You’ve probably heard it said that your enemy’s
enemy is your friend (which mostly isn’t true). But what is mostly true is that
your friend’s folly is often your biggest foe.
In my economics book Benevolent Libertarianism, I talked about how the biggest competition for the job for which you are applying is not a rich entrepreneur, but someone with similar skills and experiences who’d be more likely to express an interest. I offered an analogy that, when on the pull in a nightclub, average looking Graham’s biggest competition is not gorgeous George, it is average looking Gary and average looking Gordon.
This can be summarised as a reliable rule of thumb, that our fiercest competition usually comes from those most like us, not those far away from us, because they overlap with us in skills, goals, and audiences, and compete for the same space.
I feel this most acutely in a different way about my Christian faith. The biggest impediments to the tenability and credibility of the gospel are frequently not atheists, agnostics or members of other religions – they are the science-distorting fundies, crackpots, hucksters, snake-handlers, weaponisers of scripture, ill-mannered congregation members, charlatan prosperity-gospel peddlers, whooping self-appointed prophet grifters, and cultish sectarians – who are, basically, all fellow Christians who purport to be on the same team.
We’ve seen that in politics too. We saw how the biggest threat to the Blair brand of centre-left Labour became Corbyn’s hard left. We’ve seen how the biggest threat to the Conservative Party have been those who’ve actually taken their place as being conservative while the party has drifted off to the centre left.
It’s definitely something to watch out for - it’s often not the opponent across the trench who undoes you, but the fool recklessly waving your own flag.
