Mad Rant: Government Is Not the Answer

One of the things that often annoys me in dealing with republicans is the repeated raising of the question of what exactly monarchy can practically do to serve the public or how monarchies can work better than republics or what practical things they can provide that republics cannot. There are, of course, arguments that can be made for monarchy on all of those scores but I get extremely frustrated at the repetition of that line of questioning. Why you ask? Because, when emphasized so much, it seems to me to be a symptom of the disease of revolutionary republicanism that has gripped the world and I get extremely frustrated when monarchists continually try to battle republicans on the enemy’s terms and using republican standards of judging success or failure. To some extent this cannot be avoided but I think monarchists should struggle against it and not surrender the terms of the debate to the revolutionaries.

Despite what can be said for monarchy in this regard it can also be a hard subject to deal with, particularly now, because most monarchies have been reduced to the status of glorified window dressing. On paper the monarchy may be the foundation of the governments in many countries but they have reduced their royals to the point of resembling the lilies of the field who toil not neither do they spin. Given that, it can be difficult at times to list in a practical way what monarchies can provide that republics cannot when most monarchies are effectively republics in all but name already. The problem with this, in even ‘going there’ is that it accepts the model of the revolutionaries who made a sort of god or a secular religion out of government and politics.

Like anyone else, I of course have my own opinions about what political, economic and governmental systems work the best, though never losing my abhorrence for all politics in general and looking back most nostalgically on the era when there was no government as we would know it today but simply a sovereign, his lords and his people who each handle their own affairs within their own sphere of society. It was only with the emergence of mass politics, roughly emerging at the time of the French Revolution if one must take aim at a certain event, when government began to be looked to as the source of the answers to all problems in life and when people started to be fed the lie that if we could just come up with this or that sort of government or adapt this or that political ideology everything would work perfectly and the world would be a utopian paradise.

Retch! It is a lie of course and the most absurd lie which may be why it is so readily believed. In the old days the only institution which would come close to matching this would be religion and even then, in virtually all religions, that paradise was something that could never be achieved in this life with our human foibles and physical limitations. Mass politics emerged as a means for the revolutionary elite to overthrow monarchs and seize power for themselves and the idea of the government as the answer to all life’s problems emerged as a way to allow these revolutionary elites to continually increase the scope and reach of government and thus vastly enlarge their own power continuously as time goes on and we see that very clearly today.

Monarchy, of course, can be of great practical benefit; if it could not it would not have been the dominant form of government for the vast majority of human history, because it takes into account all aspects of humanity; the need for spiritual nourishment, the need for pageantry, the centrality of family as well as seeing to the nuts and bolts of ordering society. However, at times I would like to shout at skeptics that monarchy is not based on trying to give everyone exactly what they want and providing absolutely everything for every single person but rather is based, in my view at least, on the principle of legitimate authority; regardless of how it works because it is legitimate.

If society is well ordered and based on the proper principles true freedom and prosperity will flow naturally. Revolutionaries associate monarchy with oppression to divert from the fact that it is oppression that they themselves truly stand for. They use socialism to keep people in the slavery of perpetual existence without any advancement. They preach freedom while delivering only licentiousness and expanding the scope of government to control every aspect of human life from how much money you make, to what you eat, what you drink, how you travel, how to think correctly, what is passed on through propaganda -er, education, even trying to heal the sick and control the weather. Even Louis XIV at the height of his glory never imagined having such far reaching powers over his people nor would he have cared to have it. I maintain that monarchy is a superior form of government, that in general republicanism is disastrous but government is also not finally the point -it is not the be all and end all of human existence and no government or political system or administrative formula is the answer to all human suffering. I am tired of that line of questioning, I am tired of that mentality and I am … The Mad Monarchist.