The Disturbing Rise of Monarchism in America

[EasyAce]

Across the political spectrum, longing for a strongman–savior has reached uncomfortable levels.
By Max Bloom
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449455/american-monarchism-bipartisan-authoritarian-tendencies-growing

. . . First, I should clarify. By monarchy I do not mean hereditary monarchy, which would adapt itself poorly to the
relatively egalitarian class structure of modern America. Nor do I necessarily mean absolute monarchy, although there
are some who want that. The monarchy I’m imagining could be an elective one, and it could admit certain informal
constraints. But I don’t want to weaken my position too much either: I am not referring to the purely ceremonial
monarchies of Northern Europe, nor am I making reference to a heavily regulated constitutional monarchy existing
within the strictures of a mixed government. I term as monarchy what Polybius calls “kingship,” a rule of one “voluntarily
accepted by the subjects and where they are governed rather by an appeal to their reason than by fear and force,”
which operates in contradistinction to aristocracy, democracy, or some form of mixed government such as operates
in America today. This monarchy might depend on popular ratification in some way, perhaps through regular elections
or referenda, but it would not be accountable to representative bodies, appointed councils, or high courts, and it would
claim virtually all policymaking and governance under its remit.

Monarchy in America has its most frank proponents in a fringe alt-right group generally called the “neo-reactionaries.”
Without undertaking here the mammoth task of outlining neo-reactionary belief in full, we can perhaps summarize the
school of thought as a belief that liberal values — meaning everything from modern progressivism to female suffrage
and racial equality, depending on the particular brand of neo-reactionary — are deleterious to society and are pushed
by elite liberal organs (collectively denoted the “Cathedral”) that subvert whatever pretense of democracy still exists
in the West. What’s the solution? Naturally, “a Stuart restoration in an independent England.”

It’s not worth talking very long about these neo-reactionaries, since basically no one of importance supports their
ultimate aim. Consider instead Michael Anton’s widely publicized essay “The Flight 93 Election,” which argues that
traditional conservative values are at risk of being annihilated by progressives, that the conservative establishment
is in hoc to elite liberal organs, and that democratic institutions have been so thoroughly corrupted that they offer
no realistic chance of salvation. This may sound familiar.

Admittedly, Michael Anton’s proposed solution in September 2016, when the article was published, was to elect Donald
Trump president, not to restore the Stuart monarchy. But his argument is, at its heart, neo-reactionary, and his implicit
solution is monarchical. Anton sees the network of American institutions that have always helped maintain our checks
and balances as fundamentally compromised. Citing an article by Matthew Continetti as a reference point for the damaged
condition of America, Anton helpfully reminds us that “Decentralization and federalism are all well and good,” before
proceeding to inquire, “But how are they going to save, or even meaningfully improve the America that Continetti
describes? What can they do against a tidal wave of dysfunction, immorality, and corruption?” Ultimately, these solutions
just represent “conservatism’s typical combination of the useless and inapt with the utopian and unrealizable.” These do
not sound much like the words of someone seriously invested in decentralization and federalism . . .

. . . This impulse is the root of monarchism in certain corners of the American Right: a conviction that it is the end of
days, that traditional institutions are powerless to stop the Left, and that the office of the presidency is the only defense.
This is fundamentally the neo-reactionary narrative, stripped of its most heterodox trappings and tooled for the present
political moment. This is the thinking at work when Sean Hannity declares that the Trump presidency is under threat from
the “destroy-Trump media . . . joined by the destroy-Trump Democrats, the Washington deep-state establishment, weak,
establishment Republicans, and never-Trumpers” and that Congress has “failed the president.” Or when Rush Limbaugh
laments that Republican congressmen have no intention of achieving conservative ends and that Trump must no longer
“continue to work with Republicans.” For Hannity and Limbaugh, America’s only possible way forward is leadership by
Trump and Trump alone, with Congress either ignored or rendered subservient.

If monarchism on the talk-show Right is a panic-driven search for a strongman who can finally roll back progressive
victories, monarchism on the American center-left is a cooler affair, embedded in a culture of celebrity politicians that
disdains republican checks and extols the virtues of a technocratic leader unencumbered by process or constraint. The
liberal fixation with charisma has been much commented on – Obama is only the latest beneficiary of that peculiar
reverence progressives once showed for Bill Clinton, Kennedy, Roosevelt, and Wilson – and it has been married lately
to a disdain for the grubby work of politics, the messy beliefs of the American people themselves, and the irritating
procedural safeguards installed by the Constitution . . .

. . . When Obama was president, adoration for the might of the executive grew to remarkable proportions on the Left.
It was as if no problem could not be solved by some clever application of presidential power. Disputes over the debt
ceiling? Mint a $1 trillion platinum coin. Republicans don’t want gun control? Just have the president confiscate all the
guns. Senators won’t hold hearings on Merrick Garland? Execute a bizarre, incoherent, and illegal parliamentary maneuver
to get around them. Thomas Friedman did a good job summarizing liberal attitudes toward checks on Obama when he
suggested in September of 2009 that “there is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party
democracy,” by which he meant the refusal of Republicans to join Democrats on energy and health-care legislation.
For Friedman, China-style one-party rule would literally have been better than a multi-party system of checks and
balances where one party refused to play ball with the president. To be fair, monarchy is only one authoritarian system
among many, but, like that of nearly everyone who shares his ideology, Friedman’s particular model of authoritarianism
is organized around charismatic liberals such as Obama . . .

. . . [T]he American fondness for checks and balances, for the mixed government that has so long served us well, is
fast being replaced by a bipartisan fervor for unchecked presidential rule, elective monarchy in form if not in name.
In the near-term at least, we still possess the institutions capable of ensuring that no individual leader truly runs away
with the American government: The decisions of the Supreme Court will still be respected and Congress will still be at
least somewhat autonomous. But this won’t last forever without a cultural recommitment to truly republican principles:
The president must heed the Supreme Court in large part because he knows that there are limits to what the American
people will let him get away with; congressmen must act as checks on the president because their constituents expect
them to do so. If, someday, these expectations no longer hold, then the American system of government truly will have
failed. And, for now, the prognosis is grim.

The case, then, is as strong as it has ever been to march in the opposite direction as Michael Anton and to pursue ever
more vigorously a policy of decentralization and federalism. American politics is as dysfunctional as it is in large part
because we are a diverse, disparate nation and we have abandoned many of the mechanisms that once served to localize,
decentralize, and democratize policymaking. Increasingly, our national politics is approaching a winner-take-all system
where all decisions are made in Washington and the best outcome for Massachusetts and Montana alike is to pray that
a sympathetic president restructures the nation as much as possible to their advantage in his brief time in office. Is it
any wonder then that the party of the president is perpetually clamoring for him to be made king? Our last, best
recourse is to de-escalate, to move policymaking back to the states and to local governments, and to refrain from turning
every local dispute over politics into a national referendum on the future of America. The future of our nation depends
on it.

[Cripplecreek]

Monarchists are no countrymen of mine.

[Oceander]

Monarchism is also a bipartisan vice.

[EasyAce]

Monarchism is also a bipartisan vice.

a.k.a. the Cult of the Presidency; or, the president as our national daddy. Democrats have touted their
Roosevelts, Kennedys, Clintons, and Obamas as our saviour-king-daddies; Republicans have touted
their Reagans, Bush IIs, and Trumps as our saviour-king-daddies. And when not elected, they have
touted their assorted candidates as saviour-king (queen)-daddies (mommies). Oh, sure, they couch
it in the rhetoric of we've got to bring that damn recalcitrant government in line, but they
say little to nothing when it turns out also to be we've got to keep the damn recalcitrant people in
line, and never mind such pesky little things as a certain Supreme Law of the Land . . .

[Frank Cannon]

First, I should clarify.

You need to clarify you effing stupid NR hack because what you are explaining ISN'T a monarchy. You are just selling it as that because you drool on yourself trying to make your brain work.

[Oceander]

First, I should clarify.

You need to clarify you effing stupid NR hack because what you are explaining ISN'T a monarchy. You are just selling it as that because you drool on yourself trying to make your brain work.

Here come the Trump harpies.

[Frank Cannon]

Here come the Trump harpies.

Well since you are going to violate the set rules here at TBR about insulting other posters, let me respond you shitbag by pointing out that I said nothing about Trump. I am calling out the no name loser who wrote this garbage for making up new definitions to well defined words just to make his paycheck this week.

Uncalled for attack, @Frank Cannon ~should have cleaned this up hours ago~Mod8

[Oceander]

nasty, nasty stuff~edited by Mod8

Like I said on the other thread about your nastiness:  it's like a poker player's "tell" - the nastier you get, the more obviously scared you are.

[Wingnut]

mon·ar·chism
ˈ
support for the principle of having monarchs.

Well ain't that the shits.   

[Cripplecreek]

Like I said on the other thread about your nastiness:  it's like a poker player's "tell" - the nastier you get, the more obviously scared you are.

Like a monkey in a zoo. It knows it is helpless so all it can do is crap in its hand and fling it at something.

[Frank Cannon]

Like I said on the other thread about your nastiness:  it's like a poker player's "tell" - the nastier you get, the more obviously scared you are.

damnit @Frank Cannon you have pushed it over the line~Mod8

[EasyAce]

mon·ar·chism
ˈ
support for the principle of having monarchs.

Well ain't that the shits.

It's difficult if not impossible to deny that there are too many among us in this country who prefer
a monarchic president. (Monarchism doesn't automatically imply favouring a hereditary royal type.)
Difficult if not impossible to deny, and depressing to contemplate.

[INVAR]

It is man's clamoring nature to be ruled by a monarchy.

To put all power into the hands of a man whom they want to provide for them and save them rather than risk liberty and put their faith in their Creator.

Ancient Israel demanded one, even though they were warned of the consequences, and that they would lose their liberties, their sons, their wealth, their peace, their property.

They did not care.  They ELECTED a monarchy to rule them, and God gave them over to their demands and selected their first for them.  They chose worse and worse for themselves until they wiped themselves out.

The government becomes God and takes the place of Provider when a people empower it to do the things this people want the government to do for them, even when they call themselves a democracy.  All experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer evil, while evils are sufferable than abolish the forms to which they have become accustomed.

Liberty is a risk most do not want.  They want the freedom to what they want without consequences and to have someone else pay for it.  No better definition of dependence upon men I can think of.

[Wingnut]

It's difficult if not impossible to deny that there are too many among us in this country who prefer
a monarchic president. (Monarchism doesn't automatically imply favouring a hereditary royal type.)
Difficult if not impossible to deny, and depressing to contemplate.

Well Ace, if that is so... I sure don't hang with anyone who thinks that way.   So I reject your premise.

[EasyAce]

Well Ace, if that is so... I sure don't hang with anyone who thinks that way.   So I reject your premise.

I don't hang with bears in the woods, but that doesn't mean there are no bears in the woods.

[Wingnut]

Like a monkey in a zoo. It knows it is helpless so all it can do is crap in its hand and fling it at something.

That is alway my go-to plan.   

[MOD8]

I dont like the direction this is going one damn bit, there will surely be timeouts if I have to come back in here. Chill!!!!

[Frank Cannon]

Well Ace, if that is so... I sure don't hang with anyone who thinks that way.   So I reject your premise.

Either do I. Where are all these Monarchists if it is the hip new thing?

[Wingnut]

I don't hang with bears in the woods, but that doesn't mean there are no bears in the woods.

I shit in the woods when I have to.    Wait...  where was I going with this....  Oh yeah... I'm throwing my poo at you!   lol

[Wingnut]

I dont like the direction this is going one damn bit, there will surely be timeouts if I have to come back in here. Chill!!!!

FYI....
When we need a zoo keeper we will rattle your cage.


   Your disrespect is noted~Mod8

[EasyAce]

Oh yeah... I'm throwing my poo at you!   lol

I knew it---screwball off the outside corner. ;)

[Frank Cannon]

FYI....
When we need a zoo keeper we will rattle your cage.

LOL. Top notch.

   Your disrespect is noted also Mr. Cannon

[EasyAce]

FYI....
When we need a zoo keeper we will rattle your cage.

Democracy---the fine art of running the circus from the monkey cage.---H.L. Mencken.

[Wingnut]

I knew it---screwball off the outside corner. ;)

Most assuredly!   

 

[InHeavenThereIsNoBeer]

mon·ar·chism
ˈ
support for the principle of having monarchs.

A while back I started looking at plants to attract butterflies to the garden.  Got tired of "self-pollinating" the eggplant, if you know what I mean.  While researching, I learned of the plight of the monarch butterfly, which between habitat destruction and a cold snap in Mexico several years ago are not doing well.  Since I live in a place where it's not allowed to frost, and the monarchs won't be able to winter in Mexico once we build the stupid wall (not to mention the pleasure I get in screwing with evolution, as any evil right-winger must), I ordered some milkweed seeds and started growing them so that the monarchs would have a habitat in the winter.

Last night I found my first two monarch caterpillars.  Yeah!

And now, not 24 hours later, some jerk off at NRO is attacking me for supporting monarchs.  I'll tell you what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna post without reading the article, that'll show the SOB!