Thursday, July 27, 2017

Monarchy and Morale

One of the most horrific but telling things I have ever read about the difference between a monarchy and a republic was written by Robert Katz in the last chapter of his book, “The Fall of the House of Savoy” on the subject of the end of the late Kingdom of Italy. In a paragraph praising the republic for what I would call listlessness and lack of ambition, Mr. Katz wrote, “Italy has fared well without the monarchy and its recurrent, restless dreams. The country no longer pretends to great powerhood. A president sits now in the Quirinal. Few people abroad know his name. The republic has no plan to march for glory.” I suppose one could easily cite this as a sort of test. If you can read lines like that and think, as Katz does, that this is a good thing, you must be a republican. If you think they are horribly tragic, you are probably a monarchist. This could be “Exhibit A” in making the case that liberal republicanism saps the morale of a great people. Personally, one of the things that I find most despicable, damnable and insidious about, in this case, the Italian republic, is that it has made people comfortable with mediocrity.

Simply consider the context. Italy, a land with almost nothing in the way of natural resources besides mineral water, once conquered the entire Mediterranean basin, ruled the known world and in many ways created western civilization as we know it. The cultural legacy of Italy alone was fought over by the great powers that rose up after the fall of Rome for centuries. Italian religious spread Christianity to distant shores and Italian navigators discovered new continents. Even after centuries of being divided and ruled by foreign powers, the Italians reunited, won their independence and, despite being the last out of the gate, set out again and built an empire that reached from the Alps to the Horn of Africa. When the Kingdom of Italy was brought down in World War II and this modest, most recent of the European colonial empires was demolished, we see the result in the waves of “refugees” from Eritrea and Somalia of what becomes of such places when the benefits of Roman civilization were withdrawn. Yet, led by a corrupt, top-heavy, talking shop that dispenses social welfare, people are dulled into passive acceptance with their elite always assuring them that this is the best they can expect.

I take a different view. I say that those, “recurrent, restless dreams” which Katz faults the House of Savoy for, are essential for the health and morale of any people. The liberal elites do not want this though, they simply want listless, passive consumers. They want fuel for their machine and nothing more. They do not want people to think, to dream or to aspire to greatness. Italy is only one example of this but it is a stark one. The republican ruling class has taken a population who are the sons and daughters of the Caesars and taught them to be content with being second-rate, even third or fourth-rate. If this were being done by parents, in a family, people would surely call it child abuse. Forget Augustus and Trajan, forget Legnano, forget Venice and Genoa, forget the Medici, Farnese and all the great houses of the Renaissance, forget the great strides, from Turin to Naples, forget the “fourth shore” and all those who sacrificed there, from those led by Scipio to those led by Graziani, forget the model plantations of Somaliland, forget the great art, the great buildings, the great music and literature. Just watch football on TV, wait for your check and buy yourself something nice. Something “Made in China”. Whatever you do, just don’t show any ambition.

Not every nation, of course, has the origins of the Roman Empire in their background, but most do have some period, long or short, of greatness that they once achieved. Lithuania, for example, regarded today as a minor Baltic state, overlooked by most, was a force to be reckoned with in the Middle Ages. Lithuania dominated Eastern Europe, controlling an area that stretched all the way from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Bulgaria, after the fall of the Byzantines, was the Bulgarian Empire, dominating the Balkans. They certainly had spirit, they certainly had high morale as when that empire was destroyed, the Bulgars did not lapse into apathetic acceptance. They strapped on their armor, fought back and built the Second Bulgarian Empire which again dominated the Balkans. They had what it takes to do great things and the blood in their veins was no different than that which flows in the veins of Bulgarians today. I look at most of the nations of the western world today and I want to shake them by their collective collars and shout, “YOU’RE BETTER THAN THIS!” What would your ancestors think of you if they could see you now?

One of the many southern European countries known for being in particularly bad shape economically is Portugal. Some take a fatalistic view of the situation but I do not. A cousin of mine is of Portuguese ancestry and she has a work ethic that would put the Puritans to shame. Portugal, yes, is a relatively small country but consider how it started. It had to fight for its liberation from Moorish rule and then, despite having relatively little land, a small population and few resources, Portugal still had ambition, still had a vision. They took risks, they tried new things and they became the leader in exploration, cartography, navigation and global trade. They built an empire that stretched from Brazil, all around Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia and East Asia. They controlled virtually every major trade route and became the wealthiest country in Europe. The Kingdom of Portugal did all of that and the Kingdom of Portugal started with far less than what the Portuguese Republic has today. We know what great things were possible because they actually did them. There can be no excuse for settling for mediocrity with so many great achievements in your past.

Unfortunately, the fact that a few countries have allowed their kings to still live in their palaces and still call them kings, does not make them immune from this republican mentality, this socialist dependency and consumerist apathy. Monarchies in which the monarchs have been virtually taken prisoner by the ruling class often have the same affliction and none seems worse off than the nominal Kingdom of Sweden. The Swedes, at this rate, may well go down in history as the first nation to actually die from political correctness. It doesn’t have to be this way. Sweden does not have to be the way it is now. The Kingdom of Sweden, the Christian heirs of the Vikings, once dominated northern Europe. In fact, for a brief time, the King of Sweden dominated most of eastern as well as northern Europe. The Swedes once had the audacity to fight Russia and more than once the Swedes won wars against mighty Russia. They made the Baltic Sea a Swedish lake and played a decisive role in European, even world affairs. And what did they have to begin with? Again, they were a country with little useful land, a small population, few to no resources and had much more powerful neighbors like the Germans and the Russians, yet they still proved capable of great things. We know what Swedes can do and as long as the Swedes are Swedes, there is no reason they cannot be great again.

I will not go on at length like this but it is all the more frustrating because I easily could. Russia, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, France, Spain and so on. Each has a similar story in this regard. Each one has been far, far greater than what they are now. Each one is capable of so much more than what they have been coddled into accepting in this present year. In the past, the liberals and even the socialists claimed that under each of their systems, the people would be delivered from poverty and they would then be free to pursue greater things. It was a lie. Credit capitalism or socialism as you please, hardly any country these days is not a combination of the two, the result of freedom from poverty has not been the freedom to pursue greatness but a dull, sullen, sickeningly contented apathy. Which is not to say that there are none who struggle in our modern world, far from it, but generally speaking more people today live on some sort of government assistance than at any time previously and as long as they have their bread and circuses, their government cheese and their cable TV, their only concern is not losing that rather than trying to gain something more.

This is not surprising given who is in control of what people are taught, what they see and hear on a daily basis. In the past, people took great risks, tried new things, struck out into unknown seas, for the chance of fortune and glory and to bring salvation to the heathens. Today, however, those who did this are shamed, vilified and their motivations have been stripped from the modern populace. The desire for profit is terrible, we are told (though the ones doing the telling seem to profit a great deal), very out of step with our egalitarian ideals. To convert the heathen is likewise a monstrous notion, we are told, for the only ones who do not defame Christianity among our current elite are the ones who say that St Paul got it all wrong and that Christianity is not about converting others to save their souls but accepting the heathens as they are and not doing anything to change them or make them feel in the least bit challenged or uncomfortable. The republican mentality has drained the morale of people everywhere, created an infantile society more servile than any that bowed, kneeled or kowtowed to a prince. The republic has drained away the motivation and the inspiration of once great peoples. Is it any wonder they are now dying off in record numbers?

To return to the original example of the Kingdom of Italy, regular readers may recall a post from last year in which I pointed out an article by one Andrew Roberts of “The Telegraph” who denounced Donald Trump as the American version of the late Duce of Fascism, Benito Mussolini. His evidence for this boiled down to little more than the slogan, “Make America Great Again”. This proves the point very well, I think, about someone who truly embodies the republican mindset of today. I am sure Mr. Roberts would detest any number of things about the Fascist regime in Italy, such as its suppression of the socialists and Marxists, its insistence that men be masculine and women be feminine, its teaching of religion in schools and its encouragement of Italians to marry and have very large families. However, what most offended Mr. Roberts in this instance was that Mussolini wanted to ‘make Italy great again’, he wanted top-tier status, he even wanted to rebuild the Roman Empire. Simply the desire that your nation be great is considered a crime to these disgusting people and I have no hesitation and absolutely no shame in saying that, given the choice between the views of Andrew Roberts and those of Benito Mussolini, I would take the Duce every time, call me what you like.

When people have nothing to believe in and nothing to strive for, they sink into apathy and slow death. We are seeing this happen right before our eyes. It is a psychological sickness everyone must strive to overcome and save others from. I will not be as blunt as I might about the opinion of Robert Katz as he passed away from cancer a few years ago. However, given that he was sued for libel by the Pacelli family for some outrageous things he wrote about Pope Pius XII, I consider myself in good company for being completely opposed to his point of view. Italy has not “fared well without the monarchy” specifically because it no longer has the “recurrent, restless dreams” of the House of Savoy. Other than that, he is correct, “The republic has no plan to march for glory.” but it certainly does seem to have a plan to march toward the doom of western civilization entirely. That alone, I would think, would be enough to make any rational person an ardent monarchist.

9 comments:

  1. As tragic as it is, it is completely true that in a second or even third rate Republic people are willing to accept the status quo of prosperity but encouraged to challenge the moral status quo. America even comes to mind though it may not be completely obvious to most at first. America is considered one of if not the most successful countries in history, and yet despite one of the reasons of the "Revolution" being the restriction of expanding the colonies made in the Proclamation of 1763, it is amazing to see that something as simple as the Louisiana purchase was so strongly opposed by both Federalists and Democratic-Republicans alike. Sure, the concept of Manifest Destiny kept American expansion going, we are now taught to be ashamed of our past. Are any losses experienced by the Native Americans a tragedy? Yes, but to sit and dwell on that so much time later helps no one. All it has achieved is to create a mockery of the Native Americans by forcing them into socialist dependency, killing off of the last of there dignity.

    And what of China? Depending on who you ask, China is the second most powerful country in the world, and yet, it still does not come close to the legacy of the Great Han Empire. Everything from the (main) Chinese people, the writing system, the (primary) culture are direct descendants of the Han, and through these China has achieved cultural domination of East Asia even when political hegemony was lacking, and even firmly independent countries like Japan still use Hanzi, read Romance of the Three Kingdoms and at least have a passing knowledge of Confucianism. The Mongol and Manchu Emperors at least somewhat integrated into China, how often does that happen? Traditionalism in China is starting to come back but most pride in China's Imperial past has yet to be restored (and don't even get me started on the movement to abandon Chinese identity in the ROC even though the native Taiwanese are vastly outnumbered by Chinese).

    There are endless examples but I am typing this at 3-4 in the morning so I think this should suffice for now.

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    1. True. America started biting its own tail almost immediately, as soon as independence was won. Spot on about the Native Americans, I've posted about that before, they were defeated by a superior foe but they kept their pride, now the do-gooders have robbed them of that and made them pathetic. Also true about China. Their situation is very different from the west but not dissimilar and they are on a path toward the same destination.

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  2. Would you say the republican People's Sweatshop of China is unambitious and has no plans to march for glory?

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    1. I could refer to the above comment but, the answer is that china is in the same predicament but the problem is less advanced. They only became susceptible to this in 1911 whereas it has been spreading in the west since at least the 1700's. At least. They still have the self-confidence that the west lacks, they have something to believe in to some extent but what they believe in is foolish and destroying them. China is a giant with feet made of clay.

      As the Penn.Monarchist noted above, Imperial China invented a great deal of what is vital to the world, yet what has post-imperial China invented? Nothing. They copy what others make or build things other people designed. They tried very hard to completely eradicate their own culture and heritage, now they are trying to revive it to an extent but insofar as the CCP's efforts are concerned, it is a bastardized version of it.

      China is an officially communist country which no longer practices communism. It touts Chinese pride but despises everything traditionally Chinese. They seem strong but that strength is to some extent a charade and the rest is temporary. The one-child policy has meant China is a balloon waiting to pop and their totally export-dependent economy will not survive a drop in cheap manual labor that comes from having a huge population. They are starting to see the same symptoms the west has at full force.

      They're situation is not good but they have avoided the suicidal drama-queen traits of western leaders.

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  3. Then Czech might be a lucky country as here in the Czech republic, we're not taught to be ashamed of our history and instead the teachers don't teach us about the evils of capitalism, but those of communism and so far we're not yet taught to despise our history, but to admire our reign of glory, when Czech stretched from the baltic to the Adriatic, when Czech was able to challenge the HRE and Hungary

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  4. This is exactly what Friedrich Nietzsche predicted as der letzte Mensch(the last man)as he doesn't take risks and sits in his home to lazy to even raise the next generation. This is why the roman empire fell and this is why western will fail if it dosen't pull itself up and fight for its existence.

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    1. I couldnt agree more, im glad to see others have the same philosophical awareness as I! While this this abhorrent interplay of tragedy and comedy pains us to our hearts we must remain strong. While you, I and others like us still breathe the western heart still beats. While not as strongly as was once before, still, ever onward, toward dreams of future glory.

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  5. I'm from Italy and the House of Savoy is very hated here for several reasons, the main one is because they failed to stop Mussolini. Now we have "Monarchist Alliance" a political party who regular fail to go to the main elections due his small numbers of voters (about 0,06%). Italy will be forever a republic.

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  6. I like to know how National Syndicalism can work under a monarchy with legislative power. But first, let me give you the Basic Concepts of National Syndicalism.

    Capitalism succeeds at achieving the deficiency needs (esteem, belonging and love, safety, and physiological needs), but fails at achieving growth needs (transcendence, self-actualization, aesthetic needs, and cognitive needs) while Communism succeeds at achieving the growth needs, but fails at achieving the deficiency needs, and National Syndicalism can easily succeed at achieving both. Therefore, Capitalism is no less evil than Communism, just different, while National Syndicalism is the better economic system than both.

    National Syndicalism is comprised of both social doctrine and economic policy, significantly modifies the form and function of any national economy, diminishes class tensions, and creates an economic and social climate in which the masses may finally have all their needs met.

    Syndicates are occupationally specific collectives of workers and employers, which each possesses a degree of executive power and policy pertaining to the given occupation and are created in significant fields of occupation or industry in the economy as a whole.

    National Syndicates are consisted of the chairmen, the councils, and the memberships, which would only include those within the occupational field of the Syndicate with each Syndicate's council having one councilor per constituency and would be elected by the membership of the Syndicate, and one of the councilors serving as chairman of the Syndicate and will be mandated so under vote by the councilors themselves, with elections for both councilor and chairman occuring regularly every 5 years, and with no member of any Syndicate having any formal affiliations with any political party, and will assume her or his role as an independent.

    The councilors must propose to the council, legislation and policy pertaining to their Syndicate's field. But each of her or his own proposals to Council submits, he or she must submit two policy proposals to the citizens of their constituency. If the council approves the policy by a majority of more than 50%, then it's proposed to the Membership of the Syndicate. When the Membership, comprised of both workers and business owners in the field, passes the proposal by a majority of more than 50%, then it must be incorporated into governmental policy.

    To be continued

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