[Cronos]

I don’t see how good kings automatically have perfect heirs; usually, they have failures for heirs.

Good point. Also, Alex, while there have been good kings in the past and yes, a monarchy served it's purpose at a point in time, I humbly submit that now there is no justification for an absolute monarch or even a feudal one. That time is passed

For a constitutional monarch, you can say that it works in the here and now, but where does it work? In countries that already had/have had monarchs or a monarchical tradition. It cannot be put on a country like the US now, it wouldn't be practical even if the majority wanted it.

Stability -- perhaps in the case of established monarchs it works, let's take 3 examples:

1. In long established monarchs ruling over a mono-ethnic state like in Japan or the Scandanavian nations it works as the latter are tiny, the monarchs are low-key and in the former they have been there for 2000+ years
2. In long established monarchies like Spain or the UK where they provide the figure head of unity (Personal unions leading to closer ties). In these they have been long-established and without them the various parts move apart
3. In new monarchies like Belgium or Bulgaria etc. -- they have no deep ties (Bulgaria) and their loss is not regretted. For Belgium, they serve as the sign of unity (the last king was good), but they do not serve as stability. The King had to resign when the parliament asked him to rubber-stamp an act approving abortion or divorce or something. He abdicated and them came back to power. Not a feasible solution

The US is more like Belgium (only with much, much more division) than anything else. There is no feasible choice for monarch and it is not a feasible option.

[annalex]

We don’t know what time is passed. Naturally we are not going to have a feudal society with subsistence agriculture, illiterate 90% of the population, etc. But we can have a society that is in principle feudal but takes advantage of the modern technological fluid society. For example, there is no techological reason I should not be able to hire for myself, for the argument’s sake, Pat Buchanan and be subject to policies he chooses rather than policies Bush chose ten years ago. That is new feudalism.

Likewise, I do not want to be responsible for abortion, euthanasia, and liberal miseducation system, yet my money will go for that in the republic. I do not want to patronize businesses that manufacture in China, but since foreign trade is federal law, I have no effective choice. However, if Missouri and Kansas were feudal states rather than federal states, we would have a true laboratory of freedom where the liberal regimes of New York and California have no effect on the suzerain in Kansas. his is by the way, an argument often made iapprovingly on the Free Republic, but people do not realize that it is essentially an argument for feudalism.

I would agree that feudalism is more compatible with the American spirit than absolute monarchy. But I do not argue for absolute monarchy.

I think all these medieval institutions will be reinvented for the technological age and they will thrive. I don’t have a ready answer for everything, and just like monarchies of the past, the new monarchies will differ greatly culture from culture. In a century or so, you would not recognize the West. It will be universally religious, nationalistic, open and fluid, with many forms of social organization, much greater local control, truly capitalistic and prosperous.