The Wright/Malcolm monarchy debate has ended. I’m late to the debate, but I’m not debating, instead I just want to comment on something Wright said and implicated a number of times:
I have never met anyone who talks like you before. Even the zany materialist Dr Andreassen, who thought himself nothing more than a meat robot, did not think himself my inferior. Quite the opposite.
Then you are a slave in spirit, if not in law. If so, there is nothing to discuss: for you are a man willing to have another decide your fate. If so again, I decree that, as a free man who outranks you, I have unilaterally decided you should enjoy, while in America, the rights for which I but not you are willing to die.
If you argue with my high handed decision, then you are either being presumptuous (as you say) or you are secretly possessed of the belief that you should be allowed to participate in the decision about your life as if you owned it, and were equal with me. But this would indicate that you believe yourself possessed of an inalienable right to equality. But If we are equals, and I am free, you are free. In which case you believe in an inalienable equality of rights. This is in directly logical conflict with the legal theory of monarchy, which holds that the civic power passes by inheritance, as a family property, down a bloodline set aside by law as superior to all others.
So merely by entering into this discussion at all, you cast doubt upon your position. Freedom is not something discussed between equals. Superiors need not discuss such matters with inferiors. The superiors merely decide. The inferiors show respect, show deference, and obey.
First, political freedom is not freedom true. Political freedom is the right of the mob to force their will upon the rest. Republicanism is only superior over democratic mob rule insofar as it is anti-democratic and explicitly hierarchical. Whether you are ruled by a king and ruled by a mob, you are still ruled, although, in the former you are ruled only by one, in the latter by all. Having laws outlining how you are ruled and a judge who “interprets” those laws, doesn’t mean you are any less ruled, it simply means you are ruled by an unelected judge rather than a king.
Second, no man is free. We are born into the world the subject of our father, become the subjects of our teachers, and are always the subject of the state, be it autocratic or democratic. “Freedom” is impersonal authority rather than personal authority. The “free man” wishes to be a servant without a master. To be ruled by a constitution (manipulated by politicians and “interpreted” by judges) is still to be ruled, only it is the rule of impersonal forces set in motion by faceless elites, rather than the personal rule of a known individual. The free republican wishes to be ruled by the Star Chamber rather than the king. Base anarchy is the only true freedom, and nobody wants to live in base anarchy because it means getting brained by the stronger man who wants to eat your venison and rape your woman. (Admittedly, the stronger man might enjoy himself, at least until he is no longer the stronger man).
Third, the consent of the governed doesn’t exist. You are born into a society and indoctrinated in its ways from before you can even speak consent, let alone meaningfully understand the concept. The ideas of your fathers control your mind before you are even capable of realizing it. The liberal may respond, ‘but I rebel against the ways of my fathers’, not knowing rebellion is the way of his fathers. The consent of the governed is the consent of a women not protesting because she has inadvertently consumed rohypnol.
Fourth, republican freedom is not a sign of superiority, but inferiority. The superior man’s superiority comes from the responsibilities for the burdens of others he bears. He is free to act only insofar as others trust him to act for them. The free republican man is free because he bears no responsibility for the burdens of others, only his own. Even the inferior man is superior to the free republican man, for the inferior man bears the burdens and responsibilities entrusted him by his superior. (Of course, it need not be said, the slave is lowest of all for he does not even bear his own burdens. Even so, a slave can still be of value and worth).
The defining feature of the free man is that he rules no one as he himself is not ruled. To call oneself superior to another is to deny one’s own freedom.
Fifth, being a subject is not being a slave. A slave obeys force. A subject obeys a man, an office, and a tradition.
Sixth, being inferior to one is not being inferior to all. Kneeling before the king does not imply kneeling before Mr. Wright. Relatedly, being inferior in one aspect does not make one inferior in all. The king may kneel before the priest come mass, but the bishop kneels before the king come court.
The civilized man does not consider himself inferior to the savage man. He recognizes where he stands in life. The savage denies reality in order to declare himself exalted, and responds with violence to the reimposition of reality. The supposed superiority of the savage is put to the lie when the strength of civilized men is brought to bear.
The Shadowed Knight
“Whether you are ruled by a king and ruled by a mob, you are still ruled, although, in the former you are ruled only by one, in the latter by all. Having laws outlining how you are ruled and a judge who “interprets” those laws, doesn’t mean you are any less ruled, it simply means you are ruled by an unelected judge rather than a king.”
What was the quote?
“Why should I trade one tyrant 3,000 miles away for 3,000 tyrants one mile away?”
The only true freedom is the freedom to opt out. If you are unable to opt out of something, no matter how “good” or “fair,” then you are ruled and unfree.
Excellent commentary, F.N.!
It is good that you are not debating me, because all of your points are either not points in dispute, hence irrelevant; or points where you define a word to mean something other than it means, changing the meaning of my statement, hence a strawman argument, hence illogical; or a point already answered elsewhere, such as where you say inferiority to a monarch is not the same as inferiority to me, John Wright. The answer already given there is that I am a member of the sovereign ruling in America, hence the same rank as a king.
The rest of the argument is just whining and whinging that you are not free, that no man is free, and the being born into a family and having obligations to one’s father is indistinguishable of being born into an inferior caste where the rules that apply to you do not apply to your superiors. This again is merely ambiguity, where you are conflating legal inferiority, low rank, with inferiority in some other sense, such as filial piety. Since inferiority in the other sense of the word would exist under either a free society or a monarchy, it is irrelevant to the discussion. The argument, “you owe obedience to your Dad, therefore you are inferior in legal rank to the grandson of the warlord who conquered your grandfathers” simply does not follow in law or logic.
The answer already given there is that I am a member of the sovereign ruling in America, hence the same rank as a king.
Language and dialect diversity hasn’t done well in the 20th century, but political and cultural traditions have taken the biggest hit of all. Both worldwide and in America, the set of belief systems is far narrower in 2013 than in 1913. Broadcast technology kind of does that. Political and military developments have, of course, played a role as well.
What this means is that if you look for Americans in 1913 who have the same basic worldview of an ordinary American college student in 2013, you can find them. But you can’t find a lot of them. The cultural mainstream of 2013 is not descended from the cultural mainstream of 1913, most of whose traditions are entirely extinct. Rather, it is descended from a very small cultural aristocracy in 1913, whose bizarre, shocking and decadent tropes and behaviors are confined almost entirely to exclusive upper-crust circles found only in places such as Harvard and Greenwich Village.
What were these people called? By themselves and others? Communists, generally. Though when they wanted to confuse outsiders, they’d say “progressive” – and still do. But poking at this paper-thin euphemism, or any of its friends – “radical,” “activist,” and a thousand like it – is “Red-baiting” and just not done. You’ve got to respect the kayfabe.
For example, my favorite example of a culturally ancestral aristo-American is Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Higginson is best known for discovering Emily Dickinson, which may have been the only good deed he did. But as a young man, he made pioneering strides in terrorist finance as a member of the Secret Six. (If you have to get your balls groped at the airport, it’s because America isn’t your country. It’s John Brown’s country – you just live here.) In the 1890s, he worked hard to promote revolution in Russia. Some friends Russia had! And as an old man, Higginson helped Jack London and Upton Sinclair start the Intercollegiate Socialist Society; which later became the awesomely named League for Industrial Democracy, which really should have been a band or at least a nightclub; which begat the SDS; which begat (shh!) B.H. Obama…
Clearly, this is the authentic American tradition, unbroken and unchallenged. Accept no substitutes! And in fact, you can go to Google and read T.W.’s writing, and observe that for the most part it’s fresh as a daisy and could be read on NPR tomorrow, without shocking or even surprising anyone. In short – this is who we are. Of course, we can go back to No True Scotsman, or any of our other fallacies, and argue that there’s some sort of transcendental difference between a “socialist” and a “communist.”
But really, why bother? It’s just obvious that we’re all communists now.
But what is communism? A tradition, sure – but what is in the tradition? Why does it work? Why does it rule?
In the terminology of the father of modern political science, Gaetano Mosca, communism is a political formula – a pattern of thinking that helps a subject support the organized minority that governs him. Typically a modern political formula allows the subject to feel a sense of political power that convinces him that he is, in a sense, part of the ruling minority, whether he is or not (usually not). Since humans, and in fact all great apes in the chimp lineage, are political animals evolved to succeed in hierarchically ruled tribes, feeling powerful is deeply satisfying. Communism works because it solves this problem, more effectively than any other political formula in wide distribution today.
When it comes to the formal governance process proper, of course, few are actually in the loop. Just as pornography can stimulate the human sex drive without providing any actual sex, democracy can stimulate the human power drive without providing any actual power. But one of the problems with American democracy today is that it’s far too constant. It’s like a single page ripped out of Playboy, pinned up in your prison cell. Fifty years ago it was still enthralling, even though your forebrain may have known it was meaningless. But eventually even your hindbrain figures out that it’s just a piece of paper with some ink on it. And it sure doesn’t help that your forebrain knows the real lady in the picture, while real and actually female, is actually on Social Security by now.
Witch-hunting on a purely informal basis, Popehat’s “social consequences,” scratches the political perfectly, because of course here is actual power – the power to harm other human beings – being exercised by ordinary people who are not mysterious DC bureaucrats. Never, ever understate how fun it is to just chimp out for a minute. If you mock it, it’s because you’ve never had a chance to be part of the mob. You can condemn it as a vile, base passion, which of course it is – and a human passion as well. We really all are Caliban.
But we have an angelic nature too, and our angelic forebrains need a cover story while the chimp hindbrain is busy biting off toes and testicles. Pure sadism is enough for the id. It’s not enough for the ego. This is why we need communism.
“The answer already given there is that I am a member of the sovereign ruling in America, hence the same rank as a king.”
I remember the illusion. It was a pleasant fantasy.
I’ll assume, for the sake of charity, Wright was speaking theoretically, and not under the supposition that there is any policy that the majority of nominal citizens could implement if it would be against the will of the ruling parties, nor any law those parties feel themselves bound by.
Republicanism is a fraud precisely because it confuses process with product. It teaches you that you are free because your laws are made by a certain process, which of course means that those laws can pretty much be as awful and repressive as can be imagined, and the government can and will get away with it because it can and will say: “But look! You cannot be unfree! Your laws are made by the only process suitable for free men!”
This is snake oil, flim-flam, a wooden nickel, a share of stock in Ponzi Enterprises. No process can or should be judged independently of the products it generates. I care not who makes my laws or how. I care only what laws I must live under – about product, not process. Ask yourselves: Are the laws we have now ones that are suitable for free Christian men to live under? No? Well I say that if a king will effectively fend off foreign invaders (which ours does not, as thousands of foreign invaders cross the Rio Grande unopposed daily), will maintain public order (which ours does not – see: Ferguson, Baltimore), and will uphold the Christian character and morals of the nation (which ours does not – just turn on the TV), but will otherwise leave men alone to live and provide for their families as they see fit (which ours does not – ask Steven and Dwight Hammond or Aaron and Melissa Klein), then he offers me the best deal, and I would be a chump not to take it.
(Harold Lee had a great column on this a while back over at The Future Primaeval, explaining that Modern men think that they are free because they chafe at any idea of submitting to any flesh-and-blood human authority, while accepting one repressive outrage after another from impersonal bureaucracies with a shrug: http://thefutureprimaeval.net/servants-without-masters )
As for Mr. Wright: There are approximately 220,000,000 eligible voters in the United States (the rest of the population being children, felons, or nonvoting aliens). If Mr. Wright thinks that he is the same as a king, who has 1/1 of the decision-making power in a monarchical society, because he has 1/220,000,000 of the decision-making power in this republic, then I have 1/220,000,000 of the Brooklyn Bridge to sell him. I’ll charge him the same price as I would for the whole bridge, of course, since a 1/1 share and a 1/220,000,000 share in something are exactly the same.
Not sure why people are wasting so many words on John Wright, who is basically just an SJW.
“@troll”,
It can be important to aim at S.J.W.s provided that they are of a high enough profile so that your argument with them could potentially increase one’s own profile during the course.
A.J.P.
Good points from many quarters.
AntiDem, I may quote you.
Mr. Wright,
Since you seemingly do not care to reply directly please explain – who is it that you govern that grants you authority through their consent?
Yes, yes, I know – the catechism, the handbook of moral theology, and St. Thomas Aquinas are all ‘beneath you’, so please explain who is it that you govern such that they can grant you authority through their consent?
What kind of arrogant drivel by Wright is that? I wonder what his definition of Monarchy is, because he seems to think living under the rule of a man prepared to rule from birth, instead of an bunch of immoral crooks who had to go through a disgusting struggle with hundreds of others – if not thousands – to get to rule, is tantamount to slavery.
The lion’s share of monarchical criticism comes at the expense of a a fundamental misunderstanding of what monarchy was/is. This is also the reason so many prefer the Necromantic knowledge of the Empirical to the Living knowledge of the analogous. They don’t understand that, for all its uses, empirical knowledge deals with the dead, the static, and is thus simpler to comprehend if not to procure. After all, you must kill something, stop it moving, before your make an empirical statement about it.
To comprehend that Monarchy does not exist in a “state of being” but rather as a perpetual “state of becoming,” of personal relationships founded on earned trust, ancient tradition and the promise of violence rather than tacit social contract, progress and peace at any price is all but impossible for Modern Western Man.
Having abdicated his conversation with God, King of Heaven and Earth, and having disposed of the Kingships of men, the only analogy most people find to comprehend Monarchy is that of modern dictatorship and it’s superficial similarities with monarchy. Being that Monarchy is a living and analogous political order, to frame it in terms of the dead regimentation of dictatorship is to mischaracterize it and argue against something it is not.
King of Kings indeed is Christ the Lord our God, not King of Godless presidents and chancellors.
Great comment, “Max”: How John C. Wright got pwned.
“The answer already given there is that I am a member of the sovereign ruling in America, hence the same rank as a king.”
That is the DEFINITION of straw man. One man says that some men are superior to other men despite the prevailing opinion or political order about it. The other man says, “well, since the prevailing order is that (remember this is already claimed to be an irrational order by the first man) we are ALL kings, does that mean you think you’re inferior to everyone?” That is straight up, bait an switch. You know damn well that the point is that reality dictates that were ARE NOT all equal and that the prevailing political climate is a result of the attempt to force equality where it doesn’t exist. The fact that a bunch of idiotic chimpanzees pretend to be politically relevant doesn’t make a man who believes in the superiority of someone who is actually politically relevant subservient to those chimps. Inferior to mass usurpers? Hell no.
Also, to the others, no John C. Wright is NOT an SJW. That is a mistake. He has is mistakenly basing his points on an unrealistically deontological moral foundation, but he is strongly on the “right” side and is a foe of the SJWs. I would not consider him NRx by any stretch, but he is conservative, and, as far as that goes, one of the better ones. This argument with him may actually be important, as he is both right wing and intelligent.
If you think monarchies are no less free than democracies and that monarchy is superior to western style democracy, please go and move to an absolute monarchy. Please. Give up your citizenship in the western-style democracy you live in and be a subject in a real, honest to God absolute monarchy. (No sissy western style “monarchy” like England or Australia–go to a real, pure, absolute monarchy.)
As far as I can tell, the list of current absolute monarchies is rather short—-and they are all such better places than the United States–better run and more/just as free.
The list I am looking at of current absolute monarchies is rather short. I have:
1) Oman
2)Saudi Arabia
3) Swaziland
4) United Arab Emirates
5) Vatican
Those of you who want to replace democracy with monarchy sound no different than the communists and socialists who want to turn America into a communist or (even more) socialist state. You compare all the warts and cancers in a democracy to some fantasy, imaginary version of a utopia of communism.
I think wanting to change from our current system to a communist or monarchy system sounds great to a bunch of over-educated intellectuals who won’t acknowledge any warts or cancers in the alternative. A bunch of Ignatius O’Reily’s from “A Condeferacy of Dunces.
(Are you sure you’re allright in the head Ignatius? Nobody wants to live in a monarchy.)
A buddy and I had the pleasure of beating the shit out of two princes in line for the Kingship of Saudi Arabia. They came up to us in Dallas and berated us for looking at the blonde coke whore going into a club with them. I wondered why they made us fight them when they didn’t have any close combat skills. I realized that being raised as princes in Saudi Arabia it never occurred to them any common scum might resist them. If we had beaten them in Saudi Arabia we would have been chained by our thumbs in a medieval cellar, electrocuted and tortured.
I mean, owning a Bible in the monarchy of Saudi Arabia won’t get your right hand cut off anymore. The new law is your right hand is sliced off one at a time in razor thin slices. Till it’s all gone.
I sure as hell didn’t doff my hat to those two kings. You intellectuals are free to go live in Saudi Arabia and doff your hat. And when the king sees your wife and daughter in public he can send a messenger with a file of secret police to bring them to his palace for sex games with him and his buddies. Try writing an editorial in Saudi Arabia complaining about that.
I agree to an extent that the exact type of government may not, at times, be as important as the character of the people who make the government up.
But if you think you are screwed under a democracy going bad, try living under a monarchy going bad.
Unless all you smart guys have no trouble giving absolute power to a monarch and not worrying what the result of that will look like.
Anyway, nothing is keeping you monarchists from living under a monarchy. Just like nothing is keeping communists in America from going and living under their favorite type of government.
I know you guys don’t really believe this yourselves. You are just groping yourselves imagining being a dark Sith lord.
@Guard
By the way, I would gladly move to Vatican, if there is some job out there, but the fact that I am not a Catholic priest makes it difficult.
“Try writing an editorial in Saudi Arabia complaining about that.”
Try writing an editorial with the kind of ideas discussed here in a newspaper of the Western world. You will see how far Western freedom goes.
Try being a teacher and teaching these ideas and you will see how far this freedom goes.
Try say gay behavior is a disease. Try say women are inferior. Try say Muslim are violent or Jews rule the financial system. I don’t say this is true. But you will see how far this freedom of speech goes.
As long as you don’t say anything bad about women, gays, lesbians, Jews, Muslim, trannies, immigrants, Asian people, feminists, Black people, you are free to criticize anybody. That is, anybody who is heterosexual Christian white male.
Jason Richwine said that immigrants had an inferior IQ so immigration was lowering American IQ. This is only basic logic (and, full disclaimer, I am a Hispanic). He was fired after a witch-hunt.
A doctor exposes the dangers of homosexual behavior. He is fired. https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/boston-hospital-panel-upholds-doctors-firing-for-telling-the-truth-about-lg
And so on and so forth
There are two kinds of regimes: authoritarian regimes (in which the authority wants to impose political rule and no more) and totalitarian regimes (in which the authority wants to impose total rule). Authoritarian regimes want to rule public life. Totalitarian regimes want to rule public life, private life and the inner mind of everyone. They want to build “a new man”.
Authoritarian regimes were the monarchies of the past. I was born in a country with an authoritarian regime, which happened to be a dictatorship. Totalitarian regimes are Islamic monarchies (this is because Islam is a totalitarian religion), communist regimes and modern democracy.
Can you feel free in a totalitarian regimes such as communism or modern democracy? Of course, you can. If you are a convinced communist, everything you want to do will be allowed in a communist regime. You will feel free. The same way I feel free about drugs in this regime (I don’t want to use drugs – I don’t drink booze nor illegal drugs – so I don’t feel coerced. I feel free about drugs). In your case, having been indoctrinated in democracy from childhood on, you feel free in this regime, because most of what you want to do is what your democratic overlords have indoctrinated to want to do. You can also brag about kicking ass to Arabian princes – look how macho man I am. Of course, you don’t try this with the sons of Rockefeller, do you?
In an authoritarian monarchy (even in an authoritarian dictatorship such as the one I experienced), as long as you don’t oppose the monarch, you can live your live as you want. Nobody is going to say how you are going to raise your children, treat your spouse or what kind of thought you should have, as long as everything is done in private.
You are not politically free but your children are not going to be taken from you because your wife wants to taste another d*ck or because the bureaucrats have decided that Christianity is child abuse (the way the democratic Norway has done with this family http://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-family-5-children-seized-norway-government-biblical-teachings-plan-international-protests-152321/).
You stay away from politics. You live life. Easy.
Not in a totalitarian regime. In the USSR you had to be a good communist. In modern democracy, the authorities worry about the kind of toys you give to your children (lest they promote “sexism”). Saying the wrong ideas can give you trouble, not only in public life but in private life, when your PC friends are happy to condemn you and ostracize you.
But I guess you are always free to kick ass to some princes. Not the princes of your country, of course (the masters of the financial system, for example). The princes of other countries that have no power in USA. And this way you feel powerful, although you aren’t.
Guard,
So you’re saying that absolute monarchy is bad?
Yes, though that doesn’t make the authority invalid, and does not make even an absolute king specifically bad.
But your “Go live under an absolute monarchy and not a constitutional monarchy” is ridiculous. Here is my answer to that: No. Why should I when constitutional monarchies are an option?
In any case, for me this is all theoretical. I am not a monarchist. I just think monarchs can be legitimate authorities and a monarchy is not an inherently wicked form of government.