Tuesday, February 6, 2018

When Does the Republican Magic Work?

The liberal democratic republican model makes great claims for itself. Even more extensive are the claims of the socialist republican model which promises a communist utopia of absolute equality for all. Liberal republicans (who truly believe in their system) will join us backward reactionaries in noting that the revolutionary, socialist republican model has utterly failed everywhere it has been tried and only persists in countries where it is supported by foreign powers or has largely abandoned its original Marxist economic principles. However, the liberal republicans are less willing to look at their own record of success in living up to the great claims they make for themselves. They, to be fair, have never promised equality of outcome as the Marxists do but they have, nonetheless, claimed to be better than any other system for organizing human endeavor which the world has ever seen in the history of existence. That is quite a claim.

Most liberal republics, however, clearly do not have much of a record of success to back up such claims as we have detailed on these pages before. The republicans of France, for example, can hardly claim to have delivered maximum human happiness and contentment for their people considering that France is currently on her fifth republican incarnation in the fairly short historical period since the French Revolution. The liberal republican model in China hardly drew its first breath before degenerating into civil war, ending only in succumbing to a communist dictatorship. The republican records of success in places such as Latin America or Africa range from fair to appalling and in Europe the most successful countries have been and still are monarchies. On the continent, the most looked-to republic has been the Federal Republic of Germany which, again, does not have much success behind it.

The Weimar republic was a degenerate disaster which easily succumbed to National Socialism and the post-war republic has been fairly prosperous in economic terms but in virtually nothing else and could hardly be said to fit the ideal liberal republican model in any event what with its constant banning of political parties and speech codes which make it clear that the German people are not to be trusted. That is what republicanism is supposed to be all about and yet, the laws of Germany show that they do not trust their people but rather firmly believe that if they are ever able to hear the arguments for National Socialism, discuss or debate such a subject, or the Holocaust, the German people will immediately rush headlong into another Nazi dictatorship. That the Germans would be in the position they are today is hardly surprising, and the idea of the democratic “will of the people” might be seen as not such a priority, given that every generation of German children since 1945 have been routinely marched to museums on a regular basis to be told how terrible there are year after year.

The Italian Republic has certainly been no roaring success. There is much to admire about Italy and people around the world will talk about how great it is (I would too) but only in cultural terms. The people, the art, the music, the food, the antiquities are all great but no one ever boasts about the government which is top-heavy, corrupt and which has buried the future of Italians in crippling regulations and massive debt. The First Spanish Republic was so incompetent that it collapsed very quickly and the Second Spanish Republic almost immediately started down the path to Marxist dictatorship and quickly degenerated into mass murder and finally a civil war which saw it destroyed. Where is the great republican success story? The countries in Europe that people point to as the most successful and the ones which more people want to move to are all monarchies; the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

However, if all else fails, liberals can always point to the one country that mesmerizes people all over the world, the one which both her friends and foes make the center of all life on the planet; the United States of America. Even in America-bashing Europe, the liberals almost invariably point to the United States and to the Founding Fathers of America as the great success story and the example for others to follow. Yet, the liberals, and the left-liberals in particular, cannot seem to get their story straight. On the one hand, they believe that America is so wonderful and so superior to all other countries in the world that it is positively cruel and inhumane to expect people to live anywhere else, while on the other hand being the ones most eager to provide skeptics like myself with the longest list of American failures or to respond to the likes of President Trump with the assertion that, “America was NEVER great!”

That America has done better than other republics, I have never denied. However, I fail to see how the USA can be claimed as the great, liberal, success story when the liberals themselves continuously redefine their measure of success. For example, liberals certainly claim to believe in democracy but, what is democracy? Does it even exist? I ask the question in all seriousness because the supporters of this ephemeral thing do not seem to have a substantive answer. Originally, in the USA, democracy meant that all landowners could vote. Then, for most of early American history it meant that all free, White, adult men could vote. But that was not democracy because later it meant that all men of any race could vote. However, it turns out, that wasn’t really democracy either because later still women were given the vote and that was democracy. Now, in at least one state I know of, the definition is about to change again to include convicted criminals, so I do not see how anyone can say that we have democracy clearly defined even after several centuries have gone by in America.

Similarly, if the American liberal democratic model is all about freedom and liberty, why are we constantly hearing about the people who do not have these things and why are we still struggling to achieve them? There was the struggle to end slavery, the struggle for worker’s rights, the struggle for women’s rights, the struggle for civil rights, the struggle for “gay” rights and so on and so forth. Has everyone ever been satisfied with their state of affairs in the United States? I am sure the modern social justice warriors would say that only straight, white, males have been satisfied in America. If true, that is hardly a record of success and if, as the right-liberals would say, this is not true, they still cannot then explain how the American system which they so idolize failed to protect itself from the likes of the social justice malcontents and troublemakers. The more right-leaning liberals would also have a hard time explaining how such gross violations of constitutional rights was able to occur in the Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt administrations. Ah, but, we are told, those cannot be held against the liberal model because it was times of war and great national crisis when Lincoln used military force to suppress the state government of Maryland or when Roosevelt put American citizens in “internment” camps.

That could be a fair point, though the United States government was not at war when federal agents entrapped Randy Weaver into a minor firearms violation and then murdered his wife and son when he refused to be an informant for them. The USA was not at war when federal agents (some of the same ones in fact) stormed and incinerated a commune of religious oddballs near Waco, Texas. No one was ever punished for any of these atrocities, few people remember them or really care. You might even be scolded for caring at all on the grounds that Randy Weaver was probably a racist and the Branch Davidians were a creepy cult. Fine, except the liberal standard they set for themselves claims that people are not supposed to be punished for their opinions or religious beliefs no matter what others may think of them. Not that I am willing either to brush aside the earlier suspension of vast constitutional rights just because it was wartime. Is that not in itself a damning indictment of the liberal republican model that it can only be expected to work when everything is fine and there are no emergencies? Are the traditional monarchies of history ever extended this same courtesy?

The answer, of course, is no. Freedom of speech is widely trampled on in the liberal regimes of the world today, yet, again, the United States is upheld as the exception to this. When you point out that many people are silenced, the response will be that they are silenced by private companies and not by the government. This is a distinction without a difference, the people in question are still being silenced. Liberal republicans, of course, would not allow traditional monarchists to get away with this such as by saying, just as truthfully, that the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church never put heretics to death, the inquisitors simply determined if heresy was present and, if it was, handed the guilty party over to the secular authorities to deal with. No, the liberal republicans would say that the Church and the monarchy were both complicit in suppressing religious dissent. They would not say that when Czar Nicholas II closed the State Duma, as he was repeatedly forced to do, that, as with the actions of American presidents, that the circumstances of the time made such a thing necessary, they simply dismiss him as an autocratic tyrant regardless of the facts of the matter.

The bottom line is this: if liberalism is supposed to be all about the power of the people and allowing the people to do exactly as they please; why are so many people in even the most “successful” of liberal societies so constantly unhappy and discontented? The answer, as should be all to obvious by now given recent events in both Europe and America, is that the people are not actually ruling themselves, they never have done and doubtless never will. They are being ruled but not in an open and honest way and this means that they are being manipulated by those who are their rulers but do not wish to be seen as such. This, I think, is something no traditional monarch has or could ever be accused of doing. For them, such a thing would have been unseemly as well as unnecessary but in the liberal system of idealism, it must be done to maintain the charade, to keep hiding the truth that liberalism is just as totalitarian as every other political “ism” that has ever been devised.

22 comments:

  1. Thank you for your informative and enlightening posts. I believe that in the US we will not be successful until we have a head of state that is above party politics and holds the best interests of their people at heart. That leader must have the right to dissolve congress, etc when the people project a "no-confidence" belief in current government.

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  2. Yes, YESSS THAT IS VERY TRUE MAD MONARCHIST

    When will people understand that Republics never work except for USA and Switzerland!? If even the Westerners can't set up a working republic then what hope others have?

    Here in Southeast Asia the countries with best performing economies are either monarchy or pseudo-monarchy. Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, and Thailand. Cambodia is the only exception.

    Now the joke republics predictably score worse than the monarchies both in economy, social cohesion, general stability, etc. Look at Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, etc. They have no future but unfortunately it is in the politicians best interest to keep the country backwards so people will keep voting for the same losers, oh and throw some welfare sweets.

    I have personally tasted the bitter poison and pus of a republic. Born and living in a republic which tried its best to be "democratic" is like hell. Incompetent leadership, politician's infighting, divide and conquer during election to garner more votes, and other vile trash.

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    1. Where in South East Asia are you from?
      And why would you call Singapore a pseudo monarchy? Ithink a "family business" would describe it better. They treat Singapore more like a business than a state.

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    2. 1/3
      The greatest trick Liberty ever pulled was to make you believe she ever existed.

      Must disagree, Arman, with excepting ‘USA and Switzerland’ from ‘Republics never work[ing]’. Historically perhaps but Switzerland is on the road to Hell with the rest of Western Civilisation, it’s just not as far along or travelling as fast.

      Item (Switzerland Yes!): ‘A Libyan imam who received Swiss welfare and preached messages of hatred has lost his asylum status. Local authorities are looking into deporting him. Because Abu Ramadan has a Libyan passport and has made several trips to Libya since his arrival to Switzerland in 1998, the migration authorities cancelled his asylum request earlier this month. Abu Ramadan has a permanent resident permit (C), but now canton Bern can look into revoking it. However, Ramadan can challenge the change of asylum status, which is not yet legally binding. As Swiss public television reported on Wednesday, Ramadan received CHF600,000 ($620,000) in state welfare payments while preaching messages of hatred against other religions from a mosque in Biel.’ (2017, swissinfo.ch; see also ‘Switzerland’s controversial Islamic leaders’)

      They’ve allowed this imam to preach hatred whilst collecting Swiss welfare for 13 years, he’s been in Switzerland 19 and still speaks no Swiss language ‘and only rudimentary English’—and the Swiss are still talking in terms of ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘looking into’…

      Item (Switzerland Yes!): ‘Last week in the western Swiss town of DelĂ©mont, an altercation between two boys outside the train station was filmed, then posted online. … the video was taken down by the mother of the assaulted teenager on the advice of local police. The reason? Many of the (hundreds of) comments below the video focused on ethnicity: the aggressor was black, the victim was white, and the discussion veered into a spiralling storm of abuse, much of it anti-immigrant. Before the boy’s attacker had even been found, the regional prosecutor’s office had warned that any further comments inciting hatred or retribution would be pursued and examined by the justice system … In Switzerland, the flipside of free speech comes mainly in the form of three legal provisions: article 261 of the Criminal Code, which forbids racist and anti-religious statements; article 173, which outlaws attacks against “personal honour”; and article 28 of the Civil Code, which guarantees “personality rights”.’ (2017, swissinfo.ch; note link to another article where someone is in legal hot water due to ‘liking’ an Fb post)

      And don’t forget Switzerland refusing to extradite Roman Polanski.

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    3. 2/3
      As for the US, while there’s much to admire about America Past, modern America is evolving into something… very different… to what its founders intended. Mark Steyn, who titles himself a United Empire Loyalist, has written often of imperious behaviours of the US federal government that would shame any king. E.g.

      “In 1217, King Henry III signed the Charter of the Forest, which despite various amendments and replacement statutes remained in force in Britain for some three-quarters of a millennium, until the early Seventies. If Magna Carta is a landmark in its concept of individual rights, the Forest Charter played an equivalent role in advancing the concept of the commons, the public space. Repealing various restrictions by his predecessors, Henry III opened the royal forests to the freemen of England, granted extensive grazing and hunting rights, and eliminated the somewhat severe penalty of death for taking the king’s venison. The [National Park Service] have not yet fried anyone for taking King Barack’s deer, but it is somewhat sobering to reflect that an English peasant enjoyed more freedom on the sovereign’s land in the 13th century than a freeborn American does on “the people’s land” in the 21st century.”
      ‘And so, as happened to Japanese and European tourists at Yellowstone, you can be arrested for photographing the King’s deer. That’s why I quote this stuff: if a 13th century peasant enjoyed rights a 21st century American doesn’t, something’s gone badly wrong.
      ’ (2014, SteynOnline, excerpting an earlier article about this incident.)

      And events such as Ruby Ridge (’92) and the 2016 police shooting of Philando Castile and Daniel Shaver show there is something very wrong with law enforcement in the US (and Britain’s going that way too but our police—so far—are notorious for haring after people for unPC comments on social media, not screaming contradictory instructions at co-operative suspects before blowing them away). Then there is the IRS targeting r/w groups under Obama, anti-Russian hysteria, FBI and intelligence branches subverting POTUS, endless failed wars, exporting SJWism (‘benefits of diversity’) and terrorism, and the list goes on and the torture never stops.

      The main problem in all Western nations is over-extended franchises—giving votes to people with no stake in society and who have done nothing to earn the vote.

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    4. Did the third part of above disappear again? You might as well delete the first two—it’s not as if they’re generating any response.

      Between bad coding, censorship and fevered egos, the internet becomes less and less useable every day.

      It’s analogous to democracies. When the internet was more-or-less restricted to the IT-savvy, it was a pretty cool place; then it became easier and easier to connect, set up websites, share one’s views, to the point that primary school kids are on the internet. When it was restricted to a sort of elite, the internet was quite good; now every spanner can get on it, it’s a s***show—a cauldron of lunacy, poor code and censorship.

      So with democracies: when they were restricted to the ‘elite’ (property-based franchise, etc.) we had a very free, stable and innovative society. Then they expanded the franchise, and expanded it again, and as it has expanded, our society has turned into… a cauldron of lunacy, bad laws and censorship.

      And the commenting s/w doesn’t accept the wordpress identity and now it doesn’t the livejournal either—blogger is an awful, awful platform.
      -- Scotched earth

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    5. I'm from the country just north of Australia, can't miss it.

      Singapore in my opinion is a pseudo-monarchy because although it is not a true monarchy, it behaves like one.

      Lee Kuan Yew rules for a very long time, replaced by Goh Chok Tong and now replaced again by his son Lee Hsien Loong. If it is not a "monarchy" then I don't know what that is. But for sure it is not democratic election.

      Also:
      -Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) created his own People's Action Party, and his party always won the election.
      -LKY founded the Lee dynasty, now his son is the current head of the house.
      -Nobody dare to criticize LKY.
      -LKY's will is the law and guide his country's decision.

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    6. I thought Switzerland was one of the toughest country to immigrate to compared to other Eurocuck countries. If you can't assimilate or integrate then you're not getting in.

      I also heard many good things about Switzerland, such as they take freedom and liberty very seriously. One of the last Canton give women the right to vote only recently in the 90's. They also have Gun Rights like the Americans.

      If even Switzerland is not safe from the road to hell then what about other less developed countries.

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    7. I'd love to discuss this topic with you, Armand, but every other comment of mine disappears; so, bit difficult to have a constructive debate, or even a nonconstructive one.

      (Blogger, particularly since Gulag took it over, is a truly awful platform with comments constantly disappearing for no discernible reason. They can't even implement the maximum character limit properly: it rejects a comment for being in excess of 4,096 characters even when the character count, including all html and spaces, is below this. But thank goodness for Gulag d*versity-hires. I'll try using asterisks and 'veiled speech' to hide possible keywords that might be getting flagged.)

      My disappeared Part 3 noted such things as Swiss referenda to abolish their armed forces, quotas for w*m*n, etc. I'll leave you to use a non-Gulag search engine to get more details as I’m tired of providing links for comments that disappear.

      Another disappeared comment replied to John R below, and took issue with his contention that Switzerland is a 'successful democracy', noting such things as 4.9% of the Swiss population being... of a certain religious persuasion. (And nothing wrong with that at all! Inshallah.) As compared to 4.8% of England & Wales’ being of that... lovely, lovely religion who don’t cause any problems at all, anywhere, ever (Inshallah).

      A quarter of Swiss residents are foreign (almost twice that of the UK)--and even if they're high-quality, with that level of immigration, Switzerland will cease being Swiss. (And nothing wrong with that either! Don't disappear my comment, Gulag--I've seen the light, I love Big Brother.)

      Switzerland will fall along with the rest of Western Civilisation and for the same reasons, starting with extending the franchise to those with little to no stake in society and no inclination to serve. As I wrote in my disappeared comments, the Swiss should have explicitly tied the vote to military service in their constitution instead of simply handing it out cost-free in 1971--Serve and vote; no service, no vote.
      (--Scotched earth)

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  3. The republican magic lay not in its ability to build but to destroy.

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  4. Pax Dickinson once wrote:
    Democracy is a metaphor for war. You tally up both sides for a head count to see who would win a fight so you don’t actually have to fight. But when one side is cat ladies and effeminate homosexuals, the metaphor for war breaks down because their presence is militarily irrelevant.

    I believe that a good summation of democracy. Even an absolute king is wise to obtain some input from la canaille to avoid ruling in a way that angers them so much they seek violent change. But I go further than Pax, believing that it was when women were given the vote that elections ceased being a civilised substitute for war and became political games; and stopped being a headcount of potential fighters with the electors reduced to little more than livestock to be herded and manipulated.

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  5. Would you be able to give me advice on a quick 3 minute or less rebuttal to when I say or am asked why I don't like democracies would you be able to give me a 3-minute rebuttal of your piece to use as an answer?

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    1. Politicians are nothing more than a class of professional liars. Lying is essential to their work. By definition, they must mislead. Therefore it is inevitable that they will commit corruption and abuse the public's trust. A leader who misleads is a ruler who misrules. Where is the logic in this?

      Contrast this to a monarch. His identity is the nation. His performance is permanent, where a politician is temporary. A monarch must do honor to his nation and his ancestors. There really is no comparison.

      I find it is easy to discredit the political class. Start there.

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    2. Why is Switzerland the only successful democracy?

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  6. Off topic here.

    An article about the Vatican's pending China deal mentioned that few people know the history of the Vatican's diplomacy. I wonder if you would comment on this....

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    1. The problem I've run into there is finding dispassionate sources of information. The discourse tends to be dominated by "the Vatican is always right" or "the Catholic Church is evil" gangs. A particular area I've tried digging into is the alleged/denied Vatican recognition of Manchukuo. The Vatican did come to an agreement with the late Qing Empire, then later with the Republic of China and until now has been one of the few sovereign states to recognize the ROC on Taiwan as the legitimate government of China rather than the PRC but Pope Frank looks anxious to change this.

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    2. The article I read was from a source not inclined to criticize the Vatican. It seemed to be admitting that the deal was less than ideal, but promoting it on compassionate grounds. The part about understanding the deal within the historical context of Vatican diplomacy threw me for a loop.

      I did try some basic research of my own. There was plenty about the Vatican being too soft on communist regimes over the years, although that seemed a bit one sided. It would be hard for me to appreciate all of the details and nuances. I can see how perhaps they would be willing to make a political compromise to maintain a religious connection.

      When I read that line about the historical context of the Vatican's diplomacy, it made it sound like there is an overall consistency in diplomatic strategy and that the outcome would be in line with that.

      In your view, is there an overall consistency to the Vatican's diplomatic efforts, throughout history?

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    3. I suppose you could find a consistent pattern of fire-breathing Vatican opposition, followed by a realpolitik compromise and a great many people being upset about it. The Vatican has caused outrage by signing concordats with everyone from Napoleon to Hitler to the Soviet Union. On these pages I have certainly heard from plenty who seem to be upset about the Lateran Accords. I don't know that I'd go so far as to call any of it a "strategy" which would tend to imply more foresight and strategy than I have personally seen present in Vatican diplomacy.

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  7. Just came across this one!! rereading your backlog and never seen this one! But i most say this is beyond spot on. i have never been able to figure out all the tings you said something was missing but you connected it thank you.

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  8. They never ending self hatred pushed on Germans is an abomination.

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