Adams is not wrong to want death for his father. Similarly Sir Terry Pratchett, who has been making the same case over this side of the Atlantic.
However, there is one other consideration: once euthanasia becomes common, it won't just be the clear-cut cases that happen. I think it’s almost inevitable that it will become the normal way for old people to die. From there, someone who just needs a lot of troublesome care will be “in the frame” to be done away with, and will be made to feel selfish for hanging on. It could get ugly.
Is that a good enough reason to force people people to live in hopeless pain, perhaps for years? I’m not sure. Probably not. But it’s worrying all the same.
For a reactionary, the important thing about elections is that they amount to an admission that the mob should in principle have the power to choose the leader. It may well be an insincere admission, and the election may not be free and fair, but by even pretending to be elected, the leader is claiming a legitimacy that depends on what he does, not who he is.
That being the case, anyone who can make as good a claim to do those things has as much claim to legitimacy as the incumbent. Therefore, the only way for the incumbent to practically defend his position is by employing more effective violence than any plausible opponent. That's what makes regimes such as Saddam Hussein's or Stalin's so much more pre-emptively aggressive against opposition than hereditary monarchs.
The hereditary monarch's legitimacy depends not on what he does, but on who he is — the rightful heir. Where the succession is well-established and clear, which was most often the case for historical monarchies, though exceptions were unfortunately fairly common, the reigning monarch had a clear advantage in a power struggle against potential rivals, in that he was the rightful heir, and they were not. That did not remove the need for internal security, but it lent stability to the regime, calming down the endless war for power.
A leader who is believed to have genuinely won the support of the people has a legitimacy of another kind — democratic legitimacy. That works to pacify and stabilise the state in the same way as hereditary legitmacy, which is why western democracies are also more peaceful and stable than military dictatorships. In fact, a democracy like Britain's or America's has the best of both worlds, in that people believe they have power to choose the government by democratic means, but in reality they have none: the civil service, universities, courts, media and business have effectively all the power.
Countries where voters really have power look very different — they tend to collapse into civil war on sectarian, tribal or other dividing lines within a decade, since the obvious most sensible thing to do with your democratic power is to share all the loot among your faction and make sure the other faction can never win and take it back.
The neoreactionary critique of the "convincing fake" democracy that currently works quite well is more subtle and hard to summarise here (Mencius Moldbug has written hundreds of thousands of words on it). The gist is that the competition for power within the ruling clique sets up a dynamic within the official and unofficial state (by which I mean universities, media, finance) which gradually expands its activity beyond any limits (the FDA / 23AndMe story is a typical example). Separately, the long-term stability of the system is threatened by the fact that it basically relies on a lie: that voters have power. There is always the danger that the mob might realise that they are being lied to and attempt to force through some kind of real democracy. Britain's system is very resistant to that, but the US saw a sort-of government shutdown this year caused by the Tea Party trying to exert democracy. The Tea Party can probably be handled by the system without causing very serious damage, but will that always be the case?
I'd love to learn from you how to tell if someone's analysis is deep or superficial by reading "quotes". It would save me a lot of time.
Note the word "totalitarian" appeared in the twentieth century, and means a society where the government controls all aspects of life; modern democracies are far more totalitarian than medieval monarchies were. The Sun King controlled far less of his subjects' lives than the Committee of Public Safety did, or 2013 HMG does.
There are a handful - maybe 12? democracies on the world that work fairly well: basically Britain and her white former colonies, and a few post-WWII installations in western Europe. They are not "just weird" - they are characterised by a very strong elite class with a historical "right to rule" that is largely recognised by the populace, and civil-service institutions that exert very powerful restraint on politicians. (Amusingly, these saving virtues of the system are commonly seen as problems). Neoreactionaries worry that this is not stable, that particularly since the 20th-century introduction of universal suffrage those stabilising influences are being eroded. Again, what you miss by picking out a few quotes is the depth of analysis behind the quotes. If you check, for instance, this 2007 post of mine, you see the beginnings of an inquiry into the problem (taken, you will observe, from a more pro-democracy point of view than I hold now), developed further by 2009 into this.
The causation between democracy and economic growth is obviously the other way round: poor people follow a leader who will protect them, a large middle class starts to demand the political power that other rich countries teach is its right.
I wouldn't expect you to pick all this up in a few hours — if I can make one suggestion that will help you going forward, it is to stop thinking of systems as "democratic" or "non-democractic". It sounds like a classification of animals into "ducks" and "non-ducks", and treating snakes and giraffes as examples of the "non-duck" category (Charles II's England and Mussolini's Italy are about as similar). Instead, look at the effects of the systems — who actually has the power, into what areas of life does that extend. I guarantee you will find that interesting, though not that you will necessarily agree with me at the end of it.
So, nothing concrete then. I couldn't find anything, either.
"...except for all the others" is a quip on the same lines as "...and you are ugly, but I will be sober in the morning". It is not an argument.
Note the industrial revolution started in Stuart England under a monarchy. Liberalism is a response to society growing wealthier, not a cause. This is something that is tacitly acknowledged by today's commentators, talking about China, for instance: they tell us that once a middle class starts to grow in China, then they will demand democratic rights etc. (Not that today's China is a monarchy, of course, but I hope you see the connection).
You and Alexander are confusing the agricultural feudalism of the middle ages with the unitary monarchies that replaced them, as soon as communications technology advanced to the point where a monarch could effectively supervise over a large area, rather than delegate for periods of years to largely independent barons.
Obviously, those monarchies were overthrown — by people who felt that since, under the new prosperity that strong monarchy had produced, they lived in many ways like aristocrats, they should also have the political power of aristocrats. But if any 18th century reformer could see where their political liberalism has brought us, they would demanding the King back as their 17th century predecessors did. However, second time round, democracy grew slowly, so nobody could make that direct comparison.
Indeed, you get a warped view of democracy from Britain or America. Most democracies fail catastrophically within 30 years. Britain, having introduced it very gradually and slowly (if a country today had the system that Britain had in 1900, for instance, nobody would call it a democracy), kept — for centuries — power restricted to a relatively small elite clique. I don't advocate such an arrangement, because it's not stable, but it's far superior to a true democracy. Democracy is spreading, though: the Tea Party, which some here seem to be trying to associate with us, is an attempt to impose full democracy on America, and liberals are screaming in terror about it even as they mouth their democratic platitudes.
Note, I'm making arguments here, and you're gasping in awe at other peoples' rhetoric. Some of us have been working on this stuff for years, and — here's a point — we're not finished. There is no neoreactionary army for you to join, no party for you to vote for. Analysis of the failures of democracy and of the alternatives that could exist is what we do. Some political movement (or maybe several) might emerge from the analysis in a few years, but all this outrage is generated just by our talking about the faults of democracy. The divine right of kings made relatively minor demands on its subjects' consciences.
If you set out to work out how humans will try to abuse and take advantage of any given political system, you will start to sound like a neoreactionary.
Alexander makes some reasonable arguments, mostly in response to straw men, but his history is literally laughable. His source for Tudor England, for instance, is a comedy routine by Eddie Izzard. If you have any concrete points to make, make them yourself.
Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein were all elected, and all supported by liberal democracies overseas, so, yeah.
Creating an old-fashioned monarchy is not mostly what neoreactionaries are talking about doing. There seems no remote chance of it in the US, though I am throwing around some ideas for how it could happen in Britain, where we do still have a legitimate royal family that could do the job. Most American neoreactionaries, where they are talking about monarchy, are merely pointing out that the standard of governance under monarchies was significantly superior to what democracy has produced, so the automatic dismissal of non-democratic systems is not justified. Various other alternatives have been suggested.
And as you suggest, a complete collapse of society followed by a building back up from warlords to feudalism and back to monarchy is more plausible. That's the long and ugly way round, and what we are hoping to avoid.
17th Century? The only country to get rid of monarchy in the 17th Century was England, and the result was so disastrous that the monarchy was restored after a few decades. Universal-suffrage democracy has barely existed before the 20th Century, and has had a few apparent successes and many catastrophic failures.
And what better way to give them that feeling than by voting for them?
We had a hereditary House of Lords in Britain until fairly recently, and what was striking about them was they knew they weren't entitled to their power, that they understood they were caretakers of something bigger than they were. That is something that most governments — even nominally democratic ones, where the politicians were in fact selected from a small ruling class — had until the last hundred years or so.
TFA does indeed say that, but none of the neoreactionaries say anything of the sort. Indeed, it's obvious nonsense — how on earth do you create a political system that judges by genetic fitness? The nearest thing I can think of to that is democracy, which is obviously a bad idea. The controversial argument that monarchist neoreactionaries make is that the innate merits of an individual ruler matter much less than the system that gives him power, and a below-average person who has inherited his kingdom will rule much better than a highly able man who has been selected by a political struggle — like, say, David Cameron, or Hitler.
North Korea, as an ideologically-based communist state with a hereditary ruling dynasty, is a complex case, one which I have written about at length, though it deserves still more analysis.
Slashdot Mirror
Adams is not wrong to want death for his father. Similarly Sir Terry Pratchett, who has been making the same case over this side of the Atlantic.
However, there is one other consideration: once euthanasia becomes common, it won't just be the clear-cut cases that happen. I think it’s almost inevitable that it will become the normal way for old people to die. From there, someone who just needs a lot of troublesome care will be “in the frame” to be done away with, and will be made to feel selfish for hanging on. It could get ugly.
Is that a good enough reason to force people people to live in hopeless pain, perhaps for years? I’m not sure. Probably not. But it’s worrying all the same.
For a reactionary, the important thing about elections is that they amount to an admission that the mob should in principle have the power to choose the leader. It may well be an insincere admission, and the election may not be free and fair, but by even pretending to be elected, the leader is claiming a legitimacy that depends on what he does, not who he is.
That being the case, anyone who can make as good a claim to do those things has as much claim to legitimacy as the incumbent. Therefore, the only way for the incumbent to practically defend his position is by employing more effective violence than any plausible opponent. That's what makes regimes such as Saddam Hussein's or Stalin's so much more pre-emptively aggressive against opposition than hereditary monarchs.
The hereditary monarch's legitimacy depends not on what he does, but on who he is — the rightful heir. Where the succession is well-established and clear, which was most often the case for historical monarchies, though exceptions were unfortunately fairly common, the reigning monarch had a clear advantage in a power struggle against potential rivals, in that he was the rightful heir, and they were not. That did not remove the need for internal security, but it lent stability to the regime, calming down the endless war for power.
A leader who is believed to have genuinely won the support of the people has a legitimacy of another kind — democratic legitimacy. That works to pacify and stabilise the state in the same way as hereditary legitmacy, which is why western democracies are also more peaceful and stable than military dictatorships. In fact, a democracy like Britain's or America's has the best of both worlds, in that people believe they have power to choose the government by democratic means, but in reality they have none: the civil service, universities, courts, media and business have effectively all the power.
Countries where voters really have power look very different — they tend to collapse into civil war on sectarian, tribal or other dividing lines within a decade, since the obvious most sensible thing to do with your democratic power is to share all the loot among your faction and make sure the other faction can never win and take it back.
The neoreactionary critique of the "convincing fake" democracy that currently works quite well is more subtle and hard to summarise here (Mencius Moldbug has written hundreds of thousands of words on it). The gist is that the competition for power within the ruling clique sets up a dynamic within the official and unofficial state (by which I mean universities, media, finance) which gradually expands its activity beyond any limits (the FDA / 23AndMe story is a typical example). Separately, the long-term stability of the system is threatened by the fact that it basically relies on a lie: that voters have power. There is always the danger that the mob might realise that they are being lied to and attempt to force through some kind of real democracy. Britain's system is very resistant to that, but the US saw a sort-of government shutdown this year caused by the Tea Party trying to exert democracy. The Tea Party can probably be handled by the system without causing very serious damage, but will that always be the case?
I'd love to learn from you how to tell if someone's analysis is deep or superficial by reading "quotes". It would save me a lot of time.
Note the word "totalitarian" appeared in the twentieth century, and means a society where the government controls all aspects of life; modern democracies are far more totalitarian than medieval monarchies were. The Sun King controlled far less of his subjects' lives than the Committee of Public Safety did, or 2013 HMG does.
There are a handful - maybe 12? democracies on the world that work fairly well: basically Britain and her white former colonies, and a few post-WWII installations in western Europe. They are not "just weird" - they are characterised by a very strong elite class with a historical "right to rule" that is largely recognised by the populace, and civil-service institutions that exert very powerful restraint on politicians. (Amusingly, these saving virtues of the system are commonly seen as problems). Neoreactionaries worry that this is not stable, that particularly since the 20th-century introduction of universal suffrage those stabilising influences are being eroded. Again, what you miss by picking out a few quotes is the depth of analysis behind the quotes. If you check, for instance, this 2007 post of mine, you see the beginnings of an inquiry into the problem (taken, you will observe, from a more pro-democracy point of view than I hold now), developed further by 2009 into this.
The causation between democracy and economic growth is obviously the other way round: poor people follow a leader who will protect them, a large middle class starts to demand the political power that other rich countries teach is its right.
I wouldn't expect you to pick all this up in a few hours — if I can make one suggestion that will help you going forward, it is to stop thinking of systems as "democratic" or "non-democractic". It sounds like a classification of animals into "ducks" and "non-ducks", and treating snakes and giraffes as examples of the "non-duck" category (Charles II's England and Mussolini's Italy are about as similar). Instead, look at the effects of the systems — who actually has the power, into what areas of life does that extend. I guarantee you will find that interesting, though not that you will necessarily agree with me at the end of it.
Note the industrial revolution started in Stuart England under a monarchy. Liberalism is a response to society growing wealthier, not a cause. This is something that is tacitly acknowledged by today's commentators, talking about China, for instance: they tell us that once a middle class starts to grow in China, then they will demand democratic rights etc. (Not that today's China is a monarchy, of course, but I hope you see the connection).
You and Alexander are confusing the agricultural feudalism of the middle ages with the unitary monarchies that replaced them, as soon as communications technology advanced to the point where a monarch could effectively supervise over a large area, rather than delegate for periods of years to largely independent barons.
Obviously, those monarchies were overthrown — by people who felt that since, under the new prosperity that strong monarchy had produced, they lived in many ways like aristocrats, they should also have the political power of aristocrats. But if any 18th century reformer could see where their political liberalism has brought us, they would demanding the King back as their 17th century predecessors did. However, second time round, democracy grew slowly, so nobody could make that direct comparison.
Indeed, you get a warped view of democracy from Britain or America. Most democracies fail catastrophically within 30 years. Britain, having introduced it very gradually and slowly (if a country today had the system that Britain had in 1900, for instance, nobody would call it a democracy), kept — for centuries — power restricted to a relatively small elite clique. I don't advocate such an arrangement, because it's not stable, but it's far superior to a true democracy. Democracy is spreading, though: the Tea Party, which some here seem to be trying to associate with us, is an attempt to impose full democracy on America, and liberals are screaming in terror about it even as they mouth their democratic platitudes.
Note, I'm making arguments here, and you're gasping in awe at other peoples' rhetoric. Some of us have been working on this stuff for years, and — here's a point — we're not finished. There is no neoreactionary army for you to join, no party for you to vote for. Analysis of the failures of democracy and of the alternatives that could exist is what we do. Some political movement (or maybe several) might emerge from the analysis in a few years, but all this outrage is generated just by our talking about the faults of democracy. The divine right of kings made relatively minor demands on its subjects' consciences.
If you set out to work out how humans will try to abuse and take advantage of any given political system, you will start to sound like a neoreactionary.
Alexander makes some reasonable arguments, mostly in response to straw men, but his history is literally laughable. His source for Tudor England, for instance, is a comedy routine by Eddie Izzard. If you have any concrete points to make, make them yourself.
Creating an old-fashioned monarchy is not mostly what neoreactionaries are talking about doing. There seems no remote chance of it in the US, though I am throwing around some ideas for how it could happen in Britain, where we do still have a legitimate royal family that could do the job. Most American neoreactionaries, where they are talking about monarchy, are merely pointing out that the standard of governance under monarchies was significantly superior to what democracy has produced, so the automatic dismissal of non-democratic systems is not justified. Various other alternatives have been suggested.
And as you suggest, a complete collapse of society followed by a building back up from warlords to feudalism and back to monarchy is more plausible. That's the long and ugly way round, and what we are hoping to avoid.
17th Century? The only country to get rid of monarchy in the 17th Century was England, and the result was so disastrous that the monarchy was restored after a few decades. Universal-suffrage democracy has barely existed before the 20th Century, and has had a few apparent successes and many catastrophic failures.
We had a hereditary House of Lords in Britain until fairly recently, and what was striking about them was they knew they weren't entitled to their power, that they understood they were caretakers of something bigger than they were. That is something that most governments — even nominally democratic ones, where the politicians were in fact selected from a small ruling class — had until the last hundred years or so.
North Korea, as an ideologically-based communist state with a hereditary ruling dynasty, is a complex case, one which I have written about at length, though it deserves still more analysis.