute tyranny - which is what singular authority is, and is what a state of exception is. Tyranny is political violence, even in its insidious form, which we know as arbitrary government.

Schmitt is concerned that liberalisms temporal nature of friend and enemy denies the capability of an absolute political - which is only achieved if there is a permanently morally, ethically and aesthetically repugnant enemy for the 'political' to wield its final authority on.

Like most supporters of tyrants, the enemy target is usually a domestic politically weak minority. Unsurprisingly Schmitt wrote anti-Semitic texts in support of the Nazis. His political philosophy underpins many of the exceptions and emergency political decisions of the Third Reich.

Liberalism extends from the enlightenment and was a response to the absolute rule of monarchs who derived their power to rule through divine right and hereditary lineage. The rationalism from writers such as Locke, Hume, Smith, etc took the irrational out of the political power, enabling the individual to have a political life of religious and economic freedom.

Political institutions that appealed to irrational legitimacy, such as the church and monarchs, could not survive in such a system. With this change in worldview came the elevation of the individual above mysticism such that political rights were subject to reason as well.

It is irrational for an individual to willingly place themselves in a political system that enables them to suffer from tyranny. Schmitt's analysis will always suffer from this, it asks for the irrational elevation of a state of exception so the 'political' can retain absolute authority.

This is in complete opposition to republicanism which reasons political equality as the end result of individuals expressing their political freedom.

Marxism was once the opponent to liberalism but is now being replaced with Schmittian Conservatism . If there is a binary friend-enemy descriptor in republicanism it is liberty-tyranny. Tyranny is repugnant to republicanism - thus the Schmittian 'political' has to be as well.