Monarchism

  I've recently come across several sites that discuss Monarchy as a potential alternative to the obviously flawed and increasingly failed democratic experiment, and have reached the point where my only real objection to monarchy is that I don't see any way to get there from here. William Lind has claimed to be a monarchist, although I haven't seen any further elucidation by him on this point. (I intend to do a lot more "research" on this, but at this time it's just an interesting itch on my consciousness. I remain a Stoic, the philosophy of slaves, because slaves are what Americans, if not humanity in general, have become for various reasons, not the least of which is "democracy". For purposes of this discussion I will drop the scare quotes and capitalization of various systems of thought because it's not clear that any of these systems are more than generalizations, except at the highest levels of discourse which I am not close to approaching, and may never reach. Nevertheless...)

  My first exposure to this point of view was probably from J.K. Baltzersen on LRC, which lead me to his Wilson Revolution Unplugged blog. At the time I considered his interest in monarchism as either tongue-in-cheek speculation or a kind of nerdy casual fandom like "Lives of the Rich and Famous".  The sort of thing that still makes me yearn for the return of the Guillotine, although I have come to realize how much of my political thought is simple romanticism combined with fatal doses of class envy and hatred. My conservatism, as far as it goes, is what's left after going down every other philosophic rabbit hole I could find without turning up any rabbits. I expect that any rabbits I find here will be long mummified, yet, dig we must.

  The most powerful and persuasive arguments I've seen along these lines are those of Mencius Moldbug at Unqualified Reservations concerning the restoration of the Stuarts. Since he doesn't use labels on his posts you'll have to dig a bit to find these. but it's well worth the effort, although almost everything he writes is (I would say, except for my unfamiliarity with the material) rather overlong and windy. His style is very eighteenth century, but doesn't really require that much familiarity with the background. It's very self-contained and he more than explains himself, but you will have to dig for it. Twitter it ain't. I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't even know what Jacobism was/is.  Thanks to public schooling my knowledge of history pretty much begins about 1776, although luckily I went to school in Virginia and was taught Virginia History which is the most important part of American history, apart from Damn Yankee history, which one needs to know to defend against, at least.

  More or less by accident (chasing back commentator's profiles somewhere) I came across Theodore Harvey's Royal World blog, which is totally fascinating to me. He claims to have debunked Jacobism, and is a big fan of the Windsor's and especially Elizabeth (whom I like) and Charles (not so much, but I'm unfortunately easy to persuade. We'll see...). He is very anti-republican, which is counter-intuitive to me, but I have to keep an open mind on matters about which I know very little, and claims to have voted for Ron Paul in the primaries, so there may be a lot of common ground.  He lost me in his defense of Caroline Kennedy as being part of an American aristocracy and his defense of nepotism in politics as being part of the monarchic ideal, which seems completely wrong and part of what I most hate about our system. I would like to see an Amendment forbidding the close relatives of any politician from elected office. No more Kennedys, Clintons or Bushes, please. The fact that Joe Kennedy was able to parlay his background in smuggling and his mob contacts into a Presidency for his otherwise unremarkable and feckless son is hardly a qualification for the appointment of his valley girl granddaughter to the Senate and launching her on the quick path to the Presidency, although the Senate is pretty much of a bull-pen for unqualified nepotistic scoundrels. At least Obama and Jim Webb got in on their own efforts and wrote their own books, but maybe it's just my democratic roots showing.

  This is the heart of my reservations about monarchy and aristocracy in general.  Every royal line can be traced back to some mud- and gore-covered thug who was able to best his equally thuggish rivals and establish dominance and eventually legitimacy over his vassels. The strongest and smartest were able to bring in the most able of their subjects to cement their positions for their families and eliminate rivals, and I'm sort of okay with that.  I've come to regret the loss of the European royalty and what has become of the various revolutions and it's clear that we've reached the end of the democratic experiment.  I've long felt that a king would be better than rule by common clowns; a king could decide as a matter of policy or whim to give the serfs a break and a democrat simply cannot, but I can't see how we can re-establish some kind of actual aristocracy, so at this point the best I can say is I'm a loyal thermadorian and hope for the worst, loyal only to my own family.  If Charles can eliminate the scum in the Commonwealth (which he is unlikely to attempt) I'll bend the knee. Until then, subvert, withhold, sabotage and endure.