Geeks For Monarchy: The Rise of the Neoreactionaries 730
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."
Re:That explains Walmart (Score:5, Interesting)
Like the folks who want a Christian Theocracy in the States. They are under the assumption that ALL Christians think the same way they do.
Relevant recent research FTW [psychologicalscience.org]
Re:Regressive (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Sexually transmitted political power? (Score:4, Interesting)
Please, put it correct: ... he is raised from birth to rule the country as is was 20 years ago by the people who supposedly knew how to rule it 60 years ago.
Re:Sexually transmitted political power? (Score:4, Interesting)
Raising someone from birth to fill a specific job sounds like the plot to a Kurt Russell movie...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120157/ [imdb.com]
I'm waiting for them to remake that as Sysadmin.
Of course, democracy hasn't managed (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, democracy hasn't managed to keep someone like Kim Jung Il off the top, either, has it?
Not that I think that they're right on the gender role thing, mind: it's blatantly stupid unless the only work being done is hard manual labour and I'm DAMN sure that the ones pushing for this don't want to actually have to work hard dangerous jobs where, because they aren't physically demanding, women will be available for management roles over them.
You know, they want the RIGHT sort of heirarchy.
Re:hrm (Score:5, Interesting)
American here. I have a question for you – I know the Queen is the head of state and theoretically has vast powers. However, she seems to have delegated most of those powers. Beyond a tourist attraction what does she do? I live close enough to Canada, another one of her domains, but I can’t figure out what she does.
Re:hrm (Score:5, Interesting)
A French Perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:That explains Walmart (Score:5, Interesting)
We are getting a new form of Monarchy right now via the inequality in wealth distribution.
Re:hrm (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest, I always thought the Lords did a fine job of basically not being too politically tied to the morons in the Commons. This is almost certainly why they want to reform the Lords - so that the upper chamber stops being a reasonably impartial bunch of old guys who do what's right because its right, and starts being a bunch of young tossers who only got their because the political parties helped with their election campaigns.
All wrapped up in the guise of "but they're not democratic".
At worst the UK will get a form of democracy that rivals the US for stupidity, infighting and intransigence.
I can see one such a democratic split between the houses would work though - if the upper house was only made available to those who have never held membership of any political party. Then the cronies of the lower houses would not be allowed in, and would not expect a cushy "retirement" in the upper house either. Imagine if the upper house was stocked only with ordinary people, now *that* would be democratic.
Hobbes' Leviathan and Social Contract theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:You jest (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:First sandwich (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:First sandwich (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:First sandwich (Score:4, Interesting)
It depends on what you mean by "the top".
If you are talking about monarchs of the type that have not been seen in Western Europe for a long type, then you are probably right. They had the power to make/break treaties, declare war/peace, order executions and do on. The nearest to one of them around nowadays is the Pope and he doesn't seem to declare war often nowadays.
Most European monarchies nowadays are not so powerful. They have things to do but, whether you are talking about Spain, Sweden, the UK or the Netherlands or anywhere else in Europe, they do not declare war, they no not make the treaties and are not known for asking for public beheadings any more. No doubt, the Royal Families spread too wide. As a Brit, I hear a lot that the Queen and immediate family are good but it spreads out too far.
For example, if the Queen was in command, the UK might not have participated in the illegal invasion of Iraq. There was no benefit to this country and there were plenty obvious downsides.
Another example from a bit longer ago. During the 50s or 60s, the KGB were convinced that there would be a military coup in the UK. The reason it didn't happen has been explained by some as due to the fact that the coup would have had to be against the Queen. That is a non-starter. Your commander in chief may be a politician. The CinC around here is the queen. Not very long ago, after Franco died, Spain found itself on the road back to democracy. The army there did not all like that and some tried to overthrow the government. The fairly new king put on his uniform and walked unarmed into the hostage situation in their parliament and told the Soldiers to stop. They did.
So you have an elected person at the top who a vocal minority think is some sort of foreign, demon, moslem marxist. A large number of the rest don't like him or what he stands for. A good number of them are the ones with money and power.
I know who our head of state is. I know her origins. I know who will replace her for several generations. I didn't need to stand up in school every morning to be brainwashed into giving my allegiance to her. As an adult, I did so freely when I put on a uniform. Every time I saluted, I saluted her. Every order I received came with her authority.
So there is the choice of half of the electorate disliking a leader? No thanks. I will stick to this system.
Re:Of course, democracy hasn't managed (Score:4, Interesting)
Democracy tried, and failed. There have been successes, and other failures with Democracy. A failure does not mean the system is fundamentally flawed. It's the other systems (Communism, Socialism, ...) which seem to have leaders like this as an objective.
Apples and oranges.
The democracy-autocracy axis is usually considered orthogonal to the classical left-right axis. And sure enough, there are democracies where all out socialists rule by democratic majority, and there are far right corporatist dictatorships.
The idea that democracy and capitalist free market fundamentalism are somehow inextricably connected seems, to say the least, tenuous to me. Likewise the usual corollary that socialism and autocracy are somehow inherently linked.