Why Monarchy Better Protects Liberty

People tell us democracy is important because liberty is important, but the end product they deliver us is a place like Sweden, France, or the UK, where you can be arrested for thought crime, and places like the USA, where this is the eventual goal that the left is pursuing, and even if they cannot arrest you... they can socially ostracize you & destroy you financially for agitating for a cause that counters their value system.

This is only moderately better than being thrown in Newgate prison for criticizing the mayor in late medieval London. At least when they threw you in Newgate, you were given a chance to fully recant and re-absorbed into society -- if not in London, somewhere else.

I am completely confident that a Monarch will do a better job protecting you from the mob more than the mob itself.

King Charles II of Engalnd, 1630-1685

This is because of the mistake that the democrat makes when they think that it is only the free market where businesses conquer one another & compete, exercising greater amounts of undue power, but this is manageable because it ends up bringing more profit to the people... 

It also occurs in government, and every sort of institution that can then be absorbed by the competing political entities to embellish its power is also absorbed. 

The democratic process itself becomes the enemy of freedom as the possession of mechanisms to disqualify, dominate, and destroy dissidents become weapons in the hands of the competing parties. 

It works just as a monopoly in the marketplace works. It has no mercy or respect for anything but its own power. 

And what makes this far more insidious than any business pursuing unlimited profits, is that it justifies itself in political terms. It casts itself as the hero, and those it vanquishes as villains, and within the political machinery even the cynic that knowingly wields power for the mere sake of power is rare to be seen. They are ideologues enslaved to their own perspective. 

The real ingredients for a free society are the actual constitution of freedom, the various layers of institutional inertia that keep it free, and whatever additional dynamic processes exist that may also thwart attempts at institutional capture. 

Hereditary institutions may actually grant greater amounts of freedom because the hereditary ruler is entirely dependent on maintaining the status quo as it is for his own power, and there is no access point for those who would befoul the liberty that is being enjoyed. 

The great irony is that the surest way to guarantee that a society remains free and does not enslave itself is perhaps a monarchy. 

Interpersonal Subjectivity

 There is an objective reality to the universe. 

Objectivity exists in two ways; First, there is an exclusive, single set of facts about what actually happened. We may not know it, but we know that only one reality unfolded. Were the north and south kingdoms of Egypt united through war, or through some diplomatic or otherwise peaceful means? We do not know, but we know that they were eventually united, and that some series of events precipitated their unity. 

Second, there is the truth of God, which functions as objectivity over topics that we would normally consider subjective. If God says that murder is wrong, it does not matter what twisted logic the murderer presents. It is as good as objectively true because the architect of all has declared it as such. 

This ultimately leads us to Interpersonal Subjectivity, which is the reality that most of us life in. 

We cannot force any sort of agreement about value-systems, morality, abstract principles which have to be followed.We have to have the same faith or principles in order to achieve this as there is no way to demonstrate this end. 

Perhaps even more poignantly, humans often cannot even agree on the facts. There are always conspiracies about whether data was covered up, manipulated, or not fully disclosed. There is also always the potential that the correlation of the events does not mean that there is necessarily the same cause behind them. 

All discussion in the world ends up actually functioning as interpersonally subjective even if objectively true things or moral things are being said. 

This functions as a sort of curse over human interaction. But it is also a blessing in the sense that it can also be the basis for liberty. 

What Is Tradition?

 First, tradition, in the sense of it being an ideal,behaves the same way that any sort of high culture behaves. It is a series of ideas and reference points... thus, it is always an imagined, perfect thing, that does not reflect reality completely. Reality is always streaked through with human flaws.

Just like democracy or the idealized monarch, tradition is an ideal that people try to uphold. Of course, it is different from ideals in the sense that it is largely based on something handed down and much of it does not necessarily exist in a way that is ideological...

Tradition could be conceived of as the ideological prior to the popularization of the ideological. It can also be conceived of as a meta-ideology, or an ideology for everything, It is meant to encompass all wisdom, and to be the underpinning of some sort of civilization. Perhaps it can even be said that tradition is open to itself being manifested in a series of ideologies. 

Tradition is to ideology as perhaps civilization is to culture. For it is something that can spawn multiple cultures, and, in addition to spawning culture, it contributes to many other things. 

Of course, we can cut up the concept of tradition infinitely, just as we can cut up the category of culture infinitely, until each region, each age-group, each subdivision of art has a culture, and it is easy to digress infinitely on something like this, and even easier for someone to say that they do not share this lofty view of what constitutes tradition, but remember, we are using tradition here in a way that transcends any sort of normal use. 

Tradition is no longer just a word filling an expected linguistic role. 

In this context, it is part of an ideology, and a way of life. 

Hypocrisy & Jokes

 One of the main reasons religion tends to be despised is the perception of its hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is likely one of the main things that fuels contempt, and also is fodder for comedy.

I remember hearing that one of the main elements of comedy is surprise, and within the very concept of hypocrisy there is also surprise. This makes the whole edifice of stuffy, hypocritical religion a popular target for comedy. 

You can tell who really has the power in any given moment based on who you cannot joke about. It is not exactly a 1:1, as you are not necessarily going to be led exactly back to the authoritarian every time you determine what can't be joked about. Sometimes, it's Caesar's favorite pet or the charity that he set up. 

Comedy itself is a form of criticism. 

Perhaps it is the case that we must welcome even the most scathing comedy directed at ourselves because it is precisely what will humble ourselves. 

Everyone Pays for What they Have

I had an NCOIC in the Army that was a body-builder -- not just a guy who liked the gym a lot and had big muscles, but the guy who, in a group of strong, buff guys, would still be easily identifiable as THE body builder in the group. 

What stood out about him was the crazy amount of sacrifice that went into his body. He exercised twice a day, for two hours, and Saturdays and holidays always started off with a massive 4-6 hour gym session. He never drank, meticulously regulated everything he ate, and led the cleanest lifestyle of us all. Even though the guy probably had this natural talent all along, this was completely obfuscated by the amount of discipline & effort he put into it. 

You can see this with everything... 

Ever hear the weekly schedule of a chess grandmaster? I remember hearing the scheduel fo Levon Aronian and the guy studies chess 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, and he rests on Sunday with... 4-6 hours of chess.  And this is not playing chess -- he's not on some Live stream laughing it up while people donate him money. He's buried in books, being coached by elite chessmen, and playing exhausting, rigorous games against chess engines. 

I learned that people basically get what they put in. 

And that is fine.

It is a lot easier to not be jealous of a chess master when you realize that you spend 50 hours a week less than him studying chess; it's a lot easier to not be jealous of a supermodel when you realize that you get to eat pizza and don't live in a gym. It also develops a greater sense fo respect for their sacrifice and, to some extent, it makes them look a little bit silly and not right in the head. Not that this is necessarily true -- perhaps they really do enjoy it more than we enjoy our regular jobs, but imagine the horror of hearing about a model or chess player who turned his hobby into his job, and subsequently his hobby became his torture machine.