Mad Rant: Terror Attacks in Britain

I have been hesitant to say anything about the Islamic terrorist attacks in Britain, mostly because I am at a loss as to what more I can say on this subject. I was puzzling over whether to address the Manchester bombing when the London bridge attack happened. For me, it rather reminded me of the recent NATO leaders meeting in that I have often felt like asking why I should care about any given country if the people of that country themselves no longer care. You have little girls being blown to bits in Manchester, young girls being systematically raped in Rotherham, a young man beheaded on the street in broad daylight, people mowed down on Westminster bridge, people mowed down and stabbed with hunting knives on London bridge and on and on. Yet, instead of any mass public uprising, instead of any mass protests against the people responsible for these atrocities, we see nothing. There has been more public opposition to President Trump visiting Britain than there is about little children being butchered in the streets. What can you say to such cognitive dissonance that will embrace the murderers of your own people in the name of tolerance but become hysterical over someone who used crude language?

Earlier this year, some people in a small Syrian village were gassed (how or by whom is another matter as I have serious doubts, to say the least of it, about the version put out by the media) and this prompted an immediate military response with U.S. warships raining down more than 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles on a nearby Syrian airbase. Yet, innocent people being butchered in London or Paris causes no acts of retaliation at all, though it did not take long of course before the usual suspects started to again make the idiotic argument that somehow dropping more bombs on the Middle East or overthrowing the leader of Syria would make people in western Europe safer. Yes, there were police raids, the mayor of London, peace be upon him, said security would be more visible on the streets of London for a time but we have been through this before and we know nothing is really going to change. We know because there was immediately more concern about what Katie Hopkins said on Twitter than there was about the murders who went on a stabbing spree. It happens every time.

There are the usual protestations from the status quo about why nothing can or should be done to change things. We heard the usual warning against blaming all Muslims for the actions of the terrorists who just happen to all be Muslims (as if it is as purely coincidental as so many terrorists in the 60’s and 70’s being Irish republicans) and how the vast majority of Muslims in Britain are wonderful people. I would say, if that is so, and I am sure it is, they would be just as wonderful in their country of origin. The terrorists who attacked in London were, not surprisingly, on the “terror watch list” and yet they do not seem to have been watched very closely obviously. When asked why this is, the answer is that there are too many people on the watch list for the government to actually watch. That should be all anyone needs to know. Obviously then, this is not just an isolated few and the fact that there are so many people “of concern” should tell everyone that this is a widespread problem. If the authorities know there is something off about this group of people, it is safe to assume that their friends and neighbors know it too and yet nothing was said to the police to warn of these impending attacks.

Personally, I am at my limit on this subject and I have completely rejected the premise of the current argument. More immigration or less? Is assimilation the answer? What policies would help people assimilate better? No! I reject all of that. It all takes for granted that countries like Europe need, I say *need*, any other people besides their own. To put it mildly, I take exception to that idea. There were no Muslims in Great Britain for many, many centuries and everyone seemed to get along just fine. All the way back in the Middle Ages, King Edward I expelled the Jews from England and England still managed to roll on well enough through the Plantagenet period, the Tudor period and the Stuart period before Oliver Cromwell killed the king and invited the Jews back in. There were bad times in all those centuries of course, the Wars of the Roses were certainly unpleasant, but I doubt the presence of a few thousand Jews would have prevented them. Depending on where they landed, the Jews themselves may well have been better off. Thanks to intolerant King Edward I, after all, they were not around to be blamed for the Black Death hitting English shores as they were in other countries.

Differences cause problems, everyone knows this, and the bigger the differences, the bigger the problems. Trying to pretend that everyone is the same will not make everyone the same. I laughed out loud when one of the terrorists in the latest attack was identified as, “an Italian of Moroccan descent”. No, I’m sorry, being Italian rather requires one to be of *Italian* descent. There were, in the colonial period, French people who lived in Vietnam. There were French families who lived and died in Vietnam for several generations. No one ever called them, “Vietnamese of French descent”. Everyone, the Vietnamese in particular, would have thought the very idea absolutely insane and positively insulting. Similarly, this is why I have no qualms about saying that there is nothing wrong with mass deportations in response to the current situation. As I wrote about earlier this year in “The Double Standard on Deportations” no one thought it was racist or unspeakably wicked when the Dutch were expelled from Indonesia, the French were expelled from Indochina or the British were expelled from India. Everyone simply accepted that Dutch people didn’t belong in Indonesia, that French people had no business being in Vietnam or Algeria and that it was only natural for Indians to want India for themselves and so British, Portuguese or Anglo-Indians had to go.

Today, of course, while any other people could do it, such a thing is considered reprehensible for Europeans to do. It is “racist” for European people to want to keep their own countries for their own people, though it is not considered “racist” for seemingly anyone else. However, race should not even have to come into this issue specifically because this is about dealing with a religion rather than a race. Islam is not uniformly one color but includes Somalis, Bosnians, Afghans, Malays, Circassians, Turks, Arabs, Persians, Sudanese and so on. Still, I will be told that such discrimination cannot be allowed, that it violates the fundamental principle of freedom of religion. This is why President Trump has had so much trouble even putting into effect a minor 90-day pause in travel from a small group of countries, because America’s enrobed high priests of “justice” have determined that this amounts to religious discrimination and what seems to be an inherent human right for everyone in the world to come to the United States as well as, be careful, the fact that America’s laws apply to everyone in every country on the planet. That could get complicated.

None of the protestations of outrage ultimately affect me all that much because I do not accept the original premise these people are coming from. So, saying, “you can’t take action specifically against Muslims because that’s a violation of freedom of religion” prompts my simple reply of, yes I can because I don’t believe in freedom of religion and I don’t think any of our modern, liberal, governments really do either. What about democracy? I don’t believe in that either. News flash: neither do the liberals who prattle about it so ceaselessly. If they did, the SNP would not be talking about a second or third referendum on Scottish independence. If they did, the EU would not be set up the way it is. If they did, issues like abortion or gay “marriage” in the United States would not have been decided by a panel of unelected judges. The whole modern, post-revolutionary liberal-democratic model is simply a system of manipulation to gain public acceptance of the course our ruling class wishes for us to take.

The United Kingdom is, after all, supposed to be an officially Christian monarchy. Certainly England is supposed to be, so, I am merely arguing that the British start to act like it. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an officially Islamic monarchy, their laws are Islamic laws and they do not allow Christianity in their country. Fine, fair enough, I have no problem with that. Likewise, then, I see nothing wrong with an (allegedly) Christian monarchy like Great Britain saying that they will not allow Islam in their country. Easy enough for me as I look back longingly on the days when all of this was taken for granted. In the Middle Ages, there were no Muslims in the Kingdom of England and England somehow managed to survive in spite of their absence. There was also no direct democracy, no idea that “all men are created equal”, no government run health service, no massive political bureaucracy, no political parties and no government welfare state. All of these were positive elements in my book.

Now, is the British government going to ban Islam in Britain? No. Are they going to deport everyone on the terrorist watch list? No. Are they going to do anything terribly different from what they have been doing in recent decades? No. As such, I have no doubt that terrorist attacks will continue, the usual routine of hash tag sympathy, political speeches and accusations of “Islamophobia” will go on as well. Particularly in light of the recent election, the British seem to prefer it that way and that is their choice to make. It does, however, as I said at the outset, make it increasingly difficult for me to have as much sympathy as I used to. The same applies to the continent. The French had a choice, they could have picked Le Pen or Macron and they chose Macron. They will have to live with the consequences of that. Le Pen could not have solved everything of course but I think that election was much more significant than most people think. Ultimately, it will take a spiritual revival to solve this problem. It will take a spiritual revival to make people care more about their own children and their own people than being called names, to then make them wake up to how they are being manipulated and then, finally, reject this liberal-democratic post-revolutionary mentality and bring about a true counter-revolution that will put government back in alignment with reality, with human nature and with the Heavens. That is my firm belief, but, then, I am … The Mad Monarchist.

Mad Rant: The Arbitrary Rule of Zuckerberg

Yesterday, during the day, I decided to check Facebook on my phone. I had to log-in again and was told that a post of mine had been removed for “violating community standards”. I was warned that my page could be deleted if this sort of atrocity happened again. Before being allowed to continue logging-in I was obliged to review the “community standards”. No big deal, right? In the grand scheme of things, no, but it did infuriate me as the sort of petty tyranny common in tin-pot dictatorships. I was annoyed because it first took a while to find out exactly what post had been removed. Finally, I found out it was a picture, since needless drama long ago convinced me to limit my Facebook activity to posting royal pictures and little to nothing else, and that picture was a World War I postcard of German/Prussian Crown Prince Wilhelm. I include, at great risk of causing offense it seems, the picture here so that everyone can see what was so atrocious as to warrant my being singled out for a severe reprimand and threat from Mr. Zuckerberg. Take a good look at it. -->

Now, if you are like me (and if so, you have my sympathies), you may be wondering just what it is about this picture that was offensive. You see, that is another part of the problem that makes this infuriating. FB will tell you, after some clicking around, what image is the cause of your misfortune, but they will not tell you exactly what about it is offensive. So, what is the point of the warning? How can you take care to never do wrong again if you do not know what you did wrong in the first place? I have seen some pictures of the Crown Prince that I could imagine someone complaining about; pictures of him in his NSKK uniform which many mistake for a Nazi Brownshirt outfit or pictures of him in his regimental “Death’s Head” Hussar uniform which some have mistaken for an SS uniform. As you can see, this is neither of those. This is a standard Imperial Germany army uniform for general officers. The only thing I could possibly come up with is the Iron Cross he is wearing. It doesn’t make sense but that is the only thing I could imagine that would be even recognizable to the public. Is the uniform that distinctive? The Order of the Black Eagle Star? How many could even recognize the Crown Prince himself?

It would of course be so much easier if FB would say, explicitly, what rule it was that I violated with this picture. But they don’t. They tell you to review their “community standards” none of which include anything explicit about what is not allowed to be posted. There is a lot of vague talk about being nice and promoting “diversity” (whatever that means) but it is all exactly that; *vague*. There is nothing concrete, nothing specific. I can only assume, since they will not tell me, that it was the Iron Cross medal that was the problem based on the fact that it was later used during the Nazi period and, since the swastika has been banned in so many places, the Iron Cross is often used to replace the swastika in artwork about the World War II period. It is not that different from the way that some have started to call for the banning of the old Imperial German ensign since many neo-Nazis took to displaying it since their beloved Nazi flag is outlawed. As such, many of the symbols of Imperial Germany are now seen as being synonymous with Nazi Germany even though they long pre-date the Nazi era. The Iron Cross, for example, originated in the 19th Century during the Napoleonic Wars.

Now, again, I could be wrong about what the actual problem with the picture was but divining that is made even more difficult due to the fact that whatever these vague “community standards” are, they are not consistently enforced. It is entirely arbitrary and depends on what gets reported and who is doing the reviewing. This is a perfect example of the distinction I have often pointed out that Bishop Bossuet talked about in his defense of absolute monarchy from a Catholic, Biblical basis. He argued for absolute power but made a distinction between absolute power and arbitrary power. A monarch, Bossuet argued, should have absolute power but no one should have arbitrary power as that would mean that no one is ever safe, no one would ever know if they are in compliance or not. Similarly, FB is, as the left with their selective support for private property and big business, never tires of pointing out, is a private entity and as such has absolute power over what is or is not allowed on their site. I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is their vague and arbitrarily enforced “community standards” that make it next to impossible to know what exactly is or is not allowed.

You see, there are a number of other pictures I have posted that, assuming someone mistook this picture of the Crown Prince for something Nazi-related, that one would think would be more likely to violate “community standards” than this one. I have posted a few pictures of German princes in Nazi-era German army or air force uniforms. I have posted a picture of the sultans of Malaysia alongside a Japanese general who was (quite unjustly) executed as a war criminal. Yet, for some reason, nothing was said or done about those but a picture of the last German Crown Prince is deleted. Likewise, I have posted a number of pictures of German royals wearing one or more Iron Crosses. These were awarded fairly freely in the Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian War and World War I before the Nazis ever came along and since most German princes served in the military, German monarchs and princes in uniforms with this decoration are extremely common.

There is an agenda at work here, though I doubt traditional, overt reactionaries are significant enough to be on their radar, and that is why this has to be arbitrary. So, for example, FB or Twitter could not ban the swastika completely or else they would have to ban all the left-wing accounts that put swastikas on Donald Trump or Marine LePen. The left actually was confronted this problem when everyone in the United States started banning the Confederate flag. Some leftists started to complain because they wanted to buy a Confederate flag to take to a street demonstration to burn it and trample on it to show how virtuous they are, but found out it was no longer so easy to get a hold of. You may have noticed the same thing regarded accusations of racism. Not all that long ago it was the left that said they wanted a “colorblind” society, because race was just a “social construct” after all but now, they are saying that it is racist to say that you are colorblind or deny that race is real because they actually do want policies that favor one race over another so long as it is the race that supports them. So, it’s only racist, sexist or in any way offensive when one side does it but not when they do it. Hence, the new rule of liberalism is that their power must be arbitrary.

As I have mentioned many times before, this is where the “Anti-fascist” crowd is working every day to prove the original Fascist, Mussolini, right in what he said about the Liberals. He said that they love to talk about freedom, liberty and rights but that these wonderful things are only for them and their supporters, not for their enemies. It has become so blatant and so common these days that even the mainstream, milquetoast conservatives are starting to take notice. The mask is coming off, I think because the left is so outrage-driven that they have worked themselves up into a frenzy so that, as Mark Steyn recently said, “You’re Hitler, I’m Hitler, everybody’s Hitler”, they know nothing about history or any subject really, all they know about Hitler is that he was a bad guy and anyone who is not one of them must be Hitler. They get offended, they go straight to Hitler, no passing “Go” and no collecting 200 dollars. Free speech? Sure, free speech for them to call you a Nazi but no free speech for you to say you would like to enforce immigration laws or post a picture of the German Kaiser’s firstborn on Facebook. Free elections? Sure, free elections so long as their side wins. If not, have the people vote again until they give the “right” answer. Freedom of association? Sure, if you are in the fashion business and don’t want to dress Melania Trump, that’s fine. But if you’re in the wedding cake business and don’t want to bake a cake for the lesbian biker couple down the street, your life is as good as ruined. It’s becoming more clear everyday and I hope more people start to wake up and come to their senses because it is making me a very, …Mad Monarchist.

Mad Rant: A British Terrorist

As I am sure all know there was recently another terrorist attack in London. The terrorist was killed by the police but not before taking the lives of a number of innocents. The authorities took their time to release the identity of the villain but, as was no surprise to most, his name was Khalid Masood, an Islamic radical not unknown to the authorities, from Kent. Yes, from Kent, so that the mindless drones on television can tell us this was a "British" terrorist and not in immigrant or refugee. He has and will be endlessly referred to as a "British citizen" and there is from start to finish absolutely nothing about this whole dirty business that I do not find positively infuriating!

In the first place is the man himself and what he is about. He is a vicious, cowardly, hypocritical dog who deserved far worse than he received. The Islamic State was quick to claim him as one of their own, which is well enough as we can see what sort of spineless pigs they consider "holy warriors". He had not the courage of conviction, otherwise he would not have lived his life submitting to a Christian monarch and, inevitably to some degree or other, accepted subsidy from Her Majesty. He was a coward living a lie who ended his life, not in an honorable act of combat but in a cowardly attack on helpless civilians.

Then there is the media description of him, Khalid Masood, the "British" citizen. Personally, the very phrase 'British citizen' rather than 'British subject' still unsettles me but to call him "British" is to point again to the dishonesty of this pig. His real name, according to The Telegraph, was Adrian Elms and he was a convert to Islam. Neighbors said he grew his beard out and wore Islamic white robes at times. Now, this can be a little tricky because the western media is in the habit of referring to people as being of a certain nationality simply because of where they were born or what sort of paperwork they have on file rather than according to the blood in their veins. And, this man was known by several different aliases during his recurring encounters with the police. This is a purely European problem. If HRH Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, whose ancestry can be traced back to the Saxon Kings of England, were to have been born in Shanghai, it would not make him Chinese and every single one of the billion people in China would find the very notion absurd. The average peasant in the interior of China has rather more common sense than European or North American television personalities.

However, given the information at hand at the moment, let us assume this man began his life as English as fish and chips. It certainly does not sound like he considered himself British. Rather, it sounds like someone forsaking his forebears to adopt the religion and culture of another people. It sounds, again, like someone living a lie. Again, had he any shred of decency, if he felt so strongly about being a Muslim, he should have renounced his British "citizenship" and moved to an Islamic country. But, of course, everything is so upside down today and our duly elected leaders so infantile and deluded that it would be considered cruel and unusual to even suggest such a thing.

Indeed, as soon as the attack was over, the British Prime Minister was quick to take to the television to say that this pig had made his attack in London, "where people of all nationalities, religions and cultures come together to celebrate the values of liberty, democracy and freedom of speech." Hearing that, one might wonder just who it was who won the war against the French Revolutionaries. She also said that the attack was an attack on the values of the Westminster Parliament, which she described as, "democracy, freedom, human rights, the rule of law". Now, I have no doubt that Theresa May is to be preferred to Comrade Corbyn but what a load of utterly contemptible nonsense! Democracy? Is the United Kingdom a democracy? Honestly, I am asking because they cannot seem to make up their mind on this point. Has Britain left the European Union yet? Freedom? Seems to be plenty of freedom for some people but not so much for others, like those who would have said, as I would have, that this murderous pig had no business being in Britain long before today. Human rights? As defined by who? Every tyranny on earth claims to love them. The rule of law? Please. The rule of law has totally evaporated in liberal societies because everything is now partisan, everything is political and the rule of law only applies to your political enemies. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also believes in the rule of law, the rule of Islamic law and they at least make no bones about it.

All of this was like salt on an open wound and then, later, to hear the Prime Minister again take the line spouted by Cameron, Blair, Obama and Bush that this attack, just like all the others in a long line before it, has nothing to do with Islam at all. Then there was the parade of Labour MPs, many Muslims themselves, doing everything they can to shield the "values" of the perpetrator of this crime. We may be living in the most deluded generation in the whole of human history, with leaders coming out in the immediate aftermath of such an attack praising the very poison that has allowed this pig to be about his murderous work. It is disgusting, it is sickening and it is infuriating and it makes me a very, VERY ... Mad Monarchist.

Mad Rant: Calling the British Royals Nazis

No, this was not a planned article as part of the “Year of World War II” at The Mad Monarchist but a reaction to a story that recently appeared in the news that has all of the monarchy-bashers salivating like Pavlov’s dog. There recently came to light a “home video” of the British Royal Family showing King Edward VIII, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Princess Elizabeth (the Queen) and Princess Margaret playing around and -brace yourselves- giving the “Nazi salute”. I first saw it in The Sun (that bastion of journalistic integrity -he said sarcastically) and the media has run with it. Taken in 1933 when the current monarch was a mere child, it has drawn out that crowd which has long tried to convince people that the British Royal Family were all a bunch of Nazi sympathizers deep down. Since it has surfaced there have also been new calls for the Royal Family to open the archives relating to the period in question to show every last detail of what the royals had to do with Nazi Germany or anyone affiliated with the regime. For the monarchy-bashers this was like an early Christmas present since the Nazis are the one group that practically everyone on earth agrees were evil and the one group these days that it is not only okay to openly hate but absolutely mandatory to do so.

Now, in the name of fairness, I have to say that the first rebuttal I heard relating to this video was not very convincing. The first push-back I heard was that the royals were not doing the “Nazi salute” at all but rather just practicing their ‘royal wave’. Frankly, having seen the video, I don’t think anyone is going to buy that. The gesture in question is what was once known as the Roman salute, adopted by Mussolini and his Fascist party as part of revival of all things Roman and later taken up by nationalist groups across Europe such as the Nazis in Germany, the nationalists in Spain and so on. Now, also in the name of fairness (not that anyone cares) I will also say that the same or similar salute was once not at all uncommon. Prior to it becoming associated with the Nazis, a practically identical salute was used in the United States as the official civilian form of salute (it was replaced by the current style of placing your open hand over your heart). I have also seen it used when taking on oath or making a pledge in places as far removed from Europe as Taiwan and South Vietnam. However, because Mussolini, Franco, Hitler etc all used it the salute came to be seen as a symbol of those lumped together under the generic epithet of “fascist”. I have never seen royals “wave” by holding their arms straight out at an angle so it seems pretty clear that it was the Roman salute that was being done and not some sort of rehearsal for the “Miss America” wave royals usually use.

Another complication was the presence of the Queen’s uncle King Edward VIII (at the time the Prince of Wales and later the Duke of Windsor after his abdication). He seems to be the one showing the little group how to do the salute properly. His presence, of course, makes the issue all the stickier because we all know how King Edward VIII, fairly or not, has been labeled for some time as the primary Nazi sympathizer in the British Royal Family. Personally, I think that is going too far. However, there is no doubt that his views would put him on the ‘naughty list’ for acceptable society today. He opposed the League of Nations, had no problem with Mussolini invading Ethiopia and thought it would be a terrible idea for the British Empire to fight another world war with Germany. It is probably also fair to say that he viewed the Nazi regime as an improvement over the Weimar Republic as far as Germany was concerned. But this also points back to a greater problem that is inevitable when one picks out an 82-year old video and looks at in with the popular perception of today rather than in the context of 1933.

Adolf Hitler had quite a few admirers around the world in 1933 and was to gain even more after coming to power in Germany the following year. The same could be said for Benito Mussolini, in fact, the Duce probably had even more admirers as he had been around for a much longer time. Winston Churchill famously said that if he had been an Italian in those days, he would have worn the black shirt himself. The head of President Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration in the United States kept a portrait of Mussolini in his office (that man, Hugh S. Johnson, was Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” in 1933, showing how mainstream such sentiments were). So, when people try to make a major issue of this, it is important to keep in mind that no one in the British Royal Family has the ability to foresee future events and this video was recorded a year before Hitler came to power in Germany, long before any countries were invaded, long before any wars were started and long before anyone was sent to an extermination camp. None of it had happened yet and no one in 1933 would have expected it to.

The really infuriating thing though is that none of this should be taken seriously in the first place. Anyone who has seen the video can clearly see that the group is just playing around, acting silly. Trying to make an issue out of this old home movie is not just ridiculous, it is slanderous. Look beyond the horsing around to what really matters. What really matters are the facts and the fact is that the Queen Mother was denouncing the Nazis before denouncing the Nazis was cool. Hitler called her “the most dangerous woman in Europe”. No love lost there. The Queen and Prince Philip both served in World War II, Prince Philip at the front in the Royal Navy and the Queen at home with what we would call the supply and logistics side of military operations. To try to cast them as being among the ranks of the enemy is treasonous slander of the first order. As for opening the archives; what would that accomplish? I doubt there is anything there that most royal historians do not already know. There were German relatives who held positions in Nazi Germany, we already know that. There were times when the British royals met and talked with such relatives, we know that. Many in Britain had great reservations about going into another world war with Germany and we know that too. It was the conflict that cost Britain her empire and it is no wonder that not everyone would view it as joyous event, regardless of how much they might despise any of the Axis countries.

All this video shows is a couple of adults and two little girls playing around in their backyard, mimicking the gestures of certain leaders on the continent, most of whom were viewed by people in Britain and America as ridiculous and worthy of a joke or two. That’s all it is, it doesn’t “mean” anything, it has no significance whatsoever. All that matters is that, when the chips were down, the British stood by their promise to Poland and when war came with Germany and Italy, and later when Japan sought to take down the British Empire in Asia, the Royal Family stood with the rest of the English-speaking world in doing their duty and serving in any capacity possible to work toward the final victory. They served in the armed forces, they served in combat, they endured the bombing and the privations caused by the submarine blockade and put their lives on the line along with all others who did the same for King and country. To take what is, only in hindsight, an embarrassing home video and try to use it to smear the Royal Family or as another means of bashing the monarchy is unjust, undignified and, in my opinion at least, downright treasonous. And it makes me a very, very … Mad Monarchist.

Mad Rant: Whoring Your Culture

Some things come across the news that are so disgusting one is at a loss for words to describe them. Such a story came to my attention recently. A British “artist” (and I use the term loosely for Michelangelo he is not) named Anish Kapoor unveiled his work: a giant vagina on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles in France which he called “Dirty Corner”. He said it was in reference to Queen Marie Antoinette, calling it the “vagina of the queen coming into power”. Previously, Kapoor was known for his Orbit Tower in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, Britain’s largest piece of public art and itself a rather atrocious eye-sore. Why he chose to do this, who can say? It can be added to the list of infamous abuses Queen Marie Antoinette suffered and continues to suffer at the hands of the successors of the mob that tore her from her family, defamed her in the most atrocious way possible and beheaded her when she had done no one any harm at all and spent her years as queen consort of France working diligently to help her husband and the French people. Just as disgusting as Anish Kapoor is whatever French officials allowed this monstrosity to be displayed at Versailles.

It should be remembered that while this particular display is certainly shocking and has grabbed some headlines, the Palace of Versailles is often used by the French government as the setting for events which, while usually less offensive, are just as inappropriate. Last year sex video star Kim Kardishian and her rapper husband Kanye West stayed at Versailles with an entourage of friends prior to their wedding. For the right price, anyone can rent out a piece of Versailles for practically anything. What has been done to the Palace of Versailles is even worse than the Red Chinese putting a Starbucks in the Forbidden City. This is what I call ‘whoring your culture’ and republics (that used to be monarchies) are experts at it. From east to west, it happens all over the world to varying degrees of offensiveness. Republican governments take the magnificent monuments of the monarchies they usurped and whore them out like pimps. They take what has great cultural significance, even sacred, spiritual significance and put them up for rent like the owner of a seedy motel with a sign that says “hourly rates available” -wink, wink. To these people have any idea what something like Versailles “means”?

Several French monarchs made use of Versailles but it will always be most associated with the one most responsible for it: King Louis XIV. It represents an era of French history of a great flowering in art, architecture, learning and religion. It represents a time when the Kingdom of France was at the cultural center of the western world, when France was the preeminent power in Europe, in short, something that anyone of Gallic blood should take great pride in and wish to see treated with all due respect. However, to the bureaucrats of the republic, it’s just a piece of real estate, valuable only for the amount of money they can sell it for. There is probably no more magnificent, awe-inspiring palace in the entire world, no other place so lavish in its details yet so monumental in scale, such a place where absolutely everything is crafted to perfection to create a sense of glory on a scale never realized before or since. And some look at all of that magnificence, all of the history bound up in it, and see a venue for art exhibits, conferences and a place to host degenerate celebrities. Again, words escape me.

And yet, to lesser degrees, this sort of thing happens all over the world. In Korea, China and Vietnam they have paid actors to reenact ceremonies at their imperial palaces. In India, the Red Fort is used as a backdrop for political speeches and former royal residences across Europe are regular tramped through by hordes of sweaty, gum popping tourists who may simply wish to mark it off their “Things to See” list. Now, I must hasten to add, I am not trying to shut down tourism to these places but there should be some decorum observed and there should be some limits as to what one can do. Yet, all of these things tend to happen to a palace when there are no longer any royals residing in them. They overthrow their monarchy, seize the property of the royals and then make money selling tickets for people to come see it and even paying people to dress up like the former royals and impersonate them. It reminds me, particularly when speaking of a case such as that of Queen Marie Antoinette, of murderers who sign book or movie deals and end up profiting from their crime. However you look at it, it’s positively disgusting.

When the Mad Monarchist Thinks (it is what it sounds like)

I have been thinking a lot recently about the Renaissance. A lot of people are very negative about the Renaissance, but I love it. There was plenty of negative things going on to be sure but it was also a glorious period, a flowering of the High Middle Ages and a high point of western civilization. It had achieved the height of Christendom in the High Middle Ages, then in the Renaissance that flowered into a more total encapsulation of western civilization with the rediscovery of classical history, of glorious ancient Rome and putting the sum total of western civilization altogether in one glorious package. There was good and bad like always, but it was grand and only the good was celebrated while the bad was recognized for what it was and nobody tried to twist it into something good. But I was thinking about the Renaissance and about Tudor England and all the things that happened back then and that forces one to think about King Henry VIII. And Henry VIII is not one of my favorite monarchs, he was not what I would consider ideal because he did not hold fast to the traditions that were handed down to him and many people today who do admire him, though that is a majority of a minority, do so because he set the stage, not because they would have liked the play at the time. It’s because he was a colossus in English history because everything that happened before him was all his creation (it created him not that he created it) and everything that happened after was a result of what he did or what he set in motion and a lot of the people that admire him today admire him because they like what came after, because that became the new normal, the new tradition but if they were alive at the time, with their current mindset and values, they would have criticized King Harry for upsetting everything and being so revolutionary in all the things he did but what he did became the new normal for the conservatives to hold on to. And you can’t get around the fact that a lot of that has to do with religion because that’s when the division in England started between the Catholics and the Protestants so the Protestants have a reason to admire him or at least defend him while the Catholics have a reason to hold anger on him. They have more reason because they were the injured party in that country but they also cannot single the King out alone because the bishops in England, they all went along with it, all but Fisher we know and that really wasn’t unusual. They let him have his way and made him think he could always have his way and most of them went along with whatever way the wind was blowing. Who can say they were entirely wrong? Things might be seen very differently, even by the Catholics, if the Queen had died sooner or even if Queen Mary had had the son she thought she was going to have, it might have all been just a small bump in the road toward an Anglo-Spanish era of domination. Because bishops going along with their king was not new and it’s not necessarily a bad thing, it has helped the Catholic Church survive a long time. When the Hundred Years War was going on, the French bishops told their king that God was on his side and the English bishops told their king that God was on his side and they both went to war full of faith and nobody questioned the Church about it. If they had tried to carry out some sort of super-national master plan they would have been seen as suspect and as enemies and the reaction would have been only natural just as it was perfectly natural at the time for clerics to be faithful to God and loyal to their king, no matter what borders they were inside of because they are not other-worldly beings but people too. The Pope made Chalemagne an emperor, gave him the title, and bowed down to him because he was the emperor. And this is part of what monarchy is and why it has lasted so long and why revolutionary republicanism is so fundamentally evil, because it goes against nature. It tries to be beyond nationality and all about legal constructs and not about people, not about the earth or the hole of the pit we were dug out of that we’re supposed to remember, by God’s command. To love your country is perfectly natural and I don’t trust people that don’t love their country. Love your country even if you distrust your government. Thomas More said something like that, the King’s servant as far as that could take him because he was English and that’s what he was supposed to do, that was natural. Of course, being a monarchist in the United States, I get people all the time accusing me of hating my country and nothing could be farther from the truth. I don’t hate my country and I get very frustrated when monarchists start going anti-American just because it’s popular to be against whoever is riding high at the moment, when there’s no reason for it. Right now there’s hardly a monarchy in the world that doesn’t depend on the United States for protection. But if you love your country you’re going to love your king because he is the personification of your country, the land, the history, the traditions, the whole national story are all bound up in that one man or woman and their family, if it’s a long one or a short one. All this republican, internationalism is devilish stuff, super-national, globalism and all, that’s Tower of Babel type chicanery, that’s nothing new and it’s nothing good. Of course, that doesn’t mean being xenophobic, a xenophobic person is a small-minded person, they got a pinched sense of reality, they’re blind to the world around them and they’d cut their own throat if they thought it’d make their neighbor have a bad day. You shouldn’t talk negatively or insulting about countries or nations anyway, individuals is one thing, a government is one thing but not the country, not the people, who are just trying to make their way and follow the path of least resistance. They’re just looking for some peace. But you have to walk that line, that narrow path that isn’t easy between internationalism and the sort of nationalism that’s just xenophobic and self-destructive because the enemy is pushing both ways. They push the internationalism junk openly but they don’t mind the radical, destructive type nationalism either because it is self-destructive and so they know it helps internationalism win in the end and it’s a perfect bogey man for them to scare the great mass of moderate, middle of the road types while they go on herding them in the internationalist direction, trying to tell them that’s the path to salvation and world peace. It’s what caused the world we have, it’s what made the world after the world of the Renaissance was destroyed. Just when western civilization started to reach this new level of learning, of art and religion and all that they started to undermine it and tear it down. Then the bad guys got their big moment of inspiration with the French Revolution. It wasn’t the American Revolution, that was child’s play to these people and those Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917 weren’t singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” marching down the street, they were singing “La Marseillaise” and raise the bloody banner, water the fields with impure blood, the world is against you, so go fight against the world. It’s why Marx said “Workers of the WORLD unite” and why Stalin said he would see the world conquered in his lifetime and why Mao said the “world has stood up” on the heavenly gate of peace. And if love of king and country wasn’t stamped on our DNA they would have done it too but they’re still trying. They have about got people poisoned off on their kings, helped out here and there by those that put their prejudice before even their own self-interest and now they’re going after (and having an easier time of it with the kings all shackled) the countries by going after property, the idea that anyone has a right to own anything, to their own property or their own native soil. It doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to everyone! It belongs to whoever needs it worst. How do we know who needs it worst? The commissar will tell you, don’t worry about that and even your country, that doesn’t belong to you or your people, it belongs to the whole world, because countries are just legal constructs, a border is just a line in the dirt, it’s not like nations are each unique families, their own unit with a father-monarch that embodies them, no, they say, we’re all just alike, we’re all interchangeable and nothing belongs to you, it belongs to everyone. That’s equality and all good, decent people believe in that, they all believe in liberty, equality and brotherhood right? This is what people don’t understand when they tell me that I have to make a better case for monarchy, I have to better show how monarchy can take care of everyone better, do what a revolutionary republic does but do it better and they don’t understand that I don’t even see it that way. You can, it’s a perfectly legitimate way to go if you want to, you can make that case and it’s true because when things are going the way nature intended, it will be better and it will be easier in a way at least, but that’s not my bottom line, that’s not my standard of judgment and people don’t see it when they tell me that you can’t just be critical of republics, you have to show that monarchy is better. I want to shout at them, but I can’t because I’d be doing it over and over again every time until I blow out my throat, that that’s a fine way to go but I don’t feel like I should have to prove that monarchy is better because I don’t believe that’s the standard of judgment. My standard is not fundamentally utilitarian, I say a third time, that’s fine if you want it and it can work like that, but I say you make your life better, that’s not the King’s job to make your life better, it’s not him who is responsible if you’re a failure. I say he is the King and should stay the King because it is his right and no one should have the power to take that away from him. I don’t care if you can run my property better than I can, I don’t care if you think you can make it more profitable than I can, it’s mine and that’s all the reason I need for saying you can’t have it. The King is the king because it’s his birthright and no one should be able to take that away from him. Change things around him all you like if it makes you feel better, you’ll just get burned by it eventually but you have no right to take away his birthright. When you do that, everything else is pointless. Everything reaches but it’s too low to catch, it bottoms out and going from there, you might inch up once in a while, some spots may be a little higher than others but you’re totally playing on the wrong damn field and nothing you do can change that until you get back on the right track and have things based on what they’re supposed to be based on, the way things grew up naturally to make you who you are or what you are, Understand? It’s like God, I’ve probably gone on with this long enough, but a monarch is like God, not in an idolatry kind of way but in that you have to have a monarch to have everything else in order, on the temporal side of things. That’s not clear. Sorry. I say God like God is the number zero. What is zero? It’s a contradiction, it’s the number that isn’t a number, it’s the quantity of nothing, it doesn’t make any sense but if you don’t have zero, if you don’t have that starting place, you can’t have math, you can’t have fractions even, you have to have the number that isn’t a number so you can have actual numbers. Nothing would make sense without it, it’s the starting point and so God is a contradiction, God cannot be explained but without that basis there is nothing and so the monarch is like that for peoples, you just can’t have a country without that natural framework. Even if you have a system, not a system but a tradition that is done a different way like the Chinese Confucian sort of system, you still have to have that basic traditional framework that grew up organically over centuries, even thousands of years, or everything falls apart so that you look at China today, after the Qing were torn down and there’s hardly anything really Chinese about China anymore. You could say the same thing about some colonial countries that went revolutionary and abolished their monarchies and today, looking back, they were more true to themselves when they were ruled by foreign powers than when they are independent because they’ve gotten rid of that anchor, that basic necessary starting point that everything else flowed from. Vietnam was more Vietnamese when the French were there, when the damn French Republic was there, because the soul survived, the spirit was maintained, in a real sense the spirits were maintained so it was okay there was hope there was the foundation. It’s what the patriot Tran Cao Van said right before they cut his head off, “The earth is still below us, Heaven is still above us, the Dynasty is still there, we wish 10,000 years to His Majesty the Emperor”. It’s good, we’ll come through. Now look at it. The spirit is being smothered or they’re doing their best to. Or you look at Mexico, look at Maximilian who took up where his ancestors had left off, he heard a divine calling to save those people, like the Holy Ghost fluttering over the abyss, I know he heard it and when he took his oath it MEANT something to him and when he died, he died like a king, he died with dignity and his generals died like heroes and that’s the first thing the enemy comes for is your dignity, we see that all around us. They come for your dignity first, they set up conditions so people give up their own dignity willingly, so that they shed it like wet clothes, fast as they can, with great enthusiasm just for the mere chance of some reward or just for a few minutes when people will notice them because they’re cutting us off from each other. They cut up the family so we don’t have that support and they cut us off from the king, from that anchor to the ancient and fundamental or they shackle them with so many chains that they can just glimpse us and we can just glimpse them like through that dark glass. We can see them we can see each other but we cannot touch, they want to slowly or quickly however they can do it, tear us away from our roots, from who we are and make us into something else. That’s why I don’t like hateful criticism of those royals we have today with so many limitations on them. I don’t hold anything against them, I can’t, I feel sorry for them because they are suffering too even if they don’t realize it because they’re being torn from us just like we’re being torn from them. It’s happening all over and we can see all over the world the powers that be dragging us in the same direction, some want to go faster, some want to go slower, but almost all of them are going in the same direction or are at least trying to. One side may put the brakes on from time to time but none have the courage or maybe none have the strength to take us back because the villains have managed to make that into something seen as hateful. You can’t go back, is what they tell us, you can only go forward, even if behind you is paradise and before is misery and despair they say it’s only good going forward and you shouldn’t even look back (because they’re afraid of what the people might see) but just take their word for it that it was all horrible behind you and keep going forward even when you see the cliff coming in front of you. This is going to probably be pretty hard to read but, too late now, may as well go on. It’s happening everywhere in one form or another, we just have a hard time keeping it straight, between helping each other out (because they’re all pulling together, at least when it counts they certainly do) while we’re torn between wanting to avoid losing who we are, because it’s because something so precious rare, and falling off into tribal bickering and old hatreds for injustices long past. It’s hard to keep straight and all the while the villains keep trying to pick away at our roots, at our foundations, trying to rip us away from that thing that someone once called the “taproot to Eden”, you know who it was. Some countries have done it quickly, just ripping it off like a bandage, you see this more in Third World countries and they are generally pretty miserable places but even in First World countries, the same thing is happening just more slowly, it’s all part of the same thing and it’s trying to strangle every last shred of decency and grace and glory out of all of us. In the western world I think they started doing that or at least making progress with that around the time of the Renaissance or the end of it, that probably helped end it but the bad guys were assisted by plenty of close-minded people too, there are always collaborators, you can count on that, always collaborators. And that’s not to say no one was trying before, they were always trying but they were not making any real progress because their holes kept getting patched up but just like the fall of Rome, because the Romans did everything in the world two thousand years ago already, eventually the holes became too many and people got lazy about patching them up or maybe made mistakes in which were the most serious but I think you know what I mean. Actually you probably don’t but I may as well stop now as don’t really have a set place to stop because I didn’t really set out with any goal in mind here, just think of it as “thinking out loud” but written down. If you got anything useful out of it, I’ll say it was worth it and if not, I probably won’t have the nerve to put this sort of stuff out here again anyway so maybe next time things will be more familiar.

To end, I’ll just say “Remember”. Always. (monarchists should at least get that one)

Mad Rant: The Red Menace

WHY?!?! This drives me up the wall! Why am I constantly being told that I am crazy, deranged or at least hopelessly “out of date” whenever I talk about the threat of communism today? “Get with the times”, they say or, “the Cold War is over” they say. As if the Berlin Wall coming down was the death of Marxism altogether everywhere in the world! Yes, it is true, the “Iron Curtain” came down in Europe but many of the same people were in the communist party in those days are running the continent, east and west, today in the ruling clique of the European Union. Even more pronounced is the fact that, while the “Iron Curtain” came down in Europe, the “Bamboo Curtain” across Asia is still going strong -and being reinforced by American and European currency as well. Why does everyone pretend as though every communist threat disappeared when Germany was reunified? I don’t understand the mentality! And why do so many tell me that I am “out of date” for pointing out actual communists causing trouble all over the world while these same people are always comparing every villainous national leader to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis? No one says to them, “World War II is over, get with the times!” No, in fact, there are still groups that comb the earth looking for any surviving Nazis to arrest them and imprison or execute them. No one calls them out of date, so why are communists treated differently. There are plenty of victims of communism in the world today because, unlike the Nazis, there are numerous communist parties still in power in countries all around the world. So why is worrying about communism “crazy” and “out of date”?

People can call names as much as they like but facts are facts and the fact is that communism is not dead and buried (I would think that would be obvious) but is alive and well and still working its insidious agenda even in North America and western Europe. The President of the European Commission is Jose Manuel Barroso who was a Maoist revolutionary working to bring down the corporatist state in Portugal. Since then he has said he is not a communist but his actions say something else and would it matter if someone had been a member of the Nazi Party in their youth? The President of the United States had a Marxist mentor as a child, his communications director, Anita Dunn, said she admired Mao Zedong, he even had a Mao Zedong ornament hanging on his Christmas tree at the White House. Some conservatives shouted about this stuff, but most just ignored it. Would everyone have reacted the same to a White House communications director saying she admired Adolf Hitler or if the President had a Christmas tree ornament with Hitler or a swastika on it? Everyone knows the answer to that, it’s obvious. Well, Mao Zedong killed more people (by a considerable margin) than Adolf Hitler did and unlike the Nazi Party which is dead, buried and outlawed, the Communist Party of Mao Zedong is still in power today ruling the largest country on earth with the largest military and an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Why is this not alarming? Or, at least, why is it “crazy” and “old fashioned” for people like me to be alarmed by it?

In Russia, the man in charge is President Vladimir Putin, a former officer of the Soviet KGB. Now, I am not saying that Putin is a communist, it would be hard to pin him down like that. On the one hand he said the fall of the Soviet Union was a terrible thing, on the other hand he has privatized industries rather than nationalizing them but regardless of what you think of his actions today, if you consider him a hero or a villain (because there are those in Russia who think Stalin was a great guy and at least they have been kept out of power) but just consider where he came from and, again, ask yourself if the world would tolerate or do business with a President of Germany who used to be an SS officer? At commemorations of World War II in Russia the old Soviet flag is still paraded. Do the Germans still parade with Nazi flags on historical occasions? No, of course not but, again, Stalin killed more people than Hitler did. Stalin invaded peaceful countries, neutral countries as well. So if everyone agrees that Hitler was evil, if everyone is constantly on the lookout for “the next Hitler”, why is it considered a throw-back to the 1950’s to be worried about communism? And worse than the various communist parties (which still hold power in countries from North Korea to Cuba) is the spread of the Marxist philosophy under other names.

The education system in First World countries around the world has become dominated by teachers unions that all have a Marxist mindset and a Marxist agenda. I’m sure people will say that sounds crazy but the facts are the facts. Schools all over the First World (and these are targeted because the Marxists target success because they think success can never be legitimately earned) teach their students to be ashamed of their countries, to despise their own people, to look down on their forebears and to scorn national pride and love of country. Americans will remember, not so long ago, the uproar over teachers unions in Wisconsin. Governor Scott Walker tried to limit collective bargaining rights for public employees and faced massive opposition from the teachers unions who tried (unsuccessfully) to remove him from office. They had plenty of insults to throw at the man and plenty of names to call him but one of the ones most used was “the Midwest Mussolini”. Now, why would they call Governor Walker “the Midwest Mussolini”? Why not “the Midwest Mao”? Probably because the people running the teachers unions do not consider Mao Zedong to be all that bad of a guy, just like the President they support. It is the same across both oceans from America. Despite the stories you may have heard from China or Korea about textbooks, in Japan the children are taught to be ashamed of their country. The teachers unions in Japan resisted so fiercely even flying the national flag or singing the national anthem that one school principal committed suicide because of his failure to reconcile the two sides of the issue. They opposed fiercely the law which officially designated these long-held symbols to be the national flag and anthem of Japan. Why? Because the flag was the same as that of the old Empire of Japan and the national anthem is a hymn of praise to the Emperor and as people with a Marxist mentality they totally despise these symbols and what they represent. The situation across the Atlantic from America is no better.

I always knew from American textbooks that in the American War for Independence the colonial rebels are naturally portrayed as the “good guys” and the British and loyalist Americans as the “bad guys”. Whatever your opinion is, that makes sense for American schools to teach that. But, knowing that, I always assumed that in British schools the textbooks would teach the opposite point of view. I was genuinely shocked the first time an English friend of mine informed me that, no, when he went to school they were taught that the American rebels were right and the British government was wrong. Later, this same friend, who has English roots going back to the conquest and is as staunch and proud, “Queen and country” patriot as you would ever hope to meet, shocked me again when he admitted that he didn’t know the words to “God Save the Queen”, the British national anthem. I explained to him how, in American schools, everyone is taught the national anthem and we say the pledge of allegiance to the flag every morning. This doesn’t happen in the United Kingdom. The national anthem is not taught there, no pledge of allegiance to the Crown even exists for school children and, I was told, aside from certain public holidays, almost no one ever flies the national flag, the “Queen’s Colours” as they were once called. I was as shocked by this at the time as I am still shocked when people act as though they think radical nationalism is running rampant in Japan. No, the same problem exists in the British Isles; Marxist-dominated teachers organizations are teaching children to be ashamed of British history, to have no respect for their forebears, no loyalty to the Crown and no love of country.

But, if you point these things out, everyone says, “you’re living in the 1950’s” and it is ridiculous. Why does no one say the same thing about the Southern Poverty Law Center that is still monitoring the Ku Klux Klan in America, even though the KKK has not been a major national movement since the 1920’s? For all intents and purposes, the KKK doesn’t even exist anymore. A Klan gathering these days is nothing more than one or two families getting together to wear sheets and set things on fire, but concern about them is legitimate while concern about communism is “crazy”?! Just to be clear, for any half-wits in the audience, I am not saying any of these targeted groups are good, I am only saying that there should be just as much concern about dangerous groups that actually exist today as is shown to dangerous groups that existed in the past but are almost totally gone at present. I could go on forever. Everyone in the world, the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, all trades with Red China which is still ruled by the Chinese Communist Party and which still has the huge portrait of their hero-dictator Mao Zedong hanging over the Tiananmen Gate of the Imperial City. Would all these countries have the same economic ties to a Germany that was still ruled by the Nazi Party and had a huge portrait of Hitler hanging on the Brandenburg Gate? Would these countries trade with Italy if the Fascist Party were in power and a huge portrait of Mussolini was hanging on the Coliseum? I think we all know the answer to that. Yet, everyone trades with China, Europe and Canada trade with Cuba, South Korea even does business with North Korea and those who oppose these things are called “out of touch”. But, of course, Hitler didn’t have any of those adorable panda bears, they’re so cute!

Communist ideology is rampant throughout the world, on every continent and in almost every country to one degree or another. Yet, if you point this out, you’re accused of living in the past, of peddling “McCarthyism” (who actually found actual communists if the truth matters to anyone) and just being hopelessly out of touch. So what if Franklin Roosevelt was the first president to recognize the Soviet Union, so what if he orchestrated the government takeover of whole sections of the American economy, so what if he only got into World War II after Hitler invaded Soviet Russia, so what if his administration was crawling with communist agents and so what if he and his hapless allies handed over half of Europe to Joseph Stalin and so what if an unfortunate side-effect of World War II was making the world safe for communism -that is all pure coincidence with no substance to it at all. Why do I bring it up? Because World War II was the great moment of glory for communism as is obvious by how they cling to it. They got to be the “good guys” and that is why every world leader that is not a communist who gets put on the ‘naughty list’ is referred to as or compared to Adolf Hitler, that is why Communist China always points the finger at Japan and invokes World War II whenever anyone looks too closely at their own gross misdeeds. They want everyone to just remember the war and keep chasing those Nazi, Fascist and imperialist bogeymen while they continue to tighten their grip on the future of humanity.

Communists may not always be honest about who they are but their ideology is still around and still spreading. Communist dictatorships still exist and they are still dangerous and growing more so with every passing year as the rest of the world embraces them. I do not mind saying so, I am a monarchist and being called “out of date” is rather mundane for me but the fact that so many will point to other horrors of the much more distant past while willfully ignoring the real and current threat that communism poses in security, in international relations and in education, makes me a very, very … Mad Monarchist.

Mad Rant: Befriending Revolutionary Iran

Any monarchist today should be as appalled as I am at the number of people today who have any sympathy or, worse yet, support for the Islamic Republic of Iran. One can see this on both ends of the political spectrum and even among groups claiming to be neither left or right. You hear, in the west, people on the left saying that Iran is the poor, put upon victim of western bullying and that the countries of the west are somehow making the Iranian regime violent and belligerent by refusing to treat them the same as other countries that do not do things like stone people to death or sponsor terrorism around the world. On the other hand, there are those on the far right who have adopted the Iranian regime as some sort of hero for doing things like defying the liberal west, calling for violence against Israel and executing homosexuals. Then, there are also those few in the libertarian camp who argue that if we would only adopt a free trade treaty with Iran, they would eventually be converted to western liberalism through the benefits of capitalism. It makes for quite a witch’s supper with religious radicals being on the same side as socialist and capitalist atheists. However, as a monarchist, it astounds and disgusts me even more that anyone describing themselves as a monarchist or any sort of believer in traditional authority could be in any way sympathetic or supportive of the current Islamic Republic of Iran.

The current Islamic regime came to power by means of a violent revolution that was co-opted (as so many revolutions are) by an exiled fanatic who was a traitor to his country, his sovereign and, I dare say, even his religion. It shocks me that anyone considering themselves a monarchist could be in support of this. Iran was a strong constitutional monarchy in which the monarch had a powerful and central position, who was revered as a father figure to his people and he was brought down by a riotous and seditious mob, forced into exile and threatened and persecuted for the rest of his life. Yet, somehow, though the logic of it escapes me, some have truly adopted the mentality that any sort of progress is a sign of evil (though evidently not computers and the internet based on how often I hear from them) and that the Imperial State of Iran was worthy of death for such ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ as allowing western cinema into the country or allowing women to wear short skirts. Some people, claiming to be monarchists (and I say “claiming” because in this case they support the revolutionary republicans) somehow think that in the case of Iran it was the revolutionaries who were the true “conservatives” and that the last Shah and his monarchy were some sort of European social democracy with rampant immorality, secularism and perhaps even atheism (after all, they made peace with Israel and what sort of “good Muslim” doesn’t want to kill every Jew on earth?).

That anyone claiming to be a monarchist or a lover of tradition could have any sympathy at all for the Islamic Republic of Iran, frankly, leaves me nearly speechless. Like the proverbial mosquito in the nudist colony, I know what to do, I just don’t know where to start. If you are a monarchist, if you are a traditionalist, if you believe that not everything in life should be subject to change on the whim of the temporary majority, there is absolutely, positively no reason, at all, for you to support the Islamic Republic. Anyone should be able to see, that is, anyone with any measurable intelligence, should be able to see that, beyond the superficial things like (gasp) women being educated, wearing short skirts or people going to see Hollywood movies, the Imperial State of Iran was far more traditional at heart than anything that has succeeded it. It looked with pride back on the entirety of Persian history and not merely that most recent Islamic era and it maintained the existing, traditional views of religion (yes, religion) and politics that had far deeper roots than anything the Islamic revolutionaries later came up with. Iran, under its last dynasty, was going through something of a mini-Renaissance, in some ways similar to the Renaissance experienced by Catholic Europe.

In both cases, ancient civilizations were being rediscovered that had flowered before the adoption of the dominant religion (Christianity in Europe, Islam in Iran). In both cases there was also an opening up, to a degree, to different styles and ideas and in both cases there were some religious fanatics who preached fundamentalism and condemned everything around them. In Europe, the Pope had such figures hauled before the inquisition and handed over to the secular authorities for execution. In Iran the answer was exile to France (not exactly a harsh punishment). Those who claim that a few movies and mini-skirts made the Iran of the Shah some sort of modern, progressive, radical state purposely ignore the fact that one of the things the religious dissident fanatics were most upset about was the rediscovery and celebration of the ancient, pre-Islamic Persian Empire and the styles of that glorious past when Persia was the dominant power in the known world. If you believe in honoring and celebrating history and tradition, your sympathies should be entirely with the Shah and not the traitors who drove him from power. In some ways, his regime was more traditional than any had been in that land for centuries. From the exalted nature of the monarch to his personal guard known as “The Immortals” the Imperial State of Iran stood on a foundation of history and tradition far more ancient than that even claimed by those who tore it all down.

However, the claim is often made that traditionalists or conservatives should have been opposed to the Imperial State of Iran because there were very un-Islamic things like nightclubs, cinemas and, again, those vile skirts that caused innocent men to be driven into frenzies of lust by the sight of a calf or perhaps even a bit of thigh. Obviously, I am making somewhat light of this because I do not consider it a damnable offense for a woman to allow her ankles to be seen in public but then, I am not a Muslim. However, back in my university days I did study Islam and the history of the Middle East (from Egypt to Iran was our definition) and so, while not an expert, I am not totally ignorant of the subject and will make my thoughts known (it is your choice to read them or not). From my understanding, if we are to assume that one is a Shiite Muslim as the majority of Iranians are, there is still absolutely no justification for anyone supporting the Islamic revolutionary regime. As I recall, Shiite Islam was based on the idea that no one can speak for God until the Mahdi, the expected one, comes from heaven to lead the faithful to their ultimate triumph. The Ayatollah broke, radically, with this long-established, traditional view of Shiia Islam by claiming unprecedented powers for the Shiite clerics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In doing this, the Ayatollah showed himself to be a revolutionary in religion as well as politics. The basis of Shiite Islam is that only God can appoint the religious leader and guardian on earth and so there was an emphasis on the original family line of the Prophet Mohammed. As a result, the Shiite branch of Islam has always had a more prominent part for clerics than in Sunni Islam, however, under the Ayatollah this was radically expanded to ridiculous proportions so that imams became infallible, sinless and were treated with such subservient devotion that one could be forgiven for thinking they had been exalted above Mohammed himself. Powers and privileges which were traditionally exclusive to the hidden, Twelfth Imam were massively usurped by the Ayatollah and his clerical-republican regime. So, on the one hand, you have the Shah, who was a religious man and a staunch Muslim from the day he was born until the day he died, exercising political authority based on centuries of traditions (or even millennia if we go back to ancient Persia) and on the other hand we have an Ayatollah whose entire theory regarding the justification of his own authority dated back no farther than 1970. Surely, anyone can see which is the more traditional.

Today, although we have touched on this in the past, it bears repeating, we also have those who at least sympathize with the forces of the Islamic Revolution in Iran because they claim to oppose the decadence and immorality of the modern west. That mentality, is not only stupid, it is stupid to the point of being suicidal. It is suicidal because these types seem not to grasp the fact that these fanatics consider the west at its most religious and conservative to be just as immoral as in our own liberal, permissive, present day. These are people who would hold the Christians of the Middle Ages as perverse because they danced touching each other, who would condemn the Popes as immoral for having nudes painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, people who were calling America the “Great Satan” back in the days of Bishop Sheen and “Leave It to Beaver”. Anyone who thinks that these fanatics would show any kindness to someone just because they consider a few of the same things to be immoral is soundly mistaken. They hate the Christian west no matter how truly Christian it actually is. Besides that, however, is the fact that what they hate about the west is more often based on the power and influence held by western nations and has nothing to do with religion or morality at all. Otherwise, how would one explain their cozy relationship with Communist China, an officially atheist, anti-religious regime that persecutes Christians, Buddhists and Muslims and carries out such things as forced abortions and sterilizations? Any tradition-minded person in the west who thinks they can make common cause with the Iranian regime is sorely mistaken.

Finally, we have the actions of the Iranian regime on the pan-monarchist front. It violently opposes and is opposed by virtually every monarchy in the region. In the past, the Emirates of Kuwait, Qatar and the Sultanate of Oman found it necessary to be at least somewhat friendly with Iran for the sake of their own safety. In the case of Kuwait they also shared a common threat from the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq (which also reveals how Iran is not being principled in its choice of friends and enemies for it simultaneously supports the Baathist regime in Syria).  Iran has said openly that there is ‘no room’ for monarchies in Islam as they pose a fundamental ideological threat to the power of the Iranian clerics who must justify their own position based on usurping authority from a monarch. Iran is staunchly opposed to and is opposed by the Kingdom of Jordan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the Gulf monarchies aligning with Saudi Arabia as that kingdom has been more helpful to them recently. This is a far cry from the Imperial State of Iran when there were friendly relations between the Shah and the Saudi King as there were between Iran and the other monarchies of the region and even family ties with the late Kingdom of Egypt.

Other monarchists made the mistake of thinking they could make common cause with Iran and were shown how wrong they were. For instance, in the wake of the Islamic Revolution, King Khalid of Saudi Arabia sent a friendly message to Iran calling for Islamic solidarity. He was met only with anti-monarchy bigotry with the Ayatollah responding by saying that Mecca was under the control of “heretics”. Needless to say, relations between the two countries have never been friendly. In several other countries, monarchist and republican alike, Iran has worked consistently to support subversive elements and oppose any with monarchist sympathies. Those who would sympathize with the Iranian regime as some sort of traditional fortress set against the “evils” of modernity might also remember that the former President of Iran took the exact opposite point of view and boasted of how much more progressive, democratic and liberal his country was when compared to a country like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As recently as Friday, January 24, 2014 an article appeared in Britain’s “The Telegraph” proposing that the west should reach out to the Islamic Republic of Iran because it is “now” a more liberal and democratic country than Saudi Arabia.

I hope I have made the case crystal clear. The Islamic Republic of Iran is an illegitimate regime of political and religious traitors and usurpers, it is an enemy to both the traditional systems of the west and of the Islamic Middle East as well as Iran itself. They are a treasonous, illegitimate regime supported by treasonous regimes and supporting treasonous, revolutionary forces far beyond their borders. There should be no justification for anyone who supports monarchy or traditional authority having any support or sympathy for the current Iranian regime whatsoever and the idea that any, no matter how small their numbers might be, actually do makes me a very … Mad Monarchist.

Mad Rant: The More Things Change, The More the EU Stinks

Recently, yours truly went on a tear about how, when it comes to Russia, a great many people seemed to have missed the memo about the Soviet Union collapsing under the weight of its own stupidity. The Cold War is supposed to be over; right? Yet, the U.S. is giving war guarantees to the Baltic states, Poland, maybe even Georgia for seemingly no other reason than to antagonize Russia. After all, if Putin got a wild hair and decided to invade any of these countries, does anyone really believe the U.S. would be able or willing to go to war with a nuclear-armed country over it? That would be against the rules after all; the U.S. only goes to war with countries that do NOT have nuclear weapons. On the other hand, while I would salute the Putin regime in Russia for efforts taken to defend Christianity, in Russia, and to combat the plummeting Russian birthrate, when it comes to foreign policy, it seems that there are so few good ideas that the boys in Moscow have to raid the files of the old Soviet Union. This also means making nice with some countries that have pretty abysmal records when it comes to Christianity; something which flies in the face of the portrayal of Russia as the last bastion of Christendom, particularly made during the Syrian fiasco.

After all, Russia is still besties with Castro’s Cuba, the terrorist regime in Iran and the Viet Cong government in Hanoi. About the only thing different from the foreign policy of the Soviet days is that Russia seems to be trying to make nice with Communist China which even the Soviets had better sense than to do. That was mostly because both wanted to be in the driver’s seat of such an alliance and, as far as the bandits in Peking are concerned, that has not changed. If this is real, watch out for Moscow taking orders from Peking (a good indication being if the arms sales to Vietnam suddenly stop) and if not, we will know it was all just a charade undertaken in the hopes of making the idiots in Washington soil themselves. It seems odd from both sides of the world. The Cold War supposedly ended and yet even those governments which most professed their willingness to make amends with Russia (Bush inviting Putin to the ranch and calling him a good guy then Obama sending Hillary Clinton over with that ridiculous “reset” button) have each gone out of their way to needlessly antagonize Russia. How this helps America in any way no one has ever explained to me. On the other hand, Russia seems stuck in the foreign policy ruts of the Soviet Union. So much has changed (for the better) in Russia since the USSR collapsed and yet, on the world stage, it’s like they have no new ideas at all and can only instinctively repeat every policy of the Soviets.

Now, I told you that story in order to tell you another one. After that tirade, this person asked me why yours truly, living in the west, should be so opinionated on matters concerning Russia, East Asia and Southeast Asia instead of the “western world” such as Europe? Of course, as anyone who has been around me can attest, I can blather on at length on almost any political subject but I was told, and it may be true, that I seemed more “animated” when talking about the situation in monarchies like Japan or Thailand than the continent with the most monarchies: Europe. True, I have ties of family and friendship with Japan and Indochina but the same could be said for Europe. Then, of course, there is Russia which I have no personal ties with at all but which I have a great cultural and spiritual fondness for, viewing Imperial Russia as sort of the “last outpost” of traditional, Christian monarchy before the flood of revolution came crashing in. I was, needless to say, a little astonished by this line of questioning because I am deeply concerned about Europe and the remaining European monarchies in particular. However, the response I came up with was the European Union. I think it embodies all of the problems I have with modern Europe and why it sometimes can be hard to really care about the continent.

Say what you will about Russia, for example, but it is a country and a nation and proudly so. They have an illegitimate government and I sometimes stand aghast at their stupidity but one thing no one could ever say about Russia is that they let others boss them around (again, this might be changing as it concerns China but we will have to wait and see). Russia will do what it thinks is best, whether it really is or is not, and does not really care what the rest of the world thinks about it. Since the European Union has really started to spread its tentacles and take on the trappings of being the “United States of Europe”, quite unlike Russia, they seem to be drowning in a sea of blandness. Individual countries become less prominent, less important and, as such, so do their national leaders, ten of which are monarchs. Whether you like him or not, there is certainly no equivalent of Mr. Putin in Europe. There are few to no bits of news that rise to the level of national drama because the EU keeps a tight lid on all that stuff, everyone is supposed to be on the same team. The most harsh thing to say would be to ask an admittedly hurtful question. Why should anyone else care about your country when you do not care about it yourself? That sounds harsh, I know, but just consider the facts. The United Kingdom is probably the most EU-skeptic country in Europe and yet, as far as I know, the most prominent anti-EU party, UKIP, has not been able to gain a single seat in Westminster. That is troubling. At least, if you think countries and nations are not interchangeable and everyone is just like every other.

The European Union, as I believe the rather colorful leader of UKIP has said, is in fact out to destroy nation-states entirely, which means destroying nations and they are doing it. They and the whole liberal, leftist, globalist elite clique that they run with. And it really isn’t even that difficult and we have a perfect object lesson in the case of Kosovo. The only difference between Kosovo and other places is that the Albanian population was already there. However, think about it: think about all of the immigration laws, refugee laws, asylum seeker laws. People can basically come from anywhere to any country in the European Union because enforcing national borders somehow violates “human dignity” and the “free movement of peoples”. So, there is nothing you can do to stop people from another nation moving into your own and once they are there, you must give them the same privileges as the natives and allow them to live as they lived in whatever their country of origin was because to do otherwise will get you a trip to the European Court of Human Rights. So, nothing to stop foreigners from coming in and since we are all good democrats in Europe these days, once enough have come in they can vote to change the laws to be just like the homeland they left behind and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. And if the thought even crosses your mind that you wish you could do something about it then you are probably an evil person who needs sensitivity training. The EU has set up a system which practically guarantees the total destruction of its member nations.

This is a uniquely European problem. It exists in some other western countries as well but still nowhere near to the degree it does in Europe. This mentality does not exist in Russia or almost anywhere in Asia. That is partly why there seems to be more tension in other parts of the world. There are tensions between, for example, China and Vietnam because the Chinese still want their country to “win” and the Vietnamese think their nation is not the same as China and they do not want their nation to be dominated by another. And these are both officially communist states! Yet, the hundreds of years of struggle between the two has not been forgotten. Even with an internationalist ideology officially in power, their attachment to their own people and their own country remains. Why does Europe seem to be different? Again, my only explanation is the European Union. There are, of course, other roots to this mentality, reasons for this and for that, but the EU really sums it all it up quite nicely. It is a union of nation-states that seems driven to destroy its member nations completely and has set up the perfect economic and political system to make that happen. And it is because I do care about Europe that this makes me a very, very … Mad Monarchist.