Given the tremendous advantages of incumbency and the autonomy of the federal bureaucracy, I'm not so sure that we are really all that democratic any more.
And maybe the U.S. is just plain too big to be meaningfully democratic. In Switzerland or New Hampshire an angry voter can swing an election by bugging friends and neighbors. As the scale of government goes up, the number of layers of effort go up. And individual votes become nearly meaningless.
To even find out if even indirect democracy is workable, we must first start with having truly local government. Blue America doesn't have truly democratic local government. "You cannot fight City Hall." Break up the cities and urban counties. Before giving up on democracy, we might want to try democracy.
Bring on the God-Emperor and His Fish Speakers. Autocracy is superior to oligarchy. Democracy, in whatever iteration, will always devolve into an oligarchy. We failed the American Experiment (a moral AND religious populous are required) and we need to move on from that. Thanks for this delightful read!
In one of my earliest government classes (in elementary school, back when schools actually taught) I was asked to defend the statement "The best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship." I received that assignment because it was thought to be the hardest position of several that were being debated. Much to my surprise (and delight) I easily won the debates and have not changed my mind at all. Successful monarchies are benevolent dictatorships inasmuch as they constrain themselves to their designated sphere of dictating and leave the rest to the locales which is surely benevolent.
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.
This is the most persuasive argument for me. The central weakness of the representative system is politicians' ability to tell people what they want to hear *now* and worry about the consequences later. Most people can't understand that what they are experiencing now may be the result of actions taken decades ago.
It was always part of the globalist plan to create a faux democracy by exploiting the dual meanings of the word 'representative'.
When Thomas Paine used the word, he was referring to the tyranny of distance in a large country, which made it difficult to convey community consensus to the administrative governerment for implementation. So trusted representatives were to transport documented consensus from villages and farms into the central administration location.
The investment bankers were never going to tolerate this, so they ensured the other meaning was applied, and the process reversed. Thus, the representatives were to be elected first, and they would convey community consensus to the administration.
Abraham Lincoln attacked this fraud and coined the definition of democracy "Government of the people, by the people and for the people", to make it clear there was no middle man. He underestimated the cerebral laziness of most people, but not so the bankers. They had long known that their definition would triumph and that its inevitable failure (ie electing their pre-selected traitor to do our thinkling for us) would eventually lead to the conclusion that there had to be a better way. Internationalism was always the path they intended.
When Lincoln was assassinated by the frustrated bankers, the Populist Movement was launched to keep democracy alive and to eventually triumph. This lasted until the 1880s. Always thorough, the bankers continue to attack that word 'populist' with their own fraudulent meaning. Did this work? Apparently. Four dumbarse academics here fell for it.
Political structures are downstream of technology, economics, and weapons systems.
Feudal warfare oriented towards small bands of mounted knights; rifles ushered in the trench warfare of WW2; nukes created the modern state of surveillance and Cold proxy wars where gigantic empire brawl in tiny 3rd world backwaters.
The original “democracy” was, really, a kind of aristocracy of Hellenic citizens. The name today represents the marriage of Big State and Global Capital. And it is such a powerful force that it’s hard to imagine anything to rival it. But we must try.
Schmitt, I remember correctly, made a distinction between strong states and obese states. Strong states are often less intrusive because they have the capacity to define their own limits, whereas weak states often become obese because they cannot resist being hijacked to an increasing number of ends, which collectively accumulate into an inefficient sprawl.
Much hinges, of course, on how well democracy is implemented: the version we currently have in the UK has a number of glaring flaws but it is a work in progress. I'd say it's still a bit early to judge it.
Given the tremendous advantages of incumbency and the autonomy of the federal bureaucracy, I'm not so sure that we are really all that democratic any more.
And maybe the U.S. is just plain too big to be meaningfully democratic. In Switzerland or New Hampshire an angry voter can swing an election by bugging friends and neighbors. As the scale of government goes up, the number of layers of effort go up. And individual votes become nearly meaningless.
To even find out if even indirect democracy is workable, we must first start with having truly local government. Blue America doesn't have truly democratic local government. "You cannot fight City Hall." Break up the cities and urban counties. Before giving up on democracy, we might want to try democracy.
Numbers here:
https://rulesforreactionaries.substack.com/p/rule-6-break-up-the-blue-zones
Bring on the God-Emperor and His Fish Speakers. Autocracy is superior to oligarchy. Democracy, in whatever iteration, will always devolve into an oligarchy. We failed the American Experiment (a moral AND religious populous are required) and we need to move on from that. Thanks for this delightful read!
In one of my earliest government classes (in elementary school, back when schools actually taught) I was asked to defend the statement "The best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship." I received that assignment because it was thought to be the hardest position of several that were being debated. Much to my surprise (and delight) I easily won the debates and have not changed my mind at all. Successful monarchies are benevolent dictatorships inasmuch as they constrain themselves to their designated sphere of dictating and leave the rest to the locales which is surely benevolent.
Interesting, well elucidated piece. Thanks.
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.
This is the most persuasive argument for me. The central weakness of the representative system is politicians' ability to tell people what they want to hear *now* and worry about the consequences later. Most people can't understand that what they are experiencing now may be the result of actions taken decades ago.
It was always part of the globalist plan to create a faux democracy by exploiting the dual meanings of the word 'representative'.
When Thomas Paine used the word, he was referring to the tyranny of distance in a large country, which made it difficult to convey community consensus to the administrative governerment for implementation. So trusted representatives were to transport documented consensus from villages and farms into the central administration location.
The investment bankers were never going to tolerate this, so they ensured the other meaning was applied, and the process reversed. Thus, the representatives were to be elected first, and they would convey community consensus to the administration.
Abraham Lincoln attacked this fraud and coined the definition of democracy "Government of the people, by the people and for the people", to make it clear there was no middle man. He underestimated the cerebral laziness of most people, but not so the bankers. They had long known that their definition would triumph and that its inevitable failure (ie electing their pre-selected traitor to do our thinkling for us) would eventually lead to the conclusion that there had to be a better way. Internationalism was always the path they intended.
When Lincoln was assassinated by the frustrated bankers, the Populist Movement was launched to keep democracy alive and to eventually triumph. This lasted until the 1880s. Always thorough, the bankers continue to attack that word 'populist' with their own fraudulent meaning. Did this work? Apparently. Four dumbarse academics here fell for it.
I'd never given any *serious* consideration to monarchy until I read this piece, so, kudos for that! I wrote something of a response/expansion to this on my stack-- https://rollofthedice.substack.com/p/kings-order-and-creative-destruction
Political structures are downstream of technology, economics, and weapons systems.
Feudal warfare oriented towards small bands of mounted knights; rifles ushered in the trench warfare of WW2; nukes created the modern state of surveillance and Cold proxy wars where gigantic empire brawl in tiny 3rd world backwaters.
The original “democracy” was, really, a kind of aristocracy of Hellenic citizens. The name today represents the marriage of Big State and Global Capital. And it is such a powerful force that it’s hard to imagine anything to rival it. But we must try.
Schmitt, I remember correctly, made a distinction between strong states and obese states. Strong states are often less intrusive because they have the capacity to define their own limits, whereas weak states often become obese because they cannot resist being hijacked to an increasing number of ends, which collectively accumulate into an inefficient sprawl.
This is a very interesting perspective (which resonates, to some extent, with my own arguments for Democratically Accountable Monarchy – https://malcolmr.substack.com/p/democratically-accountable-monarchy).
Much hinges, of course, on how well democracy is implemented: the version we currently have in the UK has a number of glaring flaws but it is a work in progress. I'd say it's still a bit early to judge it.