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Geeks For Monarchy: The Rise of the Neoreactionaries
Third Position writes "Many of us yearn for a return to one golden age or another. But there's a community of bloggers taking the idea to an extreme: they want to turn the dial way back to the days before the French Revolution. Neoreactionaries believe that while technology and capitalism have advanced humanity over the past couple centuries, democracy has actually done more harm than good. They propose a return to old-fashioned gender roles, social order and monarchy."
Bringing back serfdom.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
As long as _I_ am the one who's in power.
I always liked the title Jarl, I think I would be a good Jarl.
No, thanks.
Sure, a monarchy works great until you get someone like Kim Jung Il or Kim Jung Un at the top. Then your screwed.
I bet that women and minorities are underrepresented in this movement to turn the calendar back.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Contemporary political thought seems to be about electing the right king.
Dog is my co-pilot.
I blame Game of Thrones. Although you'd think Joffrey would be example enough to discourage monarchy.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
If you think we got corrupt, selfish, self absorbed and self centered cretins for rulers, ponder how much bigger cretins you get if you give them the feeling that they're entitled to it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Any system is great as long as you are one of the elites, living off the backs of the slaves. In theory that shouldn't be possible in a democracy, which is why the elites in the US keep us as far from a democracy as possible.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Please! Someone buy these idiots a history book. This is such a perfect example of people who think they're smart but they actually know jack shit about anything except pushing bits. The funny thing is, after the first arbitrary detention and execution of a dissident for "lesse majesty" or "treason against the crown" they'd all be up in arms and in jail. I really hope they're not all really this stupid and this is all just a way to get a reaction.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."
But "democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
“If residents don’t like their government, they can and should move,” he writes. “The design is all ‘exit,’ no ‘voice.’”
Any business can tell you the value of switching costs. Once you reel them in, it is expensive to move. So, even though another city-state might be better, people will still not move since the cost of moving, even assuming the State doesn't actively interfere with exit taxes or similar measures, would prevent most from moving. This is why retail chains all want you to sign up for their cursed club cards, to try to create switching costs that will keep you around even though they suck. Plus, we don't live in Bruce Sterling's cladist space utopia, there are limited options for moving in space while stuck on Earth's surface, even ignoring the costs. Why don't all those North Koreans just move? Perhaps these fellows have answers to these criticisms, I haven't spent all day reading their FAQ or anything.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Apparently somebody's been going to too many medieval reenactments, and spicing them up with some conspiracy theorist meetings. Monarchies were nasty places to live for the majority of people. I like the part about nations being very small and people free to move between them to find one they like. Sure, and communism would have worked great if the people in charge were just nicer! Why would a king not try to conquer more territory, and allow his subjects to take off and leave whenever they want?
"Neoreactionaries believe 'The Cathedral,' is a meta-institution that consists largely of Harvard and other Ivy League schools, The New York Times and various civil servants" Don't let the pentaverate get you! "I hated the Colonel, with his wee beady eyes!"
Or a grammar Nazi, such as myself. Then YOU're screwed.
... for having frequented them in France. The French Neo-Reactionaries are, quite often, staunch arch-catholics and rather vehement racists, who often glorify one form or another of fascism. They are a rancid bunch, IMHO.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Which is why you don't give them any actual power.
... were against democracy.... that is why they established a Republic.
For a better understanding of different government systems - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFXuGIpsdE0
If you read TFA, the neoreactionaries are proposing that the monarch at the top of the hierarchy be selected by genetic fitness. The smartest, fittest, and most handsome men (one assumes only men) would rule. So there's no danger of anyone from the Kim Jung family being in charge. We're much more likely to end up with Hitler.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Since 1988, the House of Bush has occupied the Presidency for 12 years, the House of Clinton for 8 years and been a major player in another administration for 4 years as well as having better than average odds of gaining the White House for at least another 4 years if not 8.
It gets even more like that if you start looking at the House, Senate and Governorships and factor in other family dynasties like the Kennedys, the broader House of Bush.
Then there are various corporate/government crossovers where scions of capitalists enter politics. Minnesota's governor is the child of the Dayton family (retail shopping, family was behind Dayton's and now Target Stores).
I'm not sure we need to declare a new monarchy or aristocracy; we've just more less quietly reinstated it.
Someone mark the parent insightful. Undead don't make good Kings, they often end up eating all of their subjects and that's no way to run a kingdom.
That tends to be the tradeoff, when monarchies work well they work really well, and when they work badly they work really badly. Democracy tend to pull things more to the center, so things never work all that well, but they do not get nearly as bad either.
As is often the case with rose tinted glasses, I guess some people are looking back to the best cases and not really thinking about what also goes wrong and why we moved away from those structures in the first place.
Eh, when you have that much political power (or the military behind you), the criteria for genetic fitness has an odd way of adjusting to whoever is already in charge.
Disclaimer: I'm French.
At school I was taught how the French Revolution was an amazing thing. It freed us. It was the end of a time of the absolute, divine right monarchy that France and other European nations had for almost a thousand years. I learned later about The Terror, where nobles would get their heads chopped off. Including the wives and kids, and I reckon some servants too. There's probably been a rape or two, as well, since that's what you get when a mob forms up and there's nobody to police them. They don't teach you much of that when you're at school. I guess it's understandable, since you don't want 12 years old to learn about rape and kids their age being killed just because they were born in the right family. Or do you?
Anyway, I learned much, much later, in my late 20's, that the actual History is much more cynic. It was not "we, the people" (to paraphrase an American concept) who started this. People got riled up by the bourgeois. A bourgeois is a very, very rich commoner. He can hardly hope to ever become a noble. That limits, right there, the richness he can ever hope to achieve. He'll always be looked down from the nobles. He can be killed for talking wrong to a noble. It's better to be a poor noble than a rich bourgeois. So, they didn't like that very much. They started the Revolution. They manipulated the peasants and poorly educated population to do the Revolution. Just so they could usurp the power from the nobles.
Note that I'm personally fine with the fact that we took the nobles out. Nobody should have a birthright over somebody else, just because. This is unfair, this is archaic, and it doesn't make the society move forward. The problem I have with the Revolution, besides the way it's taught (unless you do a History Major you won't hear much of this), is that it replaced one nobility with another. At least the previous one, the actual nobles, where honest about their absolute power. They said "I'm better than you, you're lesser than me, fuck you and fuck off." But the Bourgeoisie, which is still in power today (we call them Oligarchs, because they are the ultimate Bourgeois and there are not so many of them), is much more hypocritical. They will make you think you're in a Democracy, when really you're not. When the Banks can decide whether or not a state will default its credits, after pushing them towards into a mass debt, it's not a democracy. It's an illusion.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, as I just started typing with no set plans for the post. I guess my point is, I'm fed up of hearing we are in a democracy, and we should feel lucky, because more and more I feel I have no choice and no say. Even if my situation isn't as bad as a serf from 400 years ago, it sure as hell isn't as good as the people back them wanted my life to be.
No, monarchy is shit even if you get an enlightened, benevolent, philosopher-king at the top. You cannot live in a free society if there is a class of people that are born with rights to which the majority have no claim. Some people might be happy to be slaves in the off chance that they are treated well and given light work, but it is rude of them to think the rest of us would want anything to do with it, and it is evil of them try and force it onto their children.
... and they have been with us since before the U. S. Constitution was signed. They had a defining influence on that document, leading to a significant disconnect between it and the principles found in the Declaration of Independence.
It was these individuals who invited the King of Prussia to reign over the new United States and it was they who opposed the Bill of Rights. Bear in mind that no small number of the wealthy who came to American shores did so to establish themselves as the new plutocratic aristocracy. Often, they had in their pockets grants of land and privileges from the crown.
It is simply a symptom of the times that they are coming out of the closet now, though their influence has always been with us. Take for instance, Leo Strauss' embrace of the Platonic "noble lie", which was a touchstone for legitimizing nobility's grip on power long before there was a United States of America.
In the 17th century as the Divine Right of Kings declined in legitimacy, the race was on for an alternative reason to obey the government (other than that they would shoot you otherwise). Both Hobbes and Locke constructed the idea that there is an implicit contract between the citizens of a country and its rulers: you do your job and we will accept your ordering of society. A small but significant element of this was the right to leave if you didn't like what the government was doing. Interestingly the refusal of this right to the subjects of Marxist regimes marks them out as nastier than their predecessors (the Berlin Wall and the rest of the Iron Curtain was a largely successful attempt to keep East Germans at home). For Hobbes this was the ONLY right of the subject; Locke argued that the contract implied a right to participate in the government, which was seminal in the American revolution.
Seventh-day Adventists actually can be categorized quite nicely into conservative evangelicalism. They step outside the mainstream on issues like the weekly sabbath, the state of the dead and by maintaining a historicist approach to prophetic interpretation. They also have an unusually strong emphasis on religious liberty and the separation of church and state. But their soteriology/christology/etc... tend to be very orthodox evangelical.
Source: Grew up Adventist, still am a practicing Adventist, MA in Religion, and I read the work of many non-Adventist theologians and scholars.
Capitalism does not lead to corruption, lack of character does.
Good grief. Eugenics on top of autocracy. Nazi Germany, here we come.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No, they supported him, because he was far better than the communists, who would have most likely wiped out the royal bloodlines.
He also got called "little corporal" behind his back in a derogatory manner by conservatives. They viewed him with deep suspicion, and plotted against him. They also feared and loathed the strasseist wing of the nazi party, and especially the SA, most of which were young unemployed strasserists, and big well organized goverment allowed hooligans. There was even talk that the SA was going to replace the wermarcht as Germany's army.
The night of long knives changed that. The top SA leaders were assassinated, along with many influential conservatives, the strasserists, the SA's role as the nazi's political army was given to its former subdivision, the SS, which was more conservative and middle class in its economics.
After this, no one dared oppose Hitler. Hitler's version of nazism was unopposed. Hitler selected himself as monarch.
See, the thing about Monarchs is they never got selected for any fitness test, they selected themselves by taking the throne, either by force, or by treachery. That doesn't make a good or accountable leader.
Not serfdom. Serfs were bound by traditional duties, but the same traditions bound their liege lords with obligations and to recognize certain rights. So, for example, you cannot turn a serf off the land his father worked. You cannot threaten him and his family with hunger in order to compel new concessions. He has a great many days guaranteed off since they're holy days. Most days of the week, he's actually working for himself and only a fraction was her required to work on his liege's land and projects.
Compare this with the circumstances your cite. Some rights are granted by our legal system but the obligations owed to a worker (esp. pay) have been in decline since the 1970's. But the employee has no security. High unemployment makes them easily replaceable; Walmart doesn't allow them to organize; they could be left at any moment with more bills than money. Thus, concessions are easy to secure for the employer who knows his employees only work for him because they've few other options. Sure, they don't lower their worker's salaries but they do reduce labor costs by having ever fewer workers perform ever more tasks. And who can complain? As for days off, Walmart workers certainly don't get our civic holidays off. Days like Sunday were once a great and beautiful thing. They were guarantees that an employer was not the master of an employees life. They granted all people the very human dignity of being able to spend time with family. They even allowed time for people to recognize a god other than Mammon. Walmart employees even have to work on Thanksgiving now and the holiday season has the most taxing schedule for them. A retail worker often does not know when he'll be working two weeks hence, and can therefore make few sure plans to spend with family and friends. Oh well, it's easier just to stay home and watch TV ($199 at Walmart!) and eat popcorn than to have to risk cancelling on friends again. As for the fraction of pay, I would be willing to bet that the ratio of profit, Walmart:"associate", is far better for Walmart than ever was the ratio of produce, liege:serf.
So, I do not think it best to say Walmart wishes to make its employees serfs. Serfs are a meddlesome bunch and tend to riot when their traditional rights are usurped. I think rather that Walmart wishes to leave its employees in a servile condition, as a great master over so many slaves. And while I'm at it, I'll throw this little bomb: the current form of consumerist capitalism undermines friendship, family, the human dignity of workers, and even religion.
Democracy of itself is the tyranny of the majority. In the USA, the Bill of Rights provides some protection against this tyrant, by putting some limits on democratic processes. The USA is far from a pure democracy (thank the Powers That Be).
One of the options TFA talks about is a system where CEOs become monarchs with stockholders becoming nobles or gentry. If I understood correctly, the author says that this is one proposed neoreactionary system of governance. However it fits the definition of fascism, and would certainly fail for the same reason fascist regimes always fail: they are too susceptible to internal corruption, when policy makers put selfish concerns ahead of societal concerns. "Yes, I have decided that we need to build a flood control dam, and my company will supply the concrete for the job. It's true that we have never had a flooding problem but it is good social policy to be prepared."
Pure monarchies have serious problems when an incompetent gains the throne. And they have troubles with filling a vacancy at the top without a lot bloodshed.
Churchill once said that democracy was the worst form of government... except for all the others. That's as true now as it was in the last century.
Will
Whatever your opinion of Obama, he is certainly not from "the ruling class".
Really? Let's see... A descendant of rulers and politically-connected international travelers, Religious and Prep school upbringing in upper-class neighborhoods, Educated at Occidental and Columbia and law degree from Harvard ... what's missing?
Obama is only "black" because his father was a member of the ruling class from a black country. His mother, who also had a PhD, is descended from an American slave-holder family.
How did you come to this delusion that Obama is not a member of the ruling class?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
This is addressed quite well in Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livy. There's three basic forms of government: rule by the one, rule by the few, and rule by the many, each of which has a good form and a bad form. Rule by the one is monarchy when good, tyranny when bad. Rule by the few is aristocracy when good, oligarchy when bad. Rule by the many is democracy when good, anarchy when bad. The cycle of history is that each of the good forms will, over time, degrade into their bad form, until a crisis occurs that topples the government and replaces it with the next form in the cycle.
The idea of a republic is to have all three running at the same time (the executive is the rule by the one, the judicial system is the rule by the few, and the legislature is the rule by the many) in the hopes that if one went bad, the other two would hold it in check, making the government stable unless all three go bad at the same time.