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.
Early works
Mitchell was commissioned in the U.S. Army through ROTC at the University of Cincinnati. After seven years in infantry and counterintelligence, he left the Army and became an associate editor of Navy Times, an independent weekly newspaper. In 1989, while at Navy Times, Mitchell published Weak Link: The Feminization of the American Military, the first book-length critical analysis of gender integration of the U.S. military. The book received national and international attention, including appearances by Mitchell on ABC's Nightline, NBC's Today, CBS's Face the Nation, CNN's Larry King Live and Crossfire, and many other television and radio shows. In 1992, Mitchell testified before the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces. In 1998, Mitchell published Women in the Military: Flirting with Disaster, adding coverage of events since the publication of Weak Link, including the Invasion of Panama, the Gulf War, the Tailhook scandal, and the Aberdeen training scandal. That same year Mitchell also published The Scandal of Gender: Early Christian Teaching on the Man and the Woman.
Political theory
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, 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 and archē or "archy". 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
Mitchell charts these traditions graphically using a vertical axis as a scale of /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 and pro-government anarchists. 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
radical: anti archy, ambivalent toward kratos
individualist: anti archy, anti kratos
paleolibertarian: ambivalent toward archy, anti kratos
paleoconservative: pro archy, anti kratos
theoconservative: pro archy, ambivalent toward kratos
neoconservative: pro archy, pro kratos
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."
Theology
In 2010, Mitchell applied archē to Christian theology and anthropology, refining the concept to distinguish archy from hierarchy. Mitchell characterizes hierarchy as involving dissimilarity, inequality, subjection, and mediation between higher and lower ranks, whereas archy involves similarity, equality, unity, intimacy, and order based on derivative being or "sourceness." Following Greek patristic theology, which identifies the Father as the archē of both the Son and the Holy Spirit, Mitchell terms relations within the Trinityarchical and not hierarchical. He likewise terms relations within man as naturally archical but "economically" hierarchical on account of the fall. The distinction of gender is also explained as naturally archical but economically hierarchical.
