I planned on digging through the fundamental texts listed in the Neoreactionary Canon and trying to figure out what exactly were the premises on which everyone was operating.
Then Trannygate happened and I became disgusted with the whole mess of them. It suddenly became clear--these guys think they invented reactionary thought and are too self-aggrandizing to understand that "inventing reaction" is a contradiction in terms.
The ideas they discuss--hierarchy, HBD, the dangers of mob rule--disappeared from the Western conversation only sixty or seventy years ago. For the most part, neoreactionaries don't say, "These old ideas are more true than modern assumptions." They say, "I have true and radical ideas. Me--I have them."
More social posturing, in other words, and that means it's doomed to obscurity, but not before a short-lived sweep through the alternative right because it assembles a lot of loose opinions under a cool-sounding name.
Consider pre-power Italian Fascism. Mussolini and his cohorts wrote millions of words describing how great and revolutionary Fascism was and how different it was from every other political theory. What it failed to describe was what exactly Fascism was.
The Reaction will put you in the driver's seat. The Reaction will be no rerun, brother. The Reaction will be live.Neoreaction is the same way, all marketing puffery surrounding a few old ideas with no central perspective. So, I'm no longer interested, though I plan on checking in a year from now to see its state.
However, I realized that I'd never written out my thoughts on monarchy, which the mainstream media has erroneously attached to neoreaction but was once a lively topic of discussion. With no more ado, the advantages and lessons of having a final authority:
Monarchy has a human reach Perhaps the triumph of democracy is really the triumph of bureaucracy, with the idea that good governance is too complex for one man to sit at the head of it.
In absolute monarchy, the government does what the monarch feels is important. If a bureau has outlived its usefulness, the monarch can single-handedly dissolve it. Consider how a strong monarch could have handled the civil rights movement, had he been persuaded that blacks were unduly disadvantaged. He may have instituted the exact same affirmative action programs that were placed but at some point he would have discontinued them as having done as much as they can.
In our current system, programs are easy to start and almost impossible to end. A final authority examines the efficacy of the programs and adjusts accordingly. The quality of the programs, of course, rests on the quality of the one ultimately responsible.
Most importantly, the fact that the monarch cannot control everything means that he’s more likely to control what’s important. Even though final authority rests in a single person, monarchy is naturally decentralized. He’s just one man, after all.
A bureaucracy without an ultimate authority, however, believes that everything can be controlled and never hesitates to try.
Monarchy is the ultimate arbiter of the law Progressivism has a bad trait of wanting the tail to wag the dog. The existence of exceptions means that the whole of the law has to change. Gay marriage and transgender rights are the current hot buttons, but the best example is euthanasia.
Everyone can conceive of a situation in which it appears that snuffing out the life of another is an act of mercy and not of violence. Our laws are generally geared toward allowing someone to die--removing medical assistance--but progressive thought says that this is oppressive--the law should allow for situations in which it’s advisable to actively kill someone.
By providing a final authority from which the law springs--as opposed to our conception that the law itself is the authority--, monarchy provides an escape valve for especially difficult cases. The man who is charged with murder for putting a pillow over the face of his father who was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s can have his punishment reduced or rescinded by order of the monarch. The monarch has the power to say “This is a special case,” without establishing a precedent for euthanasia. The law applies to most situations but cannot apply to all--monarchy solves this through the final authority of a single person.
Monarchy comes with a set of inherited obligations Perhaps the reason why dictatorships usually devolve into tyranny is because the dictators themselves were not morally prepared for true leadership.
Aristocrats and monarchs were raised in the culture of noblesse oblige--their blessings of rank required them to care for those lower in status. A future king was raised to respect his role and to understand the needs of his kingdom.
It’s always a gamble to rely on the moral compass of a leader (but hasn’t America consistently done this?), but the truth is that cruel leaders like Ivan the Terrible and prolifigates like Louis XIV were rare. The majority of bad rulers were mediocre and a surprising number were paralyzed by the enormity of their responsibilities, rather than abusing their stations.
The training of life-long leaders is the primary reason why a return to monarchy isn’t feasible today. The descendants of royalty have been separated from real power for so long that they will rule no better than your average ambitious colonel.
Monarchy provides a framework One of the most eye-opening writers I discovered in my early days of conservatism was Justus Moser. In this conservative collection, he has a piece from the 1770s named “No Promotion According to Merit.”
I was amazed that something so fundamental had a period of debate. But Moser had some good points. His central argument was that a stable arrangement allows actors to work around the framework to accomplish their goals. A shifting arrangement--one that is always changing in order to “improve” it--is like building a house during an earthquake.
Likewise, in one of his books, Theodore Dalrymple marveled at the quality of life somewhere in Italy, which he ascribed to the complete ineffectiveness of the government. Because the people could not rely on the state to regulate their economy properly, they developed a black market for quality goods whose prices were not inflated by taxes and other regulatory costs.
I don’t know that I’d go quite as far as those two, but one should know that monarchy provided a stable arrangement. The character of the reign was dictated by the character of the monarch, whose time on the throne may well last decades. Whether the most capable leader in history, a so-so ruler or a total incompetent, the subjects had time to adjust to the idiosyncrasies of their monarch. If the king was good, they prospered. If he was bad, they worked around him.
Monarchy is not driven by change Modern democracy is built on the cry, “We can do it better!” Rare is the politician who runs on the platform that nothing needs to be done.
A monarch is more likely to accept that a system is generally working and leave it unchanged. Progressive thought is always looking for the exceptions and overhauling the system to correct them. When the overhaul creates further exceptions, more overhauling follows. It’s a cycle that produces instability and can never be judged for its effectiveness because it’s always about to be improved.
The days of powerful monarchs probably will not be seen again for a long time. The kings and queens of the past came from warriors who won their position through battle and cunning. Their descendants held their thrones by outsmarting and outfighting their rivals while earning the love of their subjects. The genes may still be there (though probably not) but the historical environment has been destroyed. There is no one to take their place.
Even though we can’t return to those days, we can see the failures of our current system by comparison. Absolute monarchy may be extinct but it is not obsolete.
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