Posted on 05/08/2011 9:36:55 AM PDT by annalex
Depends what things. If two armies were standig ready to fight, a fight could be avoided if they simply count the bayonets. If a country tries to decide on which side of the road to drive, a vote is a good methond (but so is any other). Also, in the example you give, a small collective of artizans or farmers can effectively manage the business they hold in common.
But in the first example, all that was accomplished was that violence was averted. We cannot conclude that the stronger army deserved to win on the merits. The bolsheviks in 1918-22 did not deserve to win anything at all, they were simply an awful amount of them. We often forget that it is the democratic principle that put communists in Russia or China to power.
In the second example, the decision itself is about a trivial matter. Such was, one thinks, the Fathers' intention in America: rather than having a government minister in charge of management decisions, let's simply vote on them and avoid an emergence of a permanent national management class. That idea did not work out as intended: turn on your TV and you will see permanent national management class, and their name is legion.
In your example, the peasants are property-holding professionals voting on how to run their parternship business. They vote in the matters of their competence. More power to them.
But you do not really point out anything contrary to what the article says. You say, "democracy only works a limited part of the way up the hierarchical tree", and the autheor says "Anyone who believes in limiting government power for the sake of personal freedom should value also having some nondemocratic element of government besides courts respectful of their own narrow authority", so you seem to agree that democracy has strong limitations.
Your proposition is Republican democracy, but you do not show how it might practically work. You only showed how peasant democracy can run a chicken farm. And you say, vaguely, "must be balanced with competing bodies of people". You don't say how that competing bodies of people would do the trick. If you look out the window, you will see that trick not done and having no prospect of getting done. At the same time, history can show us time and again that monarchy does the trick.
Democratic politicians have notoriously short time horizons. (Hoppe (2001) blames not just politicians in particular but democracy in general for high time preference–indifference to the long run–which contributes to crime, wasted lives, and a general decline of morality and culture.) Why worry if popular policies will cause crises only when one is no longer running for reelection? Evidence of fiscal irresponsibility in the United States includes chronic budget deficits, the explicit national debt, and the still huger excesses of future liabilities over future revenues on account of Medicare and Social Security. Yet politicians continue offering new plums. Conflict of interest like this far overshadows the petty kinds that nevertheless arouse more outrage.Responsibility is diffused in democracy not only over time but also among participants. Voters can think that they are only exercising their right to mark their ballots, politicians that they are only responding to the wishes of their constituents. The individual legislator bears only a small share of responsibility fragmented among his colleagues and other government officials.
[...]
...an elected legislature and executive can get away with impositions that monarchs of the past would scarcely have ventured. Louis XIV of France, autocrat though he was, would hardly have dared prohibit alcoholic beverages, conscript soldiers, and levy an income tax
Good point. I would expand on that. A monarchy cannot be just declared, rolled in with the tanks, or voted in by Congress. You can have a junta or a dictator that way (in itself a fine American institution; we in North America might try it one day). Monarchy has to be preceded by a growth of nobility first. In other words, establishment of monarchy is a result of reaching national maturity.
I am disappointed. Please?
Slavery: A friend to Liberty.
Dictatorship: A friend to Liberty.
Hereditary Autocracy: A friend to Liberty.
The Divine Right of Kings: a political theology.
By the right of DNA they do rule us: An idiots guide to why the royals are better than us and have a right to rule us (and why we are so much better off).
A bootlickers guide to the Monarchy: How many boot licks are appropriate for a Baron, how many for a Duke, etc.
The Right of the First Night: Why it is better that one of our Monarchist Royalty impregnates your new bride.
The type of government does not matter, if it properly addresses justice.
Our Republic was designed to limit the influence of the popular will. The 17th Amendment changed that.
I have no argument with that on essence; it is an expression of the same short-horizon problem H.H.Hoppe is talking about in his book, and it is mentioned in the article. However, the author,perhaps inadvertently mixes up monarchy and dictatorship, whioch is a mistake.
Monarchy is a form of property. It is the national infrastructure in possession of a monarch. It does not manage in any way the property of its subjects.
Dictatorship is autocratic management of property of others, without a legal mandate fo any kind, usually in response to a crisis. The idea is to turn the power over to some legitimate body when the crisis goes away, which often is never. Such are numerous military juntas, Pinochet (God bless him), Napoleon, etc.
Dictatorship may institutionalize itself as not merely an autocratic but totalitarian government, -- one that manages every aspect of people's life and not merely their political or economic life. This is what the Communist parties of Russia and China did. They received majoritarian support all along; Yeltzin had to ban the communist Party of the USSR in order to get a non-communist government.
I doubt our Founding Fathers felt the same way.
The Left already has a ‘Monarchy’, they’re called The Kennedy Family.
All of the same arguments for having a Monarch could have been made to justify Germany having a “Fuhrer” in the 30s.
Fascism/communism and the rise of the State over the individual is a regression
Monarchy inevitably must lead to democracy -- while it is better than a series of dictators or an oligocracy or feudalism, it is only a half-way house, providing the "stability" that leads to the growth of the middle-class and thereby to democracy
It's very disingenuous of you, Alex to excerpt Annalex's post
In the history of the world you see a movement in which people band together as tribes, clans, then bigger clans, then under a king.
The king provides the initial "stability" and this leads to the rise of a nobility (and here I disagree with annalex's first n then m), then this percolates to the merchants, then finally to the farmers and "peasants".
When this has occured then the people are mature and demand their rights
I give you as an example, Bahrain: the current king and more especially, his father, was an enlightened ruler who educated his people and built up the economy.
yet, once the economy has progressed and people are now educated, then monarchy must relinquish power or be thrown out.
The British were lucky that they threw out their kings first, but then welcomed them back and also that they invited Dutch and then hanoverian monarchs who had no ties to England and finally Queen Victoria who lived the life of a reclusive widow and left the development of democracy to its own rights
If the English had not had this fortuitous things happening, they would have had monarchy overthrown like France or Germany or Russia
The Scandanavian monarchs are also a case in point -- they learned to give up control of running govt and so perpetuate their "rule"
An absolutionist state has no meaning in an educated country. A constitutional, figurehead monarchy may work in a state where the reins of power are in the hands of the premier (the UK, Spain etc.) as it provides some stability compared to an elected duocracy (where Premier and President both have comparable power) -- case in point, the US President is more comparable to an elected monarch in terms of sweeping powers than to a President like in France or even Russia. This works out good (along with the checks and balances).
The US system of checks and balances, while not perfect is the best known form of governing a large country
Utter drivel. Unless you mean 340 million Americans each declaring themselves the supreme sovereign of their own lives and none other.
If this is arguing for just a figurehead monarchy, then yes, it can be like the UK where the Queen is the figurehead that keeps Scotland, England, Wales together. If absolutionist, then NO, I strongly loathe such an idea (unless I were king of course ;-P).
I look at the absolutionist monarchies in the Ancien Regime, in Prussia/Germany and in Russia with horror and see their atrocities
If you mean a figurehead, then it can work as the Austro-hungarian nearly did (if the ARchduke had been alive he would have made a "Central European Federation" i.e. a United States of Central Europe with the Figurehead of a monarch over a number of states that ruled themselves) -- THAT could have worked.
Monarchy in the US? Too many what-ifs, but as I noted above, the President of the US, in powers resembles an elected, constitutional monarch. To set up one right now in the US is madness and I oppose it -- everyone will want their own candidature (Tears for Fears song "Everybody wants to rule the world"). A constitutional monarchy works fine in the UK and Spain, so let it be -- it developed for historical reasons, just the same reason why other places don't have kings. Setting up a king in a country that has not had one for centuries (even a foreign occupying one) is like King Zog of Albania -- a sure-fire failure.
"Why are you bashing the Catholic Church?"
The closest thing to a modern-day monarchy is North Korea.
"This article was posted just to get Christians to fight each other — that’s the aim of the left, to divide us Christians."
I say this as a student of history (Assyriology, Roman, European, American and Asian), as a student of Christian theology and as a member of orthodox (a Catholic)
The webpage from which this article is derived is a flight of fancy -- the loon thinks he's a king, but that's a joke. You can't declare yourself to be king, you need "ancestry" i.e. your ancestors should have killed a lot of folks when people were still thinking in terms of clans etc.
Making a monarchy in the US today is madness
If tomorrow the US decays to anarchy (mad max), then monarchy as a stepping stone to restoration of the Republic makes sense, but not in any other condition
For your first example, you chose the example I would have chosen to argue against democracy. And you will likely enjoy my citations.
The democrats that overthrew the Czar represent some of the most hilarious failings of democracy imaginable. To a great extent, the Russian revolutions looks as if it had been choreographed by Monty Python.
One of the first great laws passed by the Menshevik (read squishy liberal) Duma was the infamous “Order #1”, that abolished the rank structure in the Russian army. In the middle of World War I. All decisions were to be made by voice vote.
And as you might imagine, the most popular vote-getter was “Run away!”
As far as the Duma itself, it was entirely Menshevik except for a small group of Bolsheviks. And, with respect to majority vote, no matter the situation, they had not created a quorum rule, which the Bolsheviks soon discovered.
So when the Duma was brought to order, the Bolsheviks immediately started disrupting, by blowing horns, slamming desktops, throwing paper, screaming through bullhorns, etc. And in disgust, the entire group of Menshaviks would storm out, leaving the Bolsheviks as the majority.
So taking the podium, they brought up a stack of laws, which they passed, one after the other, by unanimous vote. The Mensheviks remained too offended to rescind any of them, much like RINO Republicans rarely rescind the excesses of the Democrats.
They also had no pattern recognition, so made this same mistake repeatedly.
And leading it all, as the president of democratic Russia, was the very “flappable” Alexander Kerensky, who combined the policy skills of Jimmy Carter at his very worst, with the emotional stability of Pee-Wee Herman.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerensky
Were it not for Kerensky, the Bolsheviks would likely never have really ruled.
Kerensky was so frightened by the Bolsheviks, who were not a particularly powerful force in St. Petersburg, that he feared they would storm his presidential office and harm him, though unarmed.
So he sent a message to a senior general at the front, telling him to prepare to advance on St. Petersburg, to protect Kerensky, if needed.
The general was very right wing, and decided that Kerensky was so pathetic, that he, the general, should march on St. Petersburg anyway, displace Kerensky and the Duma in a military coup, and declare himself Czar.
On hearing he was doing so, Kerensky panicked again, and ordered the police arsenal opened, and that rifles should be issued to, of all people, the Bolsheviks. This is where they got the rifles they eventually used to overthrow the democratic government. But they did not use them to go fight the general’s army.
Instead, they lined the streets, as best they could, and shouted at the generals conscript army to desert and join them. And they did, by the thousands.
There is a famous photo of the general and a handful of his officers, all that was left of his army, arriving in St. Petersburg, only to be arrested by the police.
Kerensky, btw, ran away from the revolution and ended up in the US, giving lectures at Stanford, where he would lie his head off, and blame everyone but himself for Russia becoming communist. When he died in 1970, the Russian Orthodox churches refused to bury him.
(I’ll include other comments on another post.)
As far as the founding fathers went, their constitution can best be described as obsessed with balance between groups of people, each with their own institutional interests.
Most people are familiar with the one balance of the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Some also figured out the balance in which the only truly democratic body in the government should be the House (”The People’s House”). Senators should be appointed by the States, thus giving the States some measure of control over the federal government. And the president is elected by the electoral college.
Likewise, while the president appoints federal judges, the senate, and thus the States, must agree to confirm their appointments.
Then there was the balance between big, populous states and the smaller states. The big states dominate the House and the electoral college, but they are balanced by having a fixed number of senators from each state.
Yet, with the passage of the 17th Amendment, the direct election of senators, the states have both lost their ability to control or limit the federal government, and the people are no longer protected from the federal government by the states.
Which shows yet another balance. That between the federal government, the state governments, and the people.
Many, even most of the problems in the US federal government do not denote from democracy, but structural imbalance in the framework of government.
Reminds me of one of the great scenes in Doctor Zhivago, when the soldiers are encouraged to join the Reds, and then turn on the generals.
Nowhere in the article do I see any mention of religion, it's a purely socio-political blurb. Now if some folks from your group want to see this in a religious light, it's as silly as the guy who wrote this article who obviously has got a fetish for royalty.
I don't know anything about this guy, beyond what he's stated, but it's pretty obvious that he's got some kind of complex and I would wonder if his conversion to Anglicanism was more due to "King and country" rather than for religious reasons -- kind of like a Christian joining your group or to any communist or atheist group -- illogical.
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