An interesting take. Ideology is part of the problem; ideals only exist between someone's ears. The other issue is that some men seek to become gods and infallible regardless of the outcome. Some true believers are trying to jam their idea of utopia on the rest of us. Damn it all I want is reliable electricity, clean tap water, and a hot grill for my steaks. Granted the root of the problem probably goes back to the first ruler but things have metastasized and now evil is openly flaunted.
You're definitely right about the world spirit but damn, things are quite ugly. The moral inversion is so repugnant. Men LARP'ing as women has to take the cake in the annals of history.
Something that NRx lost when studying the old monarchies. Legitimism for Royal Houses that were either irrelevant or complicit in the creation of Clown World makes for horrible grounds from whence a functional monarchy can come.
Junger's point that the monarch rules all but the anarch only himself has give me the freedom to consider all political arragements in fresh light.
At the end of the day, I think this rules supreme: "Order is the evidence of God’s favor, and collapse the evidence of His wrath." Touches on the Chinese Mandate of Heaven, which I also appreciate.
The core mindset any dissident needs to be "what works for the kind of society we want and how can we acheive it?" If it looks like a democracy but consistently gives us what we want, so be it. If it looks like a dictatorship but ensures peace and stability, so be it. The idea of an ideal platonic form of government everyone must ascribe to is just as silly as those people constantly spewing about "saving our democracy".
I appreciated your clarity here, and am largely in agreement with your points. The internet has often inspired me to think that, while I am more in favor of monarchy than not, I am not a "Monarchist." As you say, the practical definition of this word seems to be something like "one who believes that the trappings and customs of, and articulated justifications for, late-Medieval and early Modern European hereditary monarchies together represent the single best form of government." Like you, I do not fit this definition.
However, I would say that, in the long term, the monarch (or especially his successor) must transition from pure coercive power to recognized authority. Coercion alone is not enough. The demonstrated capacity to establish and enforce order and peace does earn recognition readily enough, but the gratitude one earns in doing this is relatively short-lived. And the fact that coercive capacity tends to decay over time was recognized so long ago that it's mentioned in the thirtieth chapter of the Dao De Jing.
Absent some "theory," some legitimating explanation or belief as to why continued rule by the monarch is good and right and justified, why he should be obeyed even when he presents no direct and immediate threat of coercion, the society will lack stability. This is, I think, what you allude to with Franco: he became the true monarch, but his own belief in "royal blood" robbed him of legitimacy. Or think of V.V. Putin: he clearly rules as a monarch, but considers that he must at least portray some semblance of periodic competitive elections for his position, or risk the ire of his people. Alternately, consider Xi Jinping: again, certainly a monarch, but one who feels compelled to portray himself as the Party's selectee, in the Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist tradition.
This is because they have no other legitimating story to tell that would be accepted by the societies that they rule -- composed, as they are, almost entirely of adherents of what I have described elsewhere as the various sects of Modernity.
I have written in a different essay that North Korea is functionally a monarchy at this point, or at the very least, an Augustan Principate. What gives a monarch legitimacy is Tradition, that he does things as they have been done. This allows Expectation to be fulfilled, which is what allows the Ruled to say "Yes, this. I know this."
This is not to be understood as a defense of the cruelties the North Korean state has inflicted on its people.
I agree that North Korea is, functionally, a hereditary monarchy. (The same could be said of Syria.) But the "Democratic People's Republic" certainly maintains the forms of the Leninist-Stalinist party-state, idiosyncratically combining these with doctrines such as "Juche" and a depiction of the Kims as quasi-divine beings born to rule.
Even the Augustan Principate portrayed itself as restoring and preserving the Roman Republic: this was its legitimating story.
I don't disagree that eventually, persistent practices come to be viewed by many or most people as presumptively legitimate. One could say that the simplest justification offered by any ruler is "I ensure your security and prosperity" (and conquest, etc.). But if this is all, then when that ruler, or his successor, loses a war, or the crops fail, the justification is no longer valid. We can see in history that such dynasties tend not to last.
I would add that this latter situation is quite relevant to philosophically Modern states -- whether ruled by Biden, or Putin, or Xi.
I remember reading an interview with Dimitry Medvedev in which he explicitly said that Putin has modeled his Presidency on the Augustan Principate. Medvedev called it a “Sovereign Presidency”.
Restoring monarchy in the West is not a realistic provisional project; it's pointless to advocate it now. It may develop organically out of the disorder of oligarchic 'democracy', as it did in antiquity, and perhaps there will be opportunities to nudge people towards it in future, but as an *ideology* it's unrealistic for the present.
The old royal houses are coopted and thus moribund. Any new monarchy, if it's to emerge, will be imbued with perennial content and maybe even forms, but the kings themselves will not likely be drawn from any of the old lines. It will be the product of the self-assertion of a new type of man (spirit of his age and all that).
Dito sir. I'm more on the Orwell side, Aragon front & all but I must honestly say that reading your piece on monarchy was 1) A real pleasure, well written and researched 2) Very informative learned a lot, which is always a treat wherever it comes from!
Thank you.
A small question if I may:
After the strongest gets the top job, until another alpha male takes him down, period; thats it! for small groups of hunter gatherers. And the need arose for a somewhat permanent leader a capo di tutti capi type. Weren't they, for a while anyway, elected by the other bosses, the nobility if you will?
Franco's case was very different from William's. He liberated his own country and served his king, he did not invaded foreign lands. Pipin is closer but still. It is hard to imagine Franco founding his own royal dynasty in the middle of the 20th century. He had daughter after all. His choice looks bad in retrospect but he could have hardly known back then. I don't believe he has much of a choice, anyway.
Conquests happen and legitimism is what is in between. If anyone wants his rule to mature he must turn his military power into patrimonial one. He must become ruler, judge and contractor to his subjects.
I also do not find it likely that for example Hapsburgs will ever come back to power. Right now they are no military financial or landowning magnates. Although, one never knows.
Putin, Xi and others are dictators at best as they are legitimizing their power within the framework of democracy or the so called people's republic party and not even they are going to leave behind the idea that the power is somehow in the hands of people. This is the terrible inheritence of Enlightenment that we must get rid of if the idea of monarchy should succeed.
One of the reasons it’s hard to imagine Franco founding a dynasty is because modern monarchists are obsessed with “legitimacy”, meaning patrilineal descent and nothing else. The ones in Spain just had to have another Borbone, no matter how feeble and pathetic they had proven themselves to be (and are now ciphers). As for having a daughter, solutions to that could have been found.
Plus the liberal democratic zeitgeist. This is why I think he did not have a choice even if he wouldn't be legitimist.
Which leads to another question. You call it obsession but wasn't legitimism normal reaction? The monarchy had just ended and people wanted it back. They certainly thought about themselves as those who want to restore the order which makes legitimism prefered choice. A new dynasty would be perceived as yet another usurpation. I agree with you if the rupture is too strong or too long legitimism becomes cumbersome, perhaps even obsolete as it seems to be now, but _when_ is the right time to say it is so?
While I lean towards a monarchy, I feel the future will have a hybridization of monarch and a representative republic. They aren't mutually exclusive. The problem, like anything else, is eventually rot sets in. The question is how do we prevent the rot stage as long as possible?
Aristotle beleived exactly that kind of state had the best possible outcomes. Holding off the rot requires ruling classes that take their responsibilities seriously, or at the very least maintains basic competence. When that fails, there's nothing to be done but prune the dead weight and start again. Periodic Revolution can be a healthy thing.
Jesus fed 5000 and they wanted to make him a king. He rejected that power. He bestows power on those who eat his flesh and drink his blood.
He shares his thrown with those who overcome.
“To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.”
How do we overcome? We offer our body and blood as he did.
Secular modes of government will never work. They all devolve to tyranny and/or chaos. Only one to one love in Christ’s image is sufficient for government
I don't necessarily agree with all your sentiments but this is far and away the most intelligent monarchist material and argumentation I've ever seen.
I suspect we put ideology in place of the monarch and so the World Wars were really global civil wars.
What do you guys think about that?
An interesting take. Ideology is part of the problem; ideals only exist between someone's ears. The other issue is that some men seek to become gods and infallible regardless of the outcome. Some true believers are trying to jam their idea of utopia on the rest of us. Damn it all I want is reliable electricity, clean tap water, and a hot grill for my steaks. Granted the root of the problem probably goes back to the first ruler but things have metastasized and now evil is openly flaunted.
We're in that boom/bust cycle of history, nothing more. It just looks different. Takes on the flavor of the age's world spirit.
I'll need to think on it more. You're right about ideology.
You're definitely right about the world spirit but damn, things are quite ugly. The moral inversion is so repugnant. Men LARP'ing as women has to take the cake in the annals of history.
What did you find compelling?
A lot of monarchists are unwilling to or play games around the flaws of monarchism. This one addresses them head on in my opinion.
Something he addresses that I do think is a good strength of Monarchism is there is alot of different ways it can be done
Something that NRx lost when studying the old monarchies. Legitimism for Royal Houses that were either irrelevant or complicit in the creation of Clown World makes for horrible grounds from whence a functional monarchy can come.
Junger's point that the monarch rules all but the anarch only himself has give me the freedom to consider all political arragements in fresh light.
At the end of the day, I think this rules supreme: "Order is the evidence of God’s favor, and collapse the evidence of His wrath." Touches on the Chinese Mandate of Heaven, which I also appreciate.
Very cool essay. Thanks for it.
The core mindset any dissident needs to be "what works for the kind of society we want and how can we acheive it?" If it looks like a democracy but consistently gives us what we want, so be it. If it looks like a dictatorship but ensures peace and stability, so be it. The idea of an ideal platonic form of government everyone must ascribe to is just as silly as those people constantly spewing about "saving our democracy".
Politics is ever-flowing
Bravo!
I appreciated your clarity here, and am largely in agreement with your points. The internet has often inspired me to think that, while I am more in favor of monarchy than not, I am not a "Monarchist." As you say, the practical definition of this word seems to be something like "one who believes that the trappings and customs of, and articulated justifications for, late-Medieval and early Modern European hereditary monarchies together represent the single best form of government." Like you, I do not fit this definition.
However, I would say that, in the long term, the monarch (or especially his successor) must transition from pure coercive power to recognized authority. Coercion alone is not enough. The demonstrated capacity to establish and enforce order and peace does earn recognition readily enough, but the gratitude one earns in doing this is relatively short-lived. And the fact that coercive capacity tends to decay over time was recognized so long ago that it's mentioned in the thirtieth chapter of the Dao De Jing.
Absent some "theory," some legitimating explanation or belief as to why continued rule by the monarch is good and right and justified, why he should be obeyed even when he presents no direct and immediate threat of coercion, the society will lack stability. This is, I think, what you allude to with Franco: he became the true monarch, but his own belief in "royal blood" robbed him of legitimacy. Or think of V.V. Putin: he clearly rules as a monarch, but considers that he must at least portray some semblance of periodic competitive elections for his position, or risk the ire of his people. Alternately, consider Xi Jinping: again, certainly a monarch, but one who feels compelled to portray himself as the Party's selectee, in the Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist tradition.
This is because they have no other legitimating story to tell that would be accepted by the societies that they rule -- composed, as they are, almost entirely of adherents of what I have described elsewhere as the various sects of Modernity.
I have written in a different essay that North Korea is functionally a monarchy at this point, or at the very least, an Augustan Principate. What gives a monarch legitimacy is Tradition, that he does things as they have been done. This allows Expectation to be fulfilled, which is what allows the Ruled to say "Yes, this. I know this."
This is not to be understood as a defense of the cruelties the North Korean state has inflicted on its people.
I agree that North Korea is, functionally, a hereditary monarchy. (The same could be said of Syria.) But the "Democratic People's Republic" certainly maintains the forms of the Leninist-Stalinist party-state, idiosyncratically combining these with doctrines such as "Juche" and a depiction of the Kims as quasi-divine beings born to rule.
Even the Augustan Principate portrayed itself as restoring and preserving the Roman Republic: this was its legitimating story.
I don't disagree that eventually, persistent practices come to be viewed by many or most people as presumptively legitimate. One could say that the simplest justification offered by any ruler is "I ensure your security and prosperity" (and conquest, etc.). But if this is all, then when that ruler, or his successor, loses a war, or the crops fail, the justification is no longer valid. We can see in history that such dynasties tend not to last.
I would add that this latter situation is quite relevant to philosophically Modern states -- whether ruled by Biden, or Putin, or Xi.
I remember reading an interview with Dimitry Medvedev in which he explicitly said that Putin has modeled his Presidency on the Augustan Principate. Medvedev called it a “Sovereign Presidency”.
Restoring monarchy in the West is not a realistic provisional project; it's pointless to advocate it now. It may develop organically out of the disorder of oligarchic 'democracy', as it did in antiquity, and perhaps there will be opportunities to nudge people towards it in future, but as an *ideology* it's unrealistic for the present.
The old royal houses are coopted and thus moribund. Any new monarchy, if it's to emerge, will be imbued with perennial content and maybe even forms, but the kings themselves will not likely be drawn from any of the old lines. It will be the product of the self-assertion of a new type of man (spirit of his age and all that).
Dito sir. I'm more on the Orwell side, Aragon front & all but I must honestly say that reading your piece on monarchy was 1) A real pleasure, well written and researched 2) Very informative learned a lot, which is always a treat wherever it comes from!
Thank you.
A small question if I may:
After the strongest gets the top job, until another alpha male takes him down, period; thats it! for small groups of hunter gatherers. And the need arose for a somewhat permanent leader a capo di tutti capi type. Weren't they, for a while anyway, elected by the other bosses, the nobility if you will?
Elected monarchy is one of the oldest forms.
Franco's case was very different from William's. He liberated his own country and served his king, he did not invaded foreign lands. Pipin is closer but still. It is hard to imagine Franco founding his own royal dynasty in the middle of the 20th century. He had daughter after all. His choice looks bad in retrospect but he could have hardly known back then. I don't believe he has much of a choice, anyway.
Conquests happen and legitimism is what is in between. If anyone wants his rule to mature he must turn his military power into patrimonial one. He must become ruler, judge and contractor to his subjects.
I also do not find it likely that for example Hapsburgs will ever come back to power. Right now they are no military financial or landowning magnates. Although, one never knows.
Putin, Xi and others are dictators at best as they are legitimizing their power within the framework of democracy or the so called people's republic party and not even they are going to leave behind the idea that the power is somehow in the hands of people. This is the terrible inheritence of Enlightenment that we must get rid of if the idea of monarchy should succeed.
One of the reasons it’s hard to imagine Franco founding a dynasty is because modern monarchists are obsessed with “legitimacy”, meaning patrilineal descent and nothing else. The ones in Spain just had to have another Borbone, no matter how feeble and pathetic they had proven themselves to be (and are now ciphers). As for having a daughter, solutions to that could have been found.
Plus the liberal democratic zeitgeist. This is why I think he did not have a choice even if he wouldn't be legitimist.
Which leads to another question. You call it obsession but wasn't legitimism normal reaction? The monarchy had just ended and people wanted it back. They certainly thought about themselves as those who want to restore the order which makes legitimism prefered choice. A new dynasty would be perceived as yet another usurpation. I agree with you if the rupture is too strong or too long legitimism becomes cumbersome, perhaps even obsolete as it seems to be now, but _when_ is the right time to say it is so?
While I lean towards a monarchy, I feel the future will have a hybridization of monarch and a representative republic. They aren't mutually exclusive. The problem, like anything else, is eventually rot sets in. The question is how do we prevent the rot stage as long as possible?
Aristotle beleived exactly that kind of state had the best possible outcomes. Holding off the rot requires ruling classes that take their responsibilities seriously, or at the very least maintains basic competence. When that fails, there's nothing to be done but prune the dead weight and start again. Periodic Revolution can be a healthy thing.
You can have good kings, you can have bad kings, but belief that all men are equal is always bad.
Jesus fed 5000 and they wanted to make him a king. He rejected that power. He bestows power on those who eat his flesh and drink his blood.
He shares his thrown with those who overcome.
“To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.”
How do we overcome? We offer our body and blood as he did.
Secular modes of government will never work. They all devolve to tyranny and/or chaos. Only one to one love in Christ’s image is sufficient for government
You are correct. They all devolve into tyranny and chaos. Like clothing, they wear out and must be replaced.
“Shares his throne”
Can we try neo-feudalism first?
I'd like to see how Musk, Prince, Trump etc. manage their fiefdoms before signing up for monarchy.