Counter-Currents
3,324 words
Back when liberalism was still a good thing, for the most part – that is to say, the 18th century – all this was quite an advance. Up to that point, absolutist monarchy had been nearly ubiquitous since the end of the toga-and-sandal days. Although there have been some outstanding kings, far more have been despots. Then there are royal dynasties that lose their luster, becoming effete, inbred, out-of-touch, or all the above. In general, it’s always a hazard when too much power becomes concentrated in too few hands.
Classical liberalism offered a practical alternative, along with a great package of benefits. This included freedom of expression, religious pluralism, elected representatives, limited government, separation of powers, and an impressive list of protections from tyranny exemplified by the Bill of Rights. Like I said before, “It’s only after those centuries-old checks on government have become eroded, often through lawyerly word games, that we’re starting to feel the encroachments of despotism.”
Trouble in paradise
Depending on how you slice it and dice it, there have been four phases of liberalism during history. Each had its benefits, though the latest iteration is (at best) pretty thin gruel. Reforms are necessary at times, but each phase also eventually produced crusty froth bubbling up from the ideological cauldron. Typically this resulted from taking principles too far, beyond the point of reason or practicality. Sometimes things really went off the rails. For example, some key principles in vogue during the 1960s, which at the time seemed noble and high-minded from their perspective, led in a direct tangent line to the present-day dysfunctional clown show.
The French Revolution was first moment that the crusty froth bubbled out of the kettle and created a huge mess. This ended up nuttier than squirrel poop. Granted, I find it difficult to come down too hard on the Jacobins and their allied factions. For example, if a band of sans-culottes stormed Davos during one of those globalist conferences where our elected officials and top business figures suck up to wannabe Bond villains, then I’d be right there selling the popcorn during the siege. Other than that, they had a nifty invention back then. If memory serves, it begins with a “G” and seems to mean “government repair kit” in French.
Still, it’s inescapable that France’s revolutionaries were crazy. For a revolt against tyranny, they certainly became quite tyrannical when they got in charge. Highlights of that included the Reign of Terror, featuring mob violence, sadism, and the unfortunate overuse of that government repair kit thingy. A lot of people who didn’t deserve it got swallowed up in all that, until the revolution eventually ate itself. Whatever one can say for rough stuff, generally the “less is more” principle is a wise guideline. Targeting innocent parties is obviously wrong. When things spiral out of control, this tends to produce a Shakespearean outcome where everyone’s pushing up daisies by the end of the show.
So how is it that a movement founded on lofty principles – liberty, fraternity, equality, peppermint tea – ended up nuttier than squirrel poop? These guys were so Age of Enlightenment that it hurts. They were so bullish about rationality that they deified it with that odd Cult of Reason business. Things went terribly wrong, despite all those exalted standards.
The revolutionaries had promulgated an impressive smorgasbord of civil liberties. In practice, the item in the Declaration of the Rights of Man guaranteeing “liberty, property, safety and resistance against oppression” somehow didn’t apply to the free and equal citoyens who had been nobility and clergy before the ideological tides changed. Surely these deposed notables likewise would’ve appreciated receiving their guaranteed rights to due process. Instead, they got a drumhead trial at best before being dragged off to the government repair kit for an extreme haircut.
Lofty principles, loftier body count
The next iteration of liberalism was economically focused, beginning when industrialization was just coming on the horizon. That too featured some crusty froth spilling out of the cauldron. The major offshoot here was communism, which is too radical to be considered a subset of liberalism, although it does share some principles. Moreover, it was an ideological heir of the French revolutionary spirit. They never could get toilet paper rationing quite right, but they did find the mother lode of squirrel poop.
If one had to summarize the goals of communism in one word, it would be equality. Sounds great, right? But wait! There’s more! It’s all about democracy too. (Maybe bourgeois imperialists use the term a little differently, but c’mon, are you going to take some capitalist running dog’s word for it?) This is so built into the communist DNA that they named lots of their socialist paradises after it, such as the German Democratic Republic and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. With names like that, how could they not be awesomely free countries, right?
Communism brings lots of other good stuff too, all in the name of the people’s will. (As it happens, the Party is defined explicitly as the people’s will, and it’s a darn good thing there’s an institution clarifying what the people really want! Something as important as that shouldn’t just be left to whatever it is the unenlightened masses want, right?) These goodies include a planned economy operating under scientific principles, the elimination of superstitious religious nonsense, a classless society, liberating oppressed countries abroad by supporting friendly freedom fighters waving AK‑47s and chucking Molotov cocktails, and all that jazz. With such benevolent principles and forward-thinking ideas, what possibly could go wrong, like, ever?
What’s in that squirrel poop?
Fanaticism is a rather common hazard for ideologies, just as it is for religions. Even well-meaning reform movements sometimes go too far. For leftists, quite often causes which begin with concern for personal liberty, the brotherhood of mankind, the well-being of the downtrodden, freedom for the oppressed, and so on can turn out quite counterproductively, or even go terribly awry. Fanaticism generally involves the following beliefs, though the fourth item isn’t always present:
- They’re unquestionably right;
- Their opponents aren’t merely wrong, but evil too;
- Anything can be justified in the name of the greater good; and
- If the program is followed precisely, utopian conditions will result.
Already this can lead to a toxic combination of conceited self-righteousness, ruthlessness, and aggression. For fanatics, their beliefs are axiomatic. Defying their taboos will bring anger, or (if they’re running the show already) a visit from the political police. This is so even if their beliefs are at odds with the real world, self-contradictory, unable to withstand ten minutes of Socratic debate, or even perfectly silly.
As for the utopian vision, this leads to a utilitarian justification to suspend all their wonderful principles. After all, what’s the matter with gulags if that’s what it takes to get to an endless socialist paradise? Things seldom work out as expected, and often produce results worse than the starting point. Problems typically result from misreading human nature (for example, everyone is basically the same, or can be made so), faulty ideas about economics (such as that the scarcity problem can be avoided, or to put another way, that money grows on trees), and the idea that human nature is very malleable and the mind can be reprogrammed easily. Lately, the most pernicious belief is absolute egalitarianism, which disregards real differences in populations and leads to the expectations of equal outcomes. Sometimes the truth hurts – it’s a lot “nicer” to profess belief that all populations are equal in every way – but it doesn’t work to eschew reality and take refuge in dogma, wishful thinking, and naivety. Likewise, half-baked efforts to work out everything from pure reason don’t always produce the expected results when implemented. When these things are disregarded, then failure is inevitable. When the ideological foundation is faulty, it becomes increasingly difficult to spackle over the results, and eventually the entire edifice collapses catastrophically.
These unintended consequences are hardly a surprise to us. Unfortunately, the lesson is lost on them. Such counterproductive outcomes don’t deter leftists or inspire them to question the faulty premises that led to the pipe dream not working as designed. Instead, the blame almost always falls on people who didn’t believe in the program enough. The Five Year Plan didn’t work because of Trotskyites and wreckers. Integration didn’t work as advertised because of “racists.” When the transsexuality bubble finally bursts, goodness only knows who the usual suspects will blame, but it won’t be activists, groomers, and woke teachers who misled confused adolescents. Of course, when one of these social engineering projects fails, the next act is to double down on it. Although their ideologies began as social reform movements, these world-improvers did a remarkable job breaking things.
Efforts like this are usually very costly to society, both directly and through unintended consequences. It may be burdensome in other ways too, since in some cases The Agenda will permeate into most aspects of daily life. They just can’t leave anything well enough alone. This takes its toll on the Pod People too, making them boring, sanctimonious, and grim. For example, one can well imagine what a bucket of joy Robin DiAngelo must be in person.
Effects on leftist fanatics
All this produces some very strange results. Some leftists are moderates who have their heads screwed on fairly straight. The others, unfortunately, are doctrinaire zealots who refuse even to entertain a thought contrary to The Narrative. Even so, they’ll pride themselves on rationality and open-mindedness. Fanaticism is a potential problem for any ideology, of course. Still, the leftist herd of independent minds has distinguished itself especially. These are the people who are so convinced in their rightness that they believe all generations before them were dead wrong.
They’ll proudly proclaim their free-thinking disdain for dogmas, yet this doesn’t include their own. For example, they’ll consider fundamentalists to be superstitious sixth-grade dropouts, yet at least Bible thumpers know what a woman is. The Pod People do too, but have to go along with their programming, even though it causes plenty of cognitive dissonance. Some of us may be glad to see the influence of traditional religion diminishing, but the unfortunate side effect is that leftist ideology effectively is becoming a crappy substitute religion.
They also fancy themselves as quite open-minded. We all know how that one goes, of course! The truth is that they’re no more exempt from confirmation bias than anyone else. They’d do well to remember this when they say rightists aren’t open-minded. I’ll further add that at least we’re closed-minded about things that are degenerate, evolutionarily maladaptive, or otherwise harmful to society. Healthy instincts aren’t such a bad thing!
Also paradoxically, leftists will tell you they’re standing up for the common man, the little guy, or the working stiffs. Yet they look down on them disdainfully as unenlightened rubes and hicks who are too dumb to think for themselves. This is especially so whenever anyone with rough hands and dirty fingernails disagrees with them. The Marxist-Leninists championed the peasants and workers. Still, they took great exception to it whenever someone who grows their food, or knows which end to hold a screwdriver, didn’t want to go along with their program. The explanation is that they have “false consciousness,” which means they don’t know what’s good for them.
Other than that, they consider themselves superior to those who don’t share their beliefs. They don’t put it like that exactly, but the attitude certainly comes out. Being against their own people, however, doesn’t make them wonderful. In fact, that’s abnormal. So is a lot of other stuff they promote.
Finally, “hate” is a leftist cliché so common that it’s nearly worn out from overuse. These love-mongers are certainly against it, right? It’s quite strange, then, that the Pod People display such immoderate and unseemly loathing for people who simply disagree with them. For example, the outcome of the recent Presidential election unleashed an outpouring of Trump Derangement Syndrome, often ranting about the same things as if on script. (Most of these love-mongers are play-acting for attention on social media, though some of these conniptions look like genuine cases of amygdala hijack to me. Either way, normal adults don’t throw temper tantrums.) This is hardly a singular phenomenon; these cuddly, lovey-dovey Pod People routinely respond to dissent by erupting with hatred as they rattle off their formulaic litany of “isms” and other devil words. It doesn’t seem like they’re being the change in the world that they seek!
Destroying the village to save the village
A worse problem is that all the benefits that the left offered – again, a few centuries ago when it was still a good thing – turn out to be expendable in practice. Classical liberalism represented being able to express your opinion without fear of heavy-handed reprisals from the King, the Church, or any other authorities. In recent times, their ideological heirs threw freedom of expression, once their crowning jewel, in the trash. The turning point was “Repressive Tolerance,” a monograph in 1965 by Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School. Much more could be said about this one!
Still, leftists hadn’t yet abandoned their principles during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, when they were trying to do away with in loco parentis standards. (Their success is one of the reasons why colleges became hotbeds of radicalism, although campuses certainly aren’t havens of free expression these days.) These principles were still intact when they were trying to legalize pornography up through the 1980s. After winning these battles in the culture war, and with the consolidation of the mainstream media by the 1990s into a handful of gigantic corporate conglomerates, they changed their tune entirely. It’s rather like how the theologian John Calvin preached freedom of religion before he came to power, but reversed course on that after he became a Swiss ayatollah.
Since then, leftists have become quite adept at censorship, intimidation, disrupting meetings, and other dirty tricks targeting their opponents. (If they had any decent arguments, they wouldn’t have to go to all that trouble and make themselves look bad in the process, but that’s another story.) Since they have a near-monopoly on opinion-forming institutions, then why not put their thumb on the scale of public debate, principles be damned? The usual line is that yeah, of course they believe in freedom of speech, but certain ideas are too dangerous to utter. Of course, they get to be the ones who decide what’s fit to say or print. They have plenty of casuistry to that effect, such as equating criticism, disfavored terminology, or even just disagreement with violence. Of course, the crybullies never apply these fine scruples to themselves.
The problem is that no matter what leftists claim, they don’t really support freedom of speech as long as they mean only opinions they find agreeable. The same is true when they insist on ideologically-oriented criteria; the usual litany of ifs, ands, or buts. The big one is “hate speech,” an anticoncept which is never applied with objective standards. Jared Taylor can get censored (hater, boo hiss!) but the writings of the comsymp terrorist Frantz Fanon are taught in university courses.
Another positive development brought by classical liberalism is even-handed and moderate justice. It was a tremendous advance over the times when a tubby king could get someone’s head chopped off on a whim, or inquisitors could burn someone at the stake for heresy. The reforms include due process, human rights, the abolition of torture, and the concept that the law should work the same way for people regardless of their station in life. Lately, this has broken down is through politically motivated lawfare, two-tier policing, malicious prosecution, the usual sort of circus trials, nullification of double jeopardy protection via legalistic word games, and other anarcho-tyranny abuses. This is ideologically driven, of course. If any reason is given, it’s the overwhelming need to stop “hate” – as they define it, of course. If there’s any liberal internal dissent about whether this is really proper, I’ve heard nary a peep about it. So once again, they talk a great game, but toss their lofty principles out the window whenever it suits them.
The principle of government by consent of the governed, by way of elected officials, is an especially hallowed achievement of classical liberalism. They did away with the tubby king entirely. Even so, the left is hardly above fiddling with elections whenever it suits them. People begin their youth as Democrats, then become Republicans when they grow up, and they start voting Democratic again after they die. More seriously, JFK narrowly defeated Nixon thanks to his father’s connections. The much more cynical LBJ even bragged about electoral cheating during his career. Of course, when Nixon’s reelection campaign unwisely hedged their bets with that third-rate burglary, the left has been crying foul about it ever since.
More lately was the fiasco of 2020, leading to the illegitimate Bidet junta. (With foul irony, the catchphrase “our democracy” became a new trite phrase around that time.) I anticipated a repeat of the same script in 2024, but this time they put their hopes on wetwork. First there was the rally with suspiciously lax security, in which a mattoid with hinky Deep State connections shot at The Donald from a roof. Then there was the guy in the bushes who got caught before he could make his move. Why did they deem it acceptable to abrogate their hallowed democratic traditions – first, by an unprecedented amount of ballot box stuffing, and later two bungled assassination attempts? The real reason is that The Donald doesn’t belong to the globalist uniparty which has been ruling since Woodrow Wilson, but the more common line is that Orange Cheetoh Drumpf is “another Hitler.” I’ll credit him for getting smarter this time around, but I’m still waiting for him to become even another George Wallace.
Then there’s the classical liberal concept that political disputes should be settled peacefully. I’d be delighted if it always worked that way. Unfortunately, that’s broken down yet again: lunatics swinging bike locks, masked goon squads of brain-damaged radicalinskis, troublemaking outfits showered with billions in corporate contributions, massive riots incited by shadowy NGOs, and so forth – often while the police are ordered to look the other way, or even kneel to those freaks. In fact, a very common feature of governments organized around leftist ideology is industrial-scale political violence. It’s happened several times during history. On the rare occasions it’s acknowledged at all, often the justification is that these things were a necessary sacrifice toward achieving their beautiful vision of progress. The human rights they care so much about can be abrogated whenever it’s expedient, if it’s for what they believe is a good cause. Whenever rightists finally get sick of it, and start giving them a taste of their own medicine, then leftists will howl about it forever.
And finally
Here we have a pattern of leftists espousing the loftiest of principles formulated by their now-distant ideological antecedents, but promptly abrogate them whenever it’s convenient. All this smelly hypocrisy is justified by some exceptional circumstance or another, whether it’s “fighting fascism,” opposing “racism,” or because of some threat to “our democracy.” They really do it because they can, and because it gets them what they want.
What that strategy fails to take into account is that nobody remains in power forever. By now, the left has a terrible record of censorship, political violence, and several other dirty tricks. If (or really when) the opposing side – that’s us – takes control, why should we feel particularly obligated to honor a reciprocal agreement that the other side breaks whenever it’s expedient? When they portray themselves as the flowering of the Enlightenment, yet routinely give themselves permission to go back on everything they stand for, that’s a pretty good reason not to take them seriously. Moreover, they don’t belong in charge of anything more important than redecorating their “safe spaces.”
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26 comments
I think modern leftists are motivated by resentment rather than idealism. Their feigned idealism is the mask they wear to obfiscate their destructive behaviors.
While rhetorically ineffective, the conservative cry of “Dems are the real racist” holds some truth. The liberals aren’t actually interested in the well-being of nonwhites, or any other interest group, but cynically use them to foment social unrest or harm. For instance, leftists judges will vehemently claim to support women’s rights while giving slaps on the wrists to violent non-white rapists and traffickers.
This hypocrisy is driven by a conscious or subconscious desire on the part of the leftists to inflict as much harm as possible on society. In the aforementioned scenario, releasing violent rapists into the public space takes precedent over protecting women and girls because it optimizes suffering.
Leftists who seem somewhat reasonable or moderate are individuals who have some semblence of normalcy but can’t quite get over their social programming or feelings of resentment and inferiority. These people will utlimately side with the more radical leftists, rendering them indistinguishable from the leftist hive mind.
This. All day long. And I would add some people are most “happy” being loathsome, miserable, pretend-victims. If I were to believe in the theory of evolution, these folks would be the first to have gone extinct. But here we are. And I believe in good and evil.
The faux victims are SO annoying, especially the ones who conduct hate hoaxes, pretend to have disabilities when there’s nothing wrong with them, hold up their mental problems as a badge of honor, or expect others to buy into their fantasy world. Some of the younger ones are doing so to compensate for lack of real accomplishments, or are buying into trendy nonsense, but they should grow up.
You should look up the definition of absolute monarchy. It really only came up in the early modern age
What would be the correct prior term for monarchy in which the king serves as an autocrat with ultimate authority in the country?
Good question! Probably it will be enough to call them monarchies. The context will make it very clear that they are no parliamentary ones! When wanting to avoid misunderstandings, I’d just call them traditional monarchies.
Auctoritas?
Yes, Mr. Harell is correct. Absolutist monarchy was designed in XVI and implemented in XVII century. Accordingly, constitutional monarchy was invented in XVII and realised in XVIII century as an answer to the excesses of absolutism.
There are a lot of other types of monarchies aside from those. In opposition to “absolute”, we may call them “relative”. 🙂 There are also many systems of checks and balances going with them. The reality is much different from what you have been taught in school.
Also, revolutionaries’ notion of “reason” is actually phony. We don’t see any real scientists among them – D’Alembert or Lagrange would have avoided such a crowd completely. But they attracted a lot of lawyers, especially failed ones – Demoulin, Marx, Lenin etc.
You also seem to not understand the Soviet leadership psychology. They didn’t care about working people at all. There was one person with working background among them initially (Shlyapnikov) – he may have had some delusions, but for others, it was a minority rule what they implemented. Don’t project your American understanding here!
There’s a great book by our outstanding mathematician and philosopher I.R.Shafarevich called “The Socialism Phenomenon”. He invokes a broader context there, and, in his opinion, the problem existed long before 1789. If you haven’t read it, I recommend this book very much.
And thanks for a good article as always, Beau!
I understand that the Bolsheviks – or rather the (((Bolsheviks))) for the most part – weren’t really working class guys. Still, they certainly paid a lot of lip service to the concept.
Great article, I would love to see all these leftist freaks committed to prisons that have 75% black inmates. All the leftest males would end-up with breasts and a vagina tattooed on their backs! 🤣
We’d better not do that – they’d corrupt the Blacks and turn them into insufferable weirdos.
Case in point: dwyane wade’s kid (yes, it’s spelled d-w-y-a-n-e but pronounced dwayne), lil nas x, billy porter, and that annoying little queef “ishowspeed”.
Like Tay-Sachs in Ashkenazis, or sickle-cell in negroes, liberalism appears to be a disease unique to Northern Europeans, particularly Anglo-Saxons. I know descendants of the Pilgrims whose Puritan ancestors freed Southern slaves, who beat themselves up over “racism”. Comfortable middle-class Wasps who decorated their lawns with blm signs. Look at what used to be called “Mainstream Protestant” sects, they’re all-in on every crackpot idea the left has ever dreamed up; homosexual “marriage”, affirmative action, reparations, open borders, lax law enforcement, etc. The disease has spread pretty far, but maybe there’s a cure in that little thing called “reality”. It’s catching up, maybe there’s still time.
As a deItalicized guinea from Yankeeland, I’ve never noticed the leftist deadlystrains in the Italian or neighbor Greek amerikan populations. These terrible society-wrecking ideas just never took in the same quantity with southern European diasporas. Maybe we are part negroid; that explains “racist” Tony’s chimpout rage at afro-islamification and loopysexual deviances that’s been weirdly welcomed and tolerated by the northern Whites in masochist displays of needing to appeal to the Dark Alien Other for self-affirmation.
I have noticed many times that white Antifa activists are very often young people with a strange, decadent physiognomy. Even though they are 100% white, their physical features somehow resemble mulattoes or members of an oriental race. So they also style themselves in terms of their appearance and clothing to make themselves as culturally similar to brown people as possible. They are often the type of working class or lower middle class hicks who know nothing of high European culture (except neo-Marxist precepts) but uncritically admire the culture and lifestyle of coloured people.
There’s a LOT of textbook mattoids among them: weird looks, weirder behavior. There’s something going on in the DNA.
This essay was a superb piece of work. I almost don’t know where to begin commenting on specifics. It’s a thorough exposition of liberalism written in sentences that have the depth and brevity of aphorisms. But it’s also quite funny. Nice, that.
One gem in particular: “When the ideological foundation is faulty, it becomes increasingly difficult to spackle over the results, and eventually the entire edifice collapses catastrophically.”
This is an elegant way of making concrete Ayn Rand’s famous quip “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”
Thank you for writing this.
Aw, shucks, you’re entirely too kind!
I reject the premise of the article that liberalism exists in a fallen state and that it was ever a good thing.
I’m open to being convinced but I find all too often that the ideas surrounding royalty and aristocratic privilege seem to come from fiction, where the noble class did nothing but ride around terrorizing the peasantry all day.
What really happened is there was a merchant class (the bourgeoisie) who were frustrated at a glass ceiling putting a cap on their status and who instrumentalized the peasants to overthrow the hereditary nobility. The peasants’ situations didn’t really improve but now the door was open for jewish rule, since privilege was now associated with mere money rather than bloodline or heritage, or even a connection to the nation at all.
First up, the fundamental question of politics is: who gets to rule? The way I see it, monarchy made a lot of sense back when 95% of the public was illiterate and uneducated. These days, that’s become obsolete.
In an old-school monarchy, to get to be the King who calls the shots over the whole country, you have to be born in the right place in the right family. The lineage descends from the last barbarian chieftain who took over the place, or some dynast installed afterwards. You’d better obey the King, because the Bible says God gave him the job!
To me, this doesn’t sound any more convincing than globalists and technocrats who believe they should be in charge because they’re billionaires. Anyway, I can’t say I have perfect answers for the legitimacy question, but that’s an area of opportunity we can think about.
I likewise agree that monarchy is no longer really feasible in the modern age, my defense of it was just a historical one, because I think much of the liberal revolution was carried out under false pretenses and was actually just a power structure between entrenched elites (the nobility) and rising elites (the jews and the merchant class).
The idea of monarchy only works in conjunction with the divine right of kings. This man’s word is absolute because he has God’s mandate. He sits at the top of the social hierarchy, and that hierarchy is enveloped within a cosmic divine order. That type of sociocultural organization obviously doesn’t mean anything in a word where the vast majority of people are functionally atheist.
Now, regarding whether hereditary monarchy is “fair” or not, I have to admit that question has no meaning for me at all. Lots of things aren’t “fair.” Life itself isn’t fair in an infinite number of ways. And all our attempts at enforcing fairness seem to end in more grotesque absurdities than the original unfairness.
That’s not true. It’s an extremely primitive view of an intricate system. I can’t really blame an American for the clichés, though. Most of them stem from an imposed, deliberately ignorant view of history, which is also mostly obsessed with absolute monarchies of XVII – XVIII centuries, while they are an aberration of monarchical principle.
The notion that a king can do whatever he wants as long as he is legitimate is just false. Even in XVII century France, the most absolute of all absolutist monarchies, Louis XIV did not hold total power. He may have said: “I am the government!” But he couldn’t claim that “everything in the country is mine”, unlike Stalin, for example. Any formally “democratic” government today has more rights to tamper with your property and taxes than Louis XIV could ever dream of. Never mind that extracting 40-60% taxes was impossible at all.
And generally, all monarchies have “fractal” structure. You are the “king” of your own house. The count is an authority in his county. The king is the first among the nobles and rules the whole country, but he can’t micromanage all his subjects’ lives. It’s left to you almost entirely.
Also keep in mind that the king was always bound by some obligations, both formal and informal. E.g. he couldn’t make France an Islamic country. It’s completely different from PRC, where under Mao socialism meant totally planned economy, but then became the opposite with Deng.
Concerning power distribution, most of the monarchies have at least some balancing system. A king who is not up to rule can be deposed. (For example, Vasiliy Shuiskiy in Russia was deposed by people’s assembly in 1610.) It’s not to mention that a king needed an approval of parliament for things like taxes etc. Remember that the turmoil in France began when absolutist (!) king Louis XVI decided to assemble L’États Généraux to raise taxes.
And the monarchical principle is not antithetical towards democratic. In some monarchies, the king is elected by a representative body. For example, in the kingdom of Poland they had elections held by the Sejm. A lot of Russian tsars like Boris Godunov or Mikhail Romanov were elected by an organ called “Земский Собор”. It changed only with Peter I, who wanted an absolutist monarchy.
A good introduction to the matter can be found in the works and lectures of Prof. V.L.Makhnach, for example.
Also note that “democratic”, soft attitudes can only exist under very relaxed circumstances. America had the luxury of being surrounded by fish, not adversaries like Prussia or France. The Americans really don’t know what hardship is. However, most of European countries were under constant threat of war or invasion, not to mention harsh conditions of living. And when you had your Civil War, you could witness the façade of rights and democracy being quickly stripped.
And keep in mind that things like conscription army came hand in hand with parliamentary democracy, and parliamentaries were quite happy with 12-14 hour shifts for working people for a long time. With “liberal democracies”, you just get people who are happy to exploit you, but without conscience or moral scruples. I mostly agree that parliamentarianism was established not to ensure your rights are not infringed, but as a revolt of some burgeois elements against the nobility. For a certain time, there was some positive output for you, but then the system went in the opposite direction. That’s not a bug, but a feature of parliamentarism itself.
And another note: all technocratic systems present today are highly formal. They like bureaucracy and procedure. In reality, people like Gates are the opposite of the feudal nobility. I generally regard formalisation of rights etc. under the guise of liberalism as a step towards a “total state”. Carl Schmitt actually discusses in his writings the fact that nominal democracies like Weimar republic had already become “total states” in the sense that everything is governments’ business (and also political). Then you naturally get people like Rockefeller and Gates, for example. You didn’t have the nobles telling you how to live in the XIX century or before that. A count, baron or king wouldn’t come up with an idea of measuring your “carbon footprint” at all. 🙂
The truth is that under current circumstances, your voice almost matters not, whatever formal system of governance you choose. Check out some statistical evaluations of (near-zero) correlation between what people want and what they get. There are also objective limitations like Arrow theorem. An ideal system where you always get what you want is just impossible.
Actually, our present situation would require less efforts to overcome under monarchical rule then under the current circumstances, not to mention the fact that it won’t be possible to get to that level of stupidity we live with under a monarch at all. There’s a reason why the Americans and the Soviets prevented reestablishment of the monarchies in countries like Italy after WWII.
It’s not to say that monarchies only yield positive results. But, if you look at the overall picture, they have a much better record then parliamentary “democracies” at solving problems. And you shouldn’t be confused by things like prosperity etc. Being prosperous is almost orthogonal to political organisation. For example, when you have an industrious people and a country full of resources like America, you would naturally acquire a good deal of wealth under any system (except communist 🙂 ) if you are just left to your own devices.
My point is that an organic system is better than inorganic. When you need formal protections, it’s likely a sign that something has gone wrong. It’s only a matter of time when that “wrong” materialises in the form of the Federal Reserve or Davos. At that point, no “checks and balances” would help. They just become a weapon in the enemy’s hands, like the American Constitution and “our democracy”. I think that classical liberalism was just a first step in this direction, maybe unconscious.
With that in mind, I’m not against democratic elements per se. You may even have a state parliament, for example. But the real democracy belongs to the local level. Local self-governance (sheriffs etc.) and self-reliance coupled with the right to bear arms are much more meaningful than any grand-scale elections. And informal relations are more important than formal things like constitutions, which can be subverted and eventually used as a weapon against you.
A good deal of logical perspective for those who wish to contemplate the matter,, and very informative.
If I may add;
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood let alone believed by the masses.” – Plato
“Prince Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha crowned king of Bulgaria at the age of six survived the Second World War during the Nazi occupation when he was a child. After the Russian occupation and coup de ’tat which followed, the royal family was seized and ferried to a new location. They expected that they would also be executed like his uncle and other regents, (following the historic fate of the Russian royal family by the Bolsheviks /so called communists). Although this did not happen, they were kept under guard for 50 years. Simeon returned from exile in 1996 to a popular reception several years after the Berlin wall fell. During this following decade, most Bulgarians believed that the new democratic government had done little for them after the fall of the Berlin wall, reinstating their old king. Simeon self-demoted himself from king to prime minister in order to be more useful and break monarchal customs which prevented them from entering politics. Years later in an interview after having worn both hats he said that “He could not see any single system as being the best, but certainly monarchy was something more flexible. Where politicians, which I have been, only works for only 4 or 5 year terms (within conflicting regional interests), the king works for a generation [less conflict and more consistency for wider national interests] to think and plan 25 years ahead roughly. The more people get upset with politicians the more monarchy has functioned”. (Source BBC 2023) (Reflection, Guzziferno)
This can also be envisioned in the historical mistakes of the British government regarding their colonies and New England prior to the revolution made by Parliamentary officials serving the interest of the British East India Company, and not King George who was a constitutional monarch, and was not the initiator of the tea tax.
They are children, but they should be dealt with as adults.
There are no evil Liberals, evil conservatives or evil socialist, only evil men.
Squirrel poop is a product produced daily, history is fact, regardless how much poop is shoveled over it, or how much we dine on pretending it’s caviar.
“The revolution was initiated only in Paris by Parisians, not the nation’s people. They were in immediate proximity of the reigns of power, and urban societies (increased by impoverished herds from the countryside) who suffered the most in times of economic chaos (Reasons historically against super urbanization of the poor and expanding industrial societies [and their increasing symbiosis], and now to include the growing severity of ecological damage they bring).
There is another element present though, that is needed to understand why the people of France, even the people of Paris, accepted Napoleon so readily. You see, the Republic that Napoleon overthrew, called “The Directory”, was not the Republic that the Parisians and other radical revolutionaries fought for. Far from being any sort of populist state, the Directory was run by and for the interests of a few wealthy commoners. Whenever anyone, Royalist or Revolutionary, opposed to their interest came close to winning a political victory by forceful protest, they simply sent in the army to nullify the results. That was why it was called the Directory; it directed democracy to suit the interests of its ruling cabal, (Oligarchs again, Sire?)
The Directory was hated by Royalists and Revolutionaries equally, and its sole base of support was the army. Napoleon, through his victories in Italy, had gained the adoration of the soldiers, and thus the support of the army. When Napoleon launched his coup he didn’t win so much because he had wide support; he won because there was literally no one willing to defend the Directory. Because the Directory had already used the army to purge Royalism and Radicalism, there also wasn’t that much support left for either alternative that could have capitalized on the chaos. In 1799, when Napoleon took power, the choice was not between Republicanism and Monarchy; it was between Oligarchy and Monarchy (sounds familiar? ) and,, one led by a man who had proven himself to be competent. (This was the result of the Directory’s abusive, [self serving] economic policies causing its economic downfall, as in the tendency of other traditionally uncontrolled capitalistic states, — today’s wars now being between global oligarchs, not just opposed political ideologies)
By the time Napoleon had declared himself Emperor, he had truly turned France around. He had fixed the economy and instituted many reforms (by dictatorial decree). At that point, no one but the most radical Republicans opposed him assuming the title of Emperor — and there weren’t as many radical Republicans as many assume. – Noah Weiner (Reflection, Guzziferno)
“Napoleon Bonaparte did not erase the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity from his new government, and far from denouncing, he applauded them. True, he twisted the principles to his own use. If he maintained equality, he sacrificed liberty. But it was through dictatorship that he was able to exercise justice, and not with the prioritized or singular liberal greed or barbarism that existed in his predecessors and neighboring governments. He was the first to pass laws or overnight proclamations emancipating Jewish communities and ending their persecution. He eliminated feudal privileges in Europe practiced on all people (serfdom) all through the power of dictatorship both in France and in his conquered empirical territories, providing everyone many of the civil rights shared by French citizens (Code Civil) ~ by empirical decree. These laws were so revolutionary and popular that they were adopted by many other nations. Equality before the law, religious toleration, and equality of inheritance, by these clear and enlightened laws Napoleon was rightly hailed as a second Justinian” -World History, University text (Reflection, G.)
There were dictators who best served the interest of the people (democracy?), and there were and still are the powerful mentally deprived.
Also, since a “carbon footprint” is a relatively new subject reflecting a scientific measure (NASA) effecting the wide social and global well being, it might be a concern or something that in fact would be taken up by an autocrat (not under corporate control).
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