Posted on 11/06/2016 5:27:00 PM PST by Kaslin
The latest suggestion to end the political rancor in America is…a monarchy! Nikolai Tolstoy writes in The New York Times how a king or queen would make America more stable.
Indeed, the modern history of Europe has shown that those countries fortunate enough to enjoy a king or queen as head of state tend to be more stable and better governed than most of the Continent’s republican states. By the same token, demagogic dictators have proved unremittingly hostile to monarchy because the institution represents a dangerously venerated alternative to their ambitions.
Reflecting in 1945 on what had led to the rise of Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill wrote: “This war would never have come unless, under American and modernizing pressure, we had driven the Hapsburgs out of Austria and Hungary and the Hohenzollerns out of Germany.”
“By making these vacuums,” he went on, “we gave the opening for the Hitlerite monster to crawl out of its sewer on to the vacant thrones.”
Tolstoy also suggests monarchies are better than republics because countries know who the next leader is going to be.
No British statesman was more supportive of the colonists’ cause than Edmund Burke, yet none was more eloquent in defense of the benefits of Britain’s monarchy.
“The people of England well know,” he wrote, “that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation, and a sure principle of transmission; without at all excluding a principle of improvement.”
A monarchy, in other words, lends to a political order a vital element of continuity that enables gradual reform. The rule of law is thus guaranteed by respect for authority — as Dr. Johnson advised Boswell: “Now, Sir, that respect for authority is much more easily granted to a man whose father has had it, than to an upstart, and so Society is more easily supported.”
Their contemporary, the historian Edward Gibbon, weighed the rival systems and came down with characteristic acerbity in favor of a hereditary sovereign. “We may easily devise imaginary forms of government, in which the sceptre shall be constantly bestowed on the most worthy, by the free and incorrupt suffrage of the whole community,” he wrote, but “experience overturns these airy fabrics.”
This ignores history, and the fact monarchies can be just as demagogic as any dictator. English King Charles the First tried to levy a tax without Parliament’s consent, and jailed multiple religious opponents. The Houses of York and Lancaster fought for over three decades for who would rule England in War of the Roses. England and France fought each other for years over America and parts of Europe, while various kings, queens and religious orders fought in the Thirty Years’ War. Peter the Great went to war with Sweden over the Baltic Sea, and went after the Ottoman Empire. The list of monarchist warmongering and political instability goes on and on.
But it should also be pointed out the U.S. might as well have an elected monarchy because of the power of the presidency. The executive has been grabbing more and more power as the term “Leader of the Free World” became more popular. Veronique de Rugy wrote in Reason in 2008 how the Bush Administration issued dozens of powerful new regulations.
Since Bush took office in 2001, there has been a 13 percent decrease in the annual number of new rules. But the new regulations’ cost to the economy will be much higher than it was before 2001. Of the new rules, 159 are “economically significant,” meaning they will cost at least $100 million a year. That’s a 10 percent increase in the number of high-cost rules since 2006, and a 70 percent increase since 2001. And at the end of 2007, another 3,882 rules were already at different stages of implementation, 757 of them targeting small businesses.
Overall, the final outcome of this Republican regulation has been a significant increase in regulatory activity and cost since 2001. The number of pages added to the Federal Register, which lists all new regulations, reached an all-time high of 78,090 in 2007, up from 64,438 in 2001.
Even more worrisome is how agencies implement these rules. In a recent study titled “Homeland Security and Regulatory Analysis: Are We Safer Yet?,” Jerry Ellig and Jamie Belcore of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center (where I work) looked at the regulatory analysis behind the Department of Homeland Security’s regulations. They found that the agency conducted shoddy, incomplete regulatory analysis; never tried to find regulatory alternatives; and didn’t bother arguing that there was a market failure or a systemic problem that might warrant government intervention. According to Homeland Security’s own estimate, its rules cost the economy more than $4 billion a year; the actual cost is likely to be much higher.
FDR also issued New Deal regulations through executive orders, and let’s not forget the executive orders and regulations President Barack Obama has issued during his tenure. This is what happens when a government decides to ignore what’s outlined in the Constitution and do what it wants to do. The U.S. doesn’t need a monarchy; it pretty much has an elected one.
There is a solution, but it’s one that isn’t easy to go about. It requires the people to actually pay attention to what’s going on and not what politicians claim whenever they come up for re-election. It means supporting people like Justin Amash, Mike Lee, and Thomas Massie who are interested in making sure the executive is countered by the legislature. Of course it’s not easy because most people probably would prefer to live their lives without government involvement (those who don’t vote, anyway). This means education is necessary for those who do pay attention to talk to those who don’t or those who are flexible in their opinions. It isn’t easy, but it’s what need to be done.
World War I was caused by empires ruled by kings. Point invalid.
The only king we need is Christ.
Most monarchs are patriots and put their countries priorities first. They are not typically globalists unless they are crazy conquerors. Just sayin’
It is mind-boggling that the Clinton crime family is as close as they are to taking the election. You would have to be an idiot to vote for someone whose only interest is their own profit. Voting in this Clinton crime network is like voting in a third-world Dictator. I don’t understand the passivity of the people.
With what Comey & Roberts have done to us, it’s time to drain the swamp! Two f*ckin’ people have caused major harm to the American people! Give Trump a chance. Vote TRUMP!!!!!
Royalty comes from royal bloodlines, but there has been foul play associated with even that... so therefore the point us moot.
Royalty comes from royal bloodlines, but there has been foul play associated with even that... so therefore the point us moot.
Agree with you.
Short of Christ on Earth, however, a benevolent monarchy may be the best form of government.
The challenge, of course, is making sure it stays benevolent.
Amash is a NeverTrumper.
I'm in his district; I'll be writing-in my next-door neighbor, one of the county commissioners.
Now to actually realize that.
King Arthur: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
Peasant Woman: Order, eh? Who does he think he is?
King Arthur: I am your king.
Peasant Woman: Well, I didn’t vote for you.
King Arthur: You don’t vote for kings.
Peasant Woman: Well, how’d you become king, then?
[Angelic music plays... ]
King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.
Dennis: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Arthur: Be quiet!
Dennis: You can’t expect to wield supreme power just ‘cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
Arthur: Shut up
Dennis: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!
Arthur: [grabs Dennis] Shut up! Will you shut up?!
Dennis: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system!
Arthur: [shakes Dennis] Shut up!
Dennis: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I’m being repressed!
Arthur: Bloody Peasant!
Dennis: Ooh, what a giveaway! Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That’s what I’m on about! Did you see him repressing me? You saw him, didn’t you?
We’re going to have a queen in a couple of days if we don’t all get out and vote! Call every Republican and Independent you know and get them to vote. Drive them yourself if you have to.
No corruption and rigged deals, no Obamacare and no IRS enforcement of Obamacare premiums!
Go Trump!
Combining head of state with the chief elected executive, as the US does, has its drawbacks. The contumely laid on the US by the scandals of Nixon and Clinton, for example, would not tarnish the head of state or the nation itself.
The head of state remains when government changes from one party to another, providing stability. But if the head of state is to have any power at all, rather than be just a figurehead, what power should he/she have?
No, WW1 was triggered by some anarchistic/socialistic POS who wanted to create chaos, any chaos, so that their filthy revolution might possibly happen. Scum like that would have killed and murdered till they set something off.
Their ideological heirs now populate the DNC.
No chance getting one of those to begin with in a world full of scum already perverting anything they can lay their hands on.
So it’s best not to try. Indeed it’s best to resist any attempt to impose one.
It’s like the blind faith that we could have a constitutional convention and somehow keep the so-called “progressives” from running amuck in it.
Correct
The monarchs in question, especially those holding sway on the continent, could have held that back easily. But they were itching for conflict and it was building for quite a while.
King? Just join the Commonwealth.
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