Posted on 02/25/2022 9:37:14 AM PST by Yashcheritsiy
“monarchist”?
Ridiculous.
In the US, we’ve replaced whiggery with buggery.
Well, it’s called Gay American Empire for a reason, eh?
I thought a whigger was a slice of dried snot that fell out of your nose when you were talking to someone.
Is that the author?? Another millennial who thinks hes so much smarter than everyone else.
“This type of republicanism differs from the classical kind which generally saw a restricted franchise and the prominence of a truly aristocratic (as opposed to merely oligarchic) stratum of society in the affairs of government.”
But how are these “truly aristocratic”, ie, wise, learned men, selected? Where do you get these angels?
Are they self anointed? Elected? By whom?
Yes, one can easily make the argument that a wise, learned, enlightened “dictator” who has the best interests of his people at heart, is the best form of government, but how will you guarantee that he will remain so, and more importantly that there is some fool-proof mechanism (system) in place that ensures that the next aristocrat will be similarly good?
That is TOTALLY the author, bro.
I'm sure the slaves and Christians of Rome might disagree.
Nah, just some whigger.
Can’t say I disagree with his five points, and I agree with him that it is extremely unlikely that those can be implemented in the US as it is constituted today - too big, too diverse, too “multicultural”.
Only in relatively small, fairly homogeneous, high IQ “communities”, such as the “former” Scandinavian countries could such a system take hold.
I say “former” because in the past decade or so they’ve willfully and stupidly “welcomed” people with lots of diversity, so they kissed their homogeneity goodbye. Maybe their IQ isn’t so high after all.
...it nevertheless restricts the franchise to those who actually have a stake in the system. Ideally, political involvement would be limited to those who display characteristics of belonging to the natural aristocracy (the northern Italian civic republics were good at this). Good proxies for this involve restricting the franchise to property owners, those who have served in the military or the militia, or some other way of dividing between givers and takers. If you want to try to stave off oligarchy, you must overtly restrict the system to those who help to form and maintain it, otherwise you’re just handing dynamite to people who want to demolish it and loot the rubble for themselves.
Author has insights but foregoes any mention of the influence of the judeo-Christian ethic on western society. The next quantum leap is the abject recognition of the social kingship of Christ, notably absent from the founding documents of our federal system of government, i.e., our independence declaration, promulgated during a brief respite of battlefield action in 1776, and the (unadorned and not yet ratified) federal constitution, by which the convention delegates boldly proposed to jettison our existing Articles of Confederation rather than merely amend them (thank you Al Hamilton). The same, however, ***was*** present in the writings and other utterances of a surprising number, if not even possibly a majority, of the almost uniformly God-fearing signers of the aforementioned documents.
Burke is considered the father of modern conservatism, to the point that a self-proclaimed Tory traditionalist like Russell Kirk could title his book The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot.
That sounds dangerously "white power." I don't care where you're from or what you look like, as long as you come here to be an American, accepting the values and principles of our society (retaining ethnic traditions within that, if you choose), learning our language, and aspiring to be part of that natural aristocracy the author refers to -- to bean educated, contributing, supportive member of our society.
The Vietnamese are a good example. The don't look like us, they come from a different culture, but for the most part, they've made themselves Americans. (And brought us some good foods while they were at it.) I wish every ethnic minority wre like them.
Adams and Jefferson were on opposite ends of the political spectrum in their day, Adams being more “conservative” and Jefferson being more “classical liberal.” Today, they’d lead wings of the same party against the party of Wilson and Roosevelt, which is in coalition with the Sanders/AOC party.
I have studied enough economics to understand what is wrong with the author’s arguments about free trade. A society that wishes to remain relatively stable in the face of a constantly changing world (as Burke called it, “a disposition to preserve [and] an ability to reform”) MUST keep the populace in as high a standard of living as it can. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Trade has proven itself to raise the overall standard of all parties, until the government interferes in it to try to game the system to get all the advantage for their country. While there are good reasons to promote domestic manufacturing and trade, protectionism is just the descendent of the very mercantilism the Founders fought.
Obviously, there are exceptions to this for national security reasons, for example. We cannot survive trading with China the way we do. (I would cut them off entirely, but that’s probably not a winnable position.) But we can’t produce enough coffee (for example) to meet domestic demand, so we trade things we produce for things like coffee that we cannot sufficiently produce. That benefits us — AND the other party as well. Win-win.
Also, whie you want a strong executive, it is easy to make the executive too strong. Then you get a dictatorship.
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