Video: The Failed God: Democracy (Hans-Hermann Hoppe)

Beware Democracy

Recently, the British Parliament formally legalized gay “marriage” in the United Kingdom. The change was met with fairly widespread support, however, there was a very, very limited number of people who were outraged by it. Not enough to be noteworthy here were it not for the fact that this particular group claimed to be monarchists and directed their anger not at the politicians who drew up the bill, the people who voted for them or the public that supported it but rather toward HM the Queen who signed the bill into law. Even that is a debatable point as the monarch does not actually do that anymore in a literal sense as Royal Assent is so taken for granted these days as a mere formality. Royal Assent is simply assumed given that it has been hundreds of years since it was last withheld. Yours truly finds this rather baffling, especially after seeing one or two people saying this has changed their entire attitude, causing them to withdraw their support for the Queen and even monarchy in general. I do not doubt some people can be that hysterical, I am simply amazed that nothing prompted it before given how fragile the loyalty of these people obviously is. The Queen nominally assenting to things like abortion or membership in the European Union was acceptable but gay “marriage” is the intolerable thing? Makes no sense to this observer. It should be obvious to anyone that the real culprit in this case is not the Queen but “democracy”.

It can seem more than a bit odd that democracy is still given so much lip-service and treated with such reverence while so many seem to be very familiar with the shortcomings and failures of the system. After all, democracy is not so widespread as people think. Many traitors in Britain who favor the U.K. becoming a republic because the monarchy is un-democratic also support the European Union in which absolutely no one with any real power at all is elected by the public. Many people in the United States scoffed at the recent attention paid to the British Royal Family, bemoaning how un-democratic it is to have a monarchy. They seem to forget that, while it usually comes to the same thing, the President of the United States is not chosen by popular vote but by the Electoral College. If the popular vote was the decisive factor the events of September 11, 2001 would have occurred on the watch of “President Al Gore” and they would probably be referred to today as the greatest act of eco-terrorism in American history. Today, the People’s Republic of China seems to have no shortage of admirers in the western world, despite the fact that in that country “democracy” means voting for the Communist Party candidate of your choice. Which is obviously completely different from free countries where you have two or sometimes even three people to choose from.

I would wager that everyone reading this, at some point, have heard someone complain about politicians who have no principles, who are totally self-serving and who engage in pandering. They mean, of course, that politicians want to get reelected and will do whatever is popular at the moment rather than doing what is best. Whether they realize it or not, these people are actually criticizing, not the politician, but the democratic process itself. After all, what is a “pandering politician” doing but exactly what he or she is expected to do; following the will of the people, doing what the public wants them to do so that a satisfied electorate will allow them to keep their job. When someone agrees with a politician doing this, he is being receptive to his constituents, listening to the people and upholding the principles of democracy. However, to someone who disagrees, that same politician is engaged in political pandering, putting his own political interests before the common good and generally being a self-serving jerk. Well, which is it democrats? The answer is, of course, that the problem is the voting public rather than the politician (though the vast majority of politicians are plenty bad, don’t get me wrong). And, as stated previously, everyone seems to realize that but only at certain times. When the majority agrees with you, democracy is great. When it does not, well, then it is time to remind everyone that the majority gets it wrong sometimes (meaning, when they disagree with you).

Believe it or not, some people have tried to place yours truly in that category because I have, at times, cited poll numbers for monarchs and monarchies that are greatly beloved by their people. However, I plead “not guilty” to such a charge because I am not a democrat and while I am perfectly pleased to have a majority do what I think is right, I am not a believer in democracy who holds that the majority can do no wrong because what is “right” is defined as whatever the majority wants. This is usually rank hypocrisy as well because, as stated, virtually no major political system in the world today is truly democratic anyway. It is a highly orchestrated act of political theatre with just enough democratic participation to obtain the pacification of the public and keep them safely in the hands of the political elite who hold real power. As Goethe accurately said, “There are none more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free”. It is, at this point, a spiritual affliction so acute that most do not even realize it, let alone question it. Democracy would be wrong even if it were being adhered to honestly (which it is not) because it is spiritually wrong. Right and wrong exist independently of the ever shifting view of 51% of the adult public. Loyalty, real loyalty and allegiance of every people to their ancient line of chieftains is a sacred thing and today hardly anyone even understands it anymore. Today, everything is conditional and this system has made people more selfish and self-serving than ever while, ironically, at the same time making them less independent and less truly free than at any other time in history.

Democracy takes hold because it works really well in the promotion of apathy for a public that is driven by fashionable trends that come and go, feigned outrage that jumps from subject to subject, sound-bites and easy to remember slogans that mean nothing but sound really ‘cool’. It gives people the illusion of power, feeds their arrogant pride but is actually nothing less than a satanic delusion. The delusion of the person who thinks they have freedom when they do whatever their bestial desires dictate while they are actually shackled spiritually to damnation. It also causes relativism which causes division and confusion and everyone should know who the “author of confusion” is. God never endorsed democracy. On the contrary, God revealed that the majority will usually do what is easy and wrong while only a few will do what is righteous. Does anyone remember the Biblical passage about when everyone did “what was right in their own eyes”? Suffice it to say, that was not something positive. This should not be taken as God being oppressive because every command God ever gave was for the ultimate good of his people. This should be obvious if anyone would open their eyes to see it. We have seen societies embrace things like abortion, contraception and unnatural sexual “lifestyles” and we have seen the same societies depopulate themselves. Soon they will have died out completely but they continue to march down the road to self-destruction, patting themselves on the back for being so “selfless” and broadminded when they are actually being so selfish that they cannot even be bothered to take the effort to survive. But, they think they’re happy, they think they’re doing the right thing because it is what most people want, what most people approve of and, of course, if it is the will of the majority (and we are told it is), then it cannot be wrong.

We should be different. We should be living examples that the bonds of personal loyalty have not been surrendered and will not be broken. If mistakes have been made, and certainly they have been, these should not be compounded with the errors of disloyalty and treason. Blaming a monarch for the unnatural desires of the majority of the unthinking public is not only ignorant, it is harmful as it ignores the real root of the problem. And people should ask themselves; if the monarchs of the world are part of the problem, why is there still a movement to remove them? In virtually every remaining monarchy in the world there is an effort, large or small, to remove them from their legitimate place. Ask yourself why the political elites, the liars on television and all the rest, still sneer at the very idea of monarchy. The answer is, because no matter what they do, no matter how little influence they have, even if they seem to be agreeable, they stand for something that is completely opposed to their real world view and they know that so long as a monarchy remains, there is always the chance that what they have taken centuries to destroy could someday be built back up -and that is a chance they are not prepared to take.

There are enemies of tradition, of right, of justice, of life and the very existence of the divine and there are a lot of them. The system that exists today is corrupting people, the lies are being spread all over the world day and night, that every “last” monarch in history was a traitor, not the disloyal mobs that turned against them and criticizing the monarchs of the world today for not working miracles it is no different than joining the treasonous mobs just for a different reason than most people. That’s like turning against King Louis XVI of France because he was forced to sign the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. It doesn’t solve anything, it doesn’t put the world back where it needs to be, it just puts you in the same camp as the enemy. You might have taken a different road to get there, but you ended up in the exact same place as the enemies of all that is righteous and sacred in the world.

Democracy at Work in America

Well, it's over and the United States will have four more years of Barack Hussein Obama, our President, our Chairman, the "Great Helmsman" etc and etc. Despite record debt, record unemployment, a sinking dollar and sky high energy prices, American voters decided they wanted to stick to the big B.O. from here on out. The Republican Party majority in the House of Representatives was maintained and even increased. The Democrat Party majority in the Senate was maintained and even increased and Secretary-General Obama was reelected. What does that mean? I'll tell you what it means; IT MEANS WE JUST SPENT TWO YEARS MUD-SLINGING, NAME-CALLING AND SPENDING MANY BILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND CHANGED ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Can anyone fully comprehend the sheer waste this represents? The United States is $16 trillion in debt, the most broke nation in history and we just spent many, many billions of dollars in the most expensive presidential race in American history and it changed absolutely NOTHING. Cry Baby Boehner is still the Speaker of the House, Harry 'We're-$16trillion-in-debt-but-can't-give-up-cowboy-poetry-month' Reed is still the leader of the Senate and Obama is still President. In other words, we just wasted two years of time for every American man, woman and child.

In his victory speech, Obama said the public didn't vote for "politics as usual". I'm sorry Comrade President, but yes they did, they voted for exactly that. Even if no one wants to admit it. Congress has never had a lower approval rating than now, yet the same people were voted back into office by both sides. Most people said that government should be smaller and that raising taxes would not solve the debt problem yet these same people voted for the President who promised bigger government and raising taxes to deal with the debt problem. In other words, the public doesn't seem to have any sense at all. You can blame the politicians for plenty but the public that keeps voting for them cannot get off totally blameless either. Sure, the choices the public are given don't help. I was never a fan of Romney or Obama (and didn't vote for either of them). I never heard Romney make the case for smaller government, in fact I never heard him present a plan at all. He was about as dull and ordinary as they come. He was a walking contradiction and, I have no doubt, would have been simply George W. Bush Part II: tax cuts but no spending cuts and so a still bigger debt. Obama, who claimed to be the "post-racial" President, has left the country more divided by race than I have ever known it. Never before have the voting blocs been so solid. Whites vote for the Republicans, non-Whites vote for the Democrats.

On that front, the Democrats are advising Republicans to face reality and they are probably right. Demographics cannot be changed. Once your population changes, that's it and, I know some people won't like this, but Europe and North America need to just get used to the idea that "White" people will soon be a thing of the past. I don't think there are any real racists to speak of these days but, if there are, especially if you have children, you better get over your prejudice or you are going to have a very miserable life. The racial changes to America are having an impact and no one can deny it any longer. Some thought Obama's about-face on gay "marriage" might alienate some African-Americans but that was not the case. Some thought his deportation of illegal immigrants and the fact that he broke his promise to tackle "immigration reform" in his first year in office might put off Hispanics but, that was not the case. He also supports gay "marriage" and abortion and the HHS mandate which the Catholic Church has called a violation of religious freedom -all things condemned by the Catholic Church, which the vast majority of Hispanics belong to, and it did nothing to deter from their support for Obama. Blacks, Hispanics and single women have the highest unemployement and poverty levels yet, they all voted for more of the same and, evidently, do not hold Obama responsible for this.

I have heard numerous pundits, from the left and the right, say that America has changed, that the "face" of America has changed and the Republican Party no longer represents the mainstream. Like it or not, racial and ethnic groups have been politicized and the GOP is on the losing side of the demographic battle. Fighting over immigration at this point is rather silly -what's done is done. More than that, values have changed. One-fifth of Americans no longer belong to any church and, evidently, single women at least consider their "right" to abortion and taxpayer-funded birth control a greater priority than the overall economy, their employment status and the price of gasoline. And all of this happened because "we the people" allowed it. And we gripe and moan and complain and still vote for more of the same. So the rule of Obama will continue, the deadlock will continue and, in my opinion, things will get worse rather than better. But that's coming from my worldview and virtually no one shares it. That's why I'm not a Republican or a Democrat but just ... The Mad Monarchist.

The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Democratic Absolutism

The supposedly healthy, wealthy and wise modern world is in a state of near apoplexy over the current economic crisis. If a downturn like this is enough to make people call for government takeover of banks and insurance companies and make the former President of Brazil point fingers at a conspiracy of White people with blue eyes one wonders how the people of today would have dealt with something as bad as the actual Great Depression. So far, despite all the complaining, things are not nearly that bad. Today we stand in line to buy the latest ipod whereas in the Great Depression people were standing in soup lines. However, gloomy Gus types need not fear for the Obama administration is trying to get us to the Great Depression as quickly as they can. His many broken promises, blatant lies and utter incompetence is too tiresome to go into in detail at this point but in many ways he is simply proving himself to be the best example of the worst stereotype of the politician.

What we are seeing around the world today is really the result of a failure in the system of absolute democracy so many have put their faith in. In the United States, and things are even worse in some other places, the vast majority of taxes are paid by a tiny minority of the population. The least noble amongst us who have no stake in the success or failure of the economy have consistently voted for whatever politician will promise them the most with no cost to themselves. Government gets bigger, social welfare becomes more prevalent and the rich and middle class (but especially the rich) are taxed more and more to pay for it all. Socialism is now creeping in and even becoming somewhat acceptable or at least thinkable here in the United States as it has been for some time in Europe. Looking at the big picture this can only spell doom for our civilization and all of our most ancient traditions. We are seeing the rise of mob rule, a sort of neo-version of the French Revolution except that most people today are too apathetic to take in hand operating the guillotine themselves.

Western civilization is approaching death and it will be, I have come to believe, death by democracy. I am reminded of the 1939 movie “Juarez” in which a fictional conservation takes place between General Porfirio Diaz and Emperor Maximilian of Mexico on the subject of government. Maximilian agrees that, in theory, democracy is the ideal system but states that, in practice, the rule of the majority frequently becomes the rule of a mob that will follow whatever demagogue promises them the most. That is why, he states, that a monarch is necessary to stand above factions and parties and rule impartially in the best interests of his people because a monarch has a sacred duty to his ancestors and to posterity. In a subsequent scene President Benito Juarez has to re-educate Diaz about how wrong Maximilian is. Juarez states that democracy is not about freedom because Maximilian offers them freedom but is about self-rule because that is what a monarch would withhold from them. He states, quite absurdly, that since no man rules himself into oppression freedom flows from democracy as naturally as a stream. What is really almost hypocritical about this exchange is that Mexico is an ideal example of how the people will, and frequently do, rule themselves into oppression and Diaz himself later became one of the more infamous Mexican dictators.

People will rule themselves into oppression because they frequently turn to insidious politicians to help them get something for nothing. They want more benefits but no new taxes. This means that a politician must deliver the benefits but always tax someone else, the wealthy minority being an easy target. Consider how the government went after the AIG executives who were given the bonuses they were contractually entitled to. The very same party which demanded that AIG be given government money and which wrote the bill that allowed these bonuses to be paid put on a great show of mock indignation at these evil, greedy, rich people on behalf of their struggling, working class constituents (pay no attention to the fact that many of these same guys got hefty donations from AIG and others like them). The fanatical leftist activist group ACORN (for which Obama formerly worked) even drove protestors to the homes of these evil rich people to shout abuse at them. Keep in mind that none of these greedy AIG executives broke any law and most have more or less been browbeaten into giving back money that they had been promised in their contract when they first went to work for the company. This is class warfare at its lowest. This is Marie Antoinette and the whole cake fabrication all over again.

Democracy has gotten the western world into this mess and the politicians, mostly liberal but who can tell the difference any more, are forced to resort to class warfare in order to shield their failed god of popular democracy. They cannot actually go on national TV and tell the voting public that this mess is to a great extent their own fault. Who would have the courage to say that this is exactly what happens when people spend money they do not have and elect representatives to government to spend tax dollars that they do not have and keep robbing Peter to pay Paul to keep all of the government freebies flowing? Democracy gave power to the people and the people have ruled themselves into slavery; absolute dependence on the government and a total lack of real freedom which is what independence is. This great lie can be traced back almost as far as anyone would wish to pursue it but a favorite example of mine is the farcical trial and tragic regicide of the noble King Charles I of Great Britain.

Out of protest the noble Stuart monarch did not speak much at his trial for he refused to recognize that any court was competent to judge him. It was just as well for he was a dead man as soon as he fell into the hands of his enemies. However, when he did finally speak what he said was as profound as it would be unpopular for modern audiences. The part that no one will like is that he said government was the business of kings and had nothing to do with the common people sharing in it. I know, I know, most today would cut his head off for that alone (unless of course he was the leader of a communist country the rest of the world depended on for trade and cheap labor). However, what I think is too often forgotten is what the noble King said after that about what exactly it was he had been fighting for. He said, if I may paraphrase, that in defending his own rights as King he was defending the rights of every person in the land to what was truly their own. The Crown and his powers were his by legitimate, legal and ancient hereditary right. If the government could take that from him then they could take anything from anyone. So it is today.

When you boil it down, there really is no dispute over what the Greek collapse was caused by. People voted themselves money until they ran out of money at which point they borrowed money and now their bills are coming due. It is obvious and yet no one, on either side of the mainstream political spectrum, seems to understand it. We still have young idiots camping outside Wall Street demanding “free” college and forgiveness of debts and even on the right, notice how the Republicans are still terrified of admitting that social security is broke. All the senior citizens marching with the “Tea Party” shout for budget cuts and smaller government until it comes to the programs they themselves are entitled to. In Great Britain the National Health Service is the biggest economic drain in the history of the British Isles yet, because of democratic absolutism, even those politicians smart enough to realize the obvious dare not say so or make a single move against the NHS because they would be promptly voted out of office for taking away “free” healthcare from the people. No, they will reduce the army to a palace guard, scrap the royal yacht and share a navy with France before they will suggest that the people actually pay for their own healthcare themselves.

The truly maddening thing about all of this is that it is so painfully obvious and was figured out thousands of years ago. The ancient Greeks and Romans understood this. Democracy means the ‘have nots’ can vote themselves the property of the ‘haves’ until there are no more ‘haves’ and everyone is a ‘have not’ and the nation tears itself to pieces. Which is usually when the dictator steps forward and everyone had better pray he is a benevolent one.

Guest Article: Stop Democracy Crusades

If one were to take a look at the history of Democracy one would be surprised at how the government of " Freedom" has little tolerance for the choices of other nations that do not correspond with theirs. Starting with the Athenians. The Athenians were well known for not willing to cooperate with other city states on charges that they were not democratic enough. Because of this stubbornness they ended up causing and losing the Peloponnesian War. This attitude of self rightesnous has survived through out the centuries. It is the attitude that defines arrogance. For these people it is not good enough to have their own country adopt such forms of government. They demand that everyone follow suite or they are evil and anyone who wants to associate with them is evil also. Surprisingly enough Democracies who often claim to be for the free choice usually develop such attitudes over time. I cannot name a single war that A Monarchy has began to force it's ideals on other nations. During WWI U.S president Woodrow Wilson did not enter the war until Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown. That way it could be an ideal Democratic crusade against the " evil" German and Austrian monarchies. Mr. Wilson clearly forgot that George Washington told the american people before exiting office to not get involved in european wars. Or that John Adams said not to go abroad looking for monsters to slay. No, Wilson was determined to push forth his radical League of Nations agenda. He wanted to create a New world order in which any nations who wished to have different form of government than what Wilson wanted would be forced to abandon their Monarchy by force or by economic sanctions.When the war was one the Central Powers were torn into shreds by the treaty of Versailles. While Russia (which was an ally) was hardly represented although out all the allied powers it spilled the most blood. During the russian civil war Woodrow Wilson sent troops to help Kolchack. They however did not move much farther than the Vladivostok where they had been sent. This was because Wilson secretly detested Kolchack for he feared that he would restore the monarchy. He was less concerned with stopping the communists than stopping his ally! This was also shared by President FDR who was just obsessed with taking down the British Empire as he was with taking down Hitler! Today the members of NATO and the EU still are bloody obsessed with taking down any nation they deem under democratic. I believe in national sovereignty . The right that every nation has the right to make its own decisions. If nation wants to have a democracy than it's their decision . However they do not have the right to tell other nations what forms of government they can and cannot have.

This article was written by The Black Baron, the purveyor of the new network website "Monarchist Manifesto". Monarchists are welcome to sign up and contribute.