The Governing Cancer of Our Time

We live in a big, diverse society. There are essentially two ways to maintain order and get things done in such a society — politics or some form of dictatorship. Either through compromise or brute force. Our founding fathers chose politics.

Politics is an activity in which you recognize the simultaneous existence of different groups, interests and opinions. You try to find some way to balance or reconcile or compromise those interests, or at least a majority of them. You follow a set of rules, enshrined in a constitution or in custom, to help you reach these compromises in a way everybody considers legitimate.

The downside of politics is that people never really get everything they want. It’s messy, limited and no issue is ever really settled. Politics is a muddled activity in which people have to recognize restraints and settle for less than they want. Disappointment is normal.

But that’s sort of the beauty of politics, too. It involves an endless conversation in which we learn about other people and see things from their vantage point and try to balance their needs against our own. Plus, it’s better than the alternative: rule by some authoritarian tyrant who tries to govern by clobbering everyone in his way.

As Bernard Crick wrote in his book, “In Defence of Politics,” “Politics is a way of ruling divided societies without undue violence.”

Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a group of people who are against politics. These groups — best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive to the right — want to elect people who have no political experience. They want “outsiders.” They delegitimize compromise and deal-making. They’re willing to trample the customs and rules that give legitimacy to legislative decision-making if it helps them gain power.

Ultimately, they don’t recognize other people. They suffer from a form of political narcissism, in which they don’t accept the legitimacy of other interests and opinions. They don’t recognize restraints. They want total victories for themselves and their doctrine.

Read the rest here.

The demise of democracy

This has been making the rounds on the blogosphere, but for those who haven't seen it yet, a couple of professors have concluded that the United States is really an oligarchy. For the record, I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

HT: Blog reader MM.

Note: I appreciate the tips and links to interesting articles I get from all of my blog readers. If you send me something and I don't get back to you quickly please bear with me. I have a lot going on in the non internet world of late.

The Politics of Nostalgia: A critical examination of democracy

...It was not always so. The greatest philosophers of antiquity—Plato and Aristotle—both considered democracy a rather inferior form of political life. Plato has Socrates claim that democratic citizens are dominated by licentious passion rather than reason: “they call insolence good education; anarchy, freedom; wastefulness, magnificence; and shamelessness, courage” (Republic 560e). He says that it is the sort of regime favoured by children and women—i.e. those in whom reason is weak (Republic 557c). Aristotle distinguishes between good forms of government, in which the rulers have the common good of the whole city as their goal, and bad ones, in which they rule for their own private interests. He gives the name “democracy” to one of the bad regimes: that in which the poor rule for the private advantage of their own class (Politics 1279a-b). In the Christian Middle Ages monarchy rather than democracy was the most common form of government, and to many medieval thinkers this seemed perfectly reasonable.[1]

A very interesting read via The Young Fogey and Modestinus.
Read the rest here.

Caution: This a long post and it's not light reading. Also it is heavily Roman Catholic in its reasoning, but many of the points are sound.

More on Neo-Reaction

There has been some considerable response to the Geeks for Monarchy post which I had linked on A/O (here). See this longish post over at Unqualified Reservations and another post by the Anti-Gnostic. Both are worth a read and contain a number of related links.

Geeks for Monarchy: The Rise of the Neoreactionaries

Many of us yearn for a return to one golden age or another. But there’s a community of bloggers taking the idea to an extreme: they want to turn the dial way back to the days before the French Revolution.

Neoreactionaries believe that while technology and capitalism have advanced humanity over the past couple centuries, democracy has actually done more harm than good. They propose a return to old-fashioned gender roles, social order and monarchy.

You may have seen them crop-up on tech hangouts like Hacker News and Less Wrong, having cryptic conversations about “Moldbug” and “the Cathedral.” And though neoreactionaries aren’t exactly rampant in the tech industry, PayPal founder Peter Thiel has voiced similar ideas, and Pax Dickinson, the former CTO of Business Insider, says he’s been influenced by neoreactionary thought. It may be a small, minority world view, but it’s one that I think shines some light on the psyche of contemporary tech culture.

Enough has been written on neoreaction already to fill at least a couple of books, so if you prefer to go straight to the source, just pop a Modafinil and skip to the “Neoreaction Reading List” at the end of this post. For everyone else, I’ll do my best to summarize neoreactionary thought and why it might matter.

Read the rest here.
HT: The Anracho-Monarchist

A Reflection on the Lifespan and Fragility of National Governments

Government survivability are the odds of a government continuing into the future intact (it’s a type of political risk). Gold is a hedge against this kind of threat. Let’s discuss.

Governments Are Fragile

When I look back over the last 100 years there are maybe just seven or so governments that still exist more or less intact (meaning their debts, currency, markets, etc. haven’t gone to the black hole). So off the top of my head those are: Canada, U.S., Australia, New Zealand, U.K., Sweden, and Switzerland. There may be a couple more, but you get the idea. It ain’t many. And notice I say “governments” and not “countries.” France still exists as a geographic area, but it has had multiple governments the past 100 years. Same for Japan, Italy, China, Russia, etc. Geographically the countries are (more or less) the same, but the management has had high turnover. And with this turnover, so goes the currency and debt promises made. Many countries had far more unsavory things happen than just losing money, but for our purposes we won’t go into them.

So let’s be generous and say 10 countries out of hundreds on the planet still have the same government and currency from 100 years ago. In fact, many governments you see today probably weren’t in existence even 75 years ago. Those are really bad odds! That means in the average person’s lifetime, if trends hold, they could likely experience their government having a major problem (up to and including vanishing and being replaced with something entirely different kind of major problem).

Does that also mean the United States falls under the same rules of history? Whether you want to believe it or not, it does. In fact, there should be a voice in the back of your head that is always giving a gentle reminder: The U.S. government is old.

Now when I say the U.S. government is old, I don’t mean in a way that it’s going to blow up tomorrow. It’s just that the longer we go on a timeline, the odds of the same government existing gets worse, not better. Governments are not a fine wine. They don’t get better with age. Governments are fragile and get more fragile the older they are. Think about it in human terms. A 20 year old has a much better chance of waking up tomorrow than a 100 year old. Age catches up with everything, even governments.

Read the rest here.

This is really good and thought provoking post. Please leave comments there.

One of the Great Socio-Political Philosophers You Never Heard Of

A belated Happy 100th Birthday to Nicolás Gómez Dávila (May 18th). And a particular thank you to Mr. Baltzersen of Wilson Unplugged for bringing him to my attention. The short Wiki article alone was enough to warm my reactionary heart. My "must read" list just got a lot longer.

Being on the Wrong Side of History

Via The Young Fogey...

Despite the historical record, a peskily persistent fallacy is argumentum ad populum, the idea that the majority is right. The mob, no matter where it’s headed, whom it’s beheading, or what it’s burning down, has always deemed itself to be on the right side of history. So whenever I hear some smug, smirking, smarm-coated snarkmonster bleating that they are on “the right side of history,” what I hear is, “I feel safe within the crowd.” I don’t sense that they fear being on the “wrong” side of history so much as they’re afraid of being on the “losing” side. They don’t want to be on the wrong side of superior force. Many of them exhibit the shallow and neurotic herd-animal fear of being deemed uncool or out of step. In far too many cases, being “on the right side of history” amounts to nothing more than being trendy. Many of these types used to ally themselves with alleged “oppressed minorities,” but now that they appear to be on the “right side of history,” they openly mock the newly marginalized minorities. Once the victims of bullying, they now fear being on the wrong side of peer pressure and are the world’s neo-bullies. Others are the type who wait until there’s critical mass behind any social movement before joining it. Many of them have no core and will fellate power wherever it leads them and consider themselves bold for doing so. And at least as it concerns liberal white males, I’ve never seen people so eager to surrender to the very historical forces that seem destined to march right over their necks. 

Read the rest here.

H.S.H. Prince Hans-Adam II Discusses The Role Of The State In The Third Millennium

A fascinating discussion of the role of government and the state in the modern world.

HT: The Mad Monarchist

An Imperial Warning Against American Exceptionalism

By William Lind

Every year I place a telephone call to my reporting senior, Kaiser Wilhelm II, to offer my best wishes on his birthday, January 27. He usually has a surprise waiting.

Last year he had just returned from a bombing raid on London in our finest Zeppelin, L-70. (In heaven, bombers drop sausages.) This year der Reisekaiser had made a voyage to America. I was bold to enquire, “How did Your Majesty make it through the British blockade?”

“In the Royal Swedish ship Venus, one of Mr. Chapman’s superb 40-gun frigates,” the Kaiser replied. “You may remember I am an admiral in the Swedish navy.”

“So you copied Count von Luckner in Seeadler and ran a blockade of armored cruisers in a sailing ship?”

“Luckner had a tricker wicket,” His Majesty said. “In Heaven, only like can fight like. We sailed right through the battle line of the Grand Fleet and all my English cousins could do was offer a 21-gun salute. One 18th-century British warship did sight us—I think it was H.M.S. Surprise—but Chapman’s frigates can do 14 knots and no limey tub can come close to that. Besides, while the English are happy to catch a Frenchman, a Swede is another matter. We would have given him a thorough drubbing.”

“May I ask why Your Majesty visited the United States?”

“To see your president,” the Kaiser answered.

“President Woodrow Wilson?”

“President William Howard Taft. That humbug Wilson is not to be found in heaven. Try the other place. Circle VI, among the intellectually obdurate.”

“Very fitting. Might I ask as to Your Majesty’s business with President Taft?”

“First, to invite America to join the Central Powers,” the Kaiser replied.

“That would indeed have been an alliance made in heaven,” I said.

“Second, to discuss a danger to your country your politicians seem unable to perceive: American exceptionalism.”

“Does Your Majesty refer to the idea that America is not subject to the laws of history?”

“Indeed. American exceptionalism follows Spanish exceptionalism—I was just talking about that with Philip IV over lunch—French exceptionalism, Austrian exceptionalism, Russian exceptionalism, and so on. It seems every Great Power, when it has passed its peak, convinces itself it can be as imprudent as it pleases and pay no price.”

“Your Majesty is speaking to my time. Republicans in Congress, who call themselves conservatives, now proclaim ‘American exceptionalism’ as their core belief.”

“What fools,” the Kaiser said. “Conservatives are supposed to learn from history. It teaches that no nation is an exception to its laws. If you overreach, you fall. My Germany overreached, grasping for Weltmacht, and I died in exile in Holland. Now your country has overreached, in Iraq and Afghanistan and in a broader push for world dominion. Speaking of your current wars, I thought you might like to speak with Max Hoffman.”

“The best operational brain in the German Army in World War I? You bet I would!”, I said.

“Well, it’s not exactly Zeppelin science,” replied General Hoffman. “If you flood an area with troops, you can win some tactical successes. But you don’t have enough troops to do that in many places. And, as is typical of Fourth Generation wars, you cannot opertionalize those tactical victories. Worse, you are sacrificing a high goal to a lower, destabilizing Pakistan in your quest for an elusive Afghan victory. If Iraq has not taught you the fallacy of American exceptionalism, Afghanistan surely will. Like every other invader, you will be only too happy to get out.”

“And your assessment of General Petraeus?”, I asked.

“Boulanger.”

Heaven, it seems, has not dulled Max’s edge.

I had hoped to ask more of His Majesty, but central pulled the plug. Regarding “American exceptionalism,” the man I really wanted to speak with was Bismarck. But then I realized he had already answered me: “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”

Source.

Some thoughts on Monarchy & Democracy

In this video is outlined the principles of what monarchists believe in. It is not wholly accurate, as it seems to portray the average monarchist as a Godfearing reactionary - not that being Godfearing or reactionary is a bad thing. However the sentence that drew my attention is "when one hears the word Communist, Anarchist or Conservative it is clear what that person believes in. Yet when one hears the word 'Monarchist' it is not so clear." He then goes on to say "It is no surprise considering the many myths about this ideology and the many branches of this ideology". Certainly there are many branches of the monarchist ideology - one can be an Australian monarchist who simply wants to keep the Queen, or an absolutist who believes in vesting absolute authority of the realm in the person of the king, or anything in between.

I think we can divide most monarchists into two rough camps - those who believe in monarchy for the sake of monarchy, and those who believe in monarchy for the sake of good government. Some people have a foot in both camps - some people are further into one camp than the other. One's preferred "branch" of monarchism is usually irrelevant here. Some constitutional monarchists just like having a Queen, or are monarchists because their country has always been a monarchy, rather than for any particularly great desire for constitutional stability. Some absolutists genuinely believe that absolute monarchy is the best form of government, and they are usually good at supporting this.

I have a foot in both camps, alternately stepping further into one or the other on a regular basis, but essentially I am a constitutional monarchist. Even though I can sympathise with its supporters, I am not a fan of absolute monarchy. It is primarily because I believe in democracy, and because I think that, while absolute monarchy certainly has its strengths, it can equally be an irresponsible and dangerous way of governing, when one man's word is law.

Read the rest here.