Counterpoint.

I must confess that I had a fitful night of sleep, ruminating on my options in the wake of my recent troubles. This is the quaint reason for my early rise. I have been advised to let the matter drop, although I am inclined to agitate for my rights and for some just compensation. It is gloomy commentary on the state of affairs that one of such gentle nature can be subjected to ignominy and mischief at the rough hands of brigands with badges and be further abused by those low creatures who prowl the gutters of our cities.

Nevertheless, I will continue on and find some solace in the knowledge of the rightness of my position.

As I have already stated, I do not wish to debase myself with talk of politics. And I do not intend to engage in a tit-for-tat with my host. However, I cannot let stand the previous post without some retort, in like manner:

To state the matter shortly, royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and human reason weak, royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.

-Walter Bagehot (1867): The English Constitution

The issue with the modern conception of government is the failure to govern. Democracy is a happy fiction, or rather a temporary one, taking as its legitimacy a reaction to a form a government that only until recently was the standard. That standard has been scuttled and replaced by a poor imposter, as evident in the inherent contradiction in the formation of constitutional monarchy. The English sovereign, for example, reserves certain powers such as the power to summon or dissolve Parliament, invite a MP to form a government, dismiss a prime minister, etc. Bagehot correctly characterized the monarchy as a "theatrical element," although he considered this a plus rather than a defect. He saw the monarch as an entertainer charged with sedating "crowds of people scarcely more civilised than the majority of two thousand years ago."

The modern monarchy is but a comic shadow of its former glory, and has lead us to the current opera comedia we regard as serious government.

-AQP

Comments

[Daniel]

This is absurd. Are you really advocating the establishment of a monarchy? This "standard" that for millennia has been the cause of so much misery?

[AQP]

Don't be ridiculous. The reestablishment of the Monarchy. And I see no evidence that democracies are any less brutal than monarchies.

When monarchs make war, they do so with their own treasure, and for conquest of territory or wealth, not for some vague notion of spreading a particular philosophy.

Face it, Daniel, Democracy is a rather unstable form of government, and has yet to prove that it can last. This fetish that you have for republican fantasies is charming, but quite wrong-headed.