Democracy is not Better than Monarchy

I know, surprising isn't it?

One of the greatest ironies of modern non-mainstream politics in the West is the tendency on the part of libertarians (whose whole ideology supposedly centers upon the maximization of personal freedom) to eventually find their way into supporting much more authoritarian ideologies on the dissident and reactionary Right. Indeed, this is the general route that my own political convictions have taken – from libertarianism to monarchism. Many libertarians would recoil in horror at the thought, yet given the number of former libertarians in neoreaction and in the dissident Right in general, it obviously happens quite often. One of the reasons I would suggest for this is that the foibles and failures of democracy – the governing system most often associated with the libertarian view of freedom – are becoming increasingly apparent to thoughtful observers. The old propaganda used to prop up the democratic dogma in Western nations is becoming increasingly stale and unconvincing. It becomes more and more apparent that democracy does not equal freedom, just as it is becoming apparent that “freedom” is not always and in every sense something that is conducive to good government and stable society.

My purpose with this essay is not to seek to convince my libertarian or classically liberal readers to become monarchists. This may well end up being where they land, politically and ideologically speaking, but their experiences and growth may move them in other directions. What I do want to do is to try to get them started on that path by pointing out that democracy is not any better than other forms of government and may indeed be worse in some areas that we can see empirically. I want to plant a seed of doubt and encourage it to grow. If the thoughtful libertarian is to be convinced, it must be by convincing himself or herself.

Please note that throughout this article, I will refer to “democracy” in a general sense to refer to any modern popular form of government. This includes the sort of representative republican system (formerly) typified by the American government which, while not directly democratic, was still essentially democratic in its overall form and complexion.

Personal Freedom

One of the obvious objections which libertarians and other classical liberals have against monarchy (and other authoritarian governing systems in general) is that the unification of power into the hands of a single executive makes it prone to abuse and to the removal or suppression of the freedoms of the citizenry. Typically, they will envision a monarchy as some kind of police state where citizens who step out of line are severely punished and every aspect of life is closely watched and regulated by the government. This, in turn, leads to a somewhat jaundiced view of history, especially that of the much-excoriated “Dark Ages,” believed to have been a dystopia of violence and tyranny.

This view of the relevant history is, however, untrue and generally relies upon a false epistemic dichotomy that is sadly very common within libertarianism. This is the failure to distinguish between “strong government” and “big government,” the two of which are usually confounded in the classical liberal’s mind. The former term refers to the capacity of the executive to exercise power within his sphere of activity, while the latter describes the extent of the sphere of activity itself. A ruler may be strong in the sense of being decisive and effective in what he does, yet find the area in which he can legitimately act to be circumscribed by law or custom. Among most historical Western monarchies, while kings often ruled “strongly,” they were not able to rule intrusively. Their subjects were often left with a relatively wide degree of latitude in their personal and economic affairs, and the restraints of custom and social structure tended to be more constraining than the actual deeds of their king himself.

Let us contrast this with the various democracies we see in the West, both the United States and others. How much do they really respect personal freedoms? In other words, how much do they really embody the “small government” ideal desired by libertarians and other classical liberals? The answer is: not much at all. Western man lives in democracies in which he can be arrested for tweeting “hate speech” on social media. His everyday life is overseen, administered, and commandeered by a body of regulations enforced by entirely unaccountable bureaucrats who have the capacity to trap him into Kafkaesque nightmares of life-altering tribulation. Every aspect of his food, his clothing, his home, his transportation, his workplace – all controlled by the government he (wrongly) believes he elected freely. If he has any kind of well-paying job or business enterprise, he will be paying a tax rate that ancient absolute monarchs would have blushed to even suggest exacting from their subjects. Democratic governments – supposedly by and for the people – intrude into every area of his life (big government) and do so through robust and often corrupt police state apparatuses which are literally willing to break down his door and possibly shoot him and his family for even minor infractions.

So please, let us dispense with the notion that democracy protects personal freedom.

Finances of the State

Another area where libertarians believe modern democracy to be superior to monarchy and other systems of authority is that of government financial health and stability. Democracies of the modern type, it is believed, utilize superior financial instruments for controlling their budgeting and fiscal health, allowing them to better encourage and sustain economic prosperity in their countries. Monarchies, on the other hand, are thought to have generally retarded economic growth and to have poorly managed their money.

This tidy bifurcation is hard to maintain in the light of both history and present-day practice, however. There are poor democracies today, and there have been prosperous monarchies throughout history. The system of government does not seem to be as important for long-term national prosperity as do the qualities of the people themselves and the set of external circumstances in which the nations find themselves. Democracy is certainly not a magical cure-all which waves its wand and enriches the societies which adopt it.

Even further, there is the fact that the long-term impulses of democracy over and against monarchy serve to make democracies financially less stable in the long run. In most monarchies, the stability and health of the state is invested in the monarch himself. As a result, this gives the monarch a strong incentive to wisely guide the finances of state, as he is directly accountable. Have monarchs ever done a poor job of this? Sure – but that doesn’t overturn the general principle itself.

Contrast this, however, with the observable facts of finance in practically every democracy, past or present. By its very nature, democracy encourages the formation of factions, each of whom will represent a certain subset of the populace and which will strive to garner as much of the budgetary pie for itself as possible. The old saw about democracy lasting until the majority of citizens realize they can vote themselves the largesse of the treasury seems to be true. Western nations are finding that they can only sustain their current levels of social spending (itself instigated by demagogues leading factions) by continuing to pile on national debt indefinitely but unsustainably. Even the slight efforts at austerity in European countries has been met by rigorous opposition, including violence. Modern democracy’s record is one of massive debt and unsustainable spending, and it is not at all apparent that this could have been avoided in any way under that governing system.

Consolidation and the Destruction of Local Diversity

Because of their emphasis on liberty and non-interference from government, libertarians and classical liberals often emphasize various aspects of localism and federalism. I do not believe this impulse to be at all misguided. It seems natural and right that differing groups of people should be able to live under different laws that pertain to their culture and interests, rather than being consolidated politically and culturally into massive superstates that destroy local flavor and liberties.

However, my contention would be that if you seek to maintain localism and community, then one is better serve by restoring historical forms of monarchy than by democracy. Many of the great imperial systems – the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and so forth – entailed a large degree of localism where the customs and traditions of the many ethnic groups contained within them were generally not interfered with. Indeed, most historical monarchies, including the despotic systems of the ancient Near East, generally respected the rights of their provincials to their own customs and mores, provided they paid their taxes. Because monarchy does not involve mass, populist legislation, it tends to eschew the drive found in democracies towards the absorption of cultural or religious minorities.

Compare this with the grossly centralizing tendencies of modern democracies, both officially and unofficially. In the United States, supposedly a republican system with strong protections for states’ rights, the steady movement has been towards the greater and greater subordination of the states to the federal government. Indeed, it has reached the point where states only retain a power supposedly delegated to them until either Congress decides to act (thus effectively federalizing that power) or until some special interest group sues the state in federal court, the result of which invariably seems to be a judgment in favor of coalescing that power under the federal aegis. The situation is obviously much further progressed in the democracies of western Europe. Unofficially, democracies – dependent as they are on the “will of the majority” – tend to act in such ways as to subordinate the local variations within the national culture to that of the dominant faction. This is readily seen in the way in which progresivism, which is held by a relatively small minority of so-called “elites” in the West, nevertheless aggressively seeks to supplant and eliminate various localist sub-cultures within Western nations.

Aggression and Expansionism

Surely, the libertarian-minded individual may be thinking, this is at least one area where democracies will prove themselves to be far superior to monarchy and other authoritarian systems. After all, democracies encourage peaceful trade and eschew fighting each other, while authoritarian regimes are aggressive and warlike, right?

Well…not really. While there have certainly been aggressive, warlike nations with authoritarian governments, one would be hard-pressed to make the case that monarchy itself is worse than democratic systems. War is a fundamental human reality, like it or not. Yet, when war was restricted to being the province of the upper classes in the feudal and aristocratic monarchies of Europe and other parts of the world, it generally was not that comparatively extensive or damaging. When war was the “gentleman’s game,” it was usually restricted in scope and extent.

It took democracy to really make warfare the existential horror which we think of today. The mass mobilization of the people of a nation was introduced by the democratic governments of the French Revolution. Every government since – whether democratic or authoritarian – has had to adopt this model to be able to compete. And while modern democracies (generally) do not tend to fight each other, democracies have been just as vigorous at fighting everyone else as has any other government type. Britain expanded its Empire over hundreds of millions of subject peoples right at the time when it was expanding the franchise and democratizing its parliamentarian government. The United States added state after state to its union as it democratically expanded across the North American continent.

And today, the USA and the democracies of Europe have been the most active in igniting brushfire wars all across the globe (and especially in the Middle East) as they aggressively seek to push off their version of democracy onto alien peoples all over the world. Indeed, the democratic globohomogayplex Regime in Washington DC has been the single biggest warmonger in the world since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, using its muscle to force people all over the world to adopt progressive “values” or else have their governments overthrown and civil war imposed upon them.

Conclusions

Again, I must emphasize that my purpose with this article is not so much to argue for monarchy – though this is my preferred form of government – but to encourage thoughtful libertarians and conservatives to consider that there are credible alternatives to the democratic dogma. Democracy, as a system, does not demonstrate anything near the superior over monarchy as most Americans and Westerners would tend to reflexively believe. In the four areas explored above, democracy either demonstrates the same general set of problems as monarchy (or any other government) could show, or else is actually inferior in practical ways. The worst that can be said about monarchy is that it is no worse than any other form, which is also the best that can be said for democracy.