This is a modification of President Reagan’s rule: “Never say anything negative about a fellow conservative.” The only misbehavior worth correcting a retrograde over is “selling out” by directly pandering to the enemy (and/or committing intrinsically evil violations of the Decalogue). The retrograde must never presume to impugn a fellow retrograde for his manners or style. Never correct a retrograde for a moderate or minor etiquette breach—especially if the retrograde being impugned has a strong track record of good work exposing radicals and cooperating with fellow retrogrades.
The most prominent current instance of the violation of this rule involves petty virtue-signaling by “white knight” retrogrades (along with a generous helping of true mods) who have appointed themselves the “tone of voice police.” Not only does constant tone-of-voice self-recrimination by retrogrades condemn many of our best people and generate endless in-fighting, but most importantly, it promotes a right-wing version of a toxic ingredient of radicalism: relativism.
As the name implies, relativism absolutizes the relative and relativizes the absolute. Tone of voice is an article of each human being’s prudential judgment, meaning that—harsh or mellow, sweet or sour, loud or quiet—it cannot be judged according to the same absolute moral and logical standards that one’s words can be. Radicals prefer to police their interlocutors’ tone of voice precisely because so doing allows them to obviate the plain truth by swapping what is absolute (text) for what is relative (tone). Radicals also prefer it because they fear the fact that righteous men often harbor heated righteous anger in view of radical injustice; radicals can avoid just chastisement by asserting that there is no proper occasion for indignation, which is a lie.
The retrograde cannot allow himself, or his righteous anger, to appear to be bested by the tepid illogic of radicalism. The foolish chastisement and finger-wagging at retrogrades by fellow retrogrades threatens to do just this, however. Accordingly, a retrograde should never get preachy or become a “white knight” with regard to another retrograde’s angry tone of voice. Naturally, the radicals rejoice in such defeatism, fatalism, and infighting by retrogrades, since it wins for them a contest they could not otherwise win.
Reasonable minds will differ; to say reasonable minds can differ is to commit oneself to a certain eventual misunderstanding. No two human beings are possessed of a single, identical mind. Accordingly, it is only a matter of time before the finest two (theoretical) retrograde minds will come to disagree about some minor matter. Even middling matters of intra-Christian disagreement are not hills on which any of the good guys should die. We want them all to live to fight another day.
In this age, the good guys should err on the side of feistiness and fustiness with foes; they should err on the side of friendliness and fellow-feeling with friends. It’s that simple. Yet the average Christian today is thrice as likely to cry out, “charity, charity,” when he hears his fellow Christian dialoguing with the enemy. And he’s thrice as likely to call down the thunder upon that grouchy Christian who might have darkened his tone of voice in dialogue with that anti-Christian. This rule enjoins retrogrades to reverse this perverse trend!
Lastly, one wonders: how should disagreement among retrogrades be handled? The answer is simple: charitably, professionally, technically, scholastically! Above all, privately! A retrograde’s technical or logical errors of reasoning—never to be confused with a non-preferred tone of voice or “approach”—should indeed be pointed out by his friends. But the manner of correction should be private and dignified. It should be an amicable boon to the errant retrograde himself, with the purpose of restoring his recto ratio—right reason—a recovery he will, as a wise man, welcome. Correct a sagacious man and he will thank you for it, as the saying goes. Naturally, this sort of self-quarantine in the retrograde camp is to be lauded, not condemned. We reserve our condemnations for the radicals themselves, and for petty, turn-coating infighting.