No.490339
>>490337Hooray, friends forever!
Grace perhaps you can give me some advice, I have a right wing Christian friend, he is morally opposed to homosexuality and promiscuity and so on, but we still RP together with him as a Pokémon and me as his master which involves us (gay) kissing and cuddling and sometimes sex, it's strictly an online thing but I have a boyfriend whereas I don't think he has a girlfriend (or boyfriend) and I'm not sure he ever has, I worry he will be lonely and I want him to try have a relationship. Am I just hurting him and giving him false companionship with our RP? Or should I just accept that maybe he's not interested in an in person relationship and this helps fulfil his needs?
Anyone else can answer too
No.490342
>>490339I ask here because Grace is our honorary comrade like this guy is to me
No.490348
>>490339Don't take anything too srsly online.
Your friend is a RW lifestylist, I guess.
No fake companionship.
Have a bit of integrity.
No.490713
Grace have you read Reflections of a Russian Statesman? What do you think about Pobedonostsev? On /lit/ they were saying he makes de Maistre look like a liberal.
No.490839
>>490713>you read Reflections of a Russian Statesman?It's in my reading list.
>On /lit/ they were saying he makes de Maistre look like a liberal.I'm not rlly trying to be so illiberal.
I bet Orthobros are going to adopt him.
I prefer Jean Bodin, King James VI & I, Thomas Hobbes, Robert Filmer.
>>490721I'm not too sure what Grace would do.
No.491315
>>491274>>491301The first one and the last one are adorable,
SPAM THEM. No.491341
>>491315They are all so cute! But I don't want to post them as people would think I'm Graceposter.
No.491348
>>491315saving them, I should organize my pictures folder but it's thousands of images and grace images gonna get lost
No.491349
>>491348you can upload them to the leftybooru (maybe if you ask the site owner)
No.491414
>>491348Make a Grace folder.
No.491938
Giovanni Gentile:
>So that the thought & will of the solitary person, the Duce, becomes the thought and will of the masses.
Giovanni Gentile:
<That Leader advances, secure, surrounded in an aura of myth, almost a person chosen by the Deity, tireless and infallible, an instrument employed by Providence to create a new civilization.
ᴉuᴉlossnW in A Diary of the Will (1927):
>Yes. The State is that unitary expression, absolute will, of the power and of the consciousness of the Nation
>This executive power–is the sovereign power of the Nation. The supreme head is the King
Then ᴉuᴉlossnW on his leadership doctrine for Fascist party members:
>Because in the subordination of all to the will of a Leader, which is not a capricious will, but a seriously meditative will, & proven by deeds, Fascism has found its strength.
>There should be no limits. We must obey even if the Leader asks too much.
No.492000
>>491996that pantsu song goes hard
No.492085
Does graceposter have an RSN? Add me.
No.492087
>>492085I tried to get back into OSRS.
But I was banned because they thought I was a bot.
I was grinding lots of bones to level prayer and killing cows.
No.492132
>>492085I did make an OSRS character.
8Grace8
No.492199
>>492196what game is that?
No.492202
>>492196oyasumi hime-sama
>>492199The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
No.492289
>>492087I'll gift her Majesty a bond. If you make another account.
No.492553
>>491349>>491414nah I'm too lazy for that
No.492660
>>492614as long as they still look royal
No.492668
>>492614She's perfect the way she is.
No.495202
>>495201Grace DESTROYED by Kara Boga and the slave boys of Turkish khans
No.495258
>>495201Lol, I remember accidentaly entering one of his videos about the bolsheviks.
Basically he cried in entire video that the bolsheviki were minority/that they killed 'the poor royal family' and how it was stressing for his religious-moralism.
But, I think you are the only monarchie that I won't be happy if you depart from this state of life. Your company in this imageboard is nice.
No.495259
>>495201Oh, man, that McCarthyist retard. I hate this guy. He's the ShortFatOtaku level of cringe.
No.495264
>>495258People are not reducible to their political opinions after all. I disagree a lot with monarchism just like I disagree with any authoritarian ideology but the OP seems like a chill person. Kinda reminds me of Puyi. I'm willing to look over our differences as long as the OP keeps drawing, they're very talented.
btw, OP, why don't you draw Grace's blue uniform design anymore?
No.495273
>>495264>as long as the OP keeps drawing, they're very talented.OP doesn't draw, but commissions.
No.495287
>>495273>OP doesn't draw, but commissions.Okay, the OP can leave then.
No.495441
Reading Bodin and Hobbes criticism of Aristotle, and having dabbled a fair bit in Aristotle's Politics myself, I think I understand why these absolute monarchists are harsh on Aristotle (at least, as far as monarchy is concerned).
…
I have greater political understanding, but there are still quite a few obstacles in my way, and insecurities I have in gaining a foothold for my absolutist agenda. –Lately I know what I'm looking to criticize, but how I justify the alternative and find a backing for it is still at odds. I've clung to the notion of an indivisible sovereignty and stressed how this justifies Monarchy on a political scale as opposed to Aristotle, and that it gives the state a unitary being: but I also relied heavily on all these authors purported agreement with Plato to disagree with Aristotle… but I'm not so sure about Plato himself and whether there is material in his works such as the Republic, Statesmen, or Laws to adequately support what I'm looking for. I want to find something that does support this sovereignty and simple state, but can I really say it's no less composite with regard to Plato's tripartite soul? maybe. –I should look into Plato and see if there is anything that suits this… but I'm pessimistic also, and can't say for sure it works altogether and I know that from certain parts I've read.
…
I gained a lot from reading other works and found a surprising amount of ammunition in Fascist works and even from Hitler in his criticism of the Austrian parliament.
>Does anybody honestly believe that human progress originates in the composite brain of the majority and not in the brain of the individual personality?
This stuck out to me, because it reminded me of Aristotle's food argument against the wise man. And again, our problem with constitutionalism with regard to Aristotle's composite political state as opposed to a monarchical form of state.
…
I have considerable gains from all this, but still have so much to look into and re-think a bit. I always get far, but have many miles ahead of me.
No.495520
>>495441Read The Unique and Its Property and Stirner's Critics. You seem to be pretty passionate about reading, I want to see your reaction to those books.
No.495531
>>495454>When you're coming from a position like mine, where you have a lot going against you, in the history books and criticism from many pundits, and such a heterodox ideology compared to the classicsI mean that's what being a Stirnerite boils down to.
>I am desperate for any backing I can getThis is just confirmation bias. You're clinging to an ideology as a form of identity, it is not worth it. You will not spontaneously combust if you don't have a concrete ideological foundation, if anything it'll keep holding you back.
No.495532
>>495531 (me)
Although I wouldn't say there's anything against Stirnerism in history books. Your ideology tries to justify your organization of society only. My anti-ideology sees everything as already justified. Stirnerism is quite friendly to history and science, not so much to historians and scientists.
No.495806
tfw skimming Karl Popper's Open Society and its Enemies to find hints on where to look.
Still haven't found precisely what I'm looking for.
>>495531It could really be my fancy.
No.496116
What prompts me is Hobbes' quote, paired with his criticism of Aristotle, and my conviction paired with these that Aristotle is the grandfather of the mixed constitution.
Because from Jean Bodin's analysis, before anyone else, it was Aristotle who came with the addition of a mixed constitution: Bodin said that Plato did not (albeit people would say he does in Laws, I think Bodin saw that more as a sovereign democracy than a truly mixed state). And albeit that Bodin testifies, that Herodotus named others who talked about a mixed constitution in his day, first named person that Bodin lists is Aristotle.
Following Hobbes singling out of Aristotle, I'm privy to think part of Hobbes' criticisms must be with the mixed constitution in relation to Aristotle as well. But finding what exactly that is, it isn't too transparent or clear-cut in Hobbes apart from the following quote.
Thomas Hobbes
>The error concerning mixed government [constitutionalism] has proceeded from want of understanding of what is meant by this word body politic, and how it signifies not the concord, but the union of many men.
It can't only be the distinction between a state an association (but I think this quote is valid for that too) – but also our understanding of what is meant by body politic or state.
I'm not sure it is as two-dimensional or simple between Plato and Aristotle, and we sometimes have a bit of both and neither: we have a love-hate relationship with Aristotle, and Jean Bodin's definition between state and association is also fairly akin to Aristotle's (and also, similarly, brings together various constitutions in his study of sovereignty like I hear Aristotle did), but with consideration of sovereignty. –But that is what I'm hoping is key for our understanding of what Hobbes means for understanding the word body politic and what it signifies.
That what I believe differs between a multi-party state and a one-party state in ideology is also connected to this. That the former (multi-party states) have in Aristotle that convention of freemen and estates in the political, a middle class and virtue in the midst of things, and composite character of the state – and this compositeness of the state as a whole to be its virtue and justice, I believe, might lend credence to this belief. –but before I try to contrast that with Plato, I'll add some doubts, because Aristotle was also a student and carried some things over from Plato, and not only criticisms, so it's not just that they're opposites (but this mentality prompts me to look into Plato). – What I hope to find in Plato is support for the State is to support an indivisible quality like sovereignty that is simple and one rather than composite – that might support the view of the state as a unitary being like one person, as opposed to the model of a mixed state.
I've had considerable success in making our notion of sovereignty more relevant and modern. I found that Fascism covertly holds a lot of the same ideas behind sovereignty in its true form and for totalitarianism in contrast to constitutionalism.
That's what people like Karl Popper say for Plato's Republic: that it is too friendly to totalitarian notions of the State.
But not only in Plato's Republic, but also Plato's Statesmen, that a state and household and said to be fundamentally no different, contrary to Aristotle also: which I think also adds to the unitary character (since Aristotle defines a household to have one head and makes it inappropriate for the political state) – it makes it more top-down than bottom-up, and that can also be seen in the notion of the philosopher king, as opposed to Aristotle's food argument against the idea of philosopher king (that many people can bring more food to the table).
…
And despite Plato's 3-part soul, I'd add that, 1st, I read that Socrates appeals to the immortality of the soul as incomposite, and, 2nd, that justice makes the state ideally one: the closer the state is to its ideal, it appeals to one and its unity. The State itself is a mirror to an individual person and his integrity – I think makes the State like a super-organism or like a person the way Hobbes makes his State into a monarch – whereas for Aristotle, the end of the state is its virtue and that I presume in relation to its composite character for the common good, and why I think Aristotle has more democratic undertones compared to Plato's philosopher king and metals.
Plato Republic:
>That the other citizens too must be sent to the task for which their natures were fitted, one man to one work, in order that each of them fulfilling his own function may be not many men, but one, and so the entire city may come to be not a multiplicity but a unity.
Which reminds me of Hobbes in that they come to be not many men, but like one man, except with Plato, it is more like they are organs than Hobbes' Leviathan that is an avatar of them all. But the entire city as this body politic isn't a multiplicity or concord, but a unity: and I presume – justice bestows its oneness and indivisible character to not be so composite, but becomes simple – that might be a stretch.
Plato Republic:
>For factions… are the outcome of injustice, and hatreds and internecine conflicts, but justice brings oneness of mind and love.
To differentiate what Hobbes says about body-politic from Aristotle, there is no other passage from Aristotle's Politics that makes this more clear than here:
Aristotle Politics
>For the people becomes a monarch, and is many in one; and the many have the power in their hands, not as individuals, but collectively. Homer says that ‘it is not good to have a rule of many,’ but whether he means this corporate rule, or the rule of many individuals, is uncertain. At all events this sort of democracy, which is now a monarch…
I stop at the passages about how this is a despot or even absolutism (which are surprisingly relevant to Hobbes) – and how it is no constitution at all according to Aristotle – the point I'm aware of, is that for Aristotle, to make the State into a monarch is the furthest from his inclination, given that for him the political constitution cannot be arranged like a household under one head or like a monarch, but only for economic units – which by this corporation of the people, it is exactly at odds.
Plato Laws:
>That all men are, so far as possible, unanimous in the praise and blame they bestow, rejoicing and grieving at the same things, and that they honor with all their heart those laws which render the State as unified as possible
This passage I found at the front of Karl Popper's book, I guess, pointing out the Leader principle:
>The great principle of all is that no one of either sex should be without a commander; nor should the mind of any one be accustomed to do anything, either in jest or earnest, of his own motion, but in war and in peace he should look to and follow his leader, even in the least things being under his guidance; for example, he should stand or move, or exercise, or wash, or take his meals, or get up in the night to keep guard and deliver messages when he is bidden; and in the hour of danger he should not pursue and not retreat except by order of his superior; and in a word, not teach the soul or accustom her to know or understand how to do anything apart from others. Of all soldiers the life should be always and in all things as far as possible in common and together; there neither is nor ever will be a higher, or better, or more scientific principle than this for the attainment of salvation and victory in war. And we ought in time of peace from youth upwards to practise this habit of commanding others, and of being commanded by other.
But whether Plato fundamentally differs from Aristotle in his understanding of a body politic is uncertain to me. Apart from the quotes I plucked, but it doesn't for sure say that Plato doesn't also like Aristotle consider the state as a whole to be composite and have a common good therein: in fact, similar to Aristotle, I think Plato also goes to talk about the whole and parts in Laws. –But what Plato says about justice bringing them to oneness of mind, and his stress on unity, reminds me of how Bodin also stressed that it is their union under sovereignty that ultimately makes the State, not so much the walls and persons.
I don't think I can rely on Plato or Aristotle for what I have in mind, and I know for sure that's why many people are constitutional monarchists: the notion of absolute sovereignty is fairly heterodox under scrutiny of both these names, esp. without consideration of how Bodin sees the need for absolute power and his distinction between the sovereign and the magistrate, but also Bodin considers it a necessity if the laws can be changed and rescinded that there is an absolute power, and that it is the case for human laws for sovereigns in his account by divine and natural law from what I've read for Bodin. That is without a doubt one of our most pernicious issues in appealing to the community… but if I'm right and there is a fundamental difference in how body-politic is understood between Plato and Aristotle here, – it would be useful in pushing back against the notion of the mixed constitution.
No.496198
This supports my endeavor here.
https://habib.camden.rutgers.edu/talks/plato-and-aristotle/
>According to Plato, unity is the desired end of both individual and state constitution.
>Plato’s overarching disposition towards unity asserts itself most pervasively and at every level, from the point of origin of a city to its formally articulated bureaucratic structure. What needs to be observed here is how unity — even more than the alleged goals of justice or the Good — is the ultimate teleological principle informing the interrelation of elements comprising the city’s overall constitution.
>Where the circularity of the concept of unity encompasses for Plato the origin and purpose of a state, Aristotle’s procedure in the Politics is strikingly different. To evince the overall contrast of both method and content between the two thinkers, it may be useful to consider firstly Aristotle’s metaphysical presuppositions, secondly his observations on the state in general, and finally his assessment of democracy as informed by these.
>To begin with, Aristotle’s self-proclaimed analytic and somewhat empirical method (I, i) is far less prone to the strategy of hypostatization which governs much of Plato’s thinking in the Republic. Aristotle’s method is to begin with the notion of a composite whole which is broken down into its smallest parts. Hence, where Plato sees democracy and the other forms of government as having a fairly determinate essence or set of defining characteristics, Aristotle is adamant that there are different types of democracy, oligarchy and aristocracy. In fact, his delineation of what he considers the best constitution, which he calls “polity,” is dependent on precisely this definitional malleability of each constitution and its ability to be mixed with other constitutional forms. More importantly, this analytic mentality underlies Aristotle’s rejection of Plato’s view that the state should comprise a unity. Aristotle holds that a state is a composite whole made up of parts; he also defines the state as an aggregate of citizens large enough to secure a self-sufficient life; a further definition suggests that the state is an association of citizens in a constitution (III, i-iii). Aristotle’s entire text stresses the plurality of parts in any state and the need to reconcile these (IV, iii). Given these assumptions, Aristotle maintains, as against Plato, that the state cannot be a unity; unity, in fact, would destroy the state’s self-sufficiency given that the state harbours not only a plurality of numbers but different kinds of men existing in relations of reciprocal equivalence and mutually supporting diversity of function. The state’s plurality, and lack of natural unity, is further evident in the rotation of office whereby citizens take turns to rule and be ruled; Aristotle goes so far as to say that such rotation entails the same citizens becoming different persons at different times (II, ii), a view which contrasts sharply with Plato’s advocacy of a strict specialisation of function. Aristotle does not, of course, suggest that a state exists in a condition of unconstrained plurality; whatever unity a state achieves is given in its harmonisation of various interests and is also a function of education in the “spirit” of a given constitution, an education which entails training of both habits and the intellect (II, v). No.496212
Aristotle Politics:
>Further, as a means to the end which he ascribes to the State, the scheme, taken literally is impracticable, and how we are to interpret it is nowhere precisely stated. I am speaking of the premise from which the argument of Socrates proceeds, "That the greater the unity of the State the better." Is it not obvious that a state at length attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a State? since the nature of a State is to be plurality, and in tending to greater unity, from being a State, it becomes a Family, and from being a Family, an Individual; for the Family may be said to be more than the State, and the Individual than the family. So that we ought not to attain this greatest unity even if we could, for it would be the destruction of the State. Again, a State is not made up only of so many men, but of different kinds of men.
>These are necessary preconditions of a state's existence, yet nevertheless, even if all these conditions are present, that does not therefore make a state, but a state is a partnership of families and of clans in living well, and its object is a full and independent life. At the same time this will not be realized unless the partners do inhabit one and the same locality and practise intermarriage; this indeed is the reason why family relationships have arisen throughout the states, and brotherhoods and clubs for sacrificial rites and social recreations. But such organization is produced by the feeling of friendship, for friendship is the motive of social life; therefore, while the object of a state is the good life, these things are means to that end. And a state is the partnership of clans and villages in a full and independent life, which in our view constitutes a happy and noble life; the political fellowship must therefore be deemed to exist for the sake of noble actions, not merely for living in common. Hence those who contribute most to such fellowship have a larger part in the state than those who are their equals or superiors in freedom and birth but not their equals in civic virtue, or than those who surpass them in wealth but are surpassed by them in virtue.
^This right here is exactly what I'm looking for.
…
With all the information I've gathered beforehand, and with reference to Hobbes quote from where I started, it does support that mixed constitutionalists do support rather a concord than a union – and although Aristotle is clear to distinguish his State from an Alliance, the nature of his State is still a plurality rather than such a sovereign union: and if it's said that they are composite nonetheless, the stress for our part is still on the unity that sovereignty bestows.
…
This helps to justify all I've said and why I've come to agree with Thomas Hobbes on this issue.
No.497427
>>497417>Patriarchy and matriarchy are basedThe entire ideology of monarchism.
No.498013
Plato Republic
>Can there be any greater evil than disc0rd and distraction and plurality where unity ought to reign? or any greater good than the bond of unity?
I made observations on DPRK with consideration of Jean Bodin and Hobbes' Leviathan, but now I'm also starting to see Plato's Republic.
…
I recall, that I talked about appetites and aversions in Hobbes' Leviathan and a DPRK video reminded me of that – I also recently found the same is shared in Plato's Republic.
Plato Republic
>And there is unity where there is community of pleasures and pains–where all the citizens are glad or grieved on the same occasions of joy and sorrow?
>No doubt.
>Yes; and where there is no common but only private feeling a State is disorganized–when you have one half of the world triumphing and the other plunged in grief at the same events happening to the city or the citizens?
>Certainly.
In this DPRK video, the lyrics:
>his love is our love
>his aversion is our aversion
–I said that was Leviathanesque, and reminded me of how Hobbes talked about appetites and aversions, and how I knew earlier parts of his philosophy translated into his civil philosophy.
…
I'll pull over some posts from my last thread.
Thomas Hobbes: Civil Sovereign is the Head, Source, Root, & Sun
>The Civil Sovereign in every Common-wealth, is the Head, the Source, the Root, and the Sun, from which all Jurisdiction is derived. And therefore, the Jurisdiction of Bishops, is derived from the Civil Sovereign.
Thomas Hobbes: Sovereign Power, Generalissimo
>For the power by which the people are to be defended consists in their armies, and the strength of an army in the union of their strength under one command; which command the sovereign instituted, therefore has, because the command of the militia, without other institution, makes him that has it sovereign. And therefore, whosoever is made general of an army, he that has the sovereign power is always generalissimo.
No.498016
<Plato / There won't be any difference, so far as ruling is concerned, between the character of a great household & the bulk of a small city
>Visitor: Well then, surely there won't be any difference, so far as ruling is concerned, between the character of a great household, on the one hand, and the bulk of a small city on the other? – Young Socrates: None. – It's clear that there is one sort of expert knowledge concerned with all these things; whether someone gives this the name of kingship, or statesmanship, or household management, let's not pick any quarrel with him.
<Bodin / A household or family, the true model of a Commonwealth
>So that Aristotle following Xenophon, seems to me without any probable cause, to have divided the Economical government from the Political, and a City from a Family; which can no otherwise be done, than if we should pull the members from the body; or go about to build a City without houses… Wherefore as a family well and wisely ordered, is the true image of a City, and the domestical government, in sort, like unto the sovereignty in a Commonwealth: so also is the manner of the government of a house or family, the true model for the government of a Commonwealth… And whilest every particular member of the body does his duty, we live in good and perfect health; so also where every family is kept in order, the whole city shall be well and peaceably governed.
<Filmer / Political & Economic, No Different
>Aristotle gives the lie to Plato, and those that say that political and economical societies are all one, and do not differ specie, but only multitudine et paucitate, as if there were 'no difference betwixt a great house and a little city'. All the argument I find he brings against them is this: 'The community of man and wife differs from the community of master and servant, because they have several ends. The intention of nature, by conjunction of male and female, is generation. But the scope of master and servant is only preservation, so that a wife and a servant are by nature distinguished. Because nature does not work like the cutlers at Delphos, for she makes but one thing for one use.' If we allow this argument to be sound, nothing doth follow but only this, that conjugal and despotical [lordly / master] communities do differ. But it is no consequence that therefore economical and political societies do the like. For, though it prove a family to consist of two distinct communities, yet it follows not that a family and a commonwealth are distinct, because, as well in the commonweal as in the family, both these communities are found.
>Suarez proceeds, and tells us that 'in process of time Adam had complete economical power'. I know not what he means by this complete economical power, nor how or in what it doth really and essentially differ from political. If Adam did or might exercise in his family the same jurisdiction which a King doth now in a commonweal, then the kinds of power are not distinct. And though they may receive an accidental difference by the amplitude or extent of the bounds of the one beyond the other, yet since the like difference is also found in political estates, it follows that economical and political power differ no otherwise than a little commonweal differs from a great one. Next, saith Suarez, 'community did not begin at the creation of Adam'. It is true, because he had nobody to communicate with. Yet community did presently follow his creation, and that by his will alone, for it was in his power only, who was lord of all, to appoint what his sons have in proper and what in common. So propriety and community of goods did follow originally from him, and it is the duty of a Father to provide as well for the common good of his children as for their particular.
<Hobbes / That a Family is a little City
>"Propriety receiv'd its beginning, What's objected by some, That the propriety of goods, even before the constitution of Cities, was found in the Fathers of Families, that objection is vain, because I have already declar'd, That a Family is a little City. For the Sons of a Family have propriety of their goods granted them by their Father, distinguisht indeed from the rest of the Sons of the same Family, but not from the propriety of the Father himself; but the Fathers of diverse Families, who are subject neither to any common Father, nor Lord, have a common Right in all things."
I repost this above^
Because this is where it all comes together.
Aristotle:
>The rule of a household is a monarchy, for every house is under one head:
>whereas constitutional rule is a government of freemen and equals.
And Aristotle said, that it was also an erroneous opinion for Plato:
>Now there is an erroneous opinion that a statesman, king, householder, and master are the same, and that they differ, not in kind, but only in the number of their subjects. For example, the ruler over a few is called a master; over more, the manager of a household; over a still larger number, a statesman or king, as if there were no difference between a great household and a small state.
For the 1st and 2nd quote, it is stressed how the political and economical rule do differ. Not only that, but that constitutional or political rule is more appropriate for democracy or oligarchy than monarchy – (as government and freemen and equals).
…
Jean Bodin said that Aristotle rejected Plato's bringing together of democracy and monarchy. And Aristotle also said, that when the state becomes a monarch under a collection of people in a corporate unity like Hobbes' Leviathan, for him it ceases to be a State.
Jean Bodin:
>And the ancients (to assure Popular estates) did strive to equal all citizens in goods, honours, power, and rewards: and if any one were more virtuous, more just, or more wise, than the rest, he was banished, as I have showed before, seeking to make an equality, if it were possible: and even Plato did wish, That wives and children should be common to all, to the end that no many might say, This is mine, or, That is thine: for those words of Meum, and Tuum (said he) were the breeders of disc0rd, and the ruin of states.
>By the which there will grow many absurdities: for in so doing, a city shall be ruined, and become a household (as Aristotle said) although that a household or family (which is the true image of a Commonweal) has but one head.
Bodin notes here, that Aristotle sees the ruin of the State to be ordered like a Monarchy or Household: albeit some constitutionalists will try to think otherwise, this is fundamentally why I believe right libertarians are at odds with absolute monarchy as an ideal. They hold fast to Aristotle's notion. And that's why they say centralization and say all these things about us absolute monarchists.
Jean Bodin somewhat criticizes Plato and Aristotle both.
>And for this cause, an ancient lawmaker, being importuned by some one, to make his country a Popular estate: Make it (says he) in thine own house. And if they say, That it is a goodly thing so to unite citizens and a city, as to make one household of it, they must then take away the plurality of heads and commanders, which are in a Popular estate, to make a Monarch, as the true fathers of a family; and to cut off this equality of goods, power, honour, and commandment, which they seek to make in a Popular estate; for that it is incompatible in a family.
How does this doctrine make sense? that the political state or city is like a household? Consider this. A household has a vast array of servants and rooms. There are many rooms for many purposes. As a city has many services and buildings. And buildings for different purposes.
Household / Economic:
A room for the master's children to be educated with teachers
A kitchen for the cooks to provide food
A room for laundry
A room for books.
The City / Political:
It has schools / universities for people to be educated
It has a restaurant for people to eat and be served by food workers.
It has laundromats for people to clean their clothes
It has libraries for their public books.
Public services where the people can be masters with public servants
Jean Bodin also calls out those who would prefer an oligarchy to democracy or monarchy, on account of its moderation between the two.
>Yet those who have come from his school approve more highly the rule of the optimates, which lies halfway between a democracy and a monarchy. They err, however, in this respect, that they seem to place virtue in the average thing or number, not in the mean proportional. Indeed, if this is true no prince will ever be good, nor will any oligarchy be quarrelsome, because between one and many they place the mean of a few, like the mean of virtue. Yet if there is any excellence in numbers, I suppose that unity is most to be praised of all, as Plato himself most divinely wrote, in the book about entity and unity.
No.498018
North Korea is a great case study in this case.
For although Bodin didn't vibe well with Plato, in making the State as a household to mean equality of goods and no private property, bordering a popular estate.
North Korea is called a monarchy by the media (and I know leftypol still strongly protest this, but hear me out) – what interests me about North Korea is it seems to play into both sides of the discussion.
Since the household is said to be the image of the commoonwealth, but also the commonwealth the image of the household: it makes sense that North Korea seems to have both. In a way, Hobbes also played into both images: making the People to be One Person (or a Monarch): where North Korea ardently believes the People are Masters and their State is a great socialist family, but pair this also with their doctrine of the Leader.
This video related.
>Our father is Marshal Kim Jong Un, Our Home is the Party's embrace"
>With the Respected Marshal who loves people most and regards his trouble for the people as his joy as our father in the harmonious great family we are assisting each other in the warm cherished house, our socialist homeland
Indeed, in the other video, they have an assembly of mothers representing the mothers of the country, and they refer to the party as the mother party – and the leader, as their father. Representing the components of a household in a democratic fashion, but also the leader.
In a way, it is like they have them in common: but couldn't that also be said for other states? that we have our children in common with curfew laws, for instance, or other public mandates looking for their common good. – As Jean Bodin aptly says, we have things in proper, but also things in common. I don't see why we shouldn't also have both by his own reasoning.
That's what makes North Korea interesting to me.
No.498027
Absolutism & Fascism have a lot in common. More than people would like to admit.
1st, Absolutism & Fascism view the State as a unitary being. Their corporatism is similar to Hobbes' corporatism: that the State is a corporation of one person. And that carries us back to Plato, who saw the State as a unity.
2nd, Fascism revives and stresses an absolute will for the State.
3rd, for Fascism the State is absolute, the groups relative; in their corporatist doctrine, associations and the sort are limited under the State.
Jean Bodin:
>Provided that they [the family] are joined together by the legitimate and limited rule of the father.
>I have said "limited," since this fact chiefly distinguishes the Family from the State
>That the latter [The State] has the final and public authority.
>The former [The Family or Household] limited and private rule.
Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan:
<In All Bodies Politique [Any Corporation under the State] The Power Of The Representative Is Limited
>In Bodies Politique, the power of the Representative is always Limited: And that which prescribes the limits thereof, is the Power Sovereign. For Power Unlimited, is absolute Sovereignty. And the Sovereign, in every Commonwealth, is the absolute Representative of all the Subjects.
ᴉuᴉlossnW:
>For Fascism the State is absolute, the individuals & groups relative.
Giuseppe Bottai writes in The Corporative State:
>However, in speaking of the corporative State, it must not be understood as meaning only all that which pertains to the relations between employers and workers - relations based on a principle of collaboration rather than upon a struggle of classes. Fascism with its new arrangements aims at a more complex end. This, summed up in a few words, is "to reassert the sovereignty of the State over those syndicates, which, whether of an economic or social kind, when left to themselves broke out at one time against the State, subjecting the will of the individual to their own arbitrary decision, almost musing the rise of judicial provisions alien to the legal order of the State, opposing their own right to the right of the State, subordinating to their own interests the defenceless classes, and even the general interest, of which the State is naturally the judge, champion and avenger ".
>In this way, having as a solid basis the principle of functional subordination of the Associations to the State, the corporative arrangement, as it progresses by degrees proves itself to be the foundation of the high political structure.
>This, then, is the achievement of the Fascist State, in which there are no individuals or groups of individuals which it does not recognize, subordinate and regulate, according to its aims.
>Since as a truly sovereign State, it seeks to be adequate to the civil society which makes up its structure–
So when anons were saying in the Study Fascism thread – that there was no merit in studying Absolutism to study Fascism – imo they were wrong to dismiss it.
…
However, I am surprised at how much Fascism advocate privatization, esp. in early Fascism, calling to reduce State monopolies and privatize numerous institutions that I'm surprised right libertarians or Hoppeans hate Fascism.
No.498028
Giovanni Gentile
>Both Nationalism & Fascism place the State at the foundation–for both, the State is not a consequence, but a beginning.
>For nationalists, the State is conceived as prior to the individual.
Aristotle:
>Further, the State is by nature clearly prior to the family & individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part.
Giovanni Gentile:
>For Fascism, on the other hand, the State and the individual are one, or better, perhaps, "State" & "individual" are terms that are inseparable in a necessary synthesis.
I look at this synthesis of "State" and "Individual" as something absolute monarchists brought about – because our concern was justifying the pre-eminence of one individual person such as a monarch: to make them on par or superior with the power of the State.
This De Jouvenel wrote scathingly–
>Where will it all end? In the destruction of all other command for the benefit of one alone – that of the State. In each man's absolute freedom from every family and social authority, a freedom the price of which is complete submission to the State. In the complete equality as between themselves of all citizens, paid for by their equal abasement before the power of their absolute master – the State. In the disappearance of every constraint which does not emanate from the State, and in denial of every pre-eminence which is not approved by the State. In a word, it ends in the atomization of society, and in the rupture of every private tie linking man and man, whose only bond is their common bondage to the State. The extremes of Individualism and Socialism meet: that was their predestined course.
-Bertrand De Jouvenel
<The extremes of Individualism and Socialism meet:
ᴉuᴉlossnW
>In so far as it is embodied in a State, this higher personality becomes a nation.
>It is not the nation which generates the State
>Rather is it the State which creates the nation, conferring volition and therefore real life on a people made aware of their moral unity.
This is somewhat like Hobbes' view: that before the institution of the State, there was only a multitude and no such people. The State as a corporation of One Person, formally called "The People" in Hobbes' view.
Bossuet:
>To imagine now, with M. Jurieu, in the people considered to be in this condition, a sovereignty, which is already a species of government, is to insist on a government before all government, and to contradict oneself. Far from the people being sovereign in this condition, there is not even a people in this state. There may be families, as ill-governed as they are ill-secured; there may well be a troop, a mass of people, a confused multitude; but there can be no people, because people supposes something which already brings together some regulated conduct and some establshed law – something which happens only to those who have already begun to leave this unhappy condition, that is to say, that of anarchy.
Joseph de Maistre
>If sovereignty is not anterior to the people, at least these two ideas are collateral, since a sovereign is necessary to make a people. It is as impossible to imagine a human society, a people, without a sovereign as a hive and bees without a queen: for, by virtue of the eternal laws of nature, a swarm of bees exists in this way or it does not exist at all. Society and sovereignty are thus born together; it is impossible to separate these two ideas. Imagine an isolated man: there is no question of laws or government, since he is not a whole man and society does not yet exist. Put this man in contact with his fellowmen: from this moment you suppose a sovereign. The first man was king over his children; each isolated family was governed in the same way. But once these families joined, a sovereign was needed, and this sovereign made a people of
No.498032
But Bodin said that Plato didn't list a mixed govt as a form of State, and that I suppose Bodin believes either would be either a State and Government (which Bodin said is different from mixing them). Yet Jean Bodin also said that it was a simple democracy.
No.498091
>>498073I keep seeing thi sgoofy-ass harem series, it genuinely makes me curious.
No.498505
what a generic and shitty oc
No.498514
>>498505shut the fuck up
>>498512Grace-chan is perfect! She does not need to change.
No.499014
>>499000 (checked)
What is Grace-chan singing?
No.499020
>>498551Her blue uniform with dark tights was awesome.
No.499198
>>499014probably battotai or rule brittania
No.500460
I agree with /leftypol/ that a left-wing side of Fascism is laughable, because from what I read they championed a great deal of privatization.
Also how hard it is to define Fascism compared to others: it is like this unicorn people cannot understand.
>>500370That is concerning, because the Church of England doesn't seem to be warming up well to his successor Prince William.
No.500462
Isocrates on Monarchy:
>Thus it is clear that monarchy is the most efficient form of government. It is said even the gods are under the kingship of Zeus; even if this were untrue, yet the fact that we imagine that the gods are under a monarchy is an admission that we consider it the best form of government.
>In oligarchies and democracies, the rulers have private interests, further they only meet occasionally and opportunities for action are missed; monarchs are continually occupied in the public interest. Again, the former are jealous and wish to exalt themselves at the expense of their predecessors and successors, the latter seek the goo will of all. But the greatest difference is that monarchs treat public affairs as their own concern, other rulers transact them as if they were other people's business, and they choose their advisors accordingly.
>Those who hold office for one year only have to retire before they have mastered their duties; a monarch has the advantage of continuous experience. Again, he knows that he has to superintend everything; the oligarchic and democratic ruler has colleagues, and much remains undone because each thinks the other is doing it.
>Obey the laws which have been laid down by kings, but consider their manner of life your highest law. For just as one who is a citizen in a democracy must pay court to the multitude, so also one who lives under a monarchy should revere the king.
No.500568
>>500478Thanks, anon.
Being sick has made me very moody.
You help me feel better.
No.500973
Grace I think you got COVID you should get that shit checked out.
No.501211
>>500977still sick.
I am recovering from some symptoms
(no more high fever or aches or throat pain, but still a little chested and runny).
No.501215
>>501211I pray for your recovery. I caught Covid twice during the pandemic, having flu suck balls
No.504268
Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan on Worship
>But in a larger use of the word Image, is contained also, any Representation of one thing by another. So an earthly Soveraign may be called the Image of God: And an inferiour Magistrate the Image of an earthly Soveraign.
>To be uncovered, before a man of Power and Authority, or before the Throne of a Prince, or in such other places as hee ordaineth to that purpose in his absence, is to Worship that man, or Prince with Civill Worship; as being a signe, not of honoring the stoole, or place, but the Person; and is not Idolatry. But if hee that doth it, should suppose the Soule of the Prince to be in the Stool, or should present a Petition to the Stool, it were Divine Worship, and Idolatry.
>To pray to a King for such things, as hee is able to doe for us, though we prostrate our selves before him, is but Civill Worship; because we acknowledge no other power in him, but humane: But voluntarily to pray unto him for fair weather, or for any thing which God onely can doe for us, is Divine Worship, and Idolatry. On the other side, if a King compell a man to it by the terrour of Death, or other great corporall punishment, it is not Idolatry: For the Worship which the Soveraign commandeth to bee done unto himself by the terrour of his Laws, is not a sign that he that obeyeth him, does inwardly honour him as a God, but that he is desirous to save himselfe from death, or from a miserable life; and that which is not a sign of internall honor, is no Worship; and therefore no Idolatry. Neither can it bee said, that hee that does it, scandalizeth, or layeth any stumbling block before his Brother; because how wise, or learned soever he be that worshippeth in that manner, another man cannot from thence argue, that he approveth it; but that he doth it for fear; and that it is not his act, but the act of the Soveraign.
<Honour And Worship What
>Honour consisteth in the inward thought, and opinion of the Power, and Goodnesse of another: and therefore to Honour God, is to think as Highly of his Power and Goodnesse, as is possible. And of that opinion, the externall signes appearing in the Words, and Actions of men, are called Worship; which is one part of that which the Latines understand by the word Cultus: For Cultus signifieth properly, and constantly, that labour which a man bestowes on any thing, with a purpose to make benefit by it. Now those things whereof we make benefit, are either subject to us, and the profit they yeeld, followeth the labour we bestow upon them, as a naturall effect; or they are not subject to us, but answer our labour, according to their own Wills. In the first sense the labour bestowed on the Earth, is called Culture; and the education of Children a Culture of their mindes. In the second sense, where mens wills are to be wrought to our purpose, not by Force, but by Compleasance, it signifieth as much as Courting, that is, a winning of favour by good offices; as by praises, by acknowledging their Power, and by whatsoever is pleasing to them from whom we look for any benefit. And this is properly Worship: in which sense Publicola, is understood for a Worshipper of the People, and Cultus Dei, for the Worship of God.
<Several Signs of Honour
>From internal Honour, consisting in the opinion of Power and Goodness, arise three Passions; Love, which hath reference to Goodness; and Hope, and Fear, that relate to Power: And three parts of external worship; Praise, Magnifying, and Blessing: The subject of Praise, being Goodness; the subject of Magnifying, and Blessing, being Power, and the effect thereof Felicity. Praise, and Magnifying are significant both by Words, and Actions: By Words, when we say a man is Good, or Great: By Actions, when we thank him for his Bounty, and obey his Power. The opinion of the Happiness of another, can only be expressed by words.
<Worship Natural and Arbitrary
>There be some signs of Honour, (both in Attributes and Actions,) that be Naturally so; as among Attributes, Good, Just, Liberal, and the like; and among Actions, Prayers, Thanks, and Obedience. Others are so by Institution, or Custom of men; and in some times and places are Honourable; in others Dishonourable; in others Indifferent: such as are the Gestures in Salutation, Prayer, and Thanksgiving, in different times and places, differently used. The former is Natural; the later Arbitrary Worship.
<Worship Commanded and Free
>And of Arbitrary Worship, there be two differences: For sometimes it is a Commanded, sometimes Voluntary Worship: Commanded, when it is such as he requireth, who is Worshipped: Free, when it is such as the Worshipper thinks fit. When it is Commanded, not the words, or gestures, but the obedience is the Worship. But when Free, the Worship consists in the opinion of the beholders: for if to them the words, or actions by which we intend honour, seem ridiculous, and tending to contumely; they are not Worship; because a sign is not a sign to him that giveth it, but to him to whom it is made; that is, to the spectator.
<Worship Public and Private
>Again, there is a Public, and a Private Worship. Public, is the Worship that a Commonwealth performs, as one Person. Private, is that which a Private person exhibits. Public, in respect of the whole Commonwealth, is Free; but in respect of Particular men it is not so Private, is in secret Free; but in the sight of the multitude, it is never without some Restraint either from the Laws, or from the Opinion of men; which is contrary to the nature of Liberty.
<The End of Worship
>The End of Worship among men, is Power. For where a man sees another worshipped supposes him powerful, and is the readier to obey him; which makes his Power greater. But God has no Ends: the worship we do him, proceeds from our duty, and is directed according to capacity, by those rules of Honour, that Reason dictates to be done by the weak to the more potent men, in hope of benefit, for fear of damage, or in thankfulness for good already received from them.
No.504269
>>504268After reading Plato's Republic, I return to this political commentary with renewed understanding.
…
Like where Hobbes is concerned with outward motions and expressive gestures to signify worship and honor as the inward conscious thoughts.
>And of that opinion, the external signs appearing in the Words, and Actions of men, are called Worship; which is one part of that which the Latins understand by the word Cultus: For Cultus signifies properly, and constantly, that labour which a man bestows on any thing, with the purpose to make benefit by it.>In the first sense the labour bestowed on the Earth, is called Culture; and the education of Children a Culture of their minds. Hobbes continues with the distinction of civil worship (the external praises and magnifying, actions and expressions to give a sense of honor to the State, such as the use of its emblems in currency and pilgrimages to its sites like Mt. Rushmore):
>To be uncovered, before a man of Power and Authority, or before the Throne of a Prince, or in such other places as hee ordaineth to that purpose in his absence, is to Worship that man, or Prince with Civill Worship; as being a signe, not of honoring the stoole, or place, but the Person; and is not Idolatry.>To pray to a King for such things, as hee is able to doe for us, though we prostrate our selves before him, is but Civill Worship; because we acknowledge no other power in him, but humaneHobbes makes the distinction between civil and divine worship: the former any person makes in a way everyday, private and public, for ordinary things, and directed toward civil persons it is with the end of power; the latter is the worship of God, which does not proceed from want of power, but from our natural duty.
Thomas Hobbes Publique Worship Consisteth In Uniformity>And this is Publique Worship; the property whereof, is to be Uniforme: For those actions that are done differently, by different men, cannot be said to be a Publique Worship. And therefore, where many sorts of Worship be allowed, proceeding from the different Religions of Private men, it cannot be said there is any Publique Worship, nor that the Common-wealth is of any Religion at all. This all this from Hobbes reminds me of Plato's Republic.
Among the chief reason Plato wanted to abolish private property was to accomplish a unity of feeling. Where the State should be unified, and people should be united in feeling, in pleasure and pain, private property fractures the State: where others rejoice at their gain, others feel sorrow and loss, pitted against each other, and to the destruction of State.
Plato Republic>And there is unity where there is community of pleasures and pains–where all the citizens are glad or grieved on the same occasions of joy and sorrow?
>No doubt.
>Yes; and where there is no common but only private feeling a State is disorganized–when you have one half of the world triumphing and the other plunged in grief at the same events happening to the city or the citizens?
>Certainly.In a way, North Korea does capture what Plato was talking about, and I somewhat relate Hobbes to it also: both advocate uniformity of these expressions and emotions… while Fascist critics (and in particular Carl Schmitt criticized Hobbes for leaving private feelings) – I do Hobbes also accomplished that ideal in his work Leviathan, and advocated uniformity the same.
As I noted earlier, in a North Korea video about the Revolutionary Arms supporting only Kim Jong Un, they stressed that his aversions were their aversions, and his love their love: which I also thought was Leviathanesique and how Hobbes talked about appetites and aversions. (Much of his philosophy translates to his civil politics, no doubt).
I think it gives me a new depth in understanding politics.
No.504376
>>504318>Caligula wasn't even that badbruh, the guy who made his horse a senate wasn't that bad? at least you aren't defending Nero I guess
No.504790
>>504376he was real for that
No.506874
bump I need Grace-chan pics
No.508732
>>508725How many monarchists are there anyway? I can't imagine it being a very big community.
No.508734
>>508732Last I checked… r/monarchism had less people than r/abolishthemonarchy.
It's that bad, and r/monarchism is our biggest hub I know of.
You'll find smaller pockets of monarchists in social media, forums, and 4ch /pol/ (outside of r/monarchism there's that traditionalist fold of tradcaths).
A lot of right libertarians jumped on board with Hoppe and the blogsphere.
I only represent the most fringe minority of monarchists
and the only group that actually aspires towards the pre-eminent ideal of monarchy as a form of State No.508738
>>508735>the only merit to Monarchy is that it only takes one bullet to kill one monarch.sorry but this goes hard
No.509073
>>509062Grace is the only one for us
No.509618
Plato's plea to abolish private property, that the State is divided, that half the State is mourning, the other half celebrating, – it's pretty compelling.
I said before, that nations are cults of personality, working on the people's mind into the frame of one persona and identity.
It is the same with race, like Plato said: instead private property dividing the feels of people, it's diverse properties of persons dividing their feelings, causing them to be grieved at each other, and celebrating and mourning at different occasions.
Race is a cult of personality, taking a group of people, and giving them all traits and appearances like one person. Racism is all about trying to strive toward that unity.
I think what drew me to monarchy is the same feeling: in democracies, I see people disorganized and drawn against each other (the system encourages this)… but the unity of one person such as a monarchy abolishes that division.
No.509810
>>509618>…but the unity of one person such as a monarchy abolishes that division.Hmm, but, why would monarchy 'abolish' that division instead of preparing the realized state which produces condradictions to itself, the revolution thus already sparked in monarchist regimes, if those monarchies already abolished the 'division', the people's exertions would be uniform, yet, it was not.
Isn't it solely 'your' feeling that you believe so? I'd say the same for the revolutionaries who believed that the emergence of a people's assembly taking the place of the royal court would manifest a progression sublimated by the human consciousness in it's journey of abstract freedom.
No.509934
>>509926Wow, looking good!
No.513006
>>512996>>512998>blacc gracenever knew I needed this until now
sad that Haiti never managed to catch a break, a violent revolution after another, then an invasion by the French, then another, and another, and another, then a blockade, then an embargo, then another, then a US invasion that stole from their treasury, then a plague doctor in charge, then lard ass joey from Vancouver writes on Twitter "haha Uyghurs can't create a nation"
this is the pistol henri used to an hero btw
No.513012
>>513011>made barbeque hungry for powerterrible choice of words
No.513016
>>513015At first, Haitian Grace was perplexed.
Why does Barbecue wear that?
But then I realized, their faction is called G9, and others wear it too.
The gang might be wearing the freemason necklaces for the letter G. It might be a gang symbol they appropriated.
No.513169
>>513016The G stands for Grace-chan.
No.513323
>>490348Where can I fetch that avatar?
No.513324
>>513323Go to
>>>/draw/3811Or go to VRchat and search Alunya at the Prismic Avatar Search world.
No.513336
Papa Doc was very much an anti-communist and hatec Castro. That's why the US was able to tolerate him.
No.513491
Is Haiti your current hyperfixation?
No.514366
>>514358Getting new Grace pictures is always nice, even if they are just paintbucketed.
No.516214
What's up with cancer and the British royal family?
No.516757
>>516734>>516735Thank you for the cute pictures!!
No.516995
>>516992
this should be in the fanfic thread.
not here
No.517697
>>497379these threads are such gem mines
No.518240
>>518236monarchads can't stop winning
No.518245
>>518236i don't like this image, she is smug, she is mocking me
No.518556
Grace-poster do you have any of the Alunya-Grace rap battle saved?
No.518693
>>517697>>516757We need more cute Alunya art too.
/leftypol/ needs drawfags like the old days.
No.518701
>>518681Aww, why not? I remember the Grace verses being fun! They are badly needed over at
>>>/music/11533.
No.519219
>>519015I thought it was for April's fools. They really need to switch it back to the jungle theme.
No.520171
>>520135But isn't Grace-chan a pillow princess?
No.520533
>>520471Very cute. Charlie was better in the pilot though where she still had a bit of crazy demon bitch in her. She's too boring in the actual show.
No.520548
>>520470Gracedom confirmed??
No.520979
>>520975Is Hazbin Hotel your current obsession?
No.520991
>>520984Sorry I mean special interest.
No.521284
Is the first images bacground cod2? I could recognize that style anywhere
No.521287
>>521284looks like cod 1 to me
No.521300
>>521287A sidenote, has anyone tried the spanish civil war mod for cod2 its kinda obscure but so well done it could be it's own game. It is as far as i know the only "game" about the civil war on the internet.
No.521301
>>521300Bokoen1 made some videos of him playing this spanish civil war mod, right?
No.521615
The most controversial point of absolute monarchists besides denial of a mixed constitution or mixed state – is the absolutism itself. Without understanding the pre-eminent notions of monarchy (which the absolutist ideal of sovereignty or majesty captures), it would have little to stand upon otherwise.
Jean Bodin - Quotes on absolutism
>If this is true [what Plato and Aristotle say], it seems to apply, not to princes, or to those who have the highest power in the state, but to the magistrates. For those who decree law ought to be above it, that they may repeal it, take from it, invalidate it, or add to it, or even if circumstances demand, allow it to become obsolete. These things cannot be done if the man who makes legislation if held by it.
>Indeed, it is a fine sentiment that the man who decrees law ought to be above the laws, for the reasons we have given; but once the measure has been passed and approved by the common assent of everyone, why should not the prince be held by the law which he has made?
>If it is just that a man shall be held by whatever he decrees for another, how much more just is it that the prince or the people shall be held by their own laws?
>Nay, not even the Roman pontiffs were willing to be held by any laws, and to use their own words, they were never tied their own hands.
>Now let us prosecute the other part of our propounded definition, and show what these words, Absolute power, signify. For we said that unto Majesty, or Sovereignty, belongs an absolute power, not subject to any law.
>It behoves him that is sovereign not to be in any sort subject to the command of another: whose office it is to give laws unto his subjects, to abrogate laws unprofitable, & in their stead to establish others: which he cannot do that is himself subject to laws or others.
>The attributes of sovereignty are therefore peculiar to the sovereign prince, for if communicable to the subject, they cannot be called attributes of sovereignty… Just as Almighty God cannot create another God equal with Himself, since He is infinite and two infinites cannot co-exist, so the sovereign prince, who is the image of God, cannot make a subject equal with himself without self-destruction.
>Majesty or Sovereignty is the most high, absolute, and perpetual power over the citizens and subjects in a Commonwealth: Which the Latins call Majestatem, the Italians Segnoria, that is to say, The greatest power to command. For Majesty (As Fetus says) is so called of mightiness.
>And to manifest this point, we must presuppose that this word Law, without any other addition, signifies The right command of him or them, which have sovereign power above others, without exception of person: be it that such commandment concern the subjects in general, or in particular: except him or them which have given the law. Howbeit to speak more properly, A law is the command of a Sovereign concerning all his subjects in general: or else concerning general things, as says Festus Pompelus.
>And as the Pope can never bind his own hands (as the Canonists say;) so neither can a sovereign prince bind his own hands, albeit that he would. We see also in the end of all edits and laws, these words, -Quia sic nobis placuit, Because it has so pleased us; - to give us to understand, that the laws of the sovereign prince, although they be grounded upon good and lively reason, depend nevertheless upon nothing but his mere and frank good will. But as for the laws of God and nature, all princes and people of the world are unto them subject: neither is it in their power to impugne them, if will not be guilty of high treason to the divine majesty, making war against God; under the greatness of whom all monarchs of the world ought to bear the yoke, and to bow their heads in fear and reverence. Wherefore in that we say the sovereign power in a Commonwealth be free from all laws, concerns nothing the laws of God and nature.
>For right certain it is, the first Commonwealths were by sovereign power governed without law, the prince's work, beck, and will, serving instead of all laws, who both in time of peace and war, by commissions gave out charge to whom they pleased; and again at their pleasure revoked the same, all depending of their full and absolute power, being themselves not bound to any laws or customs at all. And that is it for which Pomponius writes, the Roman commonwealth to have been at the first governed by regal power, without use of any law. And Josephus the histriographer, in his second against Appian, desirous to show the most honorable antiquity of the Hebrews, and of their laws, says, That Moses of all others was the first that ever write laws. And that in five hundred years after, the word Law was never heard of. Alleging in proof thereof, That Homer in so many books as were by him written never used this word.
>But it behoveth him that is a sovereign not to be in any sort subject to the command of another: which thing Tiberius wisely meaning in these words, reasoned in the Senate concerning the right of sovereignty, saying that – "The reason of his doings were no otherwise to be manifested, than in that it was to be given to none" -; whose office it is to give laws unto his subjects, to abrogate laws unprofitable, and in their stead to establish others: which he cannot do that is himself subject unto laws, or to others which have command over him. And that is it for which the laws says, That the prince is acquitted from the power of the laws; and this word the Law, in Latin imports the commandment of him which has the sovereignty. We also see that unto all edicts and decrees there is annexed this clause, "-Notwithstanding all edicts and ordinances whereunto we have derogated, and do derogate by these presents:" -a clause which has always been joined unto the ancient laws, were the law published by the present prince, or by his predecessors."
Jean Bodin elaborates on this point.
>Of the first kind are the kings who once upon a time without any laws governed empires most justly by prerogative. Such the kings of ancient Greeks are said to have been before Lycurgus and Draco, that is, before any laws had been made binding. Such, also, the ancients remember the rule of the kings in Italy. At that time no laws were promulgated by kings or by private citizens, but the whole state and the rights of citizens depended upon the will of the prince. The Latins were governed by the royal power, as Pomponius wrote, without any definite system of laws. Josephus inferred that Moses was the most ancient legislator, because Homer, in his long work, never used the word "law." Although afterwards statutes were introduced, yet they were bought forward by private citizens, not by kings; until somewhat late the princes were not willing to be bound by these regulations. Indeed, not even when the kings were driven from the city did the consuls allow their own authority and power to be limited legally.
>For right certain it is, the first Commonwealths were by sovereign power governed without law, the prince's work, beck, and will, serving instead of all laws, who both in time of peace and war, by commissions gave out charge to whom they pleased; and again at their pleasure revoked the same, all depending of their full and absolute power, being themselves not bound to any laws or customs at all. And that is it for which Pomponius writes, the Roman commonwealth to have been at the first governed by regal power, without use of any law. And Josephus the histriographer, in his second against Appian, desirous to show the most honorable antiquity of the Hebrews, and of their laws, says, That Moses of all others was the first that ever write laws. And that in five hundred years after, the word Law was never heard of. Alleging in proof thereof, That Homer in so many books as were by him written never used this word.
>So Ulysses, whose kingdom was contained within the rock of Ithaca, is of Homer as well called a King, as Agamemnon: for a great kingdom (as says Cassidorus) is no other thing than a great Commonwealth or Republic or State, under the government of one chief sovereign: wherefore if of three families, one of the chief of the families has sovereign power over the other two, or two of them together over the third, or all three jointly and at once exercise power and authority over the people of the three families; it shall as well be called a Commonwealth or Republic or State, as if it in itself comprehended an infinite multitude of citizens.
Jean Bodin on fundamental law
>But touching the laws which concern the state of the realm, and the establishing thereof; foreasmuch as they are annexed and united to the crown, the prince cannot derogate from them, such as is the law Salic: & albeit that he so do, the successor may always disanull that which has been one unto the prejudice of the laws royal; upon which the sovereign majesty is stayed & grounded.
It is more complex how this issue is handled. For those who would appeal to antiquity and the Greeks, like Plato, it is -somewhat- consistent but also understandably heterodox:
1. Plato's appeal to the rule of law is really an appeal to theocracy first and foremost.
>Which we're somewhat consistent with, stating the sovereign monarch is subject to the laws of God and Nature, which is also consistent with the fundamental laws preserving the monarchical form and sovereign majesty. The ideal of sovereignty or majesty in monarchy molds the State and has its virtues.
2. There is a story in light of how herds of sheep aren't guided by other sheep, but a superior force or herder, in like manner in a distant age – mankind was ruled by demigods like men over their herds of sheep. Which Plato calls the true government and the reason for following the rule of law – to capture that superior distribution of mind in laws – which is what the pre-eminent view of monarchy pertains to with majesty or sovereignty, formalized and enshrined as an ideal of monarchy on behalf of the State. Albeit Aristotle, like Plato, calls this into doubt.
>Yes, Plato would readily admit such a pre-eminent monarchy like that of the demigods over mankind, but Plato calls it into doubt: 1. Plato states that mankind naturally around the world isn't like a beehive or ant colony, with a natural superior immediately recognized in body and mind to rule them. States with monarchy like this are exceptional. 2. Also this pre-eminent person would be rare and extraordinary if he were to be found and readily accepted. 3. Even if there was this pre-eminent person, people would still be in disbelief and doubt.
No.521628
Jean Bodin on pre-eminent monarchy, Aristotle, & laws
>Wherefore Aristotle is deceived, in deeming the Commonwealth then to be happy, when it shall chance to have a prince of so great virtue and wisdom, as that he both can and will with greatest equity, govern his subjects without laws. For why, the law is not made for the prince, but for the subjects in general, and especially for the magistrates.
So for absolute monarchists, yes, the sovereign monarch is considered a superior, & this should be true for all monarchies that are monarchies.
It is our controversial point w/ absolute power, but… pretty much everyone unwittingly agrees.
If it weren't the case, then the laws would never change at all: otherwise we'd still be stuck with the Code of Hammurabi to this day.
It's obvious to everyone there is a sovereign power that can change laws. People only grumble about it when it comes to monarchy, but in every other state in the world this happens.
Aristotle rebuffed–
>You can change particular laws, but what about the entire lawbook?
Or
>This adds some element of the beast
But like Hobbes suggests, so long as it has anything to do with governing people – then all political states have some element of the beast notwithstanding any perfection they could hope for.
In revolutions and change of constitution / state, even the entire lawbook and fundamental constitution are done away with – if not, there would never be any change of States and revolutions, but throughout history this happens…
Some monarchists want to retain the fundamental laws of dead monarchies, but when a state is dissolved – they must establish a new order and adopt new fashions in governing.
Should states have laws and have ideology and preserve their forms of State? Yes, a rule-maker or game master should be obliged to follow his own rules – that would be proper, but I'd go as far as to say absolute power is a necessity for any functioning state as much as having laws and absolute power is of the law of nature governing states. Absolute power is part of the ideal of sovereign majesty.
I'm an unapologetic absolutist, tbh, b/c everyone else really is for lack of better terms absolutist too.
No.521630
>>521615>>521628I have read all that
No.521644
>>521642i think we already had a thread on siberia where the OP asked would you suppurt capitalism if you were rich and some anons responded with "i 'm already middle class/a bit rich and i still do"
No.521646
>>521644oopsy, sorry i meant would you support socialism if you were rich
No.521649
>>521642it would really depend on what kind of bourgeois you're talking about, there are many levels
classical bourgeois; the guys whose family owns a really, really old company, depending on the nationality, never ask this guy what did his family do during the second world war
new bourgeois; the new player in the money game who has no family ties and works at applebees, but tries to climb the bourgeois ladder using new methods, internet coins, shell companies, investments, buying shit in the metaverse, selling a book on how to get rich, right now has a decent net worth to make him on top of half the population but still behind the richest men
government supported bourgeois; the kind who have the government on their back, may have developed their wealth in the 80s or 90s, now the state helps them with subsidies and contracts so long as they get a share of the data, depending on who you ask this guy is either a "entrepeneur" or an "oligarch"
the expat; the bourgeois class of a poor third world country, who either came for the low to zero tax rate or the cute ladyboys depending on his wealth
the champagne socialist; you already know the kind, the socialism for the rich kind, there are only two kinds of this bourgeois, streamer from the united states or Commuist billionaire, no contradiction
No.521656
>>520171Grace is a Huge Pillow Princess Tsundere. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Also I am crashing this colony thread like the Hindenburg on a good day.
No.521715
>>521644>"i 'm already middle class/a bit rich and i still do"That's not what bourgeois means.
No.523545
>>523323I might get around to this later.
Rather I plan on putting together quotations from Louis XIV.
No.523552
>>523545take your time, don't forget to tell us how would you have saved the ottoman roblox army from downfall
No.523616
>>523323real shit roblox has some of the most fun neo-nazi communities of any gaming community, the indoctrination they do of kids on there is gross. i've only contacted one anti-fascist group on roblox, 5th international, and they seem pretty garbage. its big memes and shit but kids are rly getting indocrinated on this site its gotta be confronted
No.525417
There are more potential quotes, but I'm lazy.
No.525441
>>52543710/10, would use flamethrower on the parasol
No.526444
(Many achievements of Louis XIV's reign were commemorated on the ceiling of the Hall of Mirrors in these portraits. It's why the Hall of Mirrors is so famous. This portrait in particular displays his help in the relief if a famine.)
<Louis XIV describes rescuing his subjects from a famine
>There arose soon thereafter an occasion, unpleasant in itself, yet useful in its outcome, that gave my people a clear indication of how capable I was of this same attention to details in regard to their own interests and their own advantages. The great dearth of 1661 did not actually make itself felt until the beginning of the year 1662, when most of the wheat of the previous ones had been consumed, but then it afflicted the entire kingdom in the midst of these first successes, as if God, who is careful to temper His blessings, had wanted to balance the great and joyful hopes for the future with a present misfortune. Those who in such a case are accustomed to profit from public calamity did not fail to close their stores, expecting higher prices and greater profits.
>One may imagine, however, my son, what effect markets empty of all sorts of grain, peasants compelled to abandon the cultivation of the soil in order to go elsewhere in desperate search for their sustenance produced in the kingdom, even causing apprehension that the misfortune of that year would continue into the following ones; artisans who raised the prices of their products in proportion to the cost of living, the poor making their complaints and their murmurs heard everywhere, middling families who held back their usual charities from fear of an impending need, the most wealthy burdened with their servants and unable to do everything – all the orders in the State, finally, threatened with the grave diseases that accompany a poor diet, and which, beginning with the people, subsequently spread to the persons of the highest quality; all this caused indescribable dismay throughout France.
>It would have been infinitely greater, my son, if I had merely agonize uselessly over it or if I had relied on the remedies at hand, on the ordinary magistrates, who are all too often weak and incompetent, lacking in zeal, or even corrupt. I became intimately acquainted with the needs of the people and with conditions. I obliged the more affluent provinces to aid the others, private individuals to open their stores and to put up their commodities at a fair price. I hastily sent orders everywhere to bring in as much wheat as I possibly could by sea from Danzig and from other foreign countries. I had my treasury purchase it. I distributed most of it free to the lower classes of the biggest cities, such as Paris, Rouen, Tours, and others. I had the rest sold at a very modest price to those who could afford it, and any profit from this was immediately employed for the relief of the poor, who derived, by this means, voluntary, natural, and imperceptible aid from the more wealthy. In the countryside, where distribution of wheat could not be effected so promptly, I dispatched money with which each one subsequently tried to relieve his need. I appeared, finally to all my subjects, as a true father of a family, who provides for his household and equitably distributes nourishment to his children and to his servants.
>I have never found any expense more useful than this one. For our subjects, my son, are our true riches and the only ones that we conserve purely for themselves, all the others being good for nothing unless we know the art of using them, that is, of spending them wisely. And if God gives me the grace to execute everything that I have in mind, I shall try to bring the prosperity of my reign to such a point, that in truth there should be no more rich or poor, for fortune, industry, and intelligence will always retain this distinction among men, but at least there should be no more indigence or begging throughout the kingdom; I mean no one, however impoverished he may be, who is not assured of his sustenance either through his work or through normal and regulated aid.
>But without looking forward, I was abundantly and immediately rewarded for my cares by the upsurge of affection that they produced for me in the hearts of the people. And this is how, my son, we may sometimes fortunately turn into blessings the greatest troubles of the State. For if anything can tighten the sacred knot that attaches subjects to their sovereign and awaken in their hearts their natural sentiments of respect, of gratitude, and of love for him, it is undoubtedly the aid that they receive from him in time of some unexpected public misfortune. We hardly note the admirable order of the world and the regular and useful course of the Sun until some disturbance in the seasons or some apparent disorder in the machine makes us give it a little more reflection. As long as everything in a State is prosperous, it is easy to forget the infinite blessings that royalty provides and merely envy those that it possesses. Man, naturally ambitious and proud, can never understand why another should command him until he feels the need for it. But habit makes him insensitive to this very need, as soon as it constantly and regularly satisfied. It is extraordinary incidents that make him consider what he ordinarily gains from this; and that, without authority, he would himself fall prey to the strongest, finding in the world neither justice, nor reason, nor security for his possessions, nor recourse against his losses; and this is how he comes to love obedience as much as he loves his own life and his own tranquility.
No.526482
<Louis XIV on reforming finance (part one):
Removing the superintendant
>It was then that I believed I should give serious attention to the re-establishment of the finances, and the first thing I deemed necessary was to remove the principal officials responsible for the disorder from their positions. For ever since I had assumed the care of my affairs, I had every day discovered new evidence of their squandering, and particularly by the superintendant. The sight of vast establishments of this man and of his insolent acquisitions could not but convince me of his wild ambition, and the general distress of my entire people constantly urged my justice against him.
>But what compounded his guilt toward me was that, far from profiting from the kindness I have shown him by retaining him in my councils, it gave him renewed hope of deceiving me, and that far from being the wiser for it, he merely tried to be more skillful at it. but whatever artifice he might employ, I was not long in recognizing his bad faith, for he could not refrain from continuing his extravagant expenses, fortifying strongholds, decorating palaces, forming conspiracies, and purchasing important offices for his friends at my expense, in the hope of soon becoming the sovereign arbiter of the State.
>Although this behavior was assuredly most criminal, I had initially intended only to exclude him from affairs, but having subsequently considered that with his restless disposition he would not endure this change of fortune without trying something new, I thought it best to arrest him. I postponed, nevertheless, the execution of this plan, and this plan distressed me greatly, for not merely did I see that he was in the meanwhile employing new subterfuges to steal from me, but what disturbed me more was that in order to appear more influential, he made a point of asking me for private audiences, and that in order not to arouse his suspicions, I was compelled to grant them and to submit to his useless discussions, while I know all about his disloyalty.
>You can imagine that I was at an age when it required a great deal of self-control for me to act with such restraint. But, on the one hand, I saw that the removal of the superintendant was necessarily connected with transferring the farmed taxes, and on the other hand, I knew that it being summer, this was the worst season of the year for making such innovations, aside from wanting above all to have a fund of four millions on hand for whatever needs might arise. Thus I resolved to wait for autumn to execute this plan.
>But having gone to Nantes toward the end of the month of August for the meeting of the Estates of Brittany and getting a closer look from there at the ambitious enterprises of this minster, I could not refrain from having him arrested at that very place on September 5. All France, as convinced as I was of the misconduct of the superintendant, acclaimed this action and praised particularly the secrecy with which I ha kept a decision of this nature for three or four months, primarily in regard to a man who had such private access to me, who was in contact with all those who were around me, who was receiving information from within and from outside the State, and whose own conscience should have given him ample warning that he ha everything to fear.
>But what I believed I had on this occasion that was most worthy of being observed and most advantageous to my people was to abolish the office of superintendant, or rather to assume it myself.
>Perhaps in considering the difficulty of this undertaking, you will one day be astonished, as all France has been, that I have undertaken this labor at an age when it is usual to love only pleasure. But I shall tell you frankly that although this work was unpleasant, I felt less repugnance for it than another might have, because I have always considered the satisfaction of doing one's duty as the sweetest pleasure in the world. I have even often wondered how it could be that love for work a quality so necessary to sovereigns should yet be one that is so rarely found in them.
>Most princes, because they have a great many servants and subjects, do not feel obliged to go to any trouble and do not consider that, if they have an infinite number of people working under their orders, there are infinitely more who rely on their conduct and that it takes a great deal of watching and a great deal of work merely to insure that those who act do only what they should and that those who rely tolerate only what they must. All these different conditions that compose the world are united to each other only by an exchange of reciprocal obligations. The deferences and the respects that we receive from our subjects are not a free gift from them but payment for the justice and the protection that they expect to receive from us. Just as they must honor us, we must protect and defend them, and our debts toward them are even more binding than theirs to us, for indeed, if one of them lacks the skill or the willingness to execute our orders, a thousand others come in a crowd to fill his post, whereas the position of a sovereign can be properly filled only by the sovereign himself.
<Of all the functions of Sovereignty, the one that a prince must guard most jealously is the handling of the finances
>But to be more specific, it must be added to this that of all the functions of sovereignty, the one that a prince must guard most jealously is the handling of the finances. It is the most delicate of all because it is the one that is most capable of seducing the one who performs it, and which makes it easiest for him to spread corruption.
>The prince alone should have the sovereign direction over it because he alone has no fortune to establish but that of the State, no acquisition to make except for the Monarchy, no authority to strengthen other than that of the laws, no debts to pay besides the public ones, no friends to enrich save his people.
…
>And indeed, what would be more ruinous for the provinces or more shameful for their king than to raise a man who has his own private objectives and affairs, who claims the right to dispose of everything without rendering any account and to fill his coffers and those of his creatures constantly with the most liquid public funds? Can a prince be more foolish than to favor private individuals who use his authority in order to become rich at his own expense and whose squandering, although it gains him nothing, ruins both his affairs and his reputation? And putting it more piously, can he fail to consider that these great sums which compose the exorbitant and monstrous wealth of a small number of financiers always come from the sweat, the tears, and the blood of the wretched, whose defense is committed to his care?
>The maxims I am teaching you today, my son, have not been taught to me by anyone, because they had never occurred to my predecessors. But now that your advantage in being instructed in them at such an early age will come back to haunt you if you don't profit from it.
>Aside from the councils of finances and the boards that had always been held, I decided, in order to acquit myself more responsibly of the superintendancy, to establish a new council, which I named Royal Council. I composed it of Marshal de Villeroi, of two Councillors of State, D'Aligre and De Seve, and of an Intendant of Finances, who was Colbert, and it is in this council that I have been working ever since to disentangle the terrible confusion that had been introduced into my affairs.
>This was assuredly no minor undertaking, and those who have seen the point at which things were and who sees the precision to which I have no reduced them are astonished, with reason, that I was able to penetrate in so short a time into an obscurity that so many able superintendants had never yet clarified. But what must put a stop to this surprise is the natural difference between the interest of the prince and that of the superintendant. For these private individuals, approaching their position with no greater care than to preserve their own liberty to dispose of everything as they see fit, often put much more of their skill into obscuring this matter than into clarifying it, whereas a king, who is its legitimate lord, puts as much order and precision as he can into everything, aside from the fact that I was personally often relieved in this work by Colbert, whom I entrusted with examining things that required too much discussion and into which I would not have had the time to go.
>The manner in which the collections and the expenditures had been made was something incredible. My revenues were no longer handled by my treasurers but by the clerks of the superintendant who combined them haphazardly with his private expenses. Money was disbursed when, how, and as they pleased, and one looked afterwards at leisure for false expenses, orders for cash, and canceled notes to consume these sums. The continual exhaustion of the public treasury and the perpertual avidity for more money made for the easy awarding of exorbitant commissions to those who offered to advance it. The wild disposition of Fouquet had always made him prefer useless expenses to necessary ones, so that the most liquid funds having been consumed in gratituities distributed to his friends, in buildings constructed for his pleasure, or in other things of a similar nature, it was necessary, at the slightest need of the State, to have recourse to alienations that could only be negotiated at a pittance because of the extreme necessity. By these means the State had become so impoverished that notwithstanding the immense tailles that were levied, the treasury netted no more than twenty-one million per year, which had itself been spent for two years in advance, aside from my having been made liable for seventy millions in notes issued for the profit of various individuals.
No.526490
(Pic related: Louis XIV against financial harpies)
<Part 2
>The thing that I was most eager to correct about this general abuse was the use of orders for cash, because these had assuredly contributed more than anything else to the squandering of my money; for in this way one gave freely to whomever one wanted, without shame and without any fear of discovery. To avoid this confusion in the future, I resolved to draw up and to record personally all the orders I would sign, so that no expenditure has since been possible without my knowing the reason.
>I also wanted to recontract my farmed taxes, which had not been brought to their just value, and in order to avoid the frauds that were so common on these occasions – whether through the corruption of the judges who awarded them or through the secret compacts between the bidders – I was present at the bidding personally; and this first effort of mine increased my revenues by three millions, aside from making the value of the contracts payable monthly, which then gave me enough to provide for the most pressing expenses and enabled me to save the State a loss of fifteen millions a year in interest on loans.
>As for the contracts for the direct taxes, I reduced the commission from five sols to only fifteen deniers per livre, a diminution that amounted to such a large sum for the entire kingdom that it permitted me, in my great exhaustion, to lower the taille by four millions.
<I was astonished myself that in such a short time and by such entirely just means I should have been able to procure so much profit for the public. But what might cause still greater astonishment in that those who dealt with me on these terms made almost as great and much more solid a gain than those who had dealt previously, because the respect of my subjects for me then and my care in protecting my servants in all their requests made them find as much facility in their collections than as there had previously been chicanery and obstruction.
>I resolved, a short time later, to reduce from three quarters to two the payments on the salary increases that the officials had acquired at the pittance and that had greatly diminished the value of my farmed taxes. But I have already explained the justice and the facility of this reduction to you now in passing as one of the good effects of the economy that was so necessary to my state.
>But my last decision of that year concerning the finances was the establishment of the Chamber of Justice, in which I had two principal motives: the first, that it was not possible, in the state to which things were reduced, to diminish the ordinary taxes sufficiently and to relieve the poverty of the people promptly enough without making those who had grown wealthy at the expense of the State contribute heavily to its expenses; and the second, that for this chamber to examine the contracts that had been made was the only means to facilitate the settling of my debts. For they had been raised to such prodigious sums that I could not have paid them all without ruining most of my subjects, nor cancel them arbitrarily without running the risk of committing an injustice, aside from not wanting to return to the abuse that had been practiced in the redemption of treasury notes, by which means influential people were paid sooner or later for sums that were not due them while the real creditors would have drawn only a small portion of their due. This is why I believe that I should liquidate exactly what I owed and what was owed to me in order to pay the one and to be paid the other, but because these discussions were delicate and because most of those concerned ha a great deal of influence and a good many relatives in the ordinary courts of justice, I was obliged to form a special one out of the most disinterested men in all the others.
>I have no doubt that from reading all these details you will get the impression that the effort required for all these sorts of things was not very pleasant in itself, and that this great number of ordinances, contracts, declarations, registers, and accounts that it was necessary not merely to see and to sign but to conceive and to resolve, was not too satisfying a matter to a mind capable of other things, and I will grant you this.
<But if you consider the great advantages that I have drawn from it later, the relief that I have granted to my subjects each year, of how many debts I have disengaged the State, how many alienated taxes I have repurchased, with what punctuality I have paid all legitimate burdens, and the number of poor workers I have supported by employing them on my buildings, how many gratuities I have given to people of merit, how I have furthered public works, what aid in men and in money I have furnished my allies, how greatly I have increased the number of my ships, what strongholds I have purchased, with what vigor I have taken possession of my rights when they were challenged, without ever having been reduce to the unfortunate necessity of burening my subjects with any extraordinary tax, you would certainly find then that the labors by which I have reached this position must have appeared very pleasant to me, since they have borne so much fruit for my subjects.
<For indeed, my son, we must consider the good of our subjects far more than our own. They are almost a part of ourselves, since we are the head of a body and they are its members. It is only for their own advantage that we must give them laws, and our power over them must only be used by us in order to work more effectively for their happiness. It is wonderful to deserve from them the name of a father and sovereign, and if one belongs to us by right of birth, the other must be the sweetest object of our ambition. I am well aware that such a wonderful title is not obtained without a great deal of effort, but in praiseworthy undertakings one must not be stopped by the idea of difficulty. Work only dismays weak souls, and when a plan is advantageous and just, it is weakness not to execute it. Laziness in those of our rank is just as opposed to the greatness of courage as timidity, and there is no doubt that a monarch responsible for watching over the public interest deserves more blame in fleeing from a useful burden than in stopping in the face of imminent danger; for indeed, the fear of danger can almost always be tinge by a feeling of prudence, whereas the fear of work can never be considered as anything but an inexcusable weakness.
>Louis XIV's close management of finances
>In working at the reorganization of the finances, I had already acceded, as I have told you, to signing personally all orders issued for the slightest expenses of the State. I found that this was not enough, an I was willing to go to the trouble of marking in my own hand, in a little book that I could always see, on one side, the funds that I was to receive each month, on the other, all the sums paid by my orders during that month.
<It may be, my son, that among the great number of courtiers who will surround you, some, attached to their pleasures and glorying in their ignorance of their own affairs, will someday portray this care to you as far beneath royalty. They will tell you, perhaps, that the kings our predecessors have never done such a thing and that even their prime ministers would have believed they were lowering themselves if they had not relied for these details on the superintendant and he, in turn, on the treasurer or on some lowly and obscure clerk. But those who speak this way have never considered that in the world, the greatest affairs are hardly ever concluded without the smallest, and that what would be baseness if a prince were acting through mere love of money becomes loftiness and superiority if its ultimate object is the welfare of his subjects, the execution of an infinite number of great plans, his own splendor, and his own magnificence, of which this attention to details is the most secure basis.
>Imagine, my son, what an entirely different thing it is for a king, whose plans must be varied, more extensive, and more hiden than those of any private individual, of such a nature indeed that there is sometimes hardly a single person in the world to whom he can entrust them all in their entirety. There are, however, none of these plans in which the finances do not enter somewhere. This is not saying enough. There are none of these plans that do not entirely and essentially depend on them, for what is great and wonderful when the state of our finances allows it becomes fantastic and ridiculous when it doe snot. Think then, I beg of you, how a king could govern and not be governed if his ignorance of these financial details subjects his best and most noble thoughts to the caprice of the prime minister, or of the superintendant, or of the treasurer, or of that obscure and unknown clerk, whom he would be obliged to consult like so many oracles, so that he could not undertake anything without obtaining their advice and their consent.
>But there are, you will be told, loyal and wise people who, without penetrating into your plans, will not mislead you about these financial details. I wish, my son, that these qualities were as common as they are rare.
No.526492
wtf is this monarchist thread
>>526444 and
>>526482 kind of interesting though, who knows how historically accurate the content is.
No.526494
>>526492The source is Louis XIV's instruction & memoirs for the dauphin, translated by Paul Sinnino.
https://archive.org/details/louisxivkingfran0000paul/page/n5/mode/2up No.526519
Grace & Alunya: Back to The Future
Grace and Alunya use a Time Machine to travel back into Harlem, the 1980s. they team with an African American named John Sideways, they must defeat Porky's current plan of flooding the streets with Crack Cocaine while fighting South African mercenary goons, Ronald Reagan, the CIA, Wall Street bankers, and creepy evangelical pastors
No.527097
>King Lear / Pre-eminence, Majesty
Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower:
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate, and the night;
By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist, and cease to be;
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
…
I do invest you jointly with my power,
[and] Pre-eminence, and all the large effects
That troop with Majesty. Ourself, by monthly course,
With reservation of an hundred knights,
By you to be sustain'd, shall our abode
Make with you by due turns. Only we still retain
The name, and all the additions to a king;
The sway, revenue, execution of the rest,
Beloved sons, be yours: which to confirm,
This coronet part betwixt you.
…
King Lear & King James VI & I
Shakespeare's King Lear is believed to have been first performed before King James VI & I in 1606; 1606, the same date Richard Knolles' translation of Bodin's Six Books of a Commonwealth was made into English (K. James VI & I owned a copy).
When Shakespeare in King Lear mentions "pre-eminence" and "all the large effects that troop with Majesty" – it is evidence Shakespeare himself was learned on the idea of Sovereignty I expound in royal colony.
We'll talk further on this.
No.527101
Historians will regale you with how Absolutism & Sovereignty or Majesty was unprecedented and formed Modernity with humanism, nationalism, & liberalism, the Peace of Westphalia; how beforehand denominational / Church allegiance came before political ideas & allegiance, etc.
Before Majesty or Sovereignty, there was the name of monarchical pre-eminence; the pre-eminent notion of Monarchy is very old, but was informal and profound.
Majesty or Sovereignty was simply the re-emergence and formalization thereof… of monarchical pre-eminence as an ideal.
It goes back to antiquity; Aristotle also briefly covered the pre-eminent ideals of Monarchy, but later he denied it and said it was more synonymous with the Indian kings with their grandiose claims… so all will acknowledge the notions of monarchical pre-eminence found in absolutism are much older than their formality in the late 1500s.
…
Aristotle went on to say.
>Any would be ridiculous who attempted to make laws for them: they would probably retort what, in the fable of Antisthenes, the lions said to the hares.
>For surely it would not be right to kill, or ostracize, or exile such a person, or… require that he should take his turn in being governed–the whole is naturally superior to the part, and he who has this pre-eminence is in the relation of the whole to the part. But if so the only alternative is that he should have the supreme power, and that mankind should obey him, not in turn, but always.
>Such an one may truly be deemed a god among men. Hence we see that legislation is necessarily concerned only with those who are equal in birth and in capacity; and for men of pre-eminent virtue there is no law–they are themselves a law (living law).
Of course, Aristotle after setting the bar this high (& increasing my suspicion of him as a monarchist) said that this was unattainable, and left it not to Greek kings but the Indian kings of the East.
–
>Now, if some men excelled others in the same degree in which gods and heroes are supposed to excel mankind in general (having in the first place a great advantage even in their bodies, and secondly in their minds), so that the superiority of the governors was undisputed and patent to their subjects, it would clearly be better that once for an the one class should rule and the other serve. But since this is unattainable, and kings have no marked superiority over their subjects, such as Scylax affirms to be found among the Indians, it is obviously necessary on many grounds that all the citizens alike should take their turn of governing and being governed
No.527112
I say, Aristotle, Aristotle, Aristotle; frankly, that is the chair Alexis de Tocqueville is really standing upon w/ his appeals to decentralization: Aristotle
There's a reason absolutists like Bodin & Hobbes were a bit course with Aristotle: (we have a love-hate relationship)
>"And I believe that scarce any thing can be more absurdly said… more repugnant to Government, than much of that he hath said in his Politics" says Hobbes
Jean Bodin also remarks against Aristotle's influence:
>"Moreover, from earliest memory the people of America always have retained the royal power. They do not do this because they have been taught, but from custom. They were not trained by Aristotle, but shaped by their leader, nature. Furthermore, when they hear that the rule of optimates exists in some corners of Italy or Germany, they marvel that this can be."
That's why Jean Bodin remarks, They were not trained by Aristotle, but shaped by their leader, Nature.
>"What Aristotle said that the king becomes a tyrant when he governs even to a minor degree contrary to the wishes of the people – is not true, for by this system there would be no kings. Moses himself, a most just and wise leader, would be judged the greatest tyrant of all, because he ordered and forbade almost all things contrary to the will of the people. Anyway, it is popular power, not royal, when the state is governed by the king according to the will of the people, since in this case the government depends upon the people. Therefore, when Aristotle upheld this definition, he was forced to confess that there never were any king"
Of course, Aristotle has said a number of good things about Monarchy, like of its fatherly and kindred nature with blood; but his view of Monarchy as incompatible with the State is what we're most combative against.
The State & Laws of Aristotle's City is the convention of the Estates or Houses; it isn't indicative of the Family, but the Families that altogether form the City (as the city / democracy was considered superior to the Family).
Hence why the Nobility favors so much for Aristotle's constitutionalism of freemen & equals. They are heads and masters of their estates, together by their consent and virtue;
That view extends to regionalism, based on the view of the estates / houses and their heads in a city.
Yet where our understanding of politics differs is moreso rather than the assent of these estates, there is a bonding agent and unity called Sovereignty; a unity that transfixes and gives an identity to the entire body, like a soul or cult of personality imposed.
A civil soul that encompasses the entire body-politic, indivisible & simple, breathes life into it and gives them a common language, so that the estates can have any assent to begin with together: a majesty or sovereignty holding it all together than simply the coherence of them.
This is the nature of the general power and how our view of civics fundamentally differs.
Hobbes says
>"The other error in this his first argument is that he says the members of every Commonwealth, as of a natural body, depend one of another. It is true they cohere together, but they depend only on the sovereign, which is the soul of the Commonwealth."
Hobbes says again
>"The error concerning mixed government has proceeded from want of understanding of what is meant by this word body politic, and how it signifies not the concord, but the union of many men."
No.527119
This De Jouvenel wrote scathingly–
>Where will it all end? In the destruction of all other command for the benefit of one alone – that of the State. In each man's absolute freedom from every family and social authority, a freedom the price of which is complete submission to the State. In the complete equality as between themselves of all citizens, paid for by their equal abasement before the power of their absolute master – the State. In the disappearance of every constraint which does not emanate from the State, and in denial of every pre-eminence which is not approved by the State. In a word, it ends in the atomization of society, and in the rupture of every private tie linking man and man, whose only bond is their common bondage to the State. The extremes of Individualism and Socialism meet: that was their predestined course.
-Bertrand De Jouvenel
<The extremes of Individualism and Socialism meet:
Giovanni Gentile
>Both Nationalism & Fascism place the State at the foundation–for both, the State is not a consequence, but a beginning.
>For nationalists, the State is conceived as prior to the individual.
Aristotle:
>Further, the State is by nature clearly prior to the family & individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part.
Giovanni Gentile:
>For Fascism, on the other hand, the State and the individual are one, or better, perhaps, "State" & "individual" are terms that are inseparable in a necessary synthesis.
No.527121
This is my response to the narrative of historians, but also the negative stigma surrounding absolute monarchy from other monarchists in our circles like the neofeud ancap people and other rightwingers.
No.527333
The Royal colony threads should have the Alunya & Grace fanfic threads in their OP.
No.527732
<Alexis de Tocqueville: The mother of modern socialism, – Royal Despotism
>Long before, Louis XIV. had publicly promulgated in his edicts the theory that all the lands in the Kingdom had been in the origin conditionally granted by the State, which was therefore the only real landowner – the actual holders having mere possessory rights, and an imperfect and questionable title. This doctrine sprang out of the feudal system, but it was never openly professed in France till that system was on the point of death; courts of justice never admitted it. It was the mother of modern socialism, which thus, strange to say, seems to have been the offspring of Royal Despotism.
<Admiration of China
>I do not exaggerate when I affirm that every one of them wrote in some place or other an emphatic eulogium on China. One is sure to find at least that in their books; and as China is very imperfectly known even in our day, their statements on its subjects are generally pure nonsense. They wanted all the nations of the world to set up exact copies of that barbarous and imbecile government, which a handful of Europeans master whenever they please. China was for them what England, and afterwards America, became for all Frenchmen. They were filled with emotion and delight at the contemplation of a government wielded by an absolute but unprejudiced Sovereign, who honored the useful arts by plowing once a year with his own hands; of a nation whose only religion was philosophy, whose only aristocracy were men of letters, whose public offices were awarded to the victors at literary tournaments.
>It is generally believed that the destructive theories known by the name of socialism are of modern origin. This is an error. These theories are coeval with the earliest economists. While some of them wanted to use the absolute power they desired to establish to change the forms of society, others proposed to employ it in ruining its fundamental basis.
>Read the Code de la Nature by Morelly; you will find therein, together with the economist doctrines regarding the omnipotence and the boundless rights of the State, several of those political theories which have terrified France of late years, and whose origin we fancy we have seen – community of property, rights of labor, absolute equality, universal uniformity, mechanical regularity of individual movements, tyrannical regulations on all subjects, and the total absorption of the individual into the Body Politic.
No.527737
The doctrine Louis XIV promulgated that Alexis de Tocqueville is referring to was something numerous people have held.
Jean Bodin
>As for the right of coining money, it is of the same nature as law, and only he who has the power to make law can regulate the coinage. That is readily evident from the Greek, Latin, and French terms, for the word nummus [in Latin] is from the Greek word nomos, and [the French] loi (law) is at the root of aloi (alloy), the first letter of which is dropped by those who speak precisely. Indeed, after law itself, there is nothing of greater consequence than the title, value, and measure of coins, as we have shown in a separate treatise, and in every well-ordered state, it is the sovereign prince alone who has this power.
Thomas Hobbes
>And the Right of Distribution of Them – The Distribution of the Materials of this Nourishment, is the constitution of Mine, and Thine, and His, that is to say, in one word Propriety; and belongs in all kinds of Commonwealth to the Sovereign power…. And this they well knew of old, who called that Nomos, (that is to say, Distribution,) which we call Law; and defined Justice, by distributing to every man his own.
>All Estates of Land Proceed Originally – From the Arbitrary Distribution of the Sovereign – In this Distribution, the First Law, is for Division of the Land itself: wherein the Sovereign assigns to every man a portion, according as he, and not according to any Subject, or any number of them, shall judge agreeable to Equity, and the Common Good. The Children of Israel, were a Commonwealth in the Wilderness, but wanted the commodities of the Earth, till they were masters of the Land of Promise, which afterward was divided amongst them, not by their own discretion, but by the discretion of Eleazar the Priest, and Joshua their General: Who when there were twelve Tribes, making them thirteen by subdivision of the Tribe of Joseph; made nevertheless but twelve portions of the Land… And though a People coming into possession of a land by war, do not always exterminate the ancient Inhabitants, (as did the Jews) but leave to many, or most, or all of them their Estates; yet it is manifest they hold them afterwards, as of the Victors distribution; as of the people of England held all theirs of William the Conquerour.
Dante Alighieri
>And I urge you not only to rise up to meet him, but to stand in reverent awe before his presence, ye who drink of his streams, and sail upon his seas; ye who tread the sands of the shores and the summits of the mountains that are his; ye who enjoy all public rights and possess all private property by the bond of his law, and no otherwise. Be ye not like the ignorant, deceiving your own selves, after the manner of them that dream, and say in their hearts, We have no Lord.
King James VI & I
>It is evident by the rolles of our Chancellery (which contain our eldest and fundamental Laws) that the King is Dominus omnium bonorum [Lord of all goods], and Dominus directus totius Dominii [Direct lord of the whole dominion (that is, property)], the whole subjects being but his vassals, and from him holding all their lands as their overlord.
From An Appeal to Caesar
wherein gold & silver is proved to be the King Majesty's royal commodity
by Thomas Violet
>The Gold and Silver of the Nation, either Foreign coin, or Ingot, or the current Coin of the Kingdom, is the Soul of the Militia, and so all wise men know it, that those that command the Gold and Silver of the Kingdom, either Coin, or Bullion, to have it free at their disposal, to be Judges of the conveniency and inconveniency, or to hinder, or to give leave to transport Gold and Silver at their pleasure, is the great Wheel of the State, a most Royal Prerogative inherent in Your Majesty, Your Heirs and Successors, (and none other whomsoever, but by Your Majesty's License, and cannot be parted with to any Persons, but by Your Majesty most especial Grant;) your Majesty, and your Privy Councel being by the Law the only proper Judges
Alexander Hamilton
>"Were there any room to doubt, that the sole right of the territories in America was vested in the crown, a convincing argument might be drawn from the principle of English tenure… By means of the feudal system, the King became, and still continues to be, in a legal sense, the original proprietor, or lord paramount, of all the lands in England.*—Agreeable to this rule, he must have been the original proprietor of all the lands in America, and was, therefore, authorized to dispose of them in what manner he thought proper."
Jean Bodin continued
<Of course each man was ruler of his family and had the right of life and death not only over the slaves but also over his wives and children, as Caesar himself testified. Justinian, in addition to many others, erred in alleging, in the chapter on a father's power, that no people had so much power over their sons as the Romans had, for it is evident from Aristotle and the Mosaic Law that the custom is also common to the Persians and the Hebrews. The ancients understood that such was the love of the parents toward their sons that even if they wished very much to abuse their power, they could not. Moreover, nothing was a more potent cause of virtue and reverence in children toward their parents than this patriarchal power.
<Therefore, when they say that they are masters of the laws and of all things, they resemble those kings whom Aristotle calls lords, who, like fathers of families, protect the state as if it were their own property. It is not contrary to nature or to the law of nations that the prince should be master of all things and of laws in the state, only he must duly defend the empire with his arms and his child with his blood, since the father of a family by the law of nations is owner not only of the goods won by him but also of those won by his servants, as well as of his servants
<Even more base is the fact that Jason when interpreting in the presence of King Louis XII a chapter of law well explained by Azo, affirmed recklessly that all things are the property of the prince. This interpretation violates not only the customs and laws of this kingdom but also all the edicts and advices of all the emperors and jurisconsults. All civil actions would be impossible if no one were owner of anything. "To the Kings," said Seneca, "power over all things belongs; to individual citizens, property." And a little later he added, "While under the best king the king holds all within his authority, at the same time the individual men hold possessions as private property." All things in the state belong to Caesar by right of authority, but property is acquired by inheritance
Bodin / The Kings of Persia, lords of the earth & waters
>And therefore the kings of Persia denouncing war, demanded the earth & waters to show that they were absolute Lords of all that was in the land & sea contained. Xenophon in Cyropedia writes, that it is a good & commendable thing among the Medes, that the prince should be lord & owner of all things.
Egyptian Loyalist Teaching
>He is the sun in whose leadership people live
>Whoever is under his light will be great in wealth
>He gives sustenance to his followers
>He feeds the man who sticks to his path
>the man he favors will be the lord of offerings
>the man he rejects will be a pauper
>He is Khuum for every body
No.527740
Hobbes goes further than others.
Thomas Hobbes
>Which is so evident, that even Cicero, (a passionate defender of Liberty,) in a public pleading, attributes all Propriety to the Law Civil, "Let the Civil Law," says he, "be once abandoned, or but negligently guarded, (not to say oppressed,) and there is nothing, that any man can be sure to receive from his Ancestor, or leave to his Children." And again; "Take away the Civil Law, and no man knows what is his own, and what another man's."
Propriety Of A Subject Excludes Not The Dominion Of The Soveraign, But Onely Of Another Subject
>From whence we may collect, that the Propriety which a subject hath in his lands, consisteth in a right to exclude all other subjects from the use of them; and not to exclude their Soveraign, be it an Assembly, or a Monarch. For seeing the Soveraign, that is to say, the Common-wealth (whose Person he representeth,) is understood to do nothing but in order to the common Peace and Security, this Distribution of lands, is to be understood as done in order to the same
Hobbes talks about this in another treatise (kinda like that meme where proletariat are asking a capitalist where did he get that property from?)
>The seventh Doctrine opposite to Government, is this, That each subject hath an absolute Dominion over the goods he is in possession of. That is to say, such a propriety as excludes not only the right of all the rest of his fellow−subjects to the same goods, but also of the Magistrate himself. Which is not true; for they who have a Lord over them, have themselves no Lordship, as hath been proved, Chap. 8. Artic. 5. Now the Magistrate is Lord of all his Subjects, by the constitution of Government. Before the yoke of Civill Society was undertaken, no man had any Proper Right; all things were common to all men. Tell me therefore, how gottest thou this propriety but from the Magistrate? How got the Magistrates it, but that every man transferred his Right on him? And thou therefore hast also given up thy Right to him; thy Dominion therefore, and Propriety, is just so much as he will, and shall last so long as he pleases; even as in a Family, each Son hath such proper goods, and so long lasting, as seeme good to the Father. But the greatest part of men who professe Civill Prudence, reason otherwise; we are equall (say they) by nature; there is no reason why any man should by better Right take my goods from me, than I his from him; we know that mony sometimes is needfull for the defence and maintenance of the publique; but let them, who require it, shew us the present necessity, and they shall willingly receive it. They who talk thus, know not, that what they would have, is already done from the beginning in the very constitution of Government, and therefore speaking as in a dissolute multitude, and yet not fashioned Government, they destroy the frame.
Hobbes is more notorious than others, but Bodin wouldn't really approve of what Hobbes is saying and was more staunch about private property rights as opposed to Hobbes.
No.527789
>>523625What shall we do on this especial day? idk anons.
I feel out of touch, but I'm sure something will happen.
No.527860
>>527755>chernobyl dogRelevance?
No.527869
>>520143>>520141Where did you find this? Saved
No.527871
>>527869푸옹 Phuong DPRK Daily
No.528523
>>528517I love her so much
No.529364
>>498016Neocamerialism isn't so far from the mark.
https://pcbwiki.net/wiki/Neocameralism–
https://pcbwiki.net/wiki/Cameralism
>Neocamerialism is a form of government proposed by the Neoreactionary writer Mencius Moldbug, largely inspired by the economic system of Cameralism as in place under the Prussian King, Frederick the Great.
>Neocameralism is the idea that a sovereign state or primary corporation is not organizationally distinct from a secondary or private corporation. Thus we can achieve good management, and thus libertarian government, by converting governments to the same management design that works well in today’s private sector.
>Neocameralism is a Monarchical system as enforced by the framework of the corporate joint-stock model that can be seen in the most companies in the western countries. In short, it believes a large joint-stock corporation should be chosen as rulers of a country, and the corporation's (large) shareholders should choose a "Monarch-CEO". It is close to the doctrine we espouse here:
>>498016But I wouldn't say it is entirely on the mark: because as political is no different from economical, so also the economical – or as Hobbes says, that the family is a little city. So the political State as we have it now is already to an extent like that corporation or the estate in its nature to begin with, but neocamerialism kinda talks as through it weren't – maybe they could bring it closer to their ideal.
No.529402
>>529388
She should have an outfit based on The Emperor's New Clothes.
No.529520
>>529436That dress picture is extremely cute. I like the skirt and I like the pants too. Why did you delete the other sketches, it was adorable to see her in one picture with shirt tucked in and on the next not.
No.529536
What does Grace-chan do when Iranian diplomats accuse her of stealing their monero coins to buy lunch money?
No.529701
Where does the Monarch have knowledge to govern the State?
There is Aristotle's food argument that discredits the idea of a wise man or philosopher king to rule the State. Stating that albeit one wise man could outwit particular members of an assembly, the assembly altogether brings more food to the table. So the City needs democracy for all the estates to bring food to civil policy.
This is the reason why Monarchists like Bodin & Hobbes & Filmer side with Plato, that there is no difference between the economical estate and political estate: if you know how to govern yourself and your own household, then you're well on your way to knowing how to govern all the estates altogether.
This is better to justify Monarchy.
Hitler writes in Mein Kampf in his criticism of parliamentarianism:
>Does anybody honestly believe that human progress originates in the composite brain of the majority and not in the brain of the individual personality?
Jean Bodin wrote related to this topic:
>But Plato had another argument for an Aristocratical estate, saying, That it was very hard to find any one man so wise and virtuous, as was requisite for the government of an an estate, and by that means a Monarchy were not sure. But this argument is captious, and may be used against himself: for if it be hard to find any one prince so wise as he desires, how shall they find out so great a number as is needful in a Seigneurie?
And for Aristotle's water argument Bodin talks about salt (virtuous men) tossed and dissolved in water.
>for as well in all Aristocratical and Popular estates, as in all corporations and colleges, the greatest part does still over-rule the sounder and the better: and the more men there be, the less effects are there of virtue and wisdom (even as a little salt cast into a great lake, loses his force:) so as the good men shall be always vanquished in number by the vicious and ambitious: and for one tyrant there shall be a hundred which will cross the resolution of the lesser but of the sounder part
Hitler in Mein Kampf also describes his own disillusionment with parliamentary democracy. Many other people have been raised with a profound belief in the wisdom of statesmen: they are the experts:
>Yet all these, and many others, were defects which could not be attributed to the parliamentary system as such, but rather to the Austrian State in particular. I still believed that if the German majority could be restored in the representative body there would be no occasion to oppose such a system as long as the old Austrian State continued to exist.
>But I soon became enraged by the hideous spectacle that met my eyes. Several hundred representatives were there to discuss a problem of great economical importance and each representative had the right to have his say.
>That experience of a day was enough to supply me with food for thought during several weeks afterwards.
>The intellectual level of the debate was quite low. Some times the debaters did not make themselves intelligible at all. Several of those present did not speak German but only their Slav vernaculars or dialects. Thus I had the opportunity of hearing with my own ears what I had been hitherto acquainted with only through reading the newspapers. A turbulent mass of people, all gesticulating and bawling against one another, with a pathetic old man shaking his bell and making frantic efforts to call the House to a sense of its dignity by friendly appeals, exhortations, and grave warnings.
>I could not refrain from laughing.
>Then I began to reflect seriously on the whole thing. I went to the Parliament whenever I had any time to spare and watched the spectacle silently but attentively. I listened to the debates, as far as they could be understood, and I studied the more or less intelligent features of those 'elect' representatives of the various nationalities which composed that motley State. Gradually I formed my own ideas about what I saw.
>A year of such quiet observation was sufficient to transform or completely destroy my former convictions as to the character of this parliamentary institution. I no longer opposed merely the perverted form which the principle of parliamentary representation had assumed in Austria. No. It had become impossible for me to accept the system in itself. Up to that time I had believed that the disastrous deficiencies of the Austrian Parliament were due to the lack of a German majority, but now I recognized that the institution itself was wrong in its very essence and form.
>A number of problems presented themselves before my mind. I studied more closely the democratic principle of 'decision by the majority vote', and I scrutinized no less carefully the intellectual and moral worth of the gentlemen who, as the chosen representatives of the nation, were entrusted with the task of making this institution function.
Hitler continues to make some critical complaints about parliamentarianism:
>The aspect of the situation that first made the most striking impression on me and gave me grounds for serious reflection was the manifest lack of any individual responsibility in the representative body.
>The parliament passes some acts or decree which may have the most devastating consequences, yet nobody bears the responsibility for it. Nobody can be called to account. For surely one cannot say that a Cabinet discharges its responsibility when it retires after having brought about a catastrophe. Or can we say that the responsibility is fully discharged when a new coalition is formed or parliament dissolved? Can the principle of responsibility mean anything else than the responsibility of a definite person?
>Is it at all possible actually to call to account the leaders of a parliamentary government for any kind of action which originated in the wishes of the whole multitude of deputies and was carried out under their orders or sanction? Instead of developing constructive ideas and plans, does the business of a statesman consist in the art of making a whole pack of blockheads understand his projects? Is it his business to entreat and coach them so that they will grant him their generous consent?
>Is it an indispensable quality in a statesman that he should possess a gift of persuasion commensurate with the statesman's ability to conceive great political measures and carry them through into practice?
>Does it really prove that a statesman is incompetent if he should fail to win over a majority of votes to support his policy in an assembly which has been called together as the chance result of an electoral system that is not always honestly administered.
>Has there ever been a case where such an assembly has worthily appraised a great political concept before that concept was put into practice and its greatness openly demonstrated through its success?
>In this world is not the creative act of the genius always a protest against the inertia of the mass?
>What shall the statesman do if he does not succeed in coaxing the parliamentary multitude to give its consent to his policy? Shall he purchase that consent for some sort of consideration?
>Or, when confronted with the obstinate stupidity of his fellow citizens, should he then refrain from pushing forward the measures which he deems to be of vital necessity to the life of the nation? Should he retire or remain in power?
>In such circumstances does not a man of character find himself face to face with an insoluble contradiction between his own political insight on the one hand and, on the other, his moral integrity, or, better still, his sense of honesty?
>Where can we draw the line between public duty and personal honour?
>Must not every genuine leader renounce the idea of degrading himself to the level of a political jobber?
>And, on the other hand, does not every jobber feel the itch to 'play politics', seeing that the final responsibility will never rest with him personally but with an anonymous mass which can never be called to account for their deeds?
>Must not our parliamentary principle of government by numerical majority necessarily lead to the destruction of the principle of leadership?
>Or may it be presumed that for the future human civilization will be able to dispense with this as a condition of its existence?
>But may it not be that, to-day, more than ever before, the creative brain of the individual is indispensable?
Hitler continues.
>The parliamentary principle of vesting legislative power in the decision of the majority rejects the authority of the individual and puts a numerical quota of anonymous heads in its place. In doing so it contradicts the aristrocratic principle, which is a fundamental law of nature; but, of course, we must remember that in this decadent era of ours the aristocratic principle need not be thought of as incorporated in the upper ten thousand.
>The devastating influence of this parliamentary institution might not easily be recognized by those who read the Jewish Press, unless the reader has learned how to think independently and examine the facts for himself. This institution is primarily responsible for the crowded inrush of mediocre people into the field of politics. Confronted with such a phenomenon, a man who is endowed with real qualities of leadership will be tempted to refrain from taking part in political life; because under these circumstances the situation does not call for a man who has a capacity for constructive statesmanship but rather for a man who is capable of bargaining for the favour of the majority. Thus the situation will appeal to small minds and will attract them accordingly.
>The narrower the mental outlook and the more meagre the amount of knowledge in a political jobber, the more accurate is his estimate of his own political stock, and thus he will be all the more inclined to appreciate a system which does not demand creative genius or even high-class talent; but rather that crafty kind of sagacity which makes an efficient town clerk. Indeed, he values this kind of small craftiness more than the political genius of a Pericles. Such a mediocrity does not even have to worry about responsibility for what he does. From the beginning he knows that whatever be the results of his 'statesmanship' his end is already prescribed by the stars; he will one day have to clear out and make room for another who is of similar mental calibre. For it is another sign of our decadent times that the number of eminent statesmen grows according as the calibre of individual personality dwindles. That calibre will become smaller and smaller the more the individual politician has to depend upon parliamentary majorities. A man of real political ability will refuse to be the beadle for a bevy of footling cacklers; and they in their turn, being the representatives of the majority–which means the dunder headed multitude–hate nothing so much as a superior brain.
>This new invention of democracy is very closely connected with a peculiar phenomenon which has recently spread to a pernicious extent, namely the cowardice of a large section of our so-called political leaders. Whenever important decisions have to be made they always find themselves fortunate in being able to hide behind the backs of what they call the majority.
>One truth which must always be borne in mind is that the majority can never replace the man. The majority represents not only ignorance but also cowardice. And just as a hundred blockheads do not equal one man of wisdom, so a hundred poltroons are incapable of any political line of action that requires moral strength and fortitude
>The lighter the burden of responsibility on each individual leader, the greater will be the number of those who, in spite of their sorry mediocrity, will feel the call to place their immortal energies at the disposal of the nation. They are so much on the tip-toe of expectation that they find it hard to wait their turn. They stand in a long queue, painfully and sadly counting the number of those ahead of them and calculating the hours until they may eventually come forward. They watch every change that takes place in the personnel of the office towards which their hopes are directed, and they are grateful for every scandal which removes one of the aspirants waiting ahead of them in the queue. If somebody sticks too long to his office stool they consider this as almost a breach of a sacred understanding based on their mutual solidarity. They grow furious and give no peace until that inconsiderate person is finally driven out and forced to hand over his cosy berth for public disposal. After that he will have little chance of getting another opportunity. Usually those placemen who have been forced to give up their posts push themselves again into the waiting queue unless they are hounded away by the protestations of the other aspirants.
>The whole spectacle of parliamentary life became more and more desolate the more one penetrated into its intimate structure and studied the persons and principles of the system in a spirit of ruthless objectivity. Indeed, it is very necessary to be strictly objective in the study of the institution whose sponsors talk of 'objectivity' in every other sentence as the only fair basis of examination and judgment. If one studied these gentlemen and the laws of their strenuous existence the results were surprising.
>There is no other principle which turns out to be quite so ill-conceived as the parliamentary principle, if we examine it objectively.
>It is not the aim of our modern democratic parliamentary system to bring together an assembly of intelligent and well informed deputies. Not at all. The aim rather is to bring together a group of nonentities who are dependent on others for their views and who can be all the more easily led, the narrower the mental outlook of each individual is. That is the only way in which a party policy, according to the evil meaning it has today, can be put into effect. And by this method alone it is possible for the wirepuller, who exercises the real control, to remain in the dark, so that personally he can never be brought to account for his actions. For under such circumstances none of the decisions taken, no matter how disastrous they may turn out for the nation as a whole, can be laid at the door of the individual whom everybody knows to be the evil genius responsible for the whole affair. All responsibility is shifted to the shoulders of the Party as a whole.
No.529702
Thomas Hobbes in De Cive:
>But perhaps for this very reason some will say, That a Popular State is much to be preferr'd before a Monarchicall; because that, where all men have a hand in publique businesses, there all have an opportunity to shew their wisedome, knowledge, and eloquence, in deliberating matters of the greatest difficulty and moment; which by reason of that desire of praise which is bred in humane nature, is to them who excell in such like faculties, and seeme to themselves to exceed others, the most delightfull of all things.
>Besides, there are many reasons why deliberations are lesse successefull in great Assemblies, than in lesser Councells; whereof one is, that to advise rightly of all things conducing to the preservation of a Commonwealth, we must not only understand matters at home, but Forraign Affaires too: at Home, by what goods the Country is nourished, and defended, and whence they are fetched; what places are fit to make Garrisons of; by what means Souldiers are best to be raised, and maintained; what manner of affections the Subjects bear toward their Prince, or Governours of their Country, and many the like: Abroad, what the power of each neighbouring Country is, and wherein it consists; what advantage, or disadvantage we may receive from them; what their dispositions are both to us−ward, and how affected to each other among themselves, and what Counsell daily passeth among them. Now, because very few in a great Assembly of men understand these things, being for the most part unskilfull (that I say not incapable) of them, what can that same number of advisers with their impertinent Opinions contribute to good Counsells, other than meer letts and impediments?
>Another reason why a great Assembly is not so fit for consultation is, because every one who delivers his opinion holds it necessary to make a long continued Speech, and to gain the more esteem from his Auditours, he polishes, and adornes it with the best, and smoothest language. Now the nature of Eloquence is to make Good and Evill, Profitable and Unprofitable, Honest and Dishonest, appear to be more or lesse than indeed they are, and to make that seem just, which is unjust, according as it shall best suit with his end that speaketh. For this is to perswade; and though they reason, yet take they not their rise from true Principles, but from vulgar received opinions, which, for the most part, are erroneous; neither endeavour they so much to fit their speech to the nature of the things they speak of, as to the Passions of their mindes to whom they speak; whence it happens that opinions are delivered not by right reason, but by a certain violence of mind. Nor is this fault in the Man, but in the nature it selfe of Eloquence, whose end (as all the Masters of Rhetorick teach us) is not truth (except by chance) but victory, and whose property is not to inform, but to allure.
>The third reason why men advise lesse successfully in a great convent is, because that thence arise Factions in a commonweal, and out of Factions, Seditions, and Civill War; for when equall Oratours doe combat with contrary Opinions, and Speeches, the conquered hates the Conquerour, and all those that were of his side, as holding his Counsell, and wisedome in scorne: and studyes all meanes to make the advise of his adversaries prejudiciall to the State, for thus he hopes to see the glory taken from him, and restored unto himself. Farthermore, where the Votes are not so unequall, but that the conquered have hopes by the accession of some few of their own opinion at another sitting to make the stronger Party, the chief heads do call the rest together; they advise apart how they may abrogate the former judgment given; they appoint to be the first and earliest at the next convent; they determine what, and in what order each man shall speak, that the same businesse may again be brought to agitation, that so what was confirmed before by the number of their then present adversaries, the same may now in some measure become of no effect to them, being negligently absent. And this same kind of industry and diligence which they use to make a people, is commonly called a faction. But when a faction is inferiour in votes, and superiour, or not much inferiour in power, than what they cannot obtain by craft, and language, they attempt by force of armes, and so it comes to a civill warre. But some will say, these things doe not necessarily, nor often happen; he may as well say, that the chief Parties are not necessarily desirous of vain glory, and that the greatest of them seldom disagree in great matters.
>We cannot on better condition be subject to any, than one whose interest depends upon our safety, and welfare; and this then comes to passe when we are the inheritance of the Ruler; for every man of his own accord endeavours the preservation of his inheritance. But the Lands, and Monies of the Subjects are not only the Princes Treasure, but their bodies, and active minds.
Thomas Hobbes - Introduction of Leviathan: Nosce Teipsum, Read Thy Self
<Concerning the first, there is a saying much usurped of late, That Wisedome is acquired, not by reading of Books, but of Men.
>But there is another saying not of late understood, by which they might learn truly to read one another, if they would take the pains; and that is, Nosce Teipsum, Read Thy Self: which was not meant, as it is now used, to countenance, either the barbarous state of men in power, towards their inferiors; or to encourage men of low degree, to a sawcie behaviour towards their betters;
>But to teach us, that for the similitude of the thoughts, and Passions of one man, to the thoughts, and Passions of another, whosoever looketh into himselfe, and considereth what he doth, when he does Think, Opine, Reason, Hope, Feare, &c, and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts, and Passions of all other men, upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of Passions, which are the same in all men, Desire, Feare, Hope, &c; not the similitude or The Objects of the Passions, which are the things Desired, Feared, Hoped, &c
>He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himselfe, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind; which though it be hard to do, harder than to learn any Language, or Science.
That is how Monarchy is justified like vid related to govern the whole State & not only his own private estate (like Aristotle & constitutionalists want) – to be like Tsar Paul I overlooking the City.
No.529703
Like I was saying earlier, look at all the rooms of any estate, then you'll easily know all the buildings of any city.
Household / Economic:
A room like a library for the master's children to be educated with teachers
A kitchen for the cooks to provide food
A room for laundry
A room for books.
The City / Political:
It has schools / universities for people to be educated
It has a restaurant for people to eat and be served by food workers.
It has laundromats for people to clean their clothes
It has libraries for their public books.
Public services where the people can be masters with public servants
Even if we concede Aristotle's talking point that we'll want more food for the table, it can still be reconciled under monarchy in any assembly.
This quote from Robert Filmer is actually from Jean Bodin: who also praised the wisdom of council. The power of Monarchy still has the power of unified command to make precise work of the council without dissolving into factions and mitigating the effect of all that food compiled together. Like Hobbes says (in his empiricist fashion) that the head is to council and the senses with all parts of the realm responding to it like nerves in the boy, and the sovereign like the soul to command. The sovereign will have the final will and determination to deliberate and is the final authority, weaving it altogether.
I disagree with Bodin and Hobbes a little bit in putting too much wisdom in the councils. Xenophon in Cyropaedia explains that being thought wise gains obedience. The problem is not that we don't trust the authority of particular men (/leftypol/ is proof of that; so many leftists identify with the names of proper men like Marxists, Leninists, Maoists, etc) – people believe the authority and wisdom of statesmen and other men "the experts", but they're taught to doubt the wisdom of kings. A monarchist should seek to restore trust in the throne as a source of wisdom, make the monarch respected like a teacher. That along with procuring a belief for them to gain sustenance and protection will restore people's trust and obedience.
No.529736
I believe Monarchy can persist into the modern world.
Some might say, that the institutions backing royalty, like the Church, have lost confidence in their wisdom.
Yet even if we have monarchy without Christian crowns, and return to this Caesarism, re-introduced in the Fascist and DPRK Leader principle, or in secularized dictatorships as one-man rule and hereditary dynasties, Monarchy can persist the monarchical form of one person in States well into Modernity with these political ideologies and totalitarianism instead of theocracy. Even if people believe in the Dr. Fauci and the Science now. Yet there are still traditionalist regimes with monarchy well into the current year as well and other examples of modern regimes.
And I'm not saying the age-old Victorian ideal of constitutional monarchy, but the pre-eminent ideals of Monarchy – may persist into Modernity.
>what about feudalism and landholding elite – isn't Monarchy tied to this?
I wouldn't say so, because while the doctrine of the lord of all goods and distribution of lands was associated with feudalism, and replaced with industrialism, the sovereign power also accounts for the distribution of money which is responsible for the transfer of commodities and capital. It is true that monarchies with great power also tend to be those with great wealth (like Saudi Arabia or Thailand or the little monarchies). Those with wealth have power to provide and gain obedience of people and retaining monarchical power. Although Hobbes says the public shouldn't be dieted in a monarchy to only his own assets and estates, but tax and rely on the distribution of funds from the entire land and people, a monarchy having a lot of wealth helps and can even be done without being a staple lordly monarchy, but even with public institutions and assemblies in other royal monarchies. The palace economies do persist into the modern day.
>what about socialism?
In socialism, isn't masterly power usurped rather than abolished? In North Korea, for example, they say the people are masters. –Masters, still. The ordering of the State under democratic centralism still resembles that relationship of sovereign power in the State – the bourgeois corporate State is hijacked and replaced with a proletarian kind, retaining the functions of the previous State in many ways, retaining the State / Republic, which can account for numerous forms of State and methods of governance. Places like primitives like the Native American empires Inca or North Korea, they tend to be called military democracies. –So all the maxims mentioned above about political and economical are no different apply even to socialism (maybe more appropriately because Plato also wanted to abolish private property).
>even hereditary monarchy?
Yes, because when States fall into monarchical form, they'll want to preserve it. It ultimately comes to a question of trust: do you trust a stranger or someone who takes after yourself with the keys of State? A son (or daughter???) have better incentives to preserve the State of their ancestors than strangers do, who tend to be rivals and want to undo the effects of his predecessors government time and time again – the loyal son generally wants to preserve the heritage of his ancestors and will be held in the image of his progenitor and the founder of their State.
Only Monarchy will transform the State from a community of strangers into a community of kindred people; they will know true loyalty, the familial kind, not only for the Monarchy, but also amongst each other.
No.529952
>>529520>Why did you delete the other sketches?To avoid going back and changing my mind.
I regret having so many sketches to end up at square one>>529536Grace is into crypto-currencies?
>lunch moneyDoes Grace also take the bus to get around?
No.530054
if you were to convert all of /siberia/ to monarchism, this board would still be better and more leftist than leftypol.
Unique IPs: 54