by invitation of bronies & Tania
<Avatard RP reactionary leech is oUr fWiEnD u GuIsE
OP Profile:
>OP?
OP is a monarchist on leftypol.org.
>What kind of Monarchist is Graceposter?
A modern day absolute monarchist & invested in the late 1500s & 1600s kind of absolutism, hereditary rule / dynasties, & the pre-eminent notion of monarchy as opposed to mixed constitutionalism / limited or mixed monarchy, formally called constitutional monarchy & constitutional monarchism.
>What about Medievalism & NeoFeudalism?
OP is ambivalent towards traditionalism, particularly the Medievalist or Neofeudalist style of Royalism, & traditionalists who are solely denoted by high church & sometimes the mixed constitutionalism of the Middle Ages & later periods.
The style of absolutism, concerning Monarchy, OP sees as fundamentally different in certain respects, so OP is ambivalent and wary of Medievalism & Traditionalism.
The Medievalist lacks a certain political forte with regard to Monarchy & the Herodotus Debate that absolutism carries (because the Medievalist is predisposed to ultra-clericalism / ultramontanism). Medievalists usually are strong proponents of mixed constitutionalism (having their roots in Aristotle & his politics) and wields Alexis de Tocqueville & Bertrand de Jouvenel against absolute monarchy.
OP is not that kind of monarchist, albeit invested in both monarchies such as the traditionalist connotation of a king with a Christian crown, but also Caesarism and even secular dictatorships sometimes as modern monarchies or bearing a resemblance to monarchical form.
>Who is Grace?
Grace is the board tan of /monarchy/ and /8flags/ on 8chan / 8moe and a monarchist tan.
Sometimes Grace is just an OC or apolitical (when representing /8flags/ or Graceposter is funposting), but primarily Grace is a monarchist tan (& supports Graceposter's taste, style, & niche of monarchy, tbh; she is not a constitutional monarchist or a staunch ultramontanist, but predisposed to absolutism and JUCHE, lmao, sorry Luce and constitutional monarchists).
Thomas Hobbes laments the prevalence of mixed monarchy / constitutionalism
>Saving only that he [the Earl] was carried away with the stream, in a manner, of the whole nation, to think that England was not an absolute, but a mixed monarchy; not considering that the supreme power must always be absolute, whether it be in the King or in the Parliament.
…
>You may know by the declarations themselves, which are very long and full of quotations of records and of cases formly reported, that the penners of them were either lawyers by profession, or such gentlemen as had the ambition to be thought so.
>Besides, I told you before, that those which were then likeliest to have their counsel asked in this business, were averse to absolute monarchy, as also to absolute democracy or aristocracy; all which governments they esteemed tyranny, and were in love with monarchy which they used to praise by the name of mixed monarchy, though it were indeed nothing else but pure anarchy.
>And those men, whose pens the King most used in these controversies of law and politics, were such, if I have not been misinformed, as having been members of this Parliament, had declaimed against ship-money and other extra-parliamentary taxes, as much as any; but who when they saw the Parliament grow higher in their demands than they thought they would have done, went over to the King's party.
…
>Only that fault, which was generally in the whole nation, which was, that they thought the government of England was not an absolute, but a mixed monarchy; and that if the King should clearly subdue this Parliament, that his power would be what he pleased, and theirs as little as he pleased: which they counted tyranny.
>This opinion, though it did not lessen their endeavour to gain the victory for the King in a battle, when a battle could not be avoided, yet it weakened their endeavour to procure him an absolute victory in the war.
>And for this cause, notwithstanding that they saw that the Parliament was firmly resolved to take all kingly power whatsoever out of his hands, yet their counsel to the King was upon all occasions, to offer propositions to them of treaty and accommodation, and to make and publish declarations; which any man might easily have foreseen would be fruitless; and not only so, but also of great disadvantage to those actions by which the King was to recover his crown and preserve his life.
…
>Sometimes also in the merely civil government there be more than one soul… For although few perceive that such government is not government, but division of the Commonwealth into three factions, and call it mixed monarchy; yet the truth is that it is not one independent Commonwealth, but three independent factions; nor one representative person, but three. In the Kingdom of God there may be three persons independent, without breach of unity in God that reigneth; but where men reign, that be subject to diversity of opinions, it cannot be so.
>To what disease in the natural body of man I may exactly compare this irregularity of a Commonwealth, I know not. But I have seen a man that had another man growing out of his side, with a head, arms, breast, and stomach of his own: if he had had another man growing out of his other side, the comparison might then have been exact.
…
>And if there were a commonwealth, wherein the rights of sovereignty were divided, we must confess with Bodin, Lib. II. chap. I. De Republica, that they are not rightly to be called commonwealths, but the corruption of commonwealths.
>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.
Thomas Hobbes / For all Monarchies, and all other States are truly indeed Absolute
>Secondly, they object, That there is no Dominion in the Christian world Absolute; which indeed is not true, for all Monarchies, and all other States, are so; for although they, who have the chief Command, do not all those things they would, and what they know profitable to the City, the reason of that is not the defect of Right in them, but the consideration of their Citizens, who busied about their private interest, and careless of what tends to the public, cannot sometimes be drawn to perform their duties without the hazard of the City. Wherefore princes sometimes forbear the exercise of their Right, and prudently remit somewhat of the act, but nothing of their Right.
William Blackstone / Sir Edward Coke:
<The Absolutism of Parliamentary Sovereignty
>The power and jurisdiction of parliament, says Sir Edward Coke, is so transcendent and absolute, that it cannot be confined, either for causes or persons, within any bounds. And of this high court he adds, it may be truly said "si antiquitatem spectes, est vetustissima; si dignitatem, est honoratissima; di juridictionem, est capacissima." It hath sovereign and uncontrollable authority in making, confirming, enlarging, restranshumanisting, abrogating, repealing, reviving, and expounding of laws, concerning matters of all possible denominations, ecclesiastical, or temporal, civil, military, maritime, or criminal: this being the place where that absolute despotic power, which must in all governments reside somewhere, is entrusted by the constitution of these kingdoms. All mischiefs and grievances, operations and remedies, that transcend the ordinary course of the laws, are within the reach of this extraordinary tribunal. It can regulate or new model the succession to the crown; as was done in the reign of Henry VIII and William III. It can alter the established religion of the land; as was done in a variety of instances, in the reigns of King Henry VIII and his three children. It can change and create afresh even the constitution of the kingdom and of parliaments themselves; as was done by the act of union, and the several statutes for triennial and septennial elections. It can, in short, do every thing that is not naturally impossible; and therefore some have not scrupled to call it's power, by a figure rather too bold, the omnipotence of parliament. True it is, that what they do, no authority upon earth can undo. So that it is a matter most essential to the liberties of this kingdom, that such members be delegated to this important trust, as are most eminent for their probity, their fortitude, and their knowledge; for it was a known apothegm of the great lord treasurer Burleigh, "that England could never be ruined but by a parliament:" and, as sir Matthew Hale observes, this being the highest and greatest court, over which none other can have jurisdiction in the kingdom…"
Francis Theobald on Absolute Power with Cambden & Bracton
>We have, I say, absolute Monarchy, and herein we differ from the Lacedemonian Kings, who were subject to their Ephori, which had a power above them: No, ours agrees with the Persian-Government; for, their King had plenary power in all things, not subject to be called to account by any person whatsoever: and so ours, if you will believe Cambden, a famous Antiquary; who saith, That the King of England, supremam potestatem, & merum imperium habet, He hath supreme power and absolute Command in his Dominions–; and so, Bracton, a sage profound Lawyer, in ancient time, speaks to the same purpose, Omni quidem sub Bege, & ipse sub nullo, sed tantum sub Deo: So that it is an unquestionable truth, that the King is subject to no over-ruling power of man, and that he is free from all humane Coercion and Restranshumanistt, I do rather insist upon this.
Jean Bodin / Majesty or Sovereignty or Pre-eminence
>Sovereignty is the absolute and perpetual power of a commonwealth [La Souveraineté est la puissance absoluë & perpetuelle d’une République], which the Latins call Majestas; the Greeks akra exousia, kurion arche, and kurion politeuma; and the Italians segniora, a word they use for private persons as well as for those who have full control of the state, while the Hebrews call it tomech shévet – that is the highest power of command.
>As for the title of Majesty itself, it sufficiently appears, that it only belongs to him that is a sovereign prince: so that for him that hath no sovereignty to usurp the same, were a very absurd thing: but to arrogate unto himself the addition of most excellent and sacred majesty, is much more absurd the one being a point of lightnes, and the other of impiety: for what more can we give unto the most mighty and immortal God, if we take from him that which is proper unto himself? And albeit that in ancient time neither emperors nor kings used these so great addition or titles: yet the German princes nevertheless have oft times given the title of Sacred Majesty unto the kings of France; aswell as unto their emperor. As I remember my self to have seen the letters of the princes of the empire, written unto the king, for the deliverance of countie Mansfeld, then prisoner in France: wherein there was sixe times V. S. M. that is to say, Vestra, Sacra, Majestas, or Your Sacred Majesty an addition proper unto God, apart from all worldly princes. As for other princes which are not soueraignes some use the addition of His Highnesse, as the dukes of Loraine, Sauoy, Mantua, Ferrara, and Florence: some of Excellency, as the princes of the confines; or else of Serenitie, as the duke of Venice.
>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 Festus saith) is so called of mightiness.
>For so here it behoveth first to define what Majesty or Sovereignty is, which neither lawyer nor political philosopher hath yet defined: although it be the principal and most necessary point for the understanding of the nature of a Commonweal. And forasmuch as wee have before defined a Commonweal to be the right government of many families, and of things common amongst them, with a most high & perpetual power: it rest to be declared, what is to be understood by the name of a most high and perpetual power.
<We have said that this power ought to be perpetual, for that it may bee, that that absolute power over the subject may be given to one or many, for a short or certain time, which expired, they are no more than subjects themselves: so that whilest they are in their puissant authority, they cannot call themselves Sovereign princes, seeing that they are but men put in trust, and keepers of this sovereign power, until it shall please the people or the prince that gave it them to recall it
>Who always remained ceased thereof.
<For as they which lend or pawn unto another man their goods, remain still the lords and owners thereof: so it is also with them, who give unto others power and authority to judge and command, be it for a certain time limited, or so great and long time as shall please them; they themselves nevertheless continuing still ceased of the power and jurisdiction, which the other exercise but by way of loan or borrowing.
>For otherwise if the high and absolute power granted by a prince to his lieutenant, should of right be called Sovereignty, he might use the same against his prince, to whom nothing was left but the bare name of a prince, standing but for a cipher: so should the subject command his Sovereign, the servant his master, than which nothing could be more absurd: considering that in all power granted unto magistrates, or private men, the person of the prince is always to be excepted; who never gives so much power unto another, but that he always keeps more unto himself; neither is ever to be thought so deprived of his sovereign power, but that he may take unto himself the examination and deciding of such things as he hath committed unto his magistrates or officers, whether it be by the way of prevention, concurrence, or evocation: from whom he may also take the power given them by virtue of their commission or institution, or suffer them to hold it so long as shall please him.
>These grounds thus laid, as the foundations of Sovereignty, wee conclude, that neither the Roman Dictator, nor the Harmoste of Lacedemonia, nor the Esmynaet of Salonick, nor he whom they cal the Archus of Malta, nor the antient Baily of Florence, (when it was gouerned by a popular state) neither the Regents or Viceroyes of kingdoms, nor any other officers or magistrats whatsoeuer, vnto whom the highest, but yet not the perpetual power, is by the princes or peoples grant commit∣ted, can be accounted to have the same in Sovereignty.
>And albeit that the ancient Dictators had all power given them in best sort that might be (which the ancient Latins called Optima Lege) so that from them it was not lawful to appeal and upon whose creation all offices were suspended; until such time as that the Tribunes were ordained as keepers of the peoples liberty, who continued in their charge notwithstanding the creation of the Dictator, who had free power to oppose themselves against him; so that if appeal were made from the Dictator, the Tribunes might assemble the people, appointing the parties to bring forth the causes of their appeal, & the Dictator to stay his judgement; as when Papirius Cursor the Dictator, condemned Fabius Max the first, to death; and Fabius Max the second had in like manner condemned M•…nutius, both Colonels of the horsemen, for that they had fought with the enemy contrary to the command of the Dictator; they were yet both by appeale and judgement of the people acquitted. For so saith Livy, Then the father of Fabius said, I call upon the Tribunes, and appeal unto the people, which can do more than thy Dictatorship whereunto king Tullus Hostilius gave place. Whereby it appears that the Dictator was neither sovereign prince, nor magistrat, as many have supposed; neither had any thing more than a simple commission for the making of war, the repressing of sedition, the reforming of the state on instituting of new officers.
>So that Sovereignty is not limited either in power, charge, or time certain. And namely the ten commissioners established for the reforming of custom and laws; albeit than they had absolute power, from which there was no appeal to be made, and that all offices were suspended, during the time of their commission; yet had they not for all that any Sovereignty; for their commission being fulfilled, their power also expired; as did that of the Dictators.
<"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 Festus saith) is so called of mightiness."
>And forasmuch as wee have before defined a Commonweal to be the right government of many families, and of things common amongst them, with a most high & perpetual power
<Bodin / The unity of sovereignty
>No otherwise than Theseus his ship, which although it were an hundred times changed by putting in of new planks, yet still retained the old name. But as a ship, if the keel (which strongly bears up the prow, the poup, the ribs, and tacklings) be taken away, is no longer a ship, but an ill favoured houp of wood; even so a Commonwealth, without a sovereignty of power, which unites in one body all members and families of the same is no more a Commonwealth, neither can by and means long endure. And not to depart from our similitude; as a ship may be quite broken up, or altogether consumed with fire; so may also the people into diverse places dispersed, or be utterly destroyed, the City or state yet standing whole; for it is neither the walls, neither the persons, that makes the city, but the union of the people under the same sovereignty of government.
>Now the sovereign prince is exalted above all his subjects, and exempt out of the rank of them: whose majesty suffers no more division than doth the unity itself, which is not set nor accounted among the numbers, howbeit that they all from it take both their force and power…. being indeed about to become much more happy if they had a sovereign prince, which with his authority and power might (as doth the understanding) reconcile all the parts, and so unite and bind them fast in happiness together.
<For that as of unity depends the union of all numbers, which have no power but from it: so also is one sovereign prince in every Commonweale necessary, from the power of whom all others orderly depend
>Wherefore what the unity is in numbers, the understanding in the powers of the soul, and the center in a circle: so likewise in this world that most mighty king, in unity simple, in nature indivisible, in purity most holy, exalted far above the Fabric of the celestial Spheres, joining this elementary world with the celestiall and intelligible heavens
It is of no importance whether the families come together in the same place or live in separate homes and area.
>It is of no importance whether the families come together in the same place or live in separate homes and area. It is said to be no other than the same family even if the father lives apart from children and servants, or these in their turn apart from each other by an interval of space, provided that they 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 has the final and public authority. The former limited and private rule. So, also, it is still the same government, made up of many families, even if the territories and the settlements are far apart, provided only that they are in the guardianship of the same sovereign power: either one rules all; or all, the individuals; or a few, all. From this it comes about that the state is nothing else than a group of families or fraternities subjected to one and the same rule.
>Cicero's definition of the state as a group of men associated for the sake of living well indicates the best objective, indeed, but not the power and the nature of the institution. This definition applies equally well to the assemblies of the Pythagoreans and of men who also come together for the sake of living well, yet they cannot be called states without great confusion of state and association. Furthermore, there are families of villains, no less than of good men, since a villain is no less a man than a good man is. A similar observation must be made about the governments. Who doubts but that every very great empire was established through violence by robbers? The definition of a state offered by us applies to villages, towns, cities, and principalities, however scattered their lands may be, provided that they are controlled by the same authority. The concept is not conditioned by the limited size of the region or by its great expanse, as the elephant is no more an animal than the ant, since each has the power of movement and perception. So Ragusa or Geneva, whose rule is comprised almost within its walls, ought to be called a state no less than the empire of the Tartars, which was bounded by the same limits as the course of the sun.
<Hobbes / Difference between concord or association and union or bond of a state
>They who compare a City and its Citizens, with a man and his members, almost all say, that he who hath the supreme power in the City, is the relation to the whole City, such as the head is to the whole man. But it appears by what has been already said, that he who is endued with such a power (whether it be a man, or a Court) has a relation to the City, not as that of the head, but of the soul to the body. For it is the soul by which a man has a will, that is, can either will, or nill.
>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
>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.
When it comes to Decentralization vs Centralization or the Pluralist nation of State vs the Unitary notion of State – OP traces this back to antiquity, & between Aristotle (representing the pluralist & concordant, so-called decentralized notion) with Plato (representing the unitary & so-called centralized notion).
>Compare & contrast this below:
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.
Plato Republic:
>For factions… are the outcome of injustice, and hatreds and internecine conflicts, but justice brings oneness of mind and love.
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
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.
<With Aristotle's Politics:
Aristotle / Since the nature of a State is to be a plurality
>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.
Aristotle / state is a partnership of families and of clans in living well, and its object is a full and independent life.
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;
>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.
From this in Aristotle comes about a more oligarchic notion of State, albeit it will be mixed, but it is primarily upheld by the heads of the estates or estates-general which is more concordant and the law proceeds from their commonality and meeting than from the unity first (I assume). So those who fall under the Tocquevillist notions invariably hold Aristotle's maxim – wanting the Monarch to be "one among equals" and putting all the focus on the Estates-General or multi-parties, and the heads of those estates meeting in fellowship, with a strong emphasis on the Middle Class or intermediates as the Nobility. This is the hallmark of Tocquevillism & the anti-absolutism of Medievalists, who oppose State Corporatism and Absolute Monarchy on these grounds, appealing to decentralization (the state as plurality; anti-state corporatism) and the middle class (which Aristotle is the stronger proponent of).
Plato advocated a kind of State Corporatism, that later Hobbes also advocated State Corporatism, and eventually Fascism had State Corporatism – all in their own unique way/
Aristotle Politics / Anti-State Corporatism / Anti-Absolute Monarchy
>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 and no longer under the control of law, seeks to exercise monarchical sway, and grows into a despot; the flatterer is held in honor; this sort of democracy being relatively to other democracies what tyranny is to other forms of monarchy. The spirit of both is the same, and they alike exercise a despotic rule over the better citizens.
Contrast this with Plato again (who does support many in one & state corporatism & unitary notions of State)
>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.
Finally, Aristotle disagrees with Plato's Statesmen, that Political & Economical have a like science:
Aristotle writes in Politics,
>Now there is an erroneous opinion that a statesman, king, householder, and a 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.
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.
<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.
When Political & Economical are alike is denied, & monarchy is only put for a household or economic unit – it denies monarchy any knowledge or capacity to govern the political constitution or state, so absolute monarchists oppose this unanimously. It is also against State Corporatism and one-party states (both Fascist and Marxist-Leninist) and supports the Western trend towards multi-party democracies (which invariably capture the idea of the estates-general or the general of the estates in concord and not unity first notions that support absolute monarchy and state corporatism and one-party states – an absolute monarchy brings the state into the image of one household, State Corporatism makes the state One Personhood, & one-party is also like one estate over the political constitution – as a baseline, absolute monarchy, State Corporatism or Fascism, and Marxist-Leninists and Vanguards all have a common enemy here.
State Corporatism is a unitary politics with the State as one personhood, a living organism, a higher personality and being; not to be confused with a collection of private corporations.
The ideology of State Corporatism traces its lineage back to Plato's Republic, Hobbes' Leviathan, and the formation of one-party States and Fascism.
In Plato's Republic is State Corporatism:
>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.
In Hobbes' Leviathan is State Corporatism:
>And in him consisteth the Essence of the Common-wealth; which (to define it,) is "One Person, of whose Acts a great Multitude, by mutuall Covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the Author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their Peace and Common Defence.”
In Italian Fascism is State Corporatism:
Gentile
>It is the State that possesses a concrete will & must be considered a person.
Giuseppe Bottai
>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."
A brief disclaimer: this is the what the corporatism of Fascism is, State Corporatism, and not to be mistaken with the corporative system itself which act as internal organs of this higher personality. Those corporate bodies are limited and are organs, and that kind of corporatism is more analogous to guilds, the primary corporatism of Fascism is State Corporatism, these are corporations are organs and limited internally in relation to "The State" (which in this connotation refers to State Corporatism especially).
Mario Palmieri:
>To make this discipline possible, and the sovereignty effective in practice as well as in theory, Fascism has devised the “Corporazione,” an instrument of social life destined to exercise the most far-reaching influence upon the economic development of Fascist States. (The Italian word “Corporazione” which is currently translated into English by the apparently analogous word “Corporation,” means, more exactly in the Italian language, what the word “Guild” means in English; that is: associations of persons engaged in kindred pursuits. We shall nevertheless follow the general usage to obviate the danger of misunderstandings.)
>Within the Corporations the interests of producers and consumers, employers and employees, individuals and associations are interlocked and integrated in a unique and univocal way, while all types of interests are brought under the aegis of the State.
Fausto Pitigliani
>That the Corporation has no legal independent personality but is an organ of the State Administration.
>To these organs, which take the name of Corporations and link the various productive activities of the country as members of one body
>The Corporations constitute the unitary organisation of the forces of production and represent all their interests.
>In virtue of this integral representation, and in view of the fact that the interests of production are the interests of the Nation, the law recognises the Corporations as State organs.
For clarity, Hobbes Leviathan also takes this stance on the limitation of subordinate corporations and the sovereign relationship of the state corporation:
>Of Regular, some are Absolute, and Independent, subject to none but their own Representative: such are only Common-wealths [or States]; Of which I have spoken already in the 5. last preceding chapters. Others are Dependent; that is to say, Subordinate to some Soveraign Power, to which every one, as also their Representative is Subject.
>Of Systemes subordinate, some are Politicall, and some Private. Politicall (otherwise Called Bodies Politique, and Persons In Law,) are those, which are made by authority from the Soveraign Power of the Common-wealth. Private, are those, which are constituted by Subjects amongst themselves, or by authoritie from a stranger. For no authority derived from forraign power, within the Dominion of another, is Publique there, but Private.
>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.
Jean Bodin also adds.
>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.
State Corporatism is anything but Aristotelian.
Where Plato praises it, Aristotle condemns it.
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 and no longer under the control of law, seeks to exercise monarchical sway, and grows into a despot; the flatterer is held in honor; this sort of democracy being relatively to other democracies what tyranny is to other forms of monarchy. The spirit of both is the same, and they alike exercise a despotic rule over the better citizens.
Contrast this with Plato again.
>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.
As you can see, Plato supports many in one, but Aristotle condemns it.
The taboo in the West against one-party States (for leftist vanguardism AND fascism) originates with Aristotle, and Aristotle condemns it for the same reason Aristotle condemns an absolute monarchy: it is seen as a tyranny over constitutionalism and the multi-parties and estates.
Thomas Hobbes
>And though in the charters of subordinate corporations, a corporation be declared to be one person in law, yet the same has not been taken notice of in the body of a commonwealth [state] or city, nor have any of those innumerable writers of politics observed any such union
There is a misnomer about Fascist corporatism: the true corporatism of Fascism is the Fascist State, the corporative system itself, like Mario Palmieri states, is a guild system between workers and employers, and leading up to a corporate state by taking the role as internal organs (to be many in one).
Fausto Pitigliani
>That the Corporation has no legal independent personality but is an organ of the State Administration.
Mario Palmieri:
>To make this discipline possible, and the sovereignty effective in practice as well as in theory, Fascism has devised the “Corporazione,” an instrument of social life destined to exercise the most far-reaching influence upon the economic development of Fascist States. (The Italian word “Corporazione” which is currently translated into English by the apparently analogous word “Corporation,” means, more exactly in the Italian language, what the word “Guild” means in English; that is: associations of persons engaged in kindred pursuits. We shall nevertheless follow the general usage to obviate the danger of misunderstandings.)
See, in Fascism, they are just guilds. They are not corporations in the English sense of the word.
Corporatism is truly understood to many any body of people to act as one person, and any body of people – such as the workers under a workers' party is a corporatism.
The unitary views of State do originate with Plato's Republic.
Absolutism & Fascism trimmed off the socialism of Plato's Republic, that wanted to abolish Meum & Tuum (mine & thine) which divided the City against itself, not pursuing the community of pleasures and pains to its fullest expression in abolishing private property, but usually through the harmony of One Person (a cult of personality) or for chvds an ethnostate where different properties of persons are dissolved into a unified racial property among all persons.
Plato's 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.
Plato Republic:
>For factions… are the outcome of injustice, and hatreds and internecine conflicts, but justice brings oneness of mind and love.
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
Benito ᴉuᴉlossnW:
Speech of the Ascension, May 26, 1927
The Unitary State
>But in the meantime I come to an essential point of my speech: perhaps the most important. What have we Fascists done in these last five years? We did something huge, monumental, centuries in the making. What have we made? We have created the Italian Unitary State. Consider that from the time of the Empire onward, Italy was no longer a unitary State. Here we solemnly reaffirm our doctrine concerning the State; here I reaffirm my formula in the speech I delivered at La Scala in Milan: "Everything within the State, nothing against the State". I do not even think anyone in the 20th century can live outside the State, unless they are in a state of barbarism, a state of savagery.
>It is only the State that gives people a consciousness of itself. If the people are not organized, if the people are not a State, they are simply a population that will be at the mercy of the first group of internal adventurers or external invaders. Because, dear gentlemen, only the State with its juridical organization, with its military force, prepared at all times, can defend the national collectivity; but if the human collectivity is broken up and reduced to the mere nucleus of the family, a few hundred Normans will suffice to conquer Puglia.
>What was the State – that State which we took over as it was breathing its last breath, gnawed by constitutional crises, debased by its organic impotence? The State which we conquered at the time of the March on Rome was the one which has been handed down from 1850 onward. It was not a State, but a system of badly organized prefectures, in which the prefect had but one preoccupation: that of being an efficient electoral errand boy.
Fascism and Democracy
>In that State, until 1922, the proletariat – what shall I say? the entire people – was absent, refractory, hostile. Today we announce to the world the creation of the powerful Unitary Italian State from the Alps to Sicily. And this State expresses itself in a centralized, organized, unitary democracy in which the people move about at ease, because, gentlemen, either you place the people within the citadel of the State, and they will defend it, or they will be outside, and they will assault it.
Hobbes Elements of Law
http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/31/91.pdf>And as this union into a city or body politic, is instituted with common power over all the particular persons, or members thereof, to the common good of them all; so also may there be amongst a multitude of those members, instituted a subordinate union of certain men, for certain common actions to be done by those men for some common benefit of theirs, or of the whole city; as for subordinate government, for counsel, for trade, and the like. And these subordinate bodies politic are usually called CORPORATIONS; and their power such over the particulars of their own society, as the whole city whereof they are members have allowed them.
>In all cities or bodies politic not subordinate, but independent, that one man or one council, to whom the particular members have given that common power, is called their SOVEREIGN, and his power the sovereign power. which consisteth in the power and the strength that every of the members have transferred to him from themselves, by covenant. And because it is impossible for any man really to transfer his own strength to another, or for that other to receive it; it is to be understood: that to transfer a man's power and strength, is no more but to lay by or relinquish his own right of resisting him to whom he so transferreth it. And every member of the body politic, is called a SUBJECT, (viz.) to the sovereign…
>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.>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
>And though in the charters of subordinate corporations, a corporation be declared to be one person in law, yet the same hath not been taken notice of in the body of a commonwealth or city, nor have any of those innumerable writers of politics observed any such union.What does this have to do with a vanguard party or any one-party state like in Fascism?
Because Corporatism is most manifest by identifying the entire State with the unity of an estate.
Like I said, before the advent of multi-parties, the spirit of the multi-parties was in the estates-general and mixed constitutionalism. It championed the multitude of estates as a concord or partnership more than a unity, only with respect to the virtue of Religion. It was Aristotle's City, where the concordant heads of estates met and the laws were their convention, this community of goods is thought to be established by their independence and partnership – whereas the unitary view asserts that unity comes first, then the community of goods (or the economy / commonwealth / common good, etc).
This comes with another point from Plato's Statesmen: that an estate and State, or economical or political, have the same science or knowledge: if you know the former, how a household or estate works, then you are well on your way to learning how to master the political craft and run a political constitution / State / commonwealth / republic (whatever term you use).
This is where corporatism is magnified, in uniting the State as if it were one household, or as if it were one party, or as if were one person, the addition of it being a one-party state helps complete this.
Alfredo Rocco in The Political Doctrine of Fascism also makes out a historical outlook sympathetic to monarchical absolutism:
>This innovating trend is not and cannot be a return to the Middle Ages. It is a common but an erroneous belief that the movement started by the Reformation and heightened by the French Revolution was directed against mediaeval ideas and institutions. Rather than as a negation, this movement should be looked upon as the development and fulfillment of the doctrines and practices of the Middle Ages. Socially and politically considered, the Middle Ages wrought disintegration and anarchy; they were characterized by the gradual weakening and ultimate extinction of the State, embodied in the Roman Empire, driven first to the East, then back to France, thence to Germany, a shadow of its former self; they were marked by the steady advance of the forces of usurpation, destructive of the State and reciprocally obnoxious; they bore the imprints of a triumphant particularism. Therefore the individualistic and anti-social movement of the 17th and 18th centuries was not directed against the Middle Ages, but rather against the restoration of the State by great national monarchies. If this movement destroyed mediaeval institutions that had survived the Middle Ages and had been grafted upon the new states, it was in consequence of the struggle primarily waged against the State. The spirit of the movement was decidedly mediaeval. The novelty consisted in the social surroundings in which it operated and in its relation to new economic developments. The individualism of the feudal lords, the particularism of the cities and of the corporations had been replaced by the individualism and the particularism of the bourgeoisie and of the popular classes.
Many traditionalists too prefer constitutionalism on the basis that it had precedence in the Middle Ages contrary to absolutism of the early modernity starting in the late 1500s. & ancaps today repeat the Tocquevillist mantra and see Medievalism and the Holy Roman Empire as an anarchy and decentralization they admire.
Alfredo Rocco brings up Dante Alighieri's De Monarchia & Aquinas De Regno:
>It was therefore natural that St. Thomas Aquinas the greatest political writer of the Middle Ages should emphasize the necessity of unity in the political field, the harm of plurality of rulers, the dangers and damaging effects of demagogy. The good of the State, says St. Thomas Aquinas, is unity. And who can procure unity more fittingly than he who is himself one? Moreover the government must follow, as far as possible, the course of nature and in nature power is always one. In the physical body only one organ is dominant—the heart; in the spirit only one faculty has sway—reason. Bees have one sole ruler; and the entire universe one sole sovereign—God. Experience shows that the countries, which are ruled by many, perish because of disc0rd while those that are ruled over by one enjoy peace, justice, and plenty. The states which are not ruled by one are troubled by dissensions, and toil unceasingly. On the contrary the states which are ruled over by one king enjoy peace, thrive in justice and are gladdened by affluence.
>Italy in the Middle Ages presented a curious phenomenon: while in practice the authority of the State was being dissolved into a multiplicity of competing sovereignties, the theory of State unity and authority was kept alive in the minds of thinkers by the memories of the Roman Imperial tradition. It was this memory that supported for centuries the fiction of the universal Roman Empire when in reality it existed no longer. Dante's De Monarchia deduced the theory of this empire conceived as the unity of a strong State. "Quod potest fieri per unum melius est per unum fieri quam plura," he says in the 14th chapter of the first book, and further on, considering the citizen as an instrument for the attainment of the ends of the State, he concludes that the individual must sacrifice himself for his country. "Si pars debet se exponere pro salute totius, cum homo siti pars quaedam civitatis … homo pro patria debet exponere se ipsum." (lib. II. 8).
The Tocquevillist Slander
Personally, I'm convinced it the decentralization / centralization babble in essence goes back to Plato and Aristotle.
Aristotle disagreed with Plato, stating contrary to Plato that economical and political do have a contrary character, whereas Plato confers that they are no different and aren't of a contrary character.
Because Aristotle asserts that political rule is the rule of constitutional freemen, and that democracy is freedom; but also that monarchy is the rule of a household, and monarchy is only concerned with staying in power – Aristotle sets the record that monarchy is despotism over constitutional freemen and ought to be one among equals or always to stay with popular convention of freemen and not like a master.
Prior to the 1700s, there wasn't much talk of decentralization vs centralization like with left or right politics that's a staple of our more contemporary political lexicon–albeit we know the rudiments for this discussion in the past and how they came to be. Of course there was party politics and divisions of land and their concentration and separation. But after the colonization and constitutional debates between Americans over their colonial territory, after the French Revolution, & about the time of Alexis de Tocqueville and Bastiat, the terms decentralization and centralization were introduced with much more gravity and weight. They are words with no bearing on the concept of sovereignty.
Imo, the pretense of decentralization has always been that: the independent rule of freemen, as Aristotle puts it, contrary to Plato: the idea that political and economical are of contrary characters, and that we must respect the political estate differently. That independent heads of houses are set apart from the city itself as freemen: but in this context it's not heads of households as freemen, but autonomous regions making the pretense against the notion of states and any wider authority.
This is why Alexis de Tocqueville in the pretext of his work on the Old Regime sets it apart as the pretense of Liberty vs Despotism: that Liberty must prevail of Despotism. And despotism is the idea that the character of the political and economical are no different, like we say, back to Plato.
The followers of Tocqueville and his political legacy, like Hoppe and De Jouvenel, tend to be aristocratic apologists.
Alexis de Tocqueville in his study of the Ancien Regime brings up, however, that his study of the Middle Ages in search of the Old European Constitution is related largely to Germany / HRE (which, as we all know, muh border gore). It's what Ancaps and neofeuds always appeal to.
Jean Bodin classifies the HRE / Germany to be an Aristocracy or kind of Oligarchy, so while Alexis de Tocqueville starts his analysis for the Old Constitution of Europe and his appeal to decentralization – it's important to note how it begins with a form of state that had been recognized as aristocratic or oligarchical. Because Alexis de Tocqueville's big blurt is about centralization and decentralization: his entire critique is standing upon this chair, and if you kick this chair from beneath the feat of Alexis de Tocqueville – he will collapse and break his bones.
Alexis de Tocqueville notes in his work how any centralization is a move away from Aristocracy, and decentralization only possible by Aristocracy
Which is important to see how this is related to his study of Germany and the Prussian influence.
Now I would babble about how these words decentralization / centralization are anathema to sovereignty and our political understanding, but suffice to say, that this pretense begins with Aristotle saying that the economy has a different character from the political will suffice enough, esp. when it comes to his idea of freemen (which Hobbes criticizes duly). A lot we see with American exceptionalism and democracy in terms of freedom and constitutionalism goes back to Aristotle. For a mixed constitution, it is largely attributed to Aristotle and Polybius, particularly Aristotle since Aristotle views whatever is whole to be a composite.
The doctrine of absolutism that Tocqueville slanders as the mother of all modern socialism has been acknowledged beforehand numerous times. He only begrudgingly admits that it had origins in the feudal system and his only pretense is the courts never admitted it – but if you read there's plenty of testimony behind the doctrine. – What I hate about Tocqueville here is the appeal to the Middle Ages and making a huff about how medieval royalism was different to renaissance and early modern royalism kinda originates with him and ancaps and anarcho-monarchists annoy me with it like Tocqueville does.
Alexander Hamilton, for instance, says this:
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.
>When a nation abolishes aristocracy, centralization follows as a matter of course.
-Alexis de Tocqueville
How do I see Tocqueville's political legacy today?
Tocqueville & Bastiat -→ De Jouvenel & Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn -→ Hans-Hermann Hoppe
A big influence on right libertarians w/ these names.
There is a fine line between having a Monarchy with a Nobility and having an Aristocracy or Oligarchy with a petty king involved.
<Jean Bodin / Lacedemonians and cities of Gauls - Oligarchy
>"So also might we say of the state of Lacedemonians, which was a pure Oligarchy, wherein were two kings, without any sovereignty at all, being indeed nothing but Captains and Generals for the managing of their wars: and for that cause were by the other magistrates of the state, sometimes for their faults condemned to fines… And such were in ancient times the kings of the cities of the Gauls, whom Caesar for this cause oftentimes called Regulos, that is to say little kings: being themselves subjects, and justiciable unto the Nobility, who had all the sovereignty.
Every movement away from Nobility / Aristocracy, Tocqueville calls centralization; every movement towards Nobility / Aristocracy, – decentralization. (The latter is where is stress is – so the Nobility is stressed above Monarchy and Democracy to achieve this aim, but not stressed on Monarchy itself which he dubs centralization).
…
De Jouvenel also stressed, following the lead of De Tocqueville, "Liberty's Aristocratic Roots" & against Caesarism (Monarchy) which he linked with Monarchy itself.
Following Tocqueville's lead, De Jouvenel placed all liberty and appeals to the Nobility and rule of a few.
<De Jouvenel / Monarchical vs Senatorial
>According to which of these two hypotheses is adopted, the conclusion is reached that the "natural" government is either the monarchical or the senatorial. But from the time that Locke utterly smashed up Filmer's fragile structure, the earliest political authority was considere to be the senate composed of fathers of families, using the word "families" in the widest sense.
>Society must, therefore, have presented two degrees of authority, which were quite different in kind.
<On the one hand is the head of the family, exercising the most imperious sway over all who were within the family circle.
>On the other are the heads of families in council, taking decisions in concert, tied to each other only by consent, submitting only to what has been determined in common, and assembling their retainers, who have outside themselves, neither law nor master, to execute their will.
As you see here, De Jouvenel takes the Aristotelian view that political & economical differ with his distinction here^
…
<De Jouvenel / Securitarian vs Libertarian
>The conclusion is that there never was a time in any society whatsoever when some individuals did not feel themselves to be insufficiently protected, and others did not feel themselves to be insufficiently free. The former I call "securitarians" and the latter "libertarians".
De Jouvenel also tackled the issues I pointed out earlier about Plato (& where the more unitary vs pluralistic views of State come into being – Aristotle, for his part, is more senatorial and many of the like appeals De Jouvenel makes are found in Aristotle's City, which is the senatorial kind of assemblage of heads of estates and of families – the political constitution stresses the estates of the city rather than the unity of the city itself under one head like a family – I touched on this issue with the doctrine that political and economical don't differ).
In my sincere opinion, De Jouvenel obviously appeals to the "old republic" and those senatorial ideals – it doesn't matter if it be a landed, hereditary nobility with their estates OR a bunch of senators in one room – we are simply adjusting the scale from Aristotle's City projected onto nobles and their estates spread apart like in Aristotle's City the various estates of the city converging.
–So this is why I look at Tocquevillism with immense annoyance when so many monarchists, be it constitutional monarchists and right libertarians and ancaps, spurn absolute monarchy in order to achieve "decentralization" and "liberty" as ascribed here, because it bears that stamp of the heads of the estates which are always few and resemble an oligarchical form.
Why is this like rocket science to explain to other monarchists? I don't think, but I believe it is because they don't take Monarchy seriously or believe what Darius says in the Herodotus Debate or Homer's monarchist maxim in the Iliad. They've been collectively taught to embrace the Nobility as opposed to Absolute Monarchy on these grounds of decentralization and libertarian ideals… this sentiment permeates the monarchist community so thoroughly and is everywhere and is unanimous for these monarchists whether constitutionalist or libertarian, but it's very popular with traditionalists.
>De Jouvenel covering Plato's politics
>…Hegel turned it to good account: recalling that Plato in his Republic had rigorously stressed the importance of the citizens remaining undifferentiated and had seen in that the essential condition of social unity, Hegel asserted that the characteristic of the modern state was, contrarywise, to allow a process of differentiation, by which an ever growing diversity could be rangedd within an ever richer unity.
>But there would be grave dangers in so avowedly normative an approach as this. It would in the first place build an ivory tower which was so remote from reality that advice issuing from it would be unable to influence the citizens of the real world: so it was with Plato's Republic, which was built on just these foundations. Worse still, the attraction exercised by pretty pictures of this kind lures men into importing them into reality and leads them on to tyrannical actions to achieve their ideals: there is a tyranny in the womb of every Utopia.
>(Footnotes): For a denunciation of the oppressive character of the institutions conceived by Plato, see my Power, Book III, ch. VII. Almost simultaneously there appeared in London a work of vast erudition and great intellectual vigour by Professor Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies. The ideas developed in the present chapter often join hands with those of Professor Popper's fine book.
While it's true that we are critical of Plato ourselves, we do have this view of the State as a unitary being (which Plato calls in his organicism of all members of society acting like one man) and that political and economical don't differ. You've seen how De Jouvenel is opposed to these unitary views. And when it comes to Monarchy itself, the stress on the chiefs and senatorial view is akin to Aristotle's City and notion of Politics. You could say, however, that I am misrepresenting De Jouvenel and I'd be fine if anyone would say so, but the overall sentiment I feel from the Tocquevillists (De Jouvenel & Alexis de Tocqueville) is this stress on the Nobility and for all the aforementioned reasons I disapprove of it and wish monarchists would stop with their Tocquevillism and with the influx of right libertarians and constitutional monarchists in agreement with those right libertarians and all this flirtation with the traditionalists about the clerical estate, have turned themselves into a hate train against absolute monarchy. I deal with their snubbing way too often and can't stand the majority of the monarchist community because they're drunk with it. The same with NeoAbsolutists who formed a cult around De Jouvenel with their blogs (but thankfully died down when Von Hallerism took over). I swear the monarchist community is so stupid.
De Jouvenel - Republic of Old
>The republic of old had no state apparatus. It needed no machinery for imposing the public will on all the citizens, who would have had none of such a thing. The citizens, with their own wills and their own resources – these latter small at first but continuously growing – decide by adjusting their wills and execute by pooling their resources.
>We do not find anywhere in the ancient republic a directing will so armed with its own weapons that it can use force. There were the consults, I may be told. But to start with there were two of them, and it was an essential feature of the office that they could block one another's activities.
>Only those decisions were possible on which there was general agreement, and, in the absence of any state apparatus, their execution depended solely on the cooperation of the public. The army was but the people in arms, and the revenues were but the sums gifted by the citizens, which could not have been raised except by voluntary subscriptions. There was not, to come down to the essential point, an administrative corps.
>In the city of old, no public office is found filled by a member of a permanent staff who holds his place from Power; the method of appointment is election for a short period, usually a year, and often by the drawing of lots, which was called by Aristotle the true democratic method.
>It thus appears that the rulers do not form, as in our modern society, a coherent body which, from the minister of state down to the policeman, moves as one piece. On the contrary, the magistrates, great and small, discharge their duties in a way which verges on independence.
>How was a regime of this kind able to function at all? Only be great moral cohesion and the inter-availability of private citizens for public office.
Like Aristotle, along with rejecting the rule of a wise man like Plato's philosopher kings, also counterpoised a strong middle class and that an oligarchy would invite the poor into assembly to help preserve the oligarchy and pass any conflicts, but keeping the main advantage.
Tocqueville thought the same with a middle class.
Aristotle also acknowledged the advent of the middle class as the decline of monarchies and that is where that meme comes from… like in that interview with the Shah of Iran asking him about whether there are other hereditary monarchies in the world and how he expects to rule when people get wealthier.
<De Jouvenel on Middle Class
<How can men whose authority rests on Power's guarantee oppose to it the proud independence which honourably distinguished the ancient aristocracy? Lacking now all strength of their own, they no longer uphold Power; no longer upholding Power, they have become incapable of limiting it. The notions of aristocracy and liberty have parted company.
>The heirs of their libertarian aspirations are the middle class. We will define the middle class, if we must, as composed of those who have enough social strength to stand in no need of any special protection and to desire the largest measure of liberty, but have on the other hand not enough strength to make their liberties oppressive to others.
De Jouvenel on chiefs of clans
>However it may be with these conjectures, it is a certain point of historical development we meet with the ambitious king who aims at extending his own prerogative at the expense of the chiefs of clans –"the absolute monarchs of their families," as Vico calls them–and is jealous of their independence.
Rather, Aristotle paints the other picture around – of a usurping middle class and oligarchy not standing the pre-eminence of one person like an absolute monarch.
Aristotle – No longer bearing the pre-eminence of one
>The first governments were kingships, probably for this reason, because of old, when cities were small, men of eminent virtue were few. Further, they were made kings because they were benefactors, and benefits can only be bestowed by good men.
>But when many persons equal in merit arose, no longer enduring the pre-eminence of one, they desired to have a commonwealth, and set up a constitution.
And this Aristotle reins in as the inevitable decline of monarchy with chiefs of equal merit wanting a constitution and aristocracy.
Now remember De Jouvenel is famous for his HLvM (Monarchy + Democracy vs Aristocracy) where Power advances by this conflict of the High meeting with the Low to screw over the Middle. This is the paradigm that many in the right libertarian circles see: and De Jouvenel himself goes along with the narrative that Marx has that absolute monarchy merged with the bourgeois to institute itself. So be mindful of that.
This is something we see in the advent of NRx terms like BioLeninism: where those in power usurp the superiors with the degenerates for their slave loyalty.
<De Jouvenel - Absolutist work of Monarchy vs libertarian work of Aristocracy
>Will historians, in their passion for libertarian and anti-absolutist institutions, admire the resistance of aristocracy to the formation of absolutism? Sismondi, for instance, states that in the Middle Ages "all the real advances made in independence of character, in the safeguarding of rights, and in the limitations forced by discussion on the caprices and vices of absolute Power, were due to the hereditary aristocracy."
<De Jouvenel – The only thing Caesarism fears, right libertarians
>In this way is removed the only obstacle that Caesarism has to fear–a movement of libertarian resistance, emanating from a people with subjective rights to defend and under the natural leadership of eminent men whom their credit qualifies and whom the insolence of wealth does not disqualify.
De Jouvenel - Monarchy First Instituted Power
>We see then that the monarchical period established in the body of society a distinct organ: this was Power, which has its own life, its own interests, its own characteristics, its own ends. It needs studying under this aspect.
(I believe this was after De Jouvenel's talk of the old republic).
<Louis XIV on HRE
>An on this subject, my son, lest they should try to impress you sometimes with the wonderful names of Roman Empire, of Caesar, of Imperial Majesty, of successor to the great emperors from whom we derive our origin, I feel obliged to indicate to you how far the emperors of today are removed from the greatness of the titles that they affect.
>When these titles were introduced into our house, it reigned all at once over France, the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, and most of Spain, which it had distributed among various individual lords, while preserving sovereignty over it. The bloody defeats of many peoples issuing from the north and from the south for the ruin of Christendom had made the French name the terror of the whole earth. Charlemagne, finally, seeing no king in all Europe, nor, to tell the truth, anywhere else in the world, whose fortunes could compare with his, this title seemed henceforth unsuitable either for them or for him. He had risen to this high point of glory not by the choice of some prince, but by courage and by victories, which are the choice and the votes of Heaven Itself when It has resolved to subordinate the other powers to a single one. And there had not been any dominion as extensive as his except for the four famous monarchies to which the empire of the entire world is attributed, although they had never conquered nor possessed any more than a small part of it, yet important and well known in the world. That of the Romans was the last, entirely extinct in the West and with only some feeble remnants in the East, miserable and languishing.
>However, as if the Roman Empire had recovered its strength and begun to revive in our climes, which was not the case at all, this the greatest title then in the memory of man alone seemed capable of defining and designation the extraordinary loftiness of Charlemagne, and even though this loftiness itself, which he derived only from God and from his sword, gave him every right to assume whatever title he would have wanted, the Pope, who along with the entire Church was extremely indebted to him, was most pleased to contribute whatever he could to his glory and to render this capacity of emperor more authentic to him through a solemn coronation, which, like the consecration, even though it does not give us royalty, proclaims it to the people and renders it more august, more inviolable, and more sacred in us. But this greatness of Charlemagne, which was so fit to establish the title of emperor or even more magnificent ones if there had been any, did not long survive him; diminished first by the partitions that were made then among the sons of France, then by the weakness and by the lack of dedication of his descendants, particularly of the branch that had established itself on this side of the Rhine; for empires, my son, are preserved only as they are acquired, that is, by vigor, by vigilance, and by work.
>The Germans, excluding the princes of our blood, soon thereafter appropriated this dignity, or rather, substituted another in its place that had nothing in common either with the old Roman Empire nor with the new empire of our ancestors, by which they tried, as in all great changes, to arrange that everyone would find his advantage and thus not oppose it. The people and the individual states entered into it owing to the great privileges that were given to them in the name of liberty, the princes of Germany because this dignity was made elective instead of hereditary and they thereby acquired the right to appoint to it, to claim it, or both; the popes, finally, because one always professes to derive it from their authority and, basically, a great and true Roman protector. In this sense, the kings of Spain still titled themselves, only a few years ago, advocates of some of the cities that I have conquered in Flanders, that country being almost entirely divided into different advocates or protectorates of this type.
>But to return to the emperors of today, you can easily, my son, understand from this entire discussion that they are in no way comparable to the old Roman emperors, nor to Charlemagne and his first successors. For, to give them their due, they can be considered merely as heads, or captains-general, of a German republic, rather new by comparison with many other states, and which is neither so great nor so powerful that it should claim any superiority over neighboring nations. Their most important decisions are subject to the deliberations of the Estates of the Empire. One imposes whatever conditions one wants upon them at their election. Most of the members of the republic, that is, the princes and the free cities of Germany, defer to their orders only when they please. In their capacity as emperors they have very little revenue, and if they did not possess other hereditary domains of their own, they would be reduced to residing, out of all the Empire, in the sole city of Bamberg, which the bishop who is its sovereign lord would be obliged to cede to them. Thus many princes who might have attained to this dignity by election have rejected it, believing it to be more a burden than of an honor. An the Elector of Bavaria could have been emperor in my time if he had not refused to appoint himself, as the law permits, by combining his vote with those that I had secured for him in the electoral college.
>I fail to see, therefore, my son, for what reason the kings of France, hereditary kings who can boast that there isn't either a better house, nor greater power, nor more absolute authority than theirs anywhere else in the world today, should rank below these elective princes. It cannot be denied, nonetheless, that the popes, as a consequence of what they had done, have gradually given precedence at the court of Rome to the ambassadors of the Emperor over all the others and most of the courts in Christendom have imitated this example without our predecessors having made any effort to prevent it.
>In short, my son, while I have not believed I should ask for anything new in Christendom on this matter, I have believed even less that, in my position, I should in any way tolerate anything new by which these princes might affect to assume the least superiority over me; and I counsel you to do the same, noting, however, how much virtue is to be esteemed, since, after such a long time, that of the Romans, that of the first Caesars, and that of Charlemagne still secure, without adequate reason, more honor than is due to the empty name and to the empty shadow of their empire.
Louis XIV memoir END
<Jean Bodin, like Voltaire, on the HRE
>The way in which the Germans define a monarchy is absurd, that is, according to the interpretation of Philip Melanchthon, as the most powerful of all states. It is even more absurd that they think they hold the empire of the Romans, which of course would seem laughable to all who have well in mind the map of the world. The empire of the Romans was most flourishing under Trajan.
>The Germans, however, hold no part of the Roman Empire except Noricum and Vindelicia. Germany is bounded by the Rhine, the Danube, the Vistula, the Carpathian Mountains, and the ocean, but all authority ends at the foothills of the Alps in the south; by the Rhine and a few cities this side of the Rhine in the west; by Silesia, in turn, on the east; by the Baltic regions on the north. How much truer it is of the king of the Turks, who took Byzantium, the capital of the empire, from the Christians, the region of Babylon, which is discussed in the book of Daniel, from the Persians, and joined a great part of his dominion beyond the Danube, up to the mouth of the Dnieper, to the old Roman provinces? Now, if we identify monarchy with force of arms, or with great wealth, or with fertility of areas, or with the number of victories, or with the size of population, or with etymology of the name, or with the fatherland of Daniel, or with the seat of the Babylonian empire, or with the amplitude of sway, it will be more appropriate, certainly, to interpret the prophecy of Daniel as applied to the sultan of the Turks."Turning to foreign nations, what has Germany to oppose to the sultan of the Turks? Or which state can more aptly be called a monarchy? This fact is obvious to everyone–If there is anywhere in the world any majesty of empire and of true monarchy, it must radiate from the Sultan. He owns the richest parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe, and he rules far and wide over the entire Mediterranean and all but a few of its islands. Moreover, in armed forces and strength he is such that he alone is the equal of almost all the princes, since he drove the armies of the Persians and the Muscovites far beyond the boundaries of the empire. But he seized provinces of the Christians and the empire of the Greeks by force of arms, and even devastated the lands of the Germans. I shall not discuss the prince of Ethiopia, called by his people Jochan Bellul, that is, precious gem, whose empire is little less than all Europe. What of the emperor of the Tartars, who rules tribes barbarous in their savagery, countless in number, unconquered in strength? If you compare Germany with these, you compare a fly to an elephant.
…
>Finally, all the peoples of the earth except Germans, Swiss with their allies, Venetians, Ragusans, Lucchese, and Genoese, who are ruled by the power of Optimates or have Popular governments. But if so many people are uncivilized because they have hereditary kings, oh, where will be the abode of culture? The fact that Aristotle thought it disastrous, however, seems to me much more absurd. For in the first place an interregnum is clearly dangerous, since the State, like a ship, without a pilot, is tossed about by the waves of sedition and often sinks. This happened after the death of Emperor Frederick II. The country, in a state of anarchy, was without an emperor for eighteen years on account of the civil war among the princes.
…
<Jean Bodin: Indigenous, Native People of America Retain Royal Power & Marvel at Rule of Optimates like Germany & Venice
>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.
<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.
<Jean Bodin – HRE & Aristotle & Hereditary Kings
>Finally, all the peoples of the earth except Germans, Swiss with their allies, Venetians, Ragusans, Lucchese, and Genoese, who are ruled by the power of Optimates or have Popular governments. But if so many people are uncivilized because they have hereditary kings, oh, where will be the abode of culture? The fact that Aristotle thought it disastrous, however, seems to me much more absurd. For in the first place an interregnum is clearly dangerous, since the State, like a ship, without a pilot, is tossed about by the waves of sedition and often sinks. This happened after the death of Emperor Frederick II. The country, in a state of anarchy, was without an emperor for eighteen years on account of the civil war among the princes.
<Sir Robert Filmer – Slavish Royalty of the Oligarchies
>We do hear a great rumour in this age, of moderated and limited Kings; Poland, Sweden, and Denmark are talked of for such; and in these kingdoms, nowhere, is such a moderated government, as our Observator means, to be found. A little inquiry would be made into the manner of the government of these kingdoms: for these northern people, as Bodin observeth, breathe after liberty.
>First, for Poland, Boterus saith, that the government of it is elective altogether, and representeth rather an aristocracy than a kingdom: the nobility, who have great authority in the diets, choosing the King, and limiting his authority, making his sovereignty but a slavish royalty: these diminutions of regality began first by default of King Lewis, and Jagello, who to gain the succession in the kingdom contrary to the laws, one for his daughter, and the other for his son, departed with many of his royalties and prerogatives, to buy the voices of the nobility. The French author of the book called The Estates of the World, doth inform us that the princes' authority was more free, not being subject to any laws, and having absolute power, not only of their estates, but also of life and death.
Jean Bodin – Not a fictitious image, like the doge of Venice & the Oligarchy
>Yet this is directed by the rule of one, who presents, not a fictitious image, like the doge of Venice, but the true picture of a king.
King James VI & I - True Law of Free Monarchies
>I mean always of such free Monarchies as our king is, and not of elective kings, and much less of such sort of governors, as the dukes of Venice are, whose Aristocratic (Oligarchic) and limited government, is nothing like to free Monarchies; although the malice of some writers has not been ashamed to mis-know any difference to be betwixt them.
Jean Bodin - All Honours, but no power - the device of Oligarchic & Popular Estates to Subdue Monarchy
>Wherefore in well ordered Aristocratic (Oligarchic) and Popular Commonwealthes (States), the greatest honours are granted without power of command, and the greatest powers to command are not granted without a companion therein.
>But the manner of well governed Aristocratic (Oligarchic) states, is to grant unto him the least power to whom they give the greatest honour: and sometimes also least honour unto them that be of most power: as of all others the Venetians in the ordering and government of their Commonweal best know how to use that matter.
>And so oftentimes it happens that they which have the greatest honours, are yet destitute of all power and command: as amongst the Venetians the Chancellor is created out of the people, which is with them the greatest honour; and yet without any power. So the Procurators of S. Mark, are also (with them) highly honoured, and in all Commonwealths the counsellors of estate, Embassadours, Bishops, and prelates, who have no command, and yet are more respected, than the other little Provosts, and diverse other judges, which have power to command, and jurisdiction to decide controversies, with administration of justice both high and low.
>[They are contenting themselves with the title of Highness, which is not Majesty or the mark of Sovereignty or monarchical pre-eminence]: and the duke of Venice with the addition of his Serenity, who (to speak properly) is but a very prince, that is to say, the first, for he is nothing else but the first of the gentlemen of Venice: and has no more above the rest of the Senators, than the chief place and dignity of the State or Commonwealth in all their assemblies, wherein he sits as chief; and the concluding voice into what corporation or college he come, if there be any question of voices.
A great policy of Aristocratic / Oligarchic estates
>A great policy in Aristocratical estates to give unto him least power to whom they give the most honour.
Bodin on Principality – or First Among Equals or Equal among the Estates or One Among Equals; or, the concordant power of the estates (Aristotle) opposed to majesty of sovereignty of a monarch
>The other reason was, for that the Roman emperours at the first had not any sovereign power, but were only called princes, that is to say, the chief men in the Commonwealth; which form of a Commonwealth or State – is called a principality, and not a Monarchy: but a principality is called a certain form of an Aristocracy (Oligarchy), wherein one is in honour, dignity and place, above the rest: as amongst the Venetians: For the Roman emperour or prince, at the first was in honour above the rest, but not in power: howbeit that in truth the greatest part of the Roman emperors were indeed tyrannical monarchs [who usurped the Roman republic].
<Jean Bodin: The Analogy of Three Cities with Different Forms of Commonwealth (or State) Mixing together: The Three Forms of State are of Contrary Natures:
>"So as if the mixture of things of diverse and contrary natures, arises a third all together differing form the things so together mixed. But that State which is made of the mixture of the three kinds of Commonweales differs in deed nothing from a mean popular State (democracy); For if three cites, whereof one of them is governed by a King, and so a Monarchy (One); the second by an Optimacy, and so an Oligarchy (Few); the third by the People, and so a Democracy (Many); should be confounded, and so thrust together into one and the same form of a Commonweale (State), and so the chief power and Sovereignty communicated unto all; who is there that can doubt but that that State shall be altogether a State popular (Democracy)? except the Sovereignty should by turns be given; first to the King, then to the Nobility, and afterwards to the People; As in the vacancy of the Roman Kingdom, the King being dead, the Senators ruled by turns: yet must they need again fall unto one of these three kinds of a Commonweale which we have spoken of: neither could this alternative manner of government be of any long continuance, either yet more profitable to the Commonwealth, then as if in an evil governed family, the wife should first command the husband; then the children them both; and the servants after them to domineer over all."
<Jean Bodin: Mixed Constitutonalism. An Opinion Not Only Absurd… but Treasonable
>"There are those who say, and have published in writing, that the constituton of France is a mixture of the three pure types, the Parlement representing Oligarchy (few), the Estates-General representing Democracy (many), and the King representing Monarchy (one). But this is an opinion not only absurd but treasonable. It is treasonable to exalt the subjects to be the equals and colleagues of their Sovereign Monarch."
>For otherwise if the King should be subject unto the assemblies and decrees of the People, he should neither be King nor Sovereign; and the Commonwealth not a Monarchical State, but a mere Oligarchy of many Lords in power equal, where the greater part commands the less in general, and every one in particular: and wherein the edicts and laws are not to be published in the name of him that rules, but in the name and authority of the states, as in an Aristocratical Seignorie, where he that is chief has no power, but owes obedience unto the commandments of the seignorie: unto whom they all and every one of them feign themselves to owe their faith and obedience: which are all things so absurd, as hard it is to say which is furthest from reason. SO when Charles the Eight, the French king, [being but so young], held a parliament at Tours, although the power of the parliament was never before so great as in those times, yet Relli, then speaker for the people, turning himself unto the King, thus begins his oration, which is yet in print. Most high, most mighty, and most Christian King, our natural and onely Lord, we your humble and obedient subjects, &c. Which are come hither by your command, in all HUMILITY, REVERENCE, and SUBJECTION present ourselves before you, &c. And have given me in charge from all this noble assembly, to declare unto you the good will and hartie desire they have with a most firm resolution and purpose to SERVE, OBEY, and AID you in all your affairs, commandments, and pleasures. In brief, all that his oration and speech is nothing else but a declaration of all their good wills towards the King, and of their humble obedience and loyalty.
John Cook / Aristotle's King>…And whereas it is called a Human Ordinance, 1 Peter. 2. 13. ''Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake whether it be to the King as supreme; that is either to be intended of a King that is guided and directed by his Parliaments or Counsells who in cases of Competition must yield to them with such power as a Duke of Venice or Geneva may have, or else it is an agreement and constitution of Irrational people, a nation delighting rather in servitude than freeddome; and those ancient Scholasticks & Philosophers which made such learned arguments of the best kind of Government, whether Monarchy, Aristocracy or Democracy, were to be preferred, many holding that Monarchy ought to have the preeminence, specifically where Kings were good men; Certainly they did not intend it of absolute unaccountable Monarchs, for Aristotle's King, was no more than a Duke of Venice, greater than any one, but less than all; the Prince of Orange had two votes in Counsell, which yet was more than right reason allows;Monarchy, no creature of Gods making, &c. wherein is proved by Scripture and reason, that monarchicall government is against the minde of God, and that the execution of the late king [King Charles I] was one of the fattest sacrifices that ever Queen Iustice had … / by Iohn Cookehttps://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A34420.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext;q1=Monarchy Aristotle Politics
>Let us first speak of master and slave, looking to the needs of practical life and also seeking to attain some better theory of their relation than exists at present. For some are of opinion that the rule of a master is a science, and that the management of a household, and the mastership of slaves, and the political and royal rule, as I was saying at the outset, are all the same. Others affirm that the rule of a master over slaves is contrary to nature, and that the distinction between slave and freeman exists by law only, and not by nature; and being an interference with nature is therefore unjust.
Aristotle writes in Politics,
>Now there is an erroneous opinion that a statesman, king, householder, and a 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.
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.
<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.
<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."
<Rousseau / Royalist political writing likens civil government to domestic government
>Royalist political writing likens civil government to domestic government… With the help of this supposition, it is easy to make out that royal government is preferable to all others, because it is unquestionably the strongest; and in addition to that, all it needs to be the best but doesn't have – is a corporate will that is more in conformity with the general will.
<Giuseppe Bottai
>All modern history, that is, all contemporaneous life, leads to the corporative conception of the State with the inclusion of Economics within the State or the identification of Economics with Politics.
<Kim Il Sung Aphorism - Family & Nation
>If a family is to manage its household affairs well only one member of the family should control its finances. Likewise, if a nation is to manage its economic life properly it must use its finances on the principle of a single management system.
>>661871With Alunya.
It would be fun if somebody took the 3D models and made something with them.
3D models here
Grace Model 1
>>>/draw/5190Grace Model 2
>>>/draw/4878Alunya Model 1
>>>/draw/4877PNGtuber gifs of Grace
https://veado.tube/^This can be used for PNGtuber stuff.
My preference for French Absolutism, Anglican, or Orthobro Monarchy for Christian MonarchyNow, I said I have reservations about the Medievalist & Traditionalist Monarchist, mostly the Tradcath sort (2nd pic related).
It isn't really my taste out of all the examples of Christian Monarchy. I'd rather stick with the Orthobro or the Anglican or French Absolutism. This is from a politics standpoint; because, from a clerical standpoint, then Catholicism & Ultramontanism should be predisposed to monarchical absolutism, because of papal infallibility and ultramontanism and its resistance to being "one among equals" with the Orthodox clergy or the nobility in Rome or the Royalty. –French Absolutism, that is the closest I align in terms of taste with Catholic Monarchy (but that always comes packed with complaints about Gallicanism).
Probably an unpopular opinion: What Bossuet calls "the religion of the second majesty" I feel is overall sapped outside of French Absolutism. The epitome of why Catholic Royalism is out of my taste has to be Spain and the Austranshumanist Habsburgs for me. It is too divorced from the political affairs, mixed constitutionalism prevails in Carlism, the only virtues & archtypes celebrated are the Saintly King or the Martyr King, the Habsburg royalism is really seedy & too mild for me, and too multicultural yet with the prevalence of high church to consolidate it, and ultramontanists are too uncomfortable with the majestic or pre-eminent view of any royalty (except Christ) & in light of the popes – the saintly view of royalty is too humble and doesn't compensate the need for majesty (which any monarchy wants).
The same could be said for other Christian Monarchies (/leftypol/ is more than familiar enough with the Romanov Martyrs), but the Orthodox are accustomed to imperial rule and Symphonia (which means less shitflinging and a better relationship with political rule).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonia_(theology)Anglican Royalism probably romanticizes Royalty most of all next to French Absolutism: it was severe with King Henry VIII, but King Charles I balanced the virtues of a saint king with a majestic king in Henry VIII and King James VI & I: of course, High Church Anglicanism also started to mellow out a bit with respects to royalty, but still.
<Louis XIV's disdain for & roast of so-called "constitutional monarchy":
>For there is no doubt that this subjection that makes it necessary for a sovereign to take orders from his people is the worst calamity that can befall a man of our rank.
-Louis XIV Quote #1
>It is perverting the order of things to attribute decisions to the subjects and deference to the sovereign, and if I have described to you elsewhere the miserable condition of princes who commit their people and their dignity to the conduct of a prime minister, I have good cause to portray to you here the misery of those who are abandoned to the indiscretion of a popular assembly.
-Louis XIV Quote #2
>I fail to see, therefore, my son, for what reason the kings of France, hereditary kings who can boast that there isn't either a better house, nor greater power, nor more absolute authority than theirs anywhere else in the world today, should rank below these elective princes.
-Louis XIV Quote #3
>It is the essential fault of this monarchy that the Prince may not levy any extraordinary taxes without the Parliament nor keep the Parliament in session without gradually losing his authority, which is sometimes left shattered, as the example of the previous King [Charles I] had sufficiently demonstrated.
-Louis XIV Quote #4
>As to the persons who were to support me in my work, I resolved above all not to have a prime minister, and if you and all your successors take my advice, my son, the name will forever be abolished in France, there being nothing more shameful than to see on the one hand all the functions and on the other the mere title of a king.
-Louis XIV Quote #5
>>662039No, because of life experience.
Aristotle also says every household is ruled by its eldest.
There is also the cult of personality aspect, primarily to filter out and promote the idea of government by father and son, & the image of father & son, to make the descent by natural by proximity.
Hereditary Monarchy w/ primogeniture completes the idea of the state as a family and is the cherry on top for me.
It is more natural and forthcoming, like a natural lottery.
Although a father is said to have the power of life and death & can choose his son also, imho.
>>662092TBH, there are elective monarchies.
& even more a signature of Aristotle's style of monarchy (if you call it monarchy).
Usually the heads of estates / nobility elect it by convention like Aristotle advocates with an independent partnership of clans (as well as the laws are by their convention).
It grates against the idea of monarchical pre-eminence & for one family alone to rule, so hereditary monarchy & primogeniture is truer to monarchical form.
>>662095In Malaysia, that office is is rule by turns, actually limited monarchy, rotational government between the chiefs of clans, etc.
The Holy Roman Empire, Malaysia, Poland, Venice are notable examples of that ideal of Aristotle & his preference for monarchy by election.
What makes the Pope unique is the Pope claims pre-eminence in spite of it: the Pope is not one among equals with the bishops, & Matthew 16:18 is the pre-eminence clause for the Popes.
Hereditary Monarchy / dynasty is an extension of the cult of personality (or work of this person on the people).
The original ruler passes, but there is an attempt to extend his person by his offspring in the most natural fashion & proximity to his person and appearance, as if to copy and paste that progenitor – that is another reason why I think the eldest & firstborn is preferred, because of proximity and closeness.
Think of it also like another form of state preservation when the original person is preserved through his offspring… it is presumed the children will have a similar likeness and appearance and character for the most part.
Imagine if Lenin died, but instead of trying to preserve his body through all these techniques – it was decided to preserve Lenin by blood relationship, and find the offspring of Lenin.
>For the sun becomes the champion of his father, like Horus, when he championed his father, forming him that formed him, fashioning him that fashioned him, making to live the name of him that begat him.
>My heart leads me in doing excellent things… I will cause it to be said forever and ever: 'It was his son, who made his name live.' May my father, Osiris, favor me with the long life of his son, Horus, according as I do that which he did; I do excellent things, as he did excellent things, for him who begat me.
- Ramses II
It is like what Bossuet says.
I cannot imagine the State as a greater family, if for the ruler's love for his kingdom isn't mixed with the love he has for his family.
If we don't build the State around that ideal of Father & Son.
Aristotle / The Association of Father & Son, the Ideal of Monarchy
>For the association of a father with his sons bears the form of monarchy… it is the ideal of monarchy to be paternal rule.
Bossuet / My Father the King
>Man who, as has been said, saw the image of a kingdom in the union of several families under the leadership of a common father, and who had found gentleness in that life, brought themselves easily to create societies of families under kings who took the place of fathers… it is apparently for that reason that the ancient people's of Palestine called their kings Abimelech, that is to say: my father the king. Subjects took themselves to be children of the Prince: and, each calling him, My father the king.
Understand that hereditary monarchy completes this vision of the State as a greater family for royalists. –It is incomplete without it.
–
Aristotle / Suckled by the same milk, of the same blood
>And this is the reason why Hellenic states were originally governed by kings; …the kingly form of government prevailed because they were of the same blood [and suckled 'with the same milk']
The rulers should be of the same blood & extend that blood relationship to everyone else, so they too can see themselves as of the same blood and family – which makes for a stronger bond of loyalty not only to the prince, but amongst the people themselves.
Hobbes' Leviathan also touches on this subject matter.
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 Restranshumanistt 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.
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 humane
Hobbes 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.
Although I think Hobbes also has influence from Calvin here? (I might be wrong, but I think so).
Plato on 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.
Then, there is the community of pleasures & pains, unity of emotion, that is the hallmark for why people call Plato's Republic "totalitarian" – because it is concerned with the conscience of the citizens, and wants uniformity.
Plato Republic - Community of Pleasures & Pains
>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.
Jean Bodin rejected this idea, & stressed private property; didn't like how Plato came close to a "dangerous equality" and inevitably democracy. Instead, Jean Bodin supported the idea of a Royal Harmony (which I think is also in Plato's Statesmen for a Royal Weaver) that harmonizes the opposite parties in a state. Whereas Thomas Hobbes (I think) supports the geometic notion of State more (and has the iconic unity of democracy and monarchy, Leviathan, as One Person and formally called "The People").
…
Aristotle also acknowledges the community of pleasures and pains in Plato, and that an organized State needs similitude and equality, or some likeness – rather than abolish private property as Plato suggests for Meum & Tuum, Aristotle suggests a stronger Middle Class to oppose the extremes of rich and poor.
…
I partially disagree with Jean Bodin & gravitate towards what Hobbes seems to suggest, because a community of pleasures and pains is desired (& I strongly see the appeal) – the harmony Bodin wants, and the community of pleasures and pains – is manifest in Monarchical rule best by the Cult of Personality, & Hobbes' Leviathan is one big so-called Cult of Personality (in a way); others who would seemingly disagree with Plato and agree with Aristotle, like most Wignats / Natsoc types, also long for a community of pleasures and pains, except instead of abolishing Meum & Tuum and private property, it is properties of persons defined as race – which also has the benefit of a cult of personality, and many socialist states benefit from a cult of personality because one man brings unity so long desired in State Corporatism and Party Vanguardism – this leads to modern monarchies often manifest through what people call secular dictatorships.
Kim Il Sung Aphorism - Queen Bee
>Just as worker bees form a group and live in a disciplined way, centring on a Queen Bee, so the collective must have a centre and discipline.
Kim Il Sung – Party Organization
>Kim Il Sung repeated this question to himself, picking up a pencil and tapping it lightly on the table. After a while, he asked the foreign quest: "Do you know how bees live?"
<"What do you mean?" asked the latter
>With a meaningful smile on his face, Kim Il Sung resumed: Bees are united around the Queen Bee. Of course, this mode of experience is a natural phenomenon based on their instinct, but it may provide an answer to the question of how to build up a party.
>He went on: "Just as bees live in an orderly fashion united around the Queen Bee, there must be a centre and discipline within a collective."
>He said that what was essential in building up a party was to unite all its members firmly around the leader, concluding that a party, which achieved the unity of all its members in ideology and will with the leader at the centre, would be ever-victorious.
Monarchia natio coloniae (or so-called dynastic patriotism) has a basis in the West. As does the corporatist mode of politics (as Plato, Hobbes, Fascism established in their own unique way).
It is simply lost in the consciousness of the West & somewhat diluted by other potents.
Xenophon:
>Cambyses, a king of the Persians, and one of the Perseidae, who look to Perseus as the founder of their race Perseus, the founder of the Persian race.
<Dante on Aeneas as father of the Roman People
>That the father of the Roman people was Aeneas, the famous king; and Titius Livus, illustrious writer of Roman deeds, confirms this testimony in the first part of his volume which begins with the capture of Troy. So great was the nobleness of this man, our ancestor most invincible and most pious, nobleness not only of his own considerable virtue, but that of his progenitors and consorts, which was transferred to him by hereditary right, that I cannot unfold it in detail, "I can but trace the main outlines of truth."
>He [Aeneas] was in the empyrean heaven chosen for father of Rome our parent and her empire.
There is all the exposition you need. Most people don't get it with monarchy.
>>661988The aliens are always here for /u/.
On the Filth of This Degenerate Age and the Abominable Neglect of Dog Excrement
>By Jean Bodin
>Behold, O miserable age, in what squalor we now dwell! Where once the streets of Christian kingdoms were swept clean by the diligence of virtuous men, now they are befouled by the negligence of slothful degenerates who cannot—nay, who will not—perform the most basic duty of civic order: the removal of their beasts’ filth from the public way!
>What wretched spectacle greets the eyes of the righteous man as he walks abroad? The pavements slick with the vile leavings of hounds, the gardens tainted by the excremental indulgences of these so-called "pet owners," who, in their boundless arrogance, presume that the world itself is their private midden! In former times, a man who allowed his dog to befoul the common thoroughfare would be soundly whipped for his offense, and rightly so—for the cleanliness of the city reflects the purity of its soul. But now? Now the libertines of modernity stroll past their own animals’ deposits with nary a glance, as if the very earth should swallow up what they cannot be troubled to lift with a spade!
>And what breeds this contempt for decency? The same root cause that has rotted all virtue from the modern soul: the overthrow of discipline, the rejection of hierarchy, and the insidious belief that one man’s convenience outweighs the common good. The youth of today, coddled by the permissive doctrines of their elders, have forgotten that property demands responsibility—that to keep a dog is to enter into a covenant with the city itself, a covenant which demands the swift and thorough eradication of all fecal matter therefrom!
>Worse still are those who, when confronted with their dereliction, dare to reply: "It is natural; all creatures must relieve themselves." Fools! Was it "natural" when Nero burned Rome? When Sodom wallowed in its sins? Nature untamed is chaos, and it is the duty of civilized men to impose order upon it! The dog, being a beast, cannot know better—but the man who holds its leash is without excuse.
>Let it be decreed, then, by magistrates who still possess a shred of moral vigor: Let those who fail to cleanse the streets of their dogs’ filth be fined heavily. Let repeat offenders be paraded through the town with the offending excrement hung about their necks, that all may know them for the vile polluters they are. For if we do not scour this pestilence from our midst, what next shall we tolerate? Shall we let men empty their chamber pots from windows again, as in the days of barbarism? Shall we return to the age when plagues festered in the muck beneath our feet?
>No, I say! The state must compel what virtue cannot inspire. Clean thy step, O sluggard, or be cleansed from the community of decent men!
The wh*Toid stronghold is soon to be assaulted by the BLACK EMPIRE,hundreds million wh*Toids composed from the most fearsome wh*Toid tribes, ready to defend Wh*Topia with their lifes, this final soon-to-be fought battle proves no easy task, so the, the council of BLACK KINGS, gather try to come up with a strategy to eradicate the wh*Toid menace,but one King takes action,King Shaka Owezengbu rallys the his brave 300 BLACK BULL ROYAL GUARD, outnumbered million to 1 ,Shaka does the unthinkable and atacks,the sentinel wh*Toids tremble in fear when they witness the brave 300 BLACK BULLS running towards them while screamin KARA BOGA, the ferocity of their muscles covered in sweat and blood, shocks every single wh*Toid that lays their eyes upon it, without a match the brave 300 BLACK BULLS easily kill the first wave the wh*Toid defenders, but the wh*Toid are simply too much in number, even for the brave 300 BLACK BULLS, King Shaka decides to use the ancient circular african phalanx,surrounded by all sides by a gigantic swarm of wh*Toids, the black bulls fight to the death kill as many as 32 million wh*Toids,all BRAVE BLACK BULLS perish on heat of battle but not without showing the wh*Toids the power of the KARA BOGA,King Shaka, the last remaining of the legendary BLACK BULLS looks everyewhere and, sees his fellow BLACK BULLS dead on the ground, covered in wh*Toid blood,so he draws his legendary Zulu sword and SCREAMS KARA BOGA, while the remaining swarm of wh*Toids plunge on him, King Shaka dies with a smile on his face, knowing KARA BOGA was watching, as soon the news reach the siege headquarters the remaining BLACK Kings launch an final assault on the weakened wh*Toid swarm,and destroy the wh*Toid threat, let it be known from this day foward,the sacrifice made by King Shaka Owezengbu and the Brave 300 BLACK BULLS,who layed down their life so the wh*Toid threat could be eradicated once it for all! finnally saving the Earth from the wh*Toid menace.
Jean Bodin on Aristotle & Monarchy
>[Aristotle], who defines a King to be him, who chosen by the people, reigns according to the desire of them his subjects: from whose will (as he in another place says) if he never so little depart, he becomes a TYRANT. Which his description is not only without reason, but also dangerous: for that sovereign power which he said to be most proper unto a King, must so needs fail, if the King could nothing command against the liking and good will of his subjects; but must to the contrary be constrained to receive laws of them – in brief it should be lawful for the people to do all things; and the most just and best Kings should be so accounted for TYRANTS: neither were a King to be reputed of anything else, than of a mean magistrate, unto whom power were to be given, and again taken away at the people's pleasure.
<Which are all things impossible, and no less absurd also, than is that which the same Aristotle says, That they are barbarous people, where their kings come by succession. When as yet his own King and Scholar Alexander the Great, was one of them which descended in right line from the blood of Hercules, and by right succession came to the kingdom of Macedon. The Lacedemonians should also be barbarous, who from the same stock of the Heraclides, had had their Kings about a thousand years. The people of Asia also, the Persians, and Egyptians, should all be barbarous: in whom not only rested, but from whom all humanity, courtesy, learning, knowledge, and the whole source and fountain of good laws and Commonwealths have sprung: and so at last none but Aristotle with some handful of Greeks should be free from barbarism.
>Whereas indeed nothing can be devised more dangerous unto the State of a Commonwealth, than to commit the election of Kings unto the suffrages of the people; as shall in due place be hereafter declared. Although Aristotle be in that also deceived, where he says, That there be three sorts of Kings; & yet having in his discourse reckoned up four, in casting up the account he finds out a fifth.
>The first he calls Voluntary Kings, as reigning by the will and good liking of the people, such as were the Kings come by the will and good liking of the people, such as were the Kings of Heroic times, whom he supposes to have been Captains, Judges, and Priests.
>The 2nd he says, are proper unto the barbarous nations, where Kings come by succession.
>The 3rd are made by election.
>The 4th was proper to the Lacedemonians, whom he says to have been perpetual generals in their wars; the son still succeeding his father.
>The 5th and last kind, is of them which having themselves got the Lordly sovereignty, use their subjects, as does the Master of the household his slaves.
>As for the first sort of Kings, we find, that they indeed executed the offices of Judges, Captains, and Priests, yet none of them are found to have ruled at the will and pleasure of the people, neither to have received their authority from the people, before Pitacus King of Corinth, and Timondas King of Nigropont: but to the contrary, Plutarch writes, That the first princes had no other honor before their eyes, then to force men, and to keep them in subjection as slaves; whereof the Holy Scripture also certifies us of the first Lordly Monarchy Nimrod; leaving the sovereignty to their children, in right of succession; as says Thucydides. Which has also been well confirmed by the succession of a great number of Kings of the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Indians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Lacedemonians, Macedonians, Sicyonians, Epirots, Athenians: and their lines failing, the people in part proceeded to make choice of their Kings by way of election, some others invaded the State by force, other some maintained themselves in Aristocratic and popular seigneury; as witnesses Herodotus, Thucydides, Josephus, Berosus, Plutarch, Xenophon, and other most ancient historiographers of the Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins, sufficient to convince the opinion of Aristotle of untruth in those things that he has writ concerning Kings.
Aristotle & Tyranny, even the slightest bit contrary to the will of the people
>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.
Jean Bodin / The native people of America retained royal power, shaped by their Leader – Nature – they were not trained by Aristotle
>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.
Jean Bodin - Aristotle & hereditary kings
>Finally, all the peoples of the earth except Germans, Swiss with their allies, Venetians, Ragusans, Lucchese, and Genoese, who are ruled by the power of Optimates or have Popular governments. But if so many people are uncivilized because they have hereditary kings, oh, where will be the abode of culture? The fact that Aristotle thought it disastrous, however, seems to me much more absurd. For in the first place an interregnum is clearly dangerous, since the State, like a ship, without a pilot, is tossed about by the waves of sedition and often sinks. This happened after the death of Emperor Frederick II. The country, in a state of anarchy, was without an emperor for eighteen years on account of the civil war among the princes.
Jean Bodin on Aristotle & Monarchy Continued
>For even Aristotle himself is of opinion, That Monarchs should be created by election, calling the people barbarous, which have their Kings by right of succession. And for which cause he deemed the Carthaginians more happy than the Lacedemonians, for that these had their Kings by succession from the fathers to the the sons in the stock and line of Hercules, whereas the others still had them by election and choice. But so he might call the Assyrians barbarous, the Medes, the Persians, the Egyptians, the people of Asia, the Parthians, the Armenians, the Indians, the Africans, the Turks, the Tartars, the Arabians, the Muscovites, the Celts, the Englishmen, the Scots, the Frenchmen, the Spaniards, the Peruvians, the Numidians the Ethiopians; and an infinite number of other people, who still have, and always before had, their Kings by right of succession. Yea and we find in Greece (the country of Aristotle himself) that the Athenians, the Lacedemonians, Sicyonians, the Corinthians, the Thebans, the Epirots, the Macedonians, had more than by the space of six hundred years, had their Kings by right of lawful succession, before that ambition had blinded them to change their Monarchies into Democracies and Aristocracies. Which had likewise taken place in Italy also, whereas the Hetruscians and Latins for many worlds of years had their Kings still descending from the fathers to the sons.
<Now if so many people and nations were all barbarous, where then should humanity and civility have place? It should be only in Poland, in Denmark, and in Sweden; for that almost these people alone have their Kings by election: and yet of them none, but such as were themselves also royally descended.
>Cicero says, humanity and courtesy to have taken beginning in the lesser Asia, and from thence to have been divided unto all the other parts of the world: and yet for all that the people of Asia had no other kings, but by succession from the father to the son, or some other the nearest of kin.
>And of all the ancient kings of Greece, we find none but Timondas, who was chosen King of Corinth, and Pittacus of Nigropont. And at such time as the royal name and line sailed, oftentimes the strongest or the mightest carried it away as it chanced after the death of Alexander the Great, who was in right line descended from Hercules, and the Kings of Macedon, who had continued above five hundred years: whose lieutenants afterwards made themselves Kings, Antipater of Macedon, Antigonus of Asia the less, Nicanor of the upper Asia, Lysimachus of Thracia: So that there is not one to be found among them, which was made King by election. So that even Greece itself (the nurse of learning & knowledge) should by this reason, in the judgement of Aristotle, be deemed barbarous. Howbeit that the word Barbarous, was in ancient time no word of disgrace, but attributed unto them which spoke a strange language and not the natural language of the country. For so the Hebrews called also the ancient Egyptians, then of all nations the most courteous and learned, Barbarous–
<Thomas Hobbes on monarchomachists & pro-regicides
>From the reading, I say, of such books, men have undertaken to kill their Kings, because the Greek and Latin writers, in their books, and discourses of Policy, make it lawfull, and laudable, for any man so to do; provided before he do it, he call him Tyrant. For they say not Regicide, that is, killing of a King, but Tyrannicide, that is, killing of a Tyrant is lawfull.
<Hobbes / From the same books (like Aristotle's Politics), they think in Democracies they are all freemen, but under Monarchies, all slaves
>From the same books, they that live under a Monarch conceive an opinion, that the Subjects in a Popular Common-wealth enjoy Liberty; but that in a Monarchy they are all Slaves. I say, they that live under a Monarchy conceive such an opinion; not they that live under a Popular Government; for they find no such matter.
<Anti-Monarchy writers, they're like Rabid Dogs
<Like rabid dogs won't drink water & have a rabid hydrophobia, rabid democratical writers have a rabid tyrannophobia;
<A monarchy bitten by rabid, snarling democratical writers wants nothing more than a strong, mean Monarch
<Once there is that Strong Monarch, it is a self-fulfilling prophesy & they abhor their Tyrant
>In sum, I cannot imagine, how anything can be more prejudicial to a Monarchy, than the allowing of such books to be publicly read, without present applying such correctives of discreet Masters, as are fit to take away their Venom; Which Venom I will not doubt to compare to the biting of a mad Dog, which is a disease the Physicians call Hydrophobia, or Fear Of Water. For as he that is so bitten, has a continual torment of thirst, and yet abhors water; and is in such an estate, as if the poison endeavoured to convert him into a Dog: So when a Monarchy is once bitten to the quick, by those Democraticall writers, that continually snarl at that estate; it wants nothing more than a strong Monarch, which nevertheless out of a certain Tyrannophobia, or fear of being strongly governed, when they have him, they abhor.
<From Aristotle, they learned to call anything but mixed constitutionalism / representative, Western multi-party democracy – Tyranny
>From Aristotle's Civil Philosophy, they have learned, to call all manner of Commonwealths but the Popular, (such as was at that time the state of Athens,) Tyranny. All Kings they called Tyrants… A Tyrant originally signified no more simply, but a Monarch: But when afterwards in most parts of Greece that kind of government was abolished, the name began to signify, not only the thing it did before, but with it, the hatred which the Popular States bare towards it: As also the name of King became odious after the deposing of the Kings in Rome, as being a thing natural to all men, to conceive some great Fault to be signified in any Attribute, that is given in despight, and to a great Enemy. And when the same men shall be displeased with those that have the administration of the Democracy, or Aristocracy, they are not to seek for disgraceful names to express their anger in; but call readily the one Anarchy, and the other Oligarchy.
Hobbes' Nominalism & the arbitrary, petty Namecalling of the political arena
<Tyranny and Oligarchy, But Different Names of Monarchy, and Aristocracy
>There be other names of Government, in the Histories, and books of Policy; as Tyranny, and Oligarchy: But they are not the names of other Forms of Government, but of the same Forms misliked. For they that are discontented under Monarchy, call it Tyranny; and they that are displeased with Aristocracy, call it Oligarchy: so also, they which find themselves grieved under a Democracy, call it Anarchy, (which signifies want of Government;) and yet I think no man believes, that want of Government, is any new kind of Government: nor by the same reason ought they to believe, that the Government is of one kind, when they like it, and another, when they mislike it, or are oppressed by the Governours.
<Thomas Hobbes / The toleration of a professed hatred of Tyranny, is a toleration of a hatred of Commonwealth in general, & another evil seed
>And because the name of Tyranny, signifies nothing more, nor less, than the name of Sovereignty, be it in one, or many men, saving that they that use the former word, are understood to be angry with them they call Tyrants; I think the toleration of a professed hatred of Tyranny, is a Toleration of hatred to Commonwealth in general, and another evil seed, not differing much from the former.
Hobbes / Greeks & Romans, the Universities, Schoolmen, & Parliament Men
>Fourthly, there were an exceeding great number of men of the better sort, that had been so educated, as that in their youth having read the books written by famous men of the ancient Grecian and Roman commonwealths concerning their polity and great actions; in which books the popular government was extolled by that glorious name of Liberty, and monarchy disgraced by that name of Tyranny; they became thereby in love with their forms of government. And out of these men were chosen the greatest part of the House of Commons, or if they were not the greatest part, yet by advantage of their eloquence, were always able to sway the rest, especially the great haranguers, and such as pretended to learning.
For who can be a good subject in a Monarchy…
<For who can be a good subject in a Monarchy, whose principles are taken from the enemies of Monarchy, such as were Cicero, Seneca, Cato, and other politicians of Rome, and Aristotle of Athens, who seldom spake of Kings but as of wolves and other ravenous beasts?
>You may perhaps think a man has need of nothing else but to know the duty he owes his governor, and what right he has to order him, but a good natural wit; but it is otherwise. For it is a science, and built upon sure and clear principles, and to be learned by deep and careful study, or from masters that have deeply studied it. And who was there in the Parliament or in the nation, that could find out those evident principles, and derive from them the necessary rules of justice, and the necessary connection of justice and peace? The people have one day in seven the leisure to hear instruction, and there are ministers appointed to teach them their duty.
>But how have those ministers performed their office? A great part of them, namely, the Presbyterian ministers, throughout the whole war, instigated the people against the King; so did also the Independents and other fanatic ministers. The rest, contented with their livings, preached in their parishes points of controversy, to religion impertinent, but to the breach of charity among themselves very effectual; or else eloquent things, which the people either understood not, or thought themselves not concerned in. But this sort of preachers, sad they did little good, so they did little hurt. The mischief proceeded wholly from the Presbyterian preachers, who, by a long practised histrionic faculty, preached up the rebellion powerfully.
Thomas Hobbes' anti-scholasticism / Universities
Needless Factionalism
>All the Presbyterians were of the same mind with Gomar: but a very great many others not; and those were called here Arminians, who, because the doctrine of free-will had been exploded as a Papistical doctrine, and because the Presbyterians were far the greater number, and already in favour with the people, were generally hated. It was easy, therefore, for the Parliament to make that calumny pass currently with the people, when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Laud, was for Arminius, and had a little before, by his power ecclesiastical, forbidden all his ministers to preach to the people of predestination; and when all ministers that were gracious with him, and hoped for Church preferment, fell to preaching and writing for free-will, to the uttermost of their power, as a proof of their ability and merit. Besides, they gave out, some of them, that the Archbishop was in heart a Papist; and in case he could effect a toleration here of the Roman religion, was to have a cardinal's hat: which was not only false, but also without any ground at all for a suspicion.
>It is a strange thing, that scholars, obscure men that could receive no clarity but from the flame of the state, should be suffered to bring their unnecessary disputes, and together with them their quarrels, out of the universities into the commonwealth; and more strange, that the state should engage in their parties, and not rather put them both to silence [Presbyterians & Arminians]
They must punish then the most of those that have had their breeding in the Universities
>They must punish then the most of those that have had their breeding in the Universities. For such curious questions in divinity are first started in the Universities, and so are all those politic questions concerning the rights of civil and ecclesiastic government; and there they are furnished with arguments for liberty out of the works of Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Seneca, and out of the histories of Rome and Greece, for their disputation against the necessary power of their sovereigns.
>Therefore I despair of any lasting peace amongst ourselves, till the Universities here shall bend and direct their studies to the settling of it, that is, to the teaching of absolute obedience to the laws of the King, and to his public edicts under the Great Seal of England. For I make no doubt, but that solid reason, backed with the authority of so many learned men, will more prevail for the keeping of us in peace within ourselves, than any victory can do over the rebels. But I am afraid that it is impossible to bring the Universities to such a compliance with the actions of state, as is necessary for the business.
The core of rebellion – the Universities
>The core of rebellion, as you have seen by this, and read of other rebellions, are the Universities; which nevertheless are not to be cast away, but to be better disciplined: that is to say, that the politics there taught be made to be, as true politics should be, such as are fit to make men know, that it is their duty to obey all laws whatsoever that shall by the authority of the King be enacted, till by the same authority they shall be repealed; such as are fit to make men understand, that the civil laws are God’s laws, as they that make them are by God appointed to make them and to make men know, that the people and the Church are one thing, and have but one head, the King; and that no man has title to govern under him, that has it not from him; that the King owes his crown to God only, and to no man, ecclesiastic or other; and that the religion they teach there, be a quiet waiting for the coming again of our blessed Saviour, and in the mean time a resolution to obey the King’s laws, which also are God’s laws
The Pastorall Authority Of Soveraigns Only Is De Jure Divino, That Of Other Pastors Is Jure Civili
>If a man therefore should ask a Pastor, in the execution of his Office, as the chief Priests and Elders of the people (Mat. 21.23.) asked our Saviour, “By what authority dost thou these things, and who gave thee this authority:” he can make no other just Answer, but that he doth it by the Authority of the Common-wealth, given him by the King, or Assembly that representeth it. All Pastors, except the Supreme, execute their charges in the Right, that is by the Authority of the Civill Soveraign, that is, Jure Civili. But the King, and every other Soveraign executeth his Office of Supreme Pastor, by immediate Authority from God, that is to say, In Gods Right, or Jure Divino. And therefore none but Kings can put into their Titles (a mark of their submission to God onely ) Dei Gratia Rex, &c. Bishops ought to say in the beginning of their Mandates, “By the favour of the Kings Majesty, Bishop of such a Diocesse;” or as Civill Ministers, “In his Majesties Name.” For in saying, Divina Providentia, which is the same with Dei Gratia, though disguised, they deny to have received their authority from the Civill State; and sliely slip off the Collar of their Civill Subjection, contrary to the unity and defence of the Common-wealth.
>So that where a stranger hath authority to appoint Teachers, it is given him by the Soveraign in whose Dominions he teacheth. Christian Doctors are our Schoolmasters to Christianity; But Kings are Fathers of Families, and may receive Schoolmasters for their Subjects from the recommendation of a stranger, but not from the command; especially when the ill teaching them shall redound to the great and manifest profit of him that recommends them: nor can they be obliged to retain them, longer than it is for the Publique good; the care of which they stand so long charged withall, as they retain any other essentiall Right of the Soveraignty.
>And therefore the second Conclusion, concerning the best form of Government of the Church, is nothing to the question of the Popes Power without his own Dominions: For in all other Common-wealths his Power (if hee have any at all) is that of the Schoolmaster onely, and not of the Master of the Family.
>The third place, is John 21.16. “Feed my sheep;” which is not a Power to make Laws, but a command to Teach. Making Laws belongs to the Lord of the Family; who by his owne discretion chooseth his Chaplain, as also a Schoolmaster to Teach his children.
The Universities… Again
>Seeing the Universities have heretofore from time to time maintained the authority of the Pope, contrary to all laws divine, civil, and natural, against the right of our Kings, why can they not as well, when they have all manner of laws and equity on their side, maintain the rights of him that is both sovereign of the kingdom, and head of the Church?
<Why then were they not in all points for the King’s power, presently after that King Henry VIII was in Parliament declared head of the Church, as much as they were before for the authority of the Pope?
>Because the clergy in the Universities, by whom all things there are governed, and the clergy without the Universities, as well biships as inferior clerks, did think that the pulling down of the Pope was the setting up of them, as to England, in his place, and made no question, the greatest part of them, but that their spiritual power did depend not upon the authority of the King, but of Christ himself, derived to them by a successive imposition of hands from bishop to bishop; notwithstanding they knew that this derivation passed through the hands of popes and bishops whose authority they had cast off. For though they were content that the divine right, which the Pope pretended to in England, should be denied him, yet they thought it not so fit to be taken from the Church of England, whom they now supposed themselves to represent.
<Kim Jong Il & KCU (Children's Union) / Education of the Youth, like clean sheets of paper
>Childhood is a very important period when young people's outlook on the world begins to form.
>As the Leader has stated, the minds of the children in this period are as clean as a sheet of blank paper and perceive given phenomena just as a camera does. Therefore, depending on their education in this period, they can become red, yellow, or black.
Hobbes / Instruction of the Subjects
<And To Have Days Set Apart To Learn Their Duty, like such is done every Sunday
>Seeing people cannot be taught this, nor when ’tis taught, remember it, nor after one generation past, so much as know in whom the Sovereign Power is placed, without setting a part from their ordinary labour, some certain times, in which they may attend those that are appointed to instruct them; It is necessary that some such times be determined, wherein they may assemble together, and (after prayers and praises given to God, the Sovereign of Sovereigns) hear those their Duties told them, and the Positive Laws, such as generally concern them all, read and expounded, and be put in mind of the Authority that makes them Laws.
<Thomas Hobbes on Instruction / Propaganda (basically)
>Another thing necessary, is rooting out from the consciences of men all those opinions which seem to justify, and give pretense of right to rebellious actions… that there is a body of the people without him or them that have the sovereign power… and because opinions which are gotten by education, and in length of time are made habitual, cannot be taken away by force, and upon the sudden: they must therefore be taken away also, by time and education. And seeing the said opinions have proceeded from private and public teaching, and those teachers have received from grounds and principles, which they have learned in the Universities…
>Instruction of the people in the essential rights which are the natural and fundamental laws of sovereignty… it is his duty to cause them [his subjects] to be instructed; and not only his duty, but his benefit also.
Ordinary people's minds are like clean paper, fit to receive whatever the Sovereign shall imprint upon them
>Whereas the common people's minds, unless they be tainted with dependence on the potent, or scribbled over with the opinions of their doctors, are like clean paper, fit to receive whatsoever the public authority shall be imprinted in them.
Subjects Are To Be Taught, Not To Affect Change Of Government
>And, to descend to particulars, the people are to be taught, first, that they ought not to be in love with any form of government that they see in their neighbor nations, more than with their own, nor, whatsoever present prosperity they behold in nations that are otherwise governed than they, to desire change. For the prosperity of a people ruled by an oligarchical or democratical assembly comes not from Oligarchy, nor from Democracy, but from the obedience and concord of the subjects: nor do the people flourish in Monarchy because one man the has right to rule them, but because they obey him. Take away in any kind of state the obedience, and consequently the concord of the people, and they shall not flourish, but in short time be dissolved. And they that go about by disobedience to do no more than reform the Commonwealth shall find they do thereby destroy it; like the foolish daughters of Peleus, in the fable, which desiring to renew the youth of their decrepit father, did by the counsel of Medea cut him in pieces and boil him, together with strange herbs, but made not of him a new man. This desire of change is like the breach of the first of God's Commandments: for there God says, Non habebis Deos alienos: "Thou shalt not have the Gods of other nations," and in another place concerning kings, that they are gods.
Keep the means of sovereignty to maintain the end thereof
>For he that deserts the Means, deserts the Ends; and he deserts the Means, that being the Sovereign, acknowledges himself subject to the Civil Laws; and renounces the Power of Supreme Judicature; or of making War, or Peace by his own Authority; or of Judging of the Necessities of the Common-wealth; or of levying Mony, and Soldiers, when, and as much as in his own conscience he shall judge necessary; or of making Officers, and Ministers both of War, and Peace; or of appointing Teachers, and examining what Doctrines are conformable, or contrary to the Defence, Peace, and Good of the people. Secondly, it is against his duty, to let the people be ignorant, or misinformed of the grounds, and reasons of those his essentiall Rights; because thereby men are easy to be seduced, and drawn to resist him, when the Common-wealth shall require their use and exercise.
>I conclude therefore, that in the instruction of the people in the Essentiall Rights (which are the Naturall, and Fundamentall Lawes) of Sovereignty, there is no difficulty, (whilest a Sovereign has his Power entire,) but what proceeds from his own fault, or the fault of those whom he trusteth in the administration of the Common-wealth; and consequently, it is his Duty, to cause them so to be instructed; and not onely his Duty, but his Benefit also, and Security, against the danger that may arrive to himself in his naturall Person, from Rebellion.
<The Use of Universities
>As for the Means, and Conduits, by which the people may receive this Instruction, wee are to search, by what means so may Opinions, contrary to the peace of Man-kind, upon weak and false Principles, have neverthelesse been so deeply rooted in them… It is therefore manifest, that the Instruction of the people, depends wholly, on the right teaching of Youth in the Universities.
>"It is his Duty, to cause them to be so instructed; and not only his Duty, but his Benefit also, and Security…"
Though he reserved for fathers to educate their children as they like.
<And because the first instruction of children depends on the care of their parents, it is necessary that they should be obedient to them while they are under their tuition; and not only so, but that also afterwards, as gratitude requires, they acknowledge the benefit of their education by external signs of honour. To which end they are to be taught that originally the the father of every man was also his sovereign lord, with power over him of life and death; and that the fathers of families, when by instituting a Commonwealth they resigned that absolute power, yet it was never intended that they should lose the honour due unto them for their education. For to relinquish such right was not necessary to the institution of sovereign power; nor would there be any reason why any man should desire to have children, or take the care to nourish and instruct them, if they were afterwards to have no other benefit from them than from other men. And this accords with the fifth Commandment.
Hobbes, like Xenophon, also puts a great stress on obedience:
<Take away in any kind of state the obedience, and consequently the concord of the people, and they shall not flourish, but in short time be dissolved. And they that go about by disobedience to do no more than reform the Commonwealth shall find they do thereby destroy it
<A Person, what?
>A PERSON, is he “whose words or actions are considered, either as his own, or as representing the words or actions of an other man, or of any other thing to whom they are attributed, whether Truly or by Fiction.
<The Word Person, Whence
>The word Person is latin: instead whereof the Greeks have Prosopon, which signifies the Face, as Persona in latine signifies the Disguise, or Outward Appearance of a man, counterfeited on the Stage; and sometimes more particularly that part of it, which disguises the face, as a Mask or Visard: And from the Stage, has been translated to any Representer of speech and action, as well in Tribunalls, as Theaters. So that a Person, is the same that an Actor is, both on the Stage and in common Conversation; and to Personate, is to Act, or Represent himself, or an other; and he that acts another, is said to bear his Person, or act in his name; (in which sense Cicero uses it where he says, “Unus Sustineo Tres Personas; Mei, Adversarii, & Judicis, I bear three Persons; my own, my Adversaries, and the Judges;”) and is called in diverse occasions, diversely; as a Representer, or Representative, a Lieutenant, a Vicar, an Attorney, a Deputy, a Procurator, an Actor, and the like.
>Actor, Author; Authority
>Of Persons Artificiall, some have their words and actions Owned by those whom they represent. And then the Person is the Actor; and he that owns his words and actions, is the AUTHOR: In which case the Actor acts by Authority. For that which in speaking of goods and possessions, is called an Owner, and in latine Dominus, in Greeke Kurios; speaking of Actions, is called Author. And as the Right of possession, is called Dominion; so the Right of doing any Action, is called AUTHORITY. So that by Authority, is always understood a Right of doing any act: and Done By Authority, done by Commission, or License from him whose right it is.
<Covenants By Authority, Bind The Author
>From hence it follows, that when the Actor makes a Covenant by Authority, he binds thereby the Author, no less than if he had made it himself; and no less subjects him to all the consequences of the same. And therefore all that hath been said formerly, (Chap. 14) of the nature of Covenants between man and man in their naturall capacity, is true also when they are made by their Actors, Representers, or Procurators, that have authority from them, so far-forth as is in their Commission, but no farther.
<And therefore he that maketh a Covenant with the Actor, or Representer, not knowing the Authority he hath, doth it at his own perill. For no man is obliged by a Covenant, whereof he is not Author; nor consequently by a Covenant made against, or beside the Authority he gave.
<But Not The Actor
>When the Actor doth any thing against the Law of Nature by command of the Author, if he be obliged by former Covenant to obey him, not he, but the Author breaks the Law of Nature: for though the Action be against the Law of Nature; yet it is not his: but contrarily; to refuse to do it, is against the Law of Nature, that forbids breach of Covenant.
<A Multitude Of Men, How One Person
>A Multitude of men, are made One Person, when they are by one man, or one Person, Represented; so that it be done with the consent of every one of that Multitude in particular. For it is the Unity of the Representer, not the Unity of the Represented, that makes the Person One. And it is the Representer that bears the Person, and but one Person: And Unity, cannot otherwise be understood in Multitude.
<Every One Is Author
>And because the Multitude naturally is not One, but Many; they cannot be understood for one; but many Authors, of every thing their Representative faith, or doth in their name; Every man giving their common Representer, Authority from himself in particular; and owning all the actions the Representer doth, in case they give him Authority without stint: Otherwise, when they limit him in what, and how far he shall represent them, none of them owns more, than they gave him commission to Act.
<An Actor May Be Many Men Made One By Plurality Of Voices [Or Majority Vote]
>And if the Representative consist of many men, the voice of the greater number, must be considered as the voice of them all. For if the lesser number pronounce (for example) in the Affirmative, and the greater in the Negative, there will be Negatives more than enough to destroy the Affirmatives; and thereby the excess of Negatives, standing uncontradicted, are the only voice the Representative has.
<Nor From A Great Multitude [Which leads to Factionalism], Unless Directed By One Judgement
>And be there never so great a Multitude; yet if their actions be directed according to their particular judgements, and particular appetites, they can expect thereby no defence, nor protection, neither against a Common enemy, nor against the injuries of one another. For being distracted in opinions concerning the best use and application of their strength, they do not help, but hinder one another [in their factionalism]; and reduce their strength by mutuall opposition to nothing: whereby they are easily, not only subdued by a very few that agree together; but also when there is no common enemy, they make war upon each other, for their particular interests. For if we could suppose a great Multitude of men to consent in the observation of Justice, and other Laws of Nature, without a common Power to keep them all in awe; we might as well suppose all Mankind to do the same; and then there neither would be nor need to be any Civil Government, or Common-wealth at all; because there would be Peace without subjection.
(Note: I like to think this is Hobbes' objection to Aristotle on "Too Much Unity" & "Atomization" in objecting to Plato's Republic – Where Aristotle suggests that the State goes & shrinks from the State, to the Family, & finally to the Individual, & is destroy, then Hobbes suggests to this & the idea that people are political animals by nature, that Mankind might as well have one world government and have peace without subjection).
<The Generation Of A Common-wealth
>The only way to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of Foreigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort, as that by their own industry, and by the fruits of the Earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is, to confer all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one Will: which is as much as to say, to appoint one man, or Assembly of men, to bear their Person; and every one to own, and acknowledge himself to be Author of whatsoever he that so bears their Person, shall Act, or cause to be Acted, in those things which concern the Common Peace and Safety; and therein to submit their Wills, every one to his Will, and their Judgements, to his Judgment.
<This is more than Consent, or Concord; it is a real Unity of them all, in one and the same Person, made by Covenant of every man with every man, in such manner, as if every man should say to every man, “I Authorize and give up my Right of Governing my self, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorize all his Actions in like manner.”
>This done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a COMMONWEALTH, in latin CIVITAS. This is the Generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that Mortall God, to which we owe under the Immortall God, our peace and defence. For by this Authority, given him by every particular man in the Commonwealth, he hath the use of so much Power and Strength conferred on him, that by terror thereof, he is enabled to form the wills of them all, to Peace at home, and mutual aid against their enemies abroad.
<The Definition Of A Common-wealth
>And in him consists the Essence of the Common-wealth; which (to define it,) is “One Person, of whose Acts a great Multitude, by mutuall Covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the Author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their Peace and Common Defence.”
<Sovereign, And Subject, What
>And he that carries this Person, is called SOVEREIGN, and said to have Sovereign Power; and every one besides, his SUBJECT.
<The Act Of Instituting A Common-wealth, What
>A Common-wealth is said to be Instituted, when a Multitude of men do Agree, and Covenant, Every One With Every One, that to whatsoever Man, or Assembly Of Men, shall be given by the major part, the Right to Present the Person of them all, (that is to say, to be their Representative;) every one, as well he that Voted For It, as [well as] he that Voted Against It, shall Authorize all the Actions and Judgements, of that Man, or Assembly of men, in the same manner, as if they were his own, to the end, to live peaceably amongst themselves, and be protected against other men.
(Note: It is interesting that this also includes those who vote against it thereby are said to consent to it – I assume by Hobbes' definition of consent by inference; aka, that they yet still participate & accept this system & don't actively resist or go somewhere else).
(For reference: Signs of Contract by Express & Signs of Contract by Inference)
<Signs Of Contract Express
>Signs of Contract, are either Express, or By Inference. Express, are words spoken with understanding of what they signify; And such words are either of the time Present, or Past; as, I Give, I Grant, I Have Given, I Have Granted, I Will That This Be Yours: Or of the future; as, I Will Give, I Will Grant; which words of the future, are called Promise.
<Signs Of Contract By Inference
>Signs by Inference, are sometimes the consequence of Words; sometimes the consequence of Silence; sometimes the consequence of Actions; sometimes the consequence of Forbearing an Action: and generally a sign by Inference, of any Contract, is whatsoever sufficiently argues the will of the Contractor.
(Later, Hobbes sufficiently says, that this can be said for people who live under any government, but dislike it)
<3. No Man Can Without Injustice Protest Against The Institution Of The Sovereign Declared By The Major Part.
>Thirdly, because the major part has by consenting voices declared a Sovereign; he that dissented must now consent with the rest; that is, be contented to avow all the actions he shall do, or else justly be destroyed by the rest. For if he voluntarily entered into the Congregation of them that were assembled, he sufficiently declared thereby his will (and therefore tacitly covenanted) to stand to what the major part should ordain: and therefore if he refuse to stand thereto, or make Protestation against any of their Decrees, he does contrary to his Covenant, and therefore unjustly. And whether he be of the Congregation, or not; and whether his consent be asked, or not, he must either submit to their decrees, or be left in the condition of warre he was in before; wherein he might without injustice be destroyed by any man whatsoever.
(This applies to really anyone who passively partakes in society; if you partake in voting, but lose the election – that you partook in voting is also a sign of contract by inference; that you used any of the public services or even took citizenship, that is also enough to be understood as a sign of contract by inference; that you aren't going ape shit right now and passively accepting everything, maybe that is also a sign of contract by inference).
Compare Jean Bodin also to what Hobbes is saying (which, btw, Hobbes also read his work)–
<Jean Bodin / The citizens in particular & the people in general
>It is one thing to bind all together, and to bind every one in particular: for so all the citizens particularly swore to the observation of the laws, but not all together for that every one of them in particular was bound unto the power of them all in general. But an oath could not be given by them all: for why, the people in general is a certain universal body, in power and nature divided from every man in particular. Then again to say truly, an oath cannot be made but by a lesser to the greater, but in a popular estate nothing can be greater than the whole body of the people themselves.
>But in a monarchy it is otherwise, where every one in particular, and all the people in general, and (as it were) in one body, must swear to the observation of the laws, and their faithful allegiance to one sovereign monarch; who next unto God (of whom he holds his scepter & power) is bound to no man. For an oath carries always with it reverence unto whom, or in whose name it is made, as still given unto a superiour.
By Absolute Sovereignty, there are some cases, Jean Bodin talks of an absolute sovereignty & majesty, where the Sovereignty is a simple unity just as a dot or a center in a circle is indivisible in geometry, and so sovereignty has the capacity to govern the State, by drawing the boundaries and limits of things, like a point and compass in geometry, I assume – (& Absolute Sovereignty in Monarchy is not understood to be a mixed, composite kind of State / mixed constitution, limited or mixed monarchy, where the limitation is understoo either to the monarch's estate, or as a part of the whole, or by limitation of term or rotational government – since that kind of constitutional monarchy sees, as Aristotle does, the monarch as a part in relation to the whole, it is an inferior & thereby limited monarchy, but with Absolute Sovereignty it is a superior relationship, and does in a way have the relationship of the whole to the part) – & King James VI & I also describes it as a Free Monarchy (Free, signifying Absolute Sovereignty, so Absolute Monarchy) – Hobbes also understood it the same way as King James VI & I, stating that the liberty is to be the liberty of commonwealths or artificial persons (for Hobbes, what really we call freedom in a Commonwealth is more of a sign of honor, such as the honor a parent has for his children and their status).
…
It is critical, that the Author is bound by covenant, but the Actor is not, – if I understand it correctly – for the justification for an Absolute Sovereignty in Hobbes' Leviathan.
<2. Sovereign Power Cannot Be Forfeited
>Because the Right of bearing the Person of them all, is given to him they make Sovereign, by Covenant only of one to another, and not of him to any of them; there can happen no breach of Covenant on the part of the Sovereign; and consequently none of his Subjects, by any pretense of forfeiture, can be freed from his Subjection.
(Now, Bossuet explains basically what Hobbes will say for why an absolute sovereignty & the actor not bound; there cannot be a sovereignty before sovereignty, or a government before government; like Joseph de Maistre suggests, Sovereignty is either before or consists with the creation of a People, so there is no People before the institution of Sovereignty to set conditions on it)
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.
He that is Sovereign makes no covenant beforehand; like Bossuet says, would assume to have government before government
>That he which is made Sovereign makes no Covenant with his Subjects beforehand, is manifest; because either he must make it with the whole multitude, as one party to the Covenant; or he must make a severall Covenant with every man. With the whole, as one party, it is impossible; because as yet they are not one Person: and if he make so many severall Covenants as there be men, those Covenants after he has the Sovereignty are void, because what act soever can be pretended by any one of them for breach thereof, is the act both of himself, and of all the rest, because done in the Person, and by the Right of every one of them in particular.
>Besides, if any one, or more of them, pretend a breach of the Covenant made by the Sovereign at his Institution; and others, or one other of his Subjects, or himself alone, pretend there was no such breach, there is in this case, no Judge to decide the controversy: it returns therefore to the Sword again; and every man recovers the right of Protecting himself by his own strength, contrary to the design they had in the Institution.
>It is therefore in vain to grant Sovereignty by way of precedent Covenant. The opinion that any Monarch receives his Power by Covenant, that is to say on Condition, proceeds from want of understanding this easy truth, that Covenants being but words, and breath, have no force to oblige, contain, constrain, or protect any man, but what it has from the public Sword; that is, from the untied hands of that Man, or Assembly of men that hath the Sovereignty, and whose actions are avouched by them all, and performed by the strength of them all, in him united. But when an Assembly of men is made Sovereign; then no man imagines any such Covenant to have past in the Institution; for no man is so dull as to say, for example, the People of Rome, made a Covenant with the Romans, to hold the Sovereignty on such or such conditions; which not performed, the Romans might lawfully depose the Roman People. That men see not the reason to be alike in a Monarchy, and in a Popular Government, proceeds from the ambition of some, that are kinder to the government of an Assembly, whereof they may hope to participate, than of Monarchy, which they despair to enjoy.
Now Hobbes also says, that those who limit, or seek to limit, will themselves become like the center in a circle, and take the point & compass to draw the limits, becoming the absolute power:
>And whosoever thinking Soveraign Power too great, will seek to make it lesse; must subject himselfe, to the Power, that can limit it; that is to say, to a greater.
For all States, Hobbes believes they are simple & absolute:
>I have already sufficiently proved (chapt. 18.) that all Governments which men are bound to obey, are Simple, and Absolute.
If it is limited (outside of just the fundamental laws, natural & divine, that is), then another must be sovereign, and another form of state:
>Secondly, that King whose power is limited, is not superiour to him, or them that have the power to limit it; and he that is not superiour, is not supreme; that is to say not Sovereign. The Sovereignty therefore was always in that Assembly which had the Right to Limit him; and by consequence the government not Monarchy, but either Democracy, or Aristocracy; as of old time in Sparta; where the Kings had a privilege to lead their Armies; but the Sovereignty was in the Ephori.
–
It is also important to consider, for the 17th law of Nature, Hobbes states
The Seventeenth, No Man Is His Own Judge
>And seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own benefit, no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause: and if he were never so fit; yet Equity allowing to each party equall benefit, if one be admitted to be Judge, the other is to be admitted also; & so the controversy, that is, the cause of War, remains, against the Law of Nature.
In the same sense, Jean Bodin states a Sovereign cannot bind his own hand, appealing to as the Canonists are supposed to have said, that neither could the Pope.
And lastly, Hobbes states again:
–
<Subjecting The Sovereign Power To Civill Laws
<A fourth opinion, repugnant to the nature of a Common-wealth, is this, “That he that hath the Sovereign Power, is subject to the Civill Laws.” It is true, that Sovereigns are all subjects to the Laws of Nature; because such laws be Divine, and cannot by any man, or Common-wealth be abrogated.
>But to those Laws which the Sovereign himself, that is, which the Common-wealth makes, he is not subject. For to be subject to Laws, is to be subject to the Commonwealth, that is to the Sovereign Representative, that is to himself; which is not subjection, but freedome from the Laws. Which errour, because it sets the Laws above the Sovereign, sets also a Judge above him, and a Power to punish him; which is to make a new Sovereign; and again for the same reason a third, to punish the second; and so continually without end, to the Confusion, and Dissolution of the Common-wealth.
<The Fundamental Rights of Sovereignty, according to Thomas Hobbes
>1. The Subjects Cannot Change The Form Of Government (The form of Government is a fundamental law)
>2. Soveraigne Power Cannot Be Forfeited
>3. No Man Can Without Injustice Protest Against The Institution Of The Soveraigne Declared By The Major Part.
>4. The Soveraigns Actions Cannot Be Justly Accused By The Subject
>5. What Soever The Soveraigne Doth, Is Unpunishable By The Subject
>6. The Soveraigne Is Judge Of What Is Necessary For The Peace And Defence Of His Subjects (And Judge Of What Doctrines Are Fit To Be Taught Them)
>7. The Right of making Rules, whereby the Subject may every man know what is so his owne, as no other Subject can without injustice take it from him
>8. To Him Also Belongeth The Right Of All Judicature And Decision Of Controversies:
>9. And Of Making War, And Peace, As He Shall Think Best:
>10. And Of Choosing All Counsellours, And Ministers, Both Of Peace, And Warre:
>11. And Of Rewarding, And Punishing, And That (Where No Former Law hath Determined The Measure Of It) Arbitrary:
>12. And Of Honour And Order
And finally, Thomas Hobbes adds, with his 12 marks of Sovereignty (as Jean Bodin would have it):
<These Rights Are Indivisible
Making it an indivisible sovereignty.
…
This is what Thomas Hobbes wants you people to be indoctrinated about, so I'll honor him and perform the civil worship of teaching /leftypol/ & /siberia/ all about this.
…
Let's include Jean Bodin's marks of Sovereignty, while we're at it:
<Jean Bodin's Marks of Sovereignty:
>1. Make laws
>2. Declare war / peace
>3. Appoint magistrates
>4. Hear last appeals
>5. Give pardons
>6. Receive fealty & homage
>7. Coining of money
>8. Regulation of weights & measures
>9. Impose taxes
>10. The power of life & death; condemn or save, reward or punish
Jean Bodin
>So also is it proper unto sovereign majesty, to receive the subjects appeals, and the greatest magistrates, to place and displace officers, charge or exempt the subjects from taxes and subsidies, to grant pardons and dispensations against the rigor of the law, to have power of life and death, to increase or diminish the value and weight of the coin, to give it title, name, and figure: to cause all subjects and liegemen to swear for the keeping of their fidelity without exception, unto him to whom such oath is due: which are the true marks of sovereignty, comprised under the power of being able to give law to all in general, and to every one in particular, and not receive any law or command from any other
>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, belongeth an absolute power, not subject to any law.
>It behooves 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 other: which he cannot do that is himself subject laws or others
In an older work, he lists them again.
>I see the sovereignty of state involved in five functions.
>One, and it is the principal one, is creating the most important magistrates and defining the office of each one; the second, proclaiming and annulling laws; the third, declaring war and peace; the fourth, receiving appeal from all magistrates; the last, the power of life and death when the law itself leaves no room for extenuation or grace.
Lastly, about the unitary nature of Sovereignty, I won't repeat, since I mentioned it enough.
Jean Bodin also states, Sovereignty is perpetual
& Hobbes also stresses a continual maintenance of a sovereign & coercive power.
The words Sovereignty, Majesty, & Pre-eminence are altogether synonymous with this notion of Monarchy.
& what Aristotle calls the qualities of a pre-eminent Monarch:
Aristotle - Qualities of a Pre-eminent Monarch:
>1. Agreeable to that ground of right which of the great founders of States
>2. It would not be right to kill, or ostracize, or exile such a person
>3. [We should not] require that he should take his turn in being governed
>4. He who has this pre-eminence is in the relation of the Whole to a part
>5. He should have the supreme power and subjects' obedience
>6. Is like a demigod among men
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).
That should suffice.
Oliver Goldsmith The Vicar of Wakefield Chapter 19
<Politics, however, was the subject on which our entertainer chiefly expatiated; for he asserted that liberty was at once his boast and his terror. After the cloth was removed, he asked me if I had seen the last Monitor, to which replying in the negative, 'What, nor the Auditor, I suppose?' cried he. 'Neither, Sir,' returned I.
>'That's strange, very strange,' replied my entertainer. 'Now, I read all the politics that come out. The Daily, the Public, the Ledger, the Chronicle, the London Evening, the Whitehall Evening, the seventeen magazines, and the two reviews; and though they hate each other, I love them all. Liberty, Sir, liberty is the Briton's boast, and by all my coal mines in Cornwall, I reverence its guardians.'
<'Then it is to be hoped,' cried I, 'you reverence the king.'
>'Yes,' returned my entertainer, 'when he does what we would have him; but if he goes on as he has done of late, I'll never trouble myself more with his matters. I say nothing. I think only. I could have directed some things better. I don't think there has been a sufficient number of advisers: he should advise with every person willing to give him advice, and then we should have things done in anotherguess manner.'
<'I wish,' cried I, 'that such intruding advisers were fixed in the pillory. It should be the duty of honest men to assist the weaker side of our constitution, that sacred power that has for some years been every day declining, and losing its due share of influence in the state. But these ignorants still continue the cry of liberty, and if they have any weight basely throw it into the subsiding scale.'
>'How,' cried one of the ladies, 'do I live to see one so base, so sordid, as to be an enemy to liberty, and a defender of tyrants? Liberty, that sacred gift of heaven, that glorious privilege of Britons!'
>'Can it be possible,' cried our entertainer, 'that there should be any found at present advocates for slavery? Any who are for meanly giving up the privileges of Britons? Can any, Sir, be so abject?'
<'No, Sir,' replied I, 'I am for liberty, that attribute of Gods! Glorious liberty! that theme of modem declamation. I would have all men kings. I would be a king myself. We have all naturally an equal right to the throne: we are all originally equal. This is my opinion, and was once the opinion of a set of honest men who were called Levellers.' They tried to erect themselves into a community, where all should be equally free. But, alas! it would never answer; for there were some among them stronger, and some more cunning than others, and these became masters of the rest; for as sure as your groom rides your horses, because he is a cunninger animal than they, so surely will the animal that is cunninger or stronger than he, sit upon his shoulders in turn. Since then it is entailed upon humanity to submit, and some are born to command, and others to obey…
<The question is, as there must be tyrants, whether it is better to have them in the same house with us, or in the same village, or still farther off, in the metropolis. Now, Sir, for my own part, as I naturally hate the face of a tyrant, the farther off he is removed from me, the better pleased am I. The generality of mankind also are of my way of thinking, and have unanimously created one king, whose election at once diminishes the number of tyrants, and puts tyranny at the greatest distance from the greatest number of people. Now the great who were tyrants themselves before the election of one tyrant, are naturally averse to a power raised over them, and whose weight must ever lean heaviest on the subordinate orders
<It is the interest of the great, therefore, to diminish kingly power as much as possible; because whatever they take from that is naturally restored to themselves; and all they have to do in the state, is to undermine the single tyrant, by which they resume their primaeval authority.…
<What they may then expect, may be seen by turning our eyes to Holland, Genoa, or Venice, where the laws govern the poor, and the rich govern the law. I am then for, and would die for, monarchy, sacred monarchy; for if there be any thing sacred amongst men, it must be the anointed sovereign of his people, and every diminution of his power in war, or in peace, is an infringement upon the real liberties of the subject.https://www.online-literature.com/oliver-goldsmith/vicar-of-wakefield/20/I like this speech & like its pushback against Aristotelian mixed constitutionalism (until the latter half delves into the middle class, which rebounds into a defence of it via monarchy, but overall I like this speech from Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield).
<My warmth I found had lengthened this harangue beyond the rules of good breeding: but the impatience of my entertainer, who often strove to interrupt it, could be restrained no longer.
>'What,' cried he, 'then I have been all this while entertaining a Jesuit in parson's cloaths; but by all the coal mines of Cornwall, out he shall pack, if my name be Wilkinson.'
<I now found I had gone too far, and asked pardon for the warmth with which I had spoken.
>'Pardon,' returned he in a fury: 'I think such principles demand ten thousand pardons. What, give up liberty, property, and, as the Gazetteer says, lie down to be saddled with wooden shoes! Sir, I insist upon your marching out of this house immediately, to prevent worse consequences, Sir, I insist upon it.'
<I was going to repeat my remonstrances; but just then we heard a footman's rap at the door, and the two ladies cried out, 'As sure as death there is our master and mistress come home.' It seems my entertainer was all this while only the butler, who, in his master's absence, had a mind to cut a figure, and be for a while the gentleman himself; and, to say the truth, he talked politics as well as most country gentlemen do. But nothing could now exceed my confusion upon seeing the gentleman, and his lady, enter, nor was their surprise, at finding such company and good cheer, less than ours.
I like 2/3 of what the speech & this scene together, lol.
>>669752>>669755But the inadequacies I see here are resolved in Hobbes' Leviathan: Hobbes fully commits to discarding mixed constitutionalism w/o recourse & makes no pretence of tyrant whatsoever. (as the vicar of wakefield does).
>Now seeing freedom cannot stand together with subjection, liberty in a commonwealth is nothing but government and rule, which because it cannot be divided, men must expect in common; and that can be no where but in the popular state, or democracy. And Aristotle saith well (lib. 6, cap. 2 of his Politics), The ground or intention of a democracy, is liberty; which he confirmeth in these words: For men ordinarily say this: that no man can partake of liberty, but only in a popular commonwealth. Whosoever therefore in a monarchical estate, where the sovereign power is absolutely in one man, claims liberty, claims (if the hardest construction should be made thereof) either to have the sovereignty in his turn, or to be colleague with him that hath it, or to have the monarchy changed into a democracy
<[Semi-relevant, from a previous chapter]<[The subjection of them who institute a commonwealth amongst themselves, is no less absolute, than the subjection of servants. And therein they are in equal estate; but the hope of those is greater than the hope of these. For he that subjecteth himself uncompelled, thinketh there is reason he should be better used, than he that doth it upon compulsion; and coming in freely, calleth himself, though in subjection, a FREEMAN; whereby it appeareth, that liberty is not any exemption from subjection and obedience to the sovereign power, but a state of better hope than theirs, that have been subjected by force and conquest. And this was the reason, that the name that signifieth children, in the Latin tongue is liberi, which also signifieth freemen. And yet in Rome, nothing at that time was so obnoxious to the power of others, as children in the family of their fathers. For both the state had power over their life without consent of their fathers; and the father might kill his son by his own authority, without any warrant from the state.]
<[Freedom therefore in commonwealths is nothing but the honour of equality of favour with other subjects, and servitude the estate of the rest. A freeman therefore may expect employments of honour, rather than a servant. And this is all that can be understood by the liberty of the subject. For in all other senses, liberty is the state of him that is not subject.]In Leviathan:
>The Athenians, and Romanes, were free; that is, free Common-wealths: not that any particular men had the Libertie to resist their own Representative; but that their Representative had the Libertie to resist, or invade other people. There is written on the Turrets of the city of Luca in great characters at this day, the word LIBERTAS; yet no man can thence infer, that a particular man has more Liberty, or Immunity from the service of the Commonwealth there, than in Constantinople. Whether a Common-wealth be Monarchicall, or Popular, the Freedome is still the same.
>But it is an easy thing, for men to be deceived, by the specious name of Liberty; and for want of Judgement to distinguish, mistake that for their Private Inheritance, and Birth right, which is the right of the Publique only. And when the same errour is confirmed by the authority of men in reputation for their writings in this subject, it is no wonder if it produce sedition, and change of Government. In these western parts of the world, we are made to receive our opinions concerning the Institution, and Rights of Commonwealths, from Aristotle, Cicero, and other men, Greeks and Romans, that living under Popular States, derived those Rights, not from the Principles of Nature, but transcribed them into their books, out of the Practice of their own Commonwealths, which were Popular; as the Grammarians describe the Rules of Language, out of the Practise of the time; or the Rules of Poetry, out of the Poems of Homer and Virgil. And because the Athenians were taught, (to keep them from desire of changing their Government,) that they were Freemen, and all that lived under Monarchy were slaves; therefore Aristotle puts it down in his Politiques,(lib.6.cap.2) “In democracy, Liberty is to be supposed: for ’tis commonly held, that no man is Free in any other Government.”
>From the same books, they that live under a Monarch conceive an opinion, that the Subjects in a Popular Common-wealth enjoy Liberty; but that in a Monarchy they are all Slaves. I say, they that live under a Monarchy conceive such an opinion;
>The Liberty, whereof there is so frequent, and honourable mention, in the Histories, and Philosophy of the Ancient Greeks, and Romans, and in the writings, and discourse of those that from them have received all their learning in the Politiques, is not the Liberty of Particular men; but the Liberty of the Commonwealth [i.e. the absolute power of states]
>The Athenians, and Romans, were free; that is, free Commonwealths: not that any particular men had the Liberty to resist their own Representative; but that their Representative had the Liberty to resist, or invade other people. There is written on the Turrets of the city of Luca in great characters at this day, the word LIBERTAS; yet no man can thence infer, that a particular man has more Liberty, or Immunity from the service of the Commonwealth there, than in Constantinople. Whether a Common-wealth be Monarchicall, or Popular, the Freedom is still the same. I've come to agree more w/ what Queen Chrysalis is saying than Starlight Glimmer here:
The Sword of Commonwealth, & appeal to an Arbiter / unilateral authority, is more sound than Aristotle's concord of hosts / the laws their mutual convention, the State a partnership of clans… (even w/ its appeal to consent of the governed, which Hobbes also assents to despite this).
…
I think what Hobbes has a point here, because the problem w/ politics being a concord rather than unitary stems from the impossibility of factions to share this vision.
…
This is evident that Hobbes makes the distribution of property based solely upon the arbitrary division of the Sovereign:
>The Children of Israel, were a Commonwealth in the Wilderness; but wanted the commodities of the Earth… which was divided amongst them, not by their own discretion, but by the discretion of Eleazar the Priest, & Joshua their General… which division was therefore Arbitrary.
It must be arbitrary, like Queen Chrysalis says, the hunger of Changelings can never be satisfied – so the hosts would never be content to divide the land amongst themselves without an arbitrary power. –Which is more likely to have defined the boundaries and borders of nations? their mutual concord & agreement, or rather their strength and their armies & the mutual fear they withhold? – The map of nations is drawn by the Sword, not by sweet concord.
…
An arbitrary power & land being cut and portioned off by the Sword of Commonwealth – rather the mutual concord of hosts – sounds ugly, whereas the concord of hosts conventionally giving the laws by their concordant power… sounds sweet & friendly.
…
The problem ultimately with the concordant view (& I've come to see as a flaw of Democracy) is the utter incapacity of these hosts & political parties to actually agree, the decision-making must ultimately be arbitary: for example, there are pan-Europeans who also appeal to this idea of a concordant Europe, but imagine bringing together the most hardline European nationalists, the Nordicists vs the Latins vs pan-Slavics – how should they agree? it's impossible, it must be arbitrary if ever.
If you took /leftypol/ & /pol/ together, there'd be much less a concord: this further shows that a concord of hosts is indecisive & cannot find an equilibrium w/o an arbiter.
So I've come to agree with Hobbes that having a concord of hosts without a sovereign to define the boundaries of the land is an impossible feat and like a state of war of all against all, proving the necessity of the Sword of Commonwealth to at once define these boundaries, or else perish into confusion & anarchy.
…
This hasn't dawned to me until now.
It shows the necessity of the Sword of Commonwealth, & dare I say, force, in having civil order of any kind.
The idea of agreement of an independent partnership of clans / factions, their love of virtue & concordance sounds nice, imo fails.
Jean Bodin & Hobbes is right to also conclude – that at first there were Lordly Monarchies & not Aristotle's heroic kings made by election and the concord of nobility for their virtue, not however that it doesn't take virtue to lead armies as well.
…
What virtue is Democracy if by participating in the Democratic process, there is formed a community of strangers rather than a kindred people – and I become a Tory or Whig, Conservative or Labour, Republican or Democrat, & make the State into a house divided?
This destroys a community of pleasures and pains, divides people against themselves, divides households against themselves by political factionalism.
Democracy makes the people themselves alien to each other by their direct participation.
A monarch or unitary corporatist party will give the people a common soul & identity.
Clement Attlee
>I have never been a republican even in theory, and certainly not in practice.
>The Labour Party has never been republican. British Socialists, with their own experiences of the long reign of Queen Victoria, differ from their Continental colleagues, with their memories of Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns and Bourbons.
>I remember Jimmie Maxton quoting John Wheatley as saying that he saw no point in substituting a bourgeois president for a bourgeois king… Capitalism, not monarchy, was the enemy.
A King Every Four Years
>The most stable and successful republic is that of the United States of America, and Americans are currently supposed to be most critical of what they call 'this King business.' Yet America is really more monarchical than Britain.
>In effect, what they do is to elect a king for a period of four years. The powers of the President are much the same as those enjoyed by our King William III. What he does with those powers depends largely on his personal will. There is all the difference in the world between a Roosevelt and a Coolidge, just as there was between a Henry III and an Edward I.
>There is the serious disadvantage of combining in one person the symbol of the nation and the party leader… At the end of dinner the British general rose, glass in hand, and gave 'The Queen,' adding 'God bless her.' He then gave 'The President of the United States.' The President was a Democrat. The American general, a Republican, said 'The President,' and added 'God help us.'
>A British king making himself a dictator is unthinkable, but many thoughtful Americans would not deny that a President might do so.
The Advantage of Constitutional Kingship
>The advantage of constitutional kingship is, in my view, every simple. The Monarch is the general representative of all the people and stands aloof from the party political battle. A president, however popular, is bound to have been chosen as representative of some political trend, and as such is open to attack from those of a different view. A monarch is a kind of referee, although the occasions when he or she has to blow the whistle are nowadays very few.
>The monarchy attracts to itself the kind of sentimental loyalty which otherwise might go to the leader of a faction. There is, therefore, far less danger under a constitutional monarchy of the people being carried away by a Hitler, a ᴉuᴉlossnW or even a de Gaulle. The monarchy gives a certain stability and continuity to the government. The substitution of one political leader for another causes no upset. The Queen's Government is carried on. The institution was not seriously affected even by the abdication of King Edward VIII, which elsewhere might have caused very serious trouble.
Common Symbol of Unity
>One may ask here whether it is the institution or the monarchs who have maintained it in being. Britain has been well served by its last three monarchs, but it is noteworthy also that the greatest progress towards the democratic Socialism in which I believe has been made not in republics but in limited monarchies.
>Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are probably the three countries where there is the highest degree of equality of well-being. They, like Britain, have been fortunate in having monarchs who are democratic and imbued with the spirit of service, while the leading statesmen have been, and are, practical men who understand the needs of their people and are tolerant. It may be said that in all these countries the persons have flattered the institution.
>There is one other very practical point in favour of monarchy. The British Commonwealth is made up of a great variety of peoples. More and more they need a common symbol of unity. Some of these peoples are inheritors to a high degree of the sentiment of loyalty to the monarch; others have this to a lesser degree. Yet others are now republics, but the monarch is there as head of the Commonwealth, a living symbol of unity which cannot be replaced by a formula, still less by a president elected by all the constituent peoples of the Commonwealth.
>>669789I post Clement Attlee here – not to show my approval.
This demonstrates what Jean Bodin says – that Mixed Constitutionalism is an opinion not only absurd but treasonable, & wholly warrants the lamentations of Thomas Hobbes
>>661724 that the whole nation of England was carried away with the stream of mixed constitutionalism and so-called mixed monarchy.
Mixed Constitutionalism in all its forms is a war against all notions of monarchical pre-eminence.
So much that Attlee boasts that America is really more monarchical than Britain.
How shouldn't it be? that is the ideal limited monarch for mixed constitutionalism – ultimately to be limited by terms or simply another estate mixed with the estates, having no pre-eminence and not wanting a monarchical power in policy since Aristotle makes a monarchical power (or any other unitary / corporatist mode of politics) contrary to his pluralistic mode of politics.
>>669776(Part 2)
I sympathize with Chrysalis here.
>>669789From Bore Doorbell:
>the monarchy was one of the things that have saved Britain from FascismAND WHAT SYSTEMS WERE COUNTRIES LIKE AUSTRIA AND GERMANY USING BEFORE FASCISM YOU FUCKING MORON? AUSTRIA-HUNGARY WAS AN ABSOLUTIST MONARCHY. SO WAS GERMANY. FASCISM TOOK OVER ALMOST RIGHT AFTER. WHERE WAS THE PROTECTION? ITALY DIDN'T EVEN ABOLISH THEIR MONARCHY'S STATUS UNTIL AFTER WORLD WAR 2. JAPAN WENT FASCIST AND KEPT THEIR MONARCH.
holy fuck the more quotes I see from Orwell the more retarded he reveals himself to be.
>>669810>but you have to honestly agreeI know your pain, b/c you have your George Orwell Animal Farm and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Gulag Archipelago, & I have my Alexis de Tocqueville and Bertrand de Jouvenel and a whole slew of Right Libertarian critics.
Like I bring up
>>661757 &
>>661758 &
>>661759 &
>>661760 &
>>661762 &
>>661763 &
>>661764 &
>>661765 &
>>661767 &
>>661771 &
>>661772I too know what it is like having a meta-narrative against you cushioned by these sort.
De Jouvenel>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: Jean Bodin on equality & a state as household?
>But the error originated with Plato, who, after he had established a popular state, introduced dangerous equalization. Then the Academicians who came from his school amplified his reasons, assuming that society is maintained by harmony, harmony by equality of justice, and equality by a popular state. Then all the citizens are made one and the same in the most perfect equality and likeness, and this should be the aim of human society. Aristotle did not confute the hypothesis of Plato, but he thought that Plato had erred especially in trying to make the citizenship one and the same; in that way the state is destroyed and becomes a family. This reasoning seems to me to be ineffective; but I judge the hypothesis not only absurd, as Aristotle would have it, but also clearly false.
>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. 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.
Jean Bodin on Monarchy
>If we should inspect nature more closely, we should gaze upon monarchy everywhere. To make a beginning from small things, we see the king among the bees, the leader in the herd, the buck among the flocks or the bellwether (as among the cranes themselves the many follow one), and in the separate natures of things some one object excels: thus, adamant among the gems, gold among the metals, the Sun among the stars, and finally God alone, the prince and author of the world. Moresoever, they say that among the evil spirits one alone is supreme. But, not to continue indefinitely, what is a family other than the true image of a state? Yet this is directed by the rule of one, who presents, not a fictitious image, like the doge of Venice, but the true picture of a king.
>If, then, Plato were to change the nature of things and set up several lords in the same family, several heads for the same body, several pilots on a ship, and finally several leaders among bees, flocks, herds (if only the farmers will permit); if at length he would join several gods into an association for ruling, then I would agree with him that the rule of the optimates is better than a kingdom.
>But if the entire nature of things protests, reason dissents, lasting experience objects, I do not see why we ought to follow Plato or anyone else and violate nature. What Homer has said, "No good thing is a number of masters; let one man be master, one man be king," Euripides has repeated, "Power belongs to one man in the homes and in the cities." For this reason Sibylla is said to have prophesied in her poems that the safety of the Roman Republic is founded upon a kingdom, that is, the citizens cannot be protected unless they have a king.
Jean Bodin on Equality continued
>For if we refer all things to nature, which is chief of all things, it becomes plain that this world, which is superior to anything ever joined together by immortal God, consists of unequal parts and mutually discordant elements and contrary motions of the spheres, so that if the harmony through dissimilarity is taken away, the whole will be ruined. In the same way the best republic, if it imitates nature, which it must do, is held together stable and unshaken by those commanding and obeying, servants and lords, powerful and needy, good and wicked, strong and weak, as if by the mixed association of unlike minds. As on the lyre and in song itself the skilled ears cannot endure that sameness of harmony which is called unison; on the contrary, a pleasing harmony is produced by dissimilar notes, deep and high, combined in accordance with certain rules, so also no normal person could endure equality, or rather democratic uniformity in the state. On the other hand, a state graduated from the highest to the lowest, with the middle orders scattered between in moderate proportion, fits together in a marvelous way through complementary action. It is true this gives rise to that blight of all public affairs, the fact that people who are alike from a certain aspect think that they are altogether unlike; but, those who are in a certain degree unlike, think that they are altogether alike. If, therefore, such is the disparity of men among themselves, such the disparity of natural talent, who would divide authority, resources, honors, and offices on the basis of equality? It is as if the same food and clothing were given to boys, grown men, old men, the sick, and the strong and by this reasoning they think to preserve equality.
Hobbes on Equality
>The cause of mutual fear consists partly in the natural equality of men, partly in their mutual will of hurting: whence it comes to pass that we can neither expect from others, nor promise to ourselves the least security: For if we look on men fullgrown, and consider how brittle the frame of our human body is, (which perishing, all its strength, vigour, and wisdom itself perishes with it) and how easy a matter it is, even for the weakest man to kill the strongest, there is no reason why any man trusting to his own strength should conceive himself made by nature above others: they are equals who can do equal things one against the other; but they who can do the greatest things, (namely kill) can do equal things. All men therefore among themselves are by nature equal.
>The question whether of two men be the more worthy, belongs not to the natural, but civil state; for it has been showed before, Cap. I. Art. 3. that all men by nature are equal, and therefore the inequality which now is, suppose from riches, power, nobility of kindred, is come from the civil law. I know that Aristotle in the first book of Politics affirms as a foundation of the whole political science, that some men by nature are made worthy to command, others only to serve; as if Lord and Master were distinguished not by consent of men, but by an aptness, that is, a certain kind of natural knowledge, or ignorance; which foundation is not only against reason (as but now has been showed) but also against experience: for neither almost is any man so dull of understanding as not to judge it better to be ruled by himself, than to yield himself to the government of another; neither if the wiser and stronger do contest, have these ever, or often the upper hand of those. Whether therefore men be equal by nature, the equality is to be acknowledged, or whether unequal, because they are like to contest for dominion, its necessary for the obtaining of Peace, that they be esteemed as equal; and therefore it is in the eight place of the Law of nature, That every man be accounted by nature equal to another, the contrary to which Law is PRIDE.
>Some there are who are discontented with the government under one, for no other reason, but because it is under one; as if it were an unreasonable thing that one man among so many, should so far excel in power, as to be able at his own pleasure to dispose of all the rest; these men sure, if they could, would withdraw themselves from under the Dominion of one God. But this exception against one is suggested by envy, while they see one man in possession of what all desire: for the same cause they would judge it to be as unreasonable, if a few commanded, unless they themselves either were, or hoped to be of the number; for if it be an unreasonable thing that all men have not an equal Right, surely an Oligarchy must be unreasonable also. But because we have showed that the state of equality is the state of war, and that therefore inequality was introduc'd by a general consent; this inequality whereby he, whom we have voluntarily given more to, enjoys more, is no longer to be accompted an unreasonable thing. The inconveniences therefore which attend the Dominion of one man, attend his Person, not his Unity.
>This great Authority being indivisible, and inseparably annexed to the Sovereignty, there is little ground for the opinion of them, that say of Sovereign Kings, though they be Singulis Majores, of greater Power than every one of their Subjects, yet they be Universis Minores, of less power than them all together. For if by All Together, they mean not the collective body as one person, then All Together, and Every One, signify the same; and the speech is absurd. But if by All Together, they understand them as one Person (which person the Sovereign appears,) then the power of all together, is the same with the Sovereign's power; and so again the speech is absurd; which absurdity they see well enough, when the Sovereignty is in an Assembly of the people; but in a Monarch they see it not; and yet the power of Sovereignty is the same in whomsoever it be placed.
>And as the power, so also the honour of the sovereign, ought to be greater than that of any or all the subjects. For in the sovereignty is the fountain of honour. The dignities of lord, earl, duke, and prince as his creatures. As in the presence of the master, the servants are equal, and without any honour at all; so are the subjects, in the presence of the sovereign. And though they shine some more, some less, when they are out of his sight; yet in his presence, they shine no more than the stars in the presence of the Sun.
>The inequality of subjects proceeds from the acts of sovereign power, and therefore has no more place in the presence of the sovereign; that is to say, in a court of justice, than the inequality between kings and their subjects in the presence of the King of kings. The honour of great persons is to be valued for their beneficence, and the aids they give to men of inferior rank, or not at all. And the violences, oppressions, and injuries they do are not extenuated, but aggravated, by the greatness of their persons, because they have the least need to commit them. The consequences of this partiality towards the great proceed in this manner. Impunity makes insolence; insolence, hatred; and hatred, an endeavor to pull down all oppressing and contumelious greatness, though with the ruin of the Commonwealth.
From Samuel Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny
>The Colonies of England differ no otherwise from those of other nations, than as the English constitution differs from theirs. All Government is ultimately and essentially absolute, but subordinate societies may have more immunities, or individuals greater liberty, as the operations of Government are differently conducted. An Englishman in the common course of life and action feels restraint. An English Colony has very liberal powers of regulating its own manners and adjusting its own affairs. But an English individual may by the supreme authority be deprived of liberty, and a Colony divested of its powers, for reasons of which that authority is the only judge.
>In sovereignty there are no gradations. There may be limited royalty, there may be limited consulship; but there can be no limited government. There must in every society be some power or other from which there is no appeal, which admits no restrictions, which pervades the whole mass of the community, regulates and adjusts all subordination, enacts laws or repeals them, erects or annuls judicatures, extends or contracts privileges, exempt itself from question or control, and bounded only by physical necessity.
>By this power, wherever it subsists, all legislation and jurisdiction is animated and maintained. From this all legal rights are emanations, which, whether equitably or not, may be legally recalled. It is not infallible, for it may do wrong; but it is irresistible, for it can be resisted only by rebellion, by an act which makes it questionable what shall be thenceforward the supreme power.
>An English Colony is a number of persons, to whom the King grants a Charter permitting them to settle in some distant country, and enabling them to constitute a Corporation, enjoying such powers as the Charter grants, to be administrated in such forms as the Charter prescribes. As a Corporation they make laws for themselves, but as a Corporation subsisting by a grant from higher authority, to the control of that authority they continue subject.
Samuel Johnson continued
>A COLONY is to the Mother-country as a member to the body, deriving its action and its strength from the general principle of vitality; receiving from the body, and communicating to it, all the benefits and evils of health and disease; liable in dangerous maladies to sharp applications, of which the body however must partake the pain; and exposed, if incurably tainted, to amputation, by which the body likewise will be mutilated.
>The Mother-country always considers the Colonies thus connected, as parts of itself; the prosperity or unhappiness of either is the prosperity or unhappiness of both; not perhaps of both in the same degree, for the body may subsist, though less commodiously, without a limb, but the limb must perish if it be parted from the body.
>Our Colonies therefore, however distant, have been hitherto treated as constituent parts of the British Empire. The inhabitants incorporated by English Charters, are entitled to all the rights of Englishmen. They are governed by English laws, entitled to English dignities, regulated by English counsels, and protected by English arms; and it seems to follow by consequence not easily avoided, that they are subject to English government, and chargeable by English taxation.
>To him that considers the nature, the original, the progress, and the constitution of the Colonies, who remembers the first discoverers had commissions from the Crown, that the first settlers owe to a Charter their civil forms and regular magistracy, and that all personal immunities and legal securities, by which the condition of the subject has been from time to time improved, have been extended to the Colonists, it will not be doubted but the Parliament of England has a right to bind them by statutes, and to bind them in all cases whatsoever, and has therefore a natural and constitutional power of laying upon them any tax or impost, whether external or internal, upon the product of land, or the manufactures of industry, in the exigencies of war, or in the time of profound peace, for the defence of America, for the purpose of raising a revenue, or for any other end beneficial to the Empire.
Archibald Kennedy
>There is, in every Family, a Sort of Government without any fixed Rules; and indeed it is impossible, even in a little Family, to form Rules for every Circumstance; and therefore it is better conceived than expressed; but perfectly understood by every Individual belonging to the Family. The Study of the Father or Master, is for the Good of the Whole; all Appeals are to him; he has a Power, from the Reason and Nature of Things, to check the Insolent, or Indolent, and to encourage the Industrious: In short, the whole Affairs of the Family are immediately under the Care or Direction of the Father or Master; and this is a natural Prerogative, known and acknowledged by every Man living, who has ever had a Family, or been any Ways concerned in a Family, in all Ages and in all Places. His Majesty, as he is our political Father, his political Prerogative, from the like Circumstances and Reasons, is equally necessary. And this political Authority has been allowed the supreme Director, in all States, in all Ages, and in all Places; and without it, there would be a Failure of Justice.
Robert Filmer / Directive Power
>The first Father had not only simply power, but power monarchical, as he was a Father, immediately from God. For by the appointment of God, as soon as Adam was created he was monarch of the world, though he had no subjects; for though there could not be actual government until there were subjects, yet by the right of nature it was due to Adam to be governor of his posterity: though not in act, yet at least in habit. Adam was a King from his creation: and in the state of innocency he had been governor of his children; for the integrity or excellency of the subjects doth not take away the order or eminency of the governor.
>but as for directive power, the condition of human nature requires it, since civil society cannot be imagined without power of government: for although as long as men continued in the state of innocency they might not need the direction of Adam in those things which were necessarily and morally to be done; yet things indifferent, that depended merely on their free will, might be directed by the power of Adam's command.
>>671589 (me)
I meant outfits from
>>671570 for the new grace designs, not the modules from
>>671589 lol
>>671577A magnanimous ruler.
I'd rather echo Bodin's appraisal, the French chauvinist he is.
Though personally I align w/ the Byzantineboo's claim to the Roman Empire over the HRE.
Personally, I prefer the Rome of Antiquity and Caligula over the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantine people.
>>671589>>671590My only quip w/ Grace's design is I worry she looks too generic like Saber or too DnD lawful good alignment chart vibes – whereas my style of monarchy is about being a 21st century Caligulan, a Leviathan enjoyer, and shilling monarchical absolutism, I ache to be seen as too traditionalist or a neofeudalist because I get ostracized by that crowd everyday.
Grace is from 2018, so it's before my utter frustration and break w/ that half of the monarchist community and delve into all the research and political works I'd post here. I utterly detested dealing with the traditional catholics for their ultramontanism, the irate mixed constitutionalists and their maxims of the classics (like Hobbes laments, esp. egregious w/ Aristotle), the right libertarians & their contempt for absolute monarchy – it is a neverending barrage of people who hate you. I struggle to think of any demographic on the right not at odds w/ my politics since outside e-monarchist circles there's republicans and Hitlerists don't like hereditary monarchy and Nietzscheans typically have a Tocquevillist contempt for absolute monarchy, Fascists usually are republican (or belong to one of these groups), Orthodox Christians are hit or miss & while there's Tsar Nicholas II supporters there's also hatred for Emp. Peter I.
This is the reason why I've come to agree with Jean Bodin that Lordly Monarchy was necessary for the formation of states, & with Thomas Hobbes on the necessity of the arbitrary power and Sword of Commonwealth – as of late – because this dilemma has convinced me a concord of hosts is unworkable. >Our Party regarded education in the monolithic ideology as its basic ideological task and carried it out energetically. As a result, a single ideology has prevailed throughout the Party, and all its members have been armed firmly with the Leader's revolutionary idea, the Juche idea, and have come to think and act as required by this idea.
>Another important factor in establishing the monolithic ideological system is to achieve the Leader's unitary leadership absolutely.
>The Leader is the supreme controller of a party, and the party's leadership is precisely his leadership. Our Party has set up a well-regulated system under which all its organizations and members act as one man under the unitary leadership of the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, give absolute authority to Party policies and defend and implement them without question.
- Kim Jong Il, The Workers' Party of Korea is a Juche type revolutionarty party which inherited the glorious tradition of the DIU
>Our Party equipped all our people fully with the Juche idea, united them closely behind the Leader organizationally, ideologically and morally, and thus made the revolutionary ranks a socio-political organism.
>Today the Workers' Party of Korea stands firmly in the centre of the revolutionary ranks in our country, and the masses of the people, who have withstood every manner of ordeal by sharing their destiny with the Party in the long revolutionary struggle, are united rock-firm behind the Party and the Leader, sharing one mind and one will.
- Kim Jong Il
>It is an essential requirement of a working-class party to ensure the unity of ideology and leadership. This is effected by establishing the Party's monolithic ideological system. Only when this is done can the whole Party be armed with the Leader's intention and become a living organism, breathing and acting in conformity with his idea and will.
>It is important in establishing the Party's monolithic ideological system to pervade the whole Party with the Leader's idea.
>The Leader is the embodiment of the organizational will of the whole Party and his idea is explicitly the guiding ideology of the Party. The ideological unity of the Party is brought about only on the basis of the Leader's idea.
- Kim Jong Il
—
>The revolutionary cause of the working class is precisely the cause of its Leader. The Leader is the top brain of the revolution and its highest Leader and as such he plays the decisive role in the accomplishment of the revolutionary cause of the working class.
- Kim Jong Il
—
>The Party's monolithic ideological system is, in other words, the Leader's ideological system and system of guidance. Without them the existence of our Party is inconceivable. The revolutionary idea of the Leader is the eternal guiding ideology of our Party and revolution.
- Kim Jong Il
—
>If the Masses are an Almighty Being, our Leader is the Sun of the Masses, who personifies the hearts of the People.
- Kim Jong Il
—
>The process of the building of our Party is a process of patterning it on the Juche idea. Imbuing all Party members with the Juche idea is a continuation and a higher stage of our Party's historic struggle to model itself on that idea.
>Imbuing all Party members with the Juche idea means, in essence, strengthening and developing our Party for all time into a party of Comrade Kim Il Sung.
>Strengthening and developing our Party into the party of the great Comrade Kim Il Sung implies having him eternally at its head and holding fast to his ideology and line and implementing them throughout all generations.
>The respected Comrade Kim Il Sung is the great leader who has, for the first time in their history of several thousand years, been acclaimed by our People; he is the Teacher and Father of our Party and People."
- Kim Jong Il
>The unity and cohesion of our Party are great and unbreakable because the entire membership is united around the great Comrade Kim Il Sung and because they are based on its infinite loyalty to the Party and the Leader. The Leader is the centre of the Party's unity and cohesion, and its strength depends on how firmly the entire membership is united behind him. The unity and cohesion of our Party are not just achieved out of duty. They are based on the membership's infinite respect for, and absolute trust in, the Party and the Leader, and founded on its unshakeable revolutionary belief and sense of gratitude which cause it to defend and protect the Party and the Leader politically and ideologically and to fight for them even at the cost of its members' lives.
>The unity and cohesion of our Party are great and unbreakable because they are based on unity of idea and purpose. The important thing in the Party's unity and cohesion is to achieve the unity of idea and will. Unity based on a single idea and purpose must be durable, otherwise it cannot achieve lasting unity. The single ideology means precisely the revolutionary idea of the Leader, the founder of the Party. The Leader's revolutionary idea is the basis of the Party's unity and cohesion; the unity and cohesion of the working-class party is the unity of idea and purpose based on the revolutionary idea.
- Kim Jong Il
>The Leader is, indeed, the infinitely benevolent father of our people and our children. We must give schoolchildren a clear understanding that their happiness is entirely due to the Leader's love for them and his consideration for them. Only then will the children remember the Leader's benevolence, support him from the bottom of their hearts and become revolutionary fighters who are unfailingly faithful to him, when they are adults.
- Kim Jong Il
>Our Leader is the supreme revolutionary genius, the Sun of the nation and the benevolent father of our People, who has built a socialist paradise on this land and brought the People the happiness and glory we see today, by leading the arduous Korean revolution along the path of trials to victory without the slightest vacillation. Because of the immortal feats he has performed for mankind, his extraordinary intelligence, outstanding leadership ability and lofty communist virtues, the Leader is supported and boundlessly revered by the People. Our People eagerly desire to meet their fatherly Leader who, by devoting his entire life to the freedom and liberation of the People and leading the vanguard of the revolution and socialist construction, has provide them with the greatest happiness and continues to provide the condition for their lives to flourish, and once they have met him, they brim over with the resolution to give their wholehearted loyalty to the Leader, and are engrossed in infinitely solemn feelings and emotions.
- Kim Jong Il
Kim Il Sung – The Peach Story
>Kim Il Sung looked around the room, and picked up a peach from the table.
>Then he answered, "A party should be built like a peach."
<"Like a peach?"
<The guests looked at the peach.
>Pointing at the peach in his hand, Kim Il Sung said: Success can be achieved in the revolution and construction only when the single-hearted unity of a leader, the party and the masses is achieved; compared with this peach, the masses are the flesh, the party is the stone, and the leader is the core in the stone.
Kim Jong Il – The leader is the life of the socio-political community
>The essence of the leader in all context lies in his being the centre of lthe life of the socio-political community. There is no doubt that the center of life is important for the existence and activities of the organism. Unless the masses are united, centring on the leader, they cannot acquire vitality as an independent socio-political community. We must understand and believe that the leader is the centre of the life of the socio-political community and that it is only when we are linked to the leader organizationally, ideologically and as comrades that we can acquire immortal socio-political integrity.
Kim Jong Il - Fatherly Leader & Motherly Party
>In order to have a deep understanding of the value of the organization, one must consider it in relation to one's own socio-political integrity. Only through the party organization, the parent body, can the popular masses be integrated into an independent socio-political organism and become the real masters of their own destiny. We must value and respect the Party organization as the parent body of our integrity. We refer to the leader as the fatherly leader and to the Party as the motherly Party because the Party organization with the leader at its centre is the parent body of our socio-political integrity.
>>672259>alright, I'm gonna actually read grace's monarchy theoryI take big inspiration from Hobbes' Leviathan and Juche's stress on Kim Il Sung for my political views.
All linked here
>>672262In short:
People are a colony of monarchy and form a great family, along with everything absolute monarchy. Cult of Personality, or work of one person on the people, w/ a unitary mode of politics.
This is Graceposter in a nutshell, a 21st Century Caligulan.
First Monarchies by Conquest / Jean Bodin
>For before there was either City or citizen, or any form of a Commonwealth amongst men, every master of a family was a master in his own house, having power of life and death over his wife and children: but after that force, violence, ambition, covetousness, and desire of revenge had armed one against another, the issues of wars and combats giving victory unto the one side, made the other to become unto them slaves: and amongst them that overcame, he that was chosen chief and captain, under whose conduct and leading they had obtained the victory, kept them also in his power and command as his faithful and obedient subjects, and the other as his slaves. Then that full and entire liberty by nature given to every man, to live as himself best pleased, was altogether taken from the vanquished, and in the vanquishers themselves in some measure also diminished, in regard of the conquerour; for that now it concerned every man in private to yield his obedience unto his chief sovereign; and he that would not abate any thing of his liberty, to live under the laws and commandment of another, lost all. So the word of Lord and Servant, of Prince and Subject, before unknown unto the world, were first brought into use.
>Yea Reason, and the very light of Nature, leads us to believe very force and violence to have given course and beginning unto Commonwealths. And albeit that there were no reason therefore, it shall be hereafter declared by the undoubted testimonies of the most credible historiographers, that is to say, of Thucydides, Plutarch, Caesar, & also by the laws of Solon, That the first men that bare rule, had no greater honour and virtue, than to kill, massacre and rob men, or to bring them in slavery. These be the words of Plutarch. Yet have we more also the witness of the sacred history, where it is said, that Nimroth the nephew of Cham, was the first that by force and violence brought men into his subjection, establishing his kingdom in the country of Assyria: and for this cause they called him the Mighty Hunter, which the Hebrews interpret to be a thief and robber…. Which thing also Philo the Jew, and Josephus by their testimonies confirm, viz. by his wealth and power to have first exercised tyranny.
<And it is not yet past seventy years that the people of Gaoga in Africa had never felt or heard of any king or lord whatsoever, until that one amongst them a travel or had in his travel seen and noted the majesty of the king of Tombut: and thereupon conceiving a desire to make himself a king also in his own country, he at first to begin withal, killed a rich merchant; and so possessed of his horses arms and merchandise, divided them amongst his nigh kinsfolks and friends, acquainted with his purpose; by whose aid he by force and violence subdued now some, and after others, killing the richest, and ceasing upon their goods: in such sort that his son became rich with the robberies of his father, made himself king, whose successor hath so continued after him in great power, as we read in Leo of Africa. This was the beginning of the kings of Gaoga, which in short time greatly increased.
Bodin on Lordly Monarchy
>Wherefore a lawful or royal Monarchy is that where the subjects obey the laws of a Monarch, and the Monarch the laws of Nature, the subjects enjoying their natural liberty, and propriety of their goods. The lordly Monarchy is that where the prince is become lord of the goods and persons of his subjects, by law of arms and lawful war; governing them as the master of a family does his slaves. The tyrannical Monarchy, is where the prince condemning the laws of nature and nations, imperiously abuses the persons of his freeborn subjects, and their goods as his own. The same difference is also found in the Oligarchical and Democratic states: for both the one and the other may be lawful, lordly, and tyrannical, in such sort as I have said: for the greatest tyranny of all other is of Tully called the rage of the furious and turbulent people.
>Now as concerning the lordly Monarchy, it is convenient for us first to entreat thereof, as of that which was first amongst men: for they are deceived which following the opinion of Aristotle, suppose that golden kind of men (more famous for the poets fables, then for that there were any such in deed) to have made first choice of their heroical kings: seeing we find, and all men are persuaded that the first Monarchy was established in Assyria, under the power of Nimrod, whom the Holy Scripture calls the Great Hunter; which is a common phrase of speech amongst the Hebrews, by which word they signify a thief, or robber. For the ancient writers, viz. Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon, have put robbery among the kinds of hunting, as we have elsewhere noted. For before the time of Nimrod no man is found to have had power and rule one over an other, all men living in like liberty; he being the first that took upon him the sovereignty, and that caused free borne men to serve: whose name seems to have been given him according unto his quality, for asmuch as Nimrod signifies a terrible lord. Soon after the world was seen full of slaves, Some one of the sons of Noe yet living. And in the whole course of the Bible, the Scripture speaking of the subjects of the kings of Assyria and Egypt, calls them always slaves: and not the Holy Scripture only, but the Greeks also, who always in their writings term themselves free, and the Barbarians slaves; meaning by the Barbarians the people of Asia and Egypt.
>But yet here might some man doubt whether the Lordly Monarchy be not a Tyranny, considering that it seems to be directly against the law of nature, which reserves unto every man his liberty, and the sovereignty over his own goods. Whereunto I answer, that of ancient time it was indeed against the law of nature to make free men slaves, and to possess himself of other men's goods: but if the consent of all nations will, that that which is gotten by just war should be the conquerours own, and that the vanquished should be slaves unto the victorious, as a man cannot well say that a Monarchy so established is tyrannical: seeing also wee read that Jacob the Patriarch, by his testament leaving unto his children certain lands that he had gotten, said that it was his own, for that he had got it by force of arms. And that more is, the rule that wills that the law of arms should take no place where there be superiours to do justice (which is put in practice against the greatest princes, and imperial cities of Germany, who be proscribed by the empire, for not making restitution of that which belonged to others) shows right well, that where there is no superiour to command, their force is reputed just. For otherwise, if we will mingle and confound the Lordly Monarchy, with the tyrannical estate, we must confess that there is no difference in wars, betwixt the just enemy and the robber; betwixt a lawful prince and a thief; betwixt wars justly denounced, and uniust and violent force; which the ancient Romans called plain robbery and theft. We also see tyrannical states and governments, soon to fall, and many tyrants in short time slain: whereas the seigneurelike states, and namely the Lordly Monarchies have been both great and of long continuance, as the ancient Monarchies of the Assyrians, the Medes, Persians, & Egyptians; and at this present that of Ethiopia (the most ancient Monarch of all Asia and Africa) whereunto are subject fifty kings as slaves, if we may believe Pau. Iouius, who all are, and term themselves the slaves of the Grand Negus of Ethiopia. And the reason why the Lordly Monarchy is more durable than the royal, is for that it is more majestical, and that the subjects hold not their lives, goods, and liberty, but of the sovereign prince, who hath by just war conquered them
Bodin on Royal Monarchy
>A Royal Monarch or king, is he which placed in sovereignty yields himself as obedient unto the laws of nature as he desires his subjects to be towards himself, leaving unto every man his natural liberty, and the propriety of his own goods. I have put to these last words for the difference of a Lordly Monarch, who may be a just and virtuous prince, and equally govern his subjects, being himself yet nevertheless lord both of their persons and goods. And if it so chance the Lordly Monarch having justly conquered his enemies country, to set them again at liberty, with the propriety of their goods: of a lord he becomes a king, and changes the Lordly Monarchy, into a Monarchy Royal. And that is it for which Pliny the younger says unto Trajan the emperour, Principis sedem obtines, ne sit Domino locus, Thou holdest the seat of a prince, Lord it not. This difference (betwixt a Royal Monarch and a Lordly) was well noted by the ancient Persians, calling Cyrus the elder (which overthrew the Monarchy of the Medes) by the name of a king: but terming Cambyses a lord, and Darius a mar∣chant; for that Cyrus was a gentle and courteous prince towards his subjects, but Cambyses his son was haughty and proud, and Darius too great an exactor and couetous. So it is also reported Alexander the Great to have been advised by Aristotle, to bear himself towards the Greeks as a father; but towards the Barbarians as a lord:
>We have moreover said in our definition, that the subjects ought to be obedient unto the Royal Monarch, to show that in him alone lies the sovereign majesty; & that the king ought to obey the laws of nature: that is to say, to govern his subjects, and to guide his actions according unto natural justice, whose luster was brighter than the light of the sun itself. It is then the true mark of a Royall Monarchy, when the prince shows himself as obedient unto the laws of nature, as he wishes his subjects to be unto himself. Which it is not hard for him looking into the duty of a good prince to obtain; as fearing God above all; if he be also pitiful unto the afflicted, wise in his enterprises, hardy in his exploits, modest in prosperity, constant in adversity, advised in his speech, wise in his councel, careful of his subjects, comfortable to his friends, terrible to his enemies, courteous to the good, dreadful towards the evil, and just towards all. Which royal souereignty so set down, as that the subjects stand obedient unto the laws of their prince, and the prince likewise unto the laws of nature: the law being on both sides a mistress, or as says Pindarus, a queen reigning over both, it shall in the same bonds unite the subjects among themselves, and together with their prince: whereof shall grow a most sweet harmony, which may with wonderful plea∣sure and felicity bless them both. This is that regal and lawful Monarchy of one, which we seek after, whether the kingdom descend by succession, as it most commonly does; or by the law, as this of ours
What is the importance of this?
I think for absolute monarchists – it is the rejection of Aristotle's golden age of heroic kings elected by a concord of hosts – and also a rejection of Aristotle's concord of hosts / partnership of independent clans with their law by convention and established by virtue – this is striking a dagger deep into the mentality supporting multi-party democracies today & mixed constitutionalism of feudal estates that people traditionally adore (like I said, mixed constitutionalism with democratic multi-parties and neofeudalism multi-estates are the same beast, and to them Fascism and Absolute Monarchy the same monster).
For absolute monarchists, there needs be that people defer to a sovereign or arbiter – yes, even the necessity of force – for the establishment of civil states.
…
All the doctrines people find odious in Hobbes, like the war of all against all, warning against private judgement of good & evil / erroneous conscience, & denial of absolute private property for the subjects – is also tied to this rejection of Aristotle's concord of hosts / partnership of independent clans united by virtue. (& while it's true Aristotle denied their convention and affirmed virtue, the system he sets up basically is where law comes by the convention of these hosts, since he asserted peer review in spite of supporting many in one over a wise man – and denying state corporatism).
…
If you really hate multi-parties (which is the modern manifestation of the estates / partnership of clans), then dear reader, this appeal to an arbitrary power or unilateral authority, & the necessity of force (because of the inadequacy of a concord of hosts / parties / factions to agree, or for painters to share a vision on one canvas, or for borders to be drawn by sweet concord rather than the sword) tends to be the alternative view.
It sounds ugly and tyrannical, but it is tenfold more practical and what politics comes down to.
As mentioned earlier, take the nationalists of any group like Nordicists, Pan-Slavists, or Latins – they wouldn't be content to divide a map by sweet concord, so the division of lands has to be by an arbitrary power by necessity… or take the political parties who are fundamentally at odds, how far should right libertarians agree with communists?
That is the idea being ridiculed in this comic – pic related – one of the reasons Hobbes belives the Sovereign must arbitrarily divide the land and distribute justice and further deny the subjects an absolute right to it is because, again, the rejection of that concord of hosts, but also because Hobbes doesn't think two people vying over and sharing the property would be content, that an arbiter has to settle it between the parties and thereby that arbiter limits them.
–This is the same scenario with the cake.
>>677706obviously pro-shah,
but right now grace is chaotic neutral & doesn't support the WAR, WAR, WAR, WAR, WAR, WAR
>>677775Celestia was going to be Queen Celestia.
Pony Grace supports Celestia because Celestia has Majesty and is the Sovereign Monarch, has the pre-eminence in this relationship.
but Grace Pony also likes the NIGHT WILL LAST FOREVER meme>>677776/siberia/ wants Grace to support it b/c they want femdom, so Grace gets the lady's right of first night with any board tan.
If Hobbes had his way, the Anglican Communion would no longer be autocephalous, but all would proceed from the King, either from within the Church of England or under the King in their own church.
>The Civil Sovereign in every Commonwealth, is the Head, the Source, the Root, & the Sun, from which all Jurisdiction is derived. And therefore, the Jurisdiction of Bishops, is derived from the Civil Sovereign.
- Hobbes
Hobbes calls the Sovereign the soul of the Commonwealth.
<Jean Bodin: Concerning Popes
>But I think no man doubts, but that the king even before his consecration enjoys both the possession and propriety of the kingdom, not by inheritance or his fathers right, and much less by the country of the bishops or peers, but by the royal law and custom of the realm, as was long since decreed of the French men, that no man should think the power of the king to depend on the pleasure of the bishops; not for that the Senat ever doubted the power of the king before his coronation; but that those vain quirks of the bishops might be utterly reselled. For it is an old proverb with us, That the king doth never die, but that so soon as he is dead, the next male of his stock is seized of the kingdom, and in possession thereof before he be crowned, which is not conferred unto him by succession of his father, but by virtue of the law of the land; least the succession of the kingdom should be uncertain, then which nothing can be more dangerous in a Commonweal.
>And to show a greater submission of the emperors unto the popes, the subscription of the emperor's letters unto the pope, is this, I kiss the hands and feet of your Holiness. So used always the emperor Charles V to subscribe to his letters, when he writ unto pope Clement the seventh. Which he did not upon a feigned courtesy, but indeed in most humble and servile manner kissed the Pope's feet, in open sight of the people, and the greatest assemblies of many noble princes, at Bononia, Rome, and last of all at Marsielles in Provence, where were met together the Pope, the Emperor, the Kings of France and Navarre, the dukes of Savoy, of Buillon, Florence, Ferrara, Vitemberg the Grand Master of Malta, with many other princes and great lords, who all kissed the Pope's feet, except the dukes of Buillon and Vitemberg, Protestant princes, who had forsaken the rites and ceremonies of the church of Rome. In far more base sort did that duke of Venice humble himself (who of the Venetians themselves is called a dog) for that he with a rope about his neck, and creeping upon all four like a beast, so craved pardon of Pope Clement the 5th. But nothing was more base, than that which almost all historiographers which write of the Pope's affairs, report of the Emperor Frederick the Second, who to redeem his son out of prison, lying prostrate upon the ground at the feet of the Pope Alexander the Fourth, suffered him to tread upon his head, if the histories be true. Whereby it is well to be perceived, the Majesty of the Emperors, by the power (should I say) or by the outrageousness of the Bishops of Rome, to have been so diminished, as that scarce the shadow of their ancient majesty seems now to remain. They also say themselves to be greater than the emperors, and that so much greater, as is the Sun greater than the Moon: that is to say, six thousand six hundred forty and five times, if we believe Ptolemy and the Arabians. And that more is, they have always pretended a right unto the empire: for the imperial seat being vacant, they have given the investitures unto them which held of the empire, and received of them their fealty: as they did of John and Luchin, viscounts of Milan, the imperial seat being empty in the year 1341, who are in the records called vassals of the church of Rome, and not of the empire; and are forbidden their obedience unto Lewes of Bavaria the Emperor, who was then excommunicated, as we have before said. For which cause the Canonists have maintained, that the emperor cannot give up his imperial dignity unto any, but unto the pope.
>But howsoever the Bishop of Rome pretended to have a sovereignty over all Christian princes, not only in spiritual, but also in temporal affairs, whether they got it by force of arms, or by the devotion and grant of princes; or by long possession and prescription: yet could not our Kings even for any most short time endure the servitude of the Bishop of Rome, nor be moved with any their excommunication, which the Popes used as firebrands to the firing of Christian Commonwealths. For these Popes interdictions, or excommunications, were wont with other nations, to draw the subjects from the obedience and reverence of their prince: but such has always been the love of our kings towards their people (and so I hope shall be forever) and loyalty of the people towards their kings: that when pope Boniface the Eight saw himself nothing to prevail by his excommunication, nor that the people were to be drawn from the obedience of their king, after he had publically excommunicated Philip the Fair, he in like manner excommunicated all the French nation, with all them which took Philip for a king. But Philip having called together an assembly of his princes, and other his nobility, and perceiving in his subjects in general a wonderful consent for his defense of his state and sovereignty: he thereupon writ letters unto Boniface (which are common in every man's hand) to reprove him of his folly: and shortly after sent Nogaret with his army into the Pope's territory, who took the Pope prisoner, (giving him well to understand that the King was not his subject, as he had by his Bull published) but seeing him through impatience to become furious and mad, he set him again at liberty. Yet from that the Pope's interdiction, the King by the advice of his nobility and Senat, appealed unto a general council, which had power over the Pope, abusing the holy cities. For the king next unto Almighty God had none his superior, unto whom he might appeal: but the Pope is bound unto the decrees and commands of the council. And long times before Philip the Victorious, and his realm being interdicted by Pope Alexander the Third, who would have brought him into his subjection: answered him by letters, That he held nothing of the pope, nor yet of any prince in the world. Benedict the third, and Julius the second, had used the like excommunication against Charles the seventh, and Lewes the twelfth (who was called the Father of his country) that so as with firebrands they might inflame the people to rebellion: yet failed they both of their hope, the obedience of the subjects being nothing diminished, but rather increased: the Bull of excommunication which the Popes legat brought into France, being by the decree of the parliament of Paris openly torn to pieces, and the legat for his presumptuousness cast in prison… True it is, that they which have thought better to assure the majesty of the Kings of France against the power of the Pope, have obtained the Pope's bulls whilest they yet stat in the city of Auignion to be exempted from their power. And namely there is in the records of France a Bull of Pope Clements the Fifth, whereby he not only absolved Philip the Fair and his subjects from the interdiction of Boniface the Eight, but also declared the King and the realm to be exempted from the Pope's power. Pope Alexander the Fourth also gave this privilege unto the realm of France, That it could not for any cause be interdicted, which was afterward by seven Popes successively confirmed by Gregory, Clement the fourth, Urban the fifth, and Benedict the twelfth, whose bull yet remain in the records of France: which yet seem unto me not to increase, but rather to diminish the majesty of our Kings, who were never in any thing beholden unto the Popes. And that more is, the court of parliament of Paris, has been by many decrees declared the clause, By the authority Apostolical; usually inserted into the Popes rescripts sent into France, to be void, mere abusive, and to no purpose: and therefore it behooved him, that would help himself by any such the popes rescript, to protest in judgment, That he would not any way take benefit of that clause. By all which things it is plainly to be understood, not only the kings, but the Kingdom of France also, to have been always free from the Pope's power and command.
>Upon this difference cast themselves into the protection of the Kings of France, who were the GREATEST Monarchs of Christendom; wherein they were not of their hope deceived. For hereupon, Pipin, Grand M. of France (a man of great wealth and power, who then disposed of all the affairs of the realm) with a great army passing over the Alps, overthrew and discomfited the power of the Lombards, and afterward going to Rome, was the first that gave unto Pope Zachary, part of the seignorie of Italy, who had before crowned him King of France, forbidding the peers and people of France to make of any choice of any other for their kings but of the house of Pipin, having publicly pronounced King Childeric for his sottishness to be unable for the government. Whereunto the people of France made so much the less resistance, for that Pipin then had the nobility and the army of France at command: and for that the Pope (who as then was esteemed as a God upon earth) was the author thereof, unto whom Pipin had before solemnly promised, and given him letters pattents thereof, That if he should become victorious over the Lombards, he should give unto the Church of Rome the Exarchate of Ravenna, which contained thirty cities, and the province of Pentapole, which contained sixteen cities moe; which he after the victory performed, laying the keys of the said cities upon Saint Peter's altar; yet reserving unto himself and his successors in the crown of France, the sovereignty of both the provinces; and that more is, power also to choose the Popes. Whereunto the Pope not only willingly granted, but almost persuaded Pipin to take upon him the name of an emperor: which title none then used, but the emperors of Constantinople. But Pipin being dead, the Lombards again took up arms, to the great disquiet of the Popes, who again had recourse unto the French Kings, as unto ta most sure sanctuary. Whereunto Charles, Pipin his son (for his many and worthy victories surnamed the Great) with a strong army passing the Alps, not only overthrew the king of the Lombards, but even their kingdom also: and having surely established the power of the Roman bishops, was by them called Emperor: and they again by Charles so long as he lived, all chosen bishops of Rome. But after the death of this Charlemagne, they which were of great credit in Rome, caused themselves to by chosen pope by the clergy, whether it were for the distrust they had to obtain that dignity of the Kings of France, having no favor in the court; or through the negligence of the French Kings, who had thereof no great care; or that it was by reason of the great civil wars which arose betwixt the children of Lewes the Gentle, wherewith the French Kings busied, lost the prerogative they had in choosing of the chief Bishop. Yet Guitard, a great antiquary, who lived in the same time writes, 3 Popes successively to have come into France to excuse themselves to Lewes the Gentle, That they had been by the clergy of Rome constrained to accept the papal dignity, beseeching him to confirm the same: which he either as a man not desirous of glory, or else fearing to provoke the clergy (being then in great authority) did: of which his error he afterwards though to late full sore repented him; being by the college of cardinals constrained to yield up his Crown, & to make himself a monk, and his wife a nun, shut up apart from her husband in a cloister with other nuns, who yet were again afterwards delivered by the princes and nobility of France, (disdaining to see the pride of the clergy) and so again restored unto their former honors. But after the death of this Lewes the Gentle (who was Emperor of France, of Germany, and of greater part of Italy, and Spain) the empire was divided into three kingdoms, which the brethren Charles the Bauld, Lothaire, and Lewes, every one of them held in title of sovereignty, without acknowledging a superiority of one another; and again, the kingdom of Lothaire was divided amongst his children into three parts: unto one fell the kingdom of Lorraine, unto another the kingdom of Arles, and to the third the kingdom of Italy: Lewes holding Germany, and Charles the Emperor, France. So their divided power began to decay, and the wealth of the bishops of Rome greatly to increase: they now succeeding one another by way of election, and in nothing acknowledging the majesty of the French kings, as they ought to have done: which came to pass especially in the time of Pope Nicholas the First, who better understood to manage matters of state than his predecessors, and was the first that used the rigors of excommunication against princes, having excommunicated Lothaire the younger brother of Lewes king of Italy."
>Howbeit that in truth the right of choosing of the pope belonged to the Kings of France, and not unto the German princes, who have but usurped the name and title of emperors, got by the prowess and force of Charlemagne king of France and by him left unto his successors the kings of France, and not unto the kings of Germany; for so they were called in all the ancient treaties and histories of Germany and France, and not emperors, except those which were crowned by the popes. But after that the power of the German kings was far spread in Italy, they then sought to usurp unto themselves that right of choosing of the bishops of Rome: whether it were for the increasing of their own wealth and power, or for to take away the ambition and foul corruption then used in voices giving, and in their elections. For the emperor Henry the third thrust out of his papacy Gregory the sixt, chosen pope by the clergy, and set Clement the second in his place, and afterwards compelled the clergy to swear, not from thenceforth to admit any into the papacy, without the consent of the German emperors; as we have learned out of the Vatican records. But Clement the second being dead, the college of cardinals sent ambassadors unto the emperor to appoint whom he thought good to be pope, who appointed Pepon, afterwards called Damasus the second; who dead, the clergy again sent ambassadors unto the emperor, for the creating of a new pope
<Jean Bodin recounts in high esteem of the clergy:
>Truly all the best learned lawyers are of opinion, That the priestly dignity is to be preferred before all other honours and vocations: and that the ministers of divine things, & moderators of the most sacred rites, are not to be accounted among the number of the vulgar & common people: which is no new or strange opinion, but drawn & derived even from the most ancient antiquity. For the most ancient kings, to make their royal power the more reverend and stately, exercised also the priestly dignity. Neither did the Greeks only, but the Roman kings also, yea and the greatest emperors themselves, style themselves high Priests or Bishops, whom the chief Arabian princes being also bishops, seem therein to have followed.
>And so the Christian kings being by their religion forbidden to mingle prophane things with sacred or armes with religions; yet took that which was next; that is to say, in preferring a sacred, order of the Clergy, not only before the common and vulgar sort of the people, but before the Senators, yea and not before them alone, but even before dukes, earls, and other magistrates whatsoever: giving unto them the highest rooms, and first places next unto the kings themselves, in all assemblies, councels, enacting of laws, and granting of liberties and privileges. And why not? when as the most ancient people of the Celts, accounted their Druids, who were the princes of their religion and judgements, superiors not unto the common sort of the people only, but even unto their captains and rulers also. For which cause Caesar in recounting of their degrees, first reckons up the Druids, then their knights or horsemen, and after them the common people.
<Jean Bodin ranks the the Sovereign Monarch even before the clergy:
>The next unto the King himself, who out of the number of citizens, going far before the rest should follow the holy order of the clergy: next unto the sacred order of the clergy, the Senate: after the Senate should follow the martial men, and amongst them, frst the general of the army, or great constable, & then the dukes , countes, marquesses, governors of provinces, landgraves, burgraves, captains of castles, vassals, and other soldiers, with such others…
<Louis XIV, Sun King – Rest assured that Kings are Absolute Lords & naturally have free & full disposition of all the goods possessed by clergymen as well as by laymen
>I have never failed to call to your attention, whenever the occasion has arisen, how much respect we must have for religion and how much deference we must have for its ministers, particularly in regard to their mission, that is, in the celebration of the sacred mysteries and in the preaching of the Gospel. But since clergymen tend to be a little presumptuous about the privileges of their estate and since they seem to want to use them sometimes in order to escape their most legitimate duties, I feel obliged to explain to you here briefly what you should know about this matter, and which might prove useful to you, whether for making your decisions more confidently or for enforcing them more easily.
>You should therefore first rest assured that kings are absolute lords and naturally have free and full disposition of all the goods possessed by clergymen as well as by laymen, in order to use them at any time as wise administrators, that is, according to the general need of their State.
>In the second place, you should learn that these mysterious names of freedoms and liberties of the Church, with which they may try to dazzle you, regard all the faithful equally, whether lay or tonsured, who are all equally sons of this common mother who, however, exempts none of them from submission to sovereigns, which the Gospel itself specifically enjoins.
>Thirdly, all this talk about the special purpose of the property of the Church and about the intentions of the founders is only a forced scruple, for the founders of benefices could not free their donations from the restrictions and obligations that were naturally attached to them, nor can their possessors claim to hold them with more rights and privileges than the donors themselves.
>Fourthly, if the clergy have been permitted to fix their contribution in their assemblies, they cannot attribute this custom to any special privilege, since this is even practiced with the laity in most of our provinces, and it was practiced everywhere in the honesty of the early days; for indeed, at that time the mere spirit of justice sufficed to inspire each individual to give according to his means, which would never happen today; and yet all this has never prevented the compulsion of both the laity and the clergy when they have refused to perform their duty voluntarily.
>But in the last place, if anyone under our dominion should put all his possessions at our disposal, it would undoubtedly be those who, holding their benefices only by our appointment, are bound to this duty not merely by their birth like most of our subjects, but also by special motives of gratitude. The taxes that are laid on them are as old as the benefices, and we have titles to them that go back to the beginning of the Monarchy. Even the popes who have tried to deprive sovereigns of this power in order to take it over themselves have established our right in trying to weaken it, since they have been compelled to retract their claims specifically with regard to this Crown.
>But there is no need here of history, of titles, or of examples; natural equity alone suffices to prove my point. Is it fair that the nobility should work and bleed for the defence of the Kingdom and so often consume its wealth in the positions that it is given, that the people who have so many mouths to feed and provide so many soldiers should still pay all the regular taxes in spite of their poverty, while the clergy, who are dispensed by their profession from the dangers of war, from the costs of luxury, and from the burden of families should alone enjoy all the abundant public benefits without ever contributing anything to its needs?
<Zosimus - New History - Pontifex Maximus
>Hence the Romans, deriving it from the Greeks, called their own priests Pontifices, and enacted a law, that kings, for the sake of dignity, should be considered of the number. The first of their kings who enjoyed this dignity was Numa Pompilius. After him it was conferred not only upon the kings but upon Octavianus and his successors in the Roman Empire. Upon the elevation of any one to the imperial dignity, the pontifices brought him the priestly habit, and he was immediately styled, Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest. All former emperors, indeed, appeared gratified with the distinction, and willingly adopted the title. Even Constantine himself, when he was Emperor, accepted it, although he was seduced from the path of rectitude in regard to sacred affairs, and had embraced the Christian faith. In like manner did all who succeeded him to Valentinian and Valens. But when the Pontifices, in the accustomed manner, brought the sacred robe to Gratian, he, considering it a garment unlawful for a Christian to use, rejected their offer. When the robe was restored to the priests who brought it, their chief is said to have made this observation, If the emperor refuses to become Pontifex, we shall soon make one.
As much as I approved the last Shah & didn't care for the pretense of ultra-clericals & traditionalists, I don't support this call for regime change.
I feel disappointed with this crown prince. He is too kosher. He only shills democracy and not monarchy.
He hasn't built on prestige of Shah.
Admittedly, the Shah was dwarfed & far overshadowed by the Clergy, but even he tried to build a cult of personality around it & used Jamesian maxims like being the father of the people *(which I strongly approve of and love in Monarchy)… but the people were indifferent and apathetic to his ambitions.
…The crown prince and pretender here doesn't even care to build upon that cult of personality / imperial cult, which could compete with the Ayatollah, since even the Pahlavi initially were going to be a republic but the people wanted a Shah… instead of stating that Iran needs a Shah, this pretender only cares to appeal to democracy and his leadership as a transition to it…
I hate Plato's maxim that the worst rulers are people who want to rule… because of it there are all these would-be rulers playing coy with the idea of them ruling… and pretending they don't want it… and because of it you get Tolkien praising a king whose only interest is collecting stamps and watching racehorses… and people get ideas that the best ruler shouldn't rule at all and leave it to the prime minister… which comes to the opposite effect of what Plato wanted since Plato even suggested he'd FORCE these philosophers to rule, not just lazily draw back from ruling or be hands off.
Crown Prince is too kosher when Iran is being bombed by Israel. He should have cared for the prestige of his royal blood and not married his daughter to an American jew. Even the Ayatollah might care more for the prestige of his bloodline since they are sayyids.
Other elites marry their children to jews like the American presidential families, but they aren't coming from the basis of hereditary monarchy.
I understand other monarchists might approve of marrying children to foreigners, but I don't. I think it works against the cult of personality / imperial cult to detract from the blood relationship with the people you rule. King should be kin unto his people. At least with similar cultures in the region.
On what secular grounds should people like him? I get the crown prince must stress secular issues (& has done it probably even more than his father, because of this circumstance) and is courting neozoroastians, anti-islamists, atheists, etc amongst the Iranian diaspora. There are secular issues people actually care about, & they present themselves like Cyrus the Great in courting the jews… but I personally think this has gone a bit overboard. The Islamic Republic looks more nationalist on secular grounds & the crown prince criticized them for being insufficiently nationalist.
That is laughable now.
Like Hobbes says, the people should stay and give obedience to the people who protect them now.
The Pahlavis usurped the Qajars, the Ayatollahs usurped the Pahlavis – this is imperfect birth of commonwealth, and the division between secularists and shia islamists that has been on-going even from the time of the Qajars.
I won't cry crocodile tears for the Islamic Republic if they fall and think Iran was better off with the last Shah. This war, the call for regime change, & the pretender – I don't support, however.
Oh look, the latest Tamers.
I'm 9 minutes in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTMatLlnd7QUnique IPs: 37