The Catholic Monarchy, Fascism and government thread

Started by Adeodatus, June 15, 2013, 06:23:44 PM

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The Harlequin King

Quote from: Greg on June 16, 2013, 05:23:00 PM
Minimum Government.  I'd vote for anyone who would massively cut government to the bare bones and make adults responsible for their own actions and inactions.

Really rocking the boat there.

As a private citizen, I would agree. If I were raised to political office, I would immediately change my opinions on that.

voxxpopulisuxx

Quote from: The Harlequin King on June 16, 2013, 05:44:44 PM
Quote from: Greg on June 16, 2013, 05:23:00 PM
Minimum Government.  I'd vote for anyone who would massively cut government to the bare bones and make adults responsible for their own actions and inactions.

Really rocking the boat there.

As a private citizen, I would agree. If I were raised to political office, I would immediately change my opinions on that.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/14546-calvin-coolidge-and-the-greatness-of-a-not-great-president
QuoteIf brevity is the soul of wit, it is unfortunate that Calvin Coolidge (shown) is remembered more for his greatly exaggerated brevity than for his frequently overlooked wit. Indeed, two of the famous quotes attributed to Coolidge have often been cited to suggest dullness rather than keenness of insight.

"The business of America is business," our 30th president said, suggesting to some people a too narrow view of the meaning of life and politics in this blessed Republic. Worse, a badly worded statement about unemployment ("When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.") makes our 30th president seem as rhetorically inept as our 43rd. But unlike George W. Bush, Calvin Coolidge would have seen the folly of getting the federal government more heavily and unconstitutionally involved in the education of American children, to the point where President Obama is now calling for a national preschool program. And while the man from Plymouth Notch, Vermont, sometimes displayed a New England style of folksiness, he did not take the kind of liberties with rules of grammar and logic the second President Bush took when he spoke of how "wings take dream" and raised the question, "Is our children learning?" Nor did Coolidge have Bush's peculiar talent for expressing sympathy for Americans "working hard to put food on your family."

When the White House staff was but a fraction of the size it is today, a popular story of Coolidge concerned the question of how many people he had working for him at the White House. "About half of them," came the reply. Whether the issue was government employees, the federal budget or collegiality in the U.S. Senate, Coolidge was an acknowledged master at getting to the heart of the matter quickly, decisively — and succinctly. Once a senator was foolish enough to complain to the president of a colleague who had told him to go to hell.

"I looked up the law, Senator," Coolidge replied, "and you don't have to go."

Sticks and stones may break our bones, we learned in grade school, but names will never harm us. Coolidge said essentially the same thing, though far more cleverly. Yet he was rarely, if ever, clever merely for the sake of being clever. It could not fairly be said of Coolidge what was said years later about the brash and controversial journalist, William F. Buckley, Jr. "Mr. Buckley," former Attorney General Ramsey Clark complained during a debate, "would rather be clever than right."

"I don't know why anyone would rather be clever than right," his nemesis coolly replied, "when the good Lord has given him the option of being both." The good Lord surely gave Coolidge the option of being both. And Coolidge, being economical in all things, was not inclined to waste the blessings of the Lord.

"I am for economy," Coolidge said. "After that I am for more economy." President Clinton came into office promising to "focus like a laser beam" on the economy. (Bush 43, sinking his teeth into a task, described himself "a pit bull on the pant leg of opportunity.") While the 42nd president did preside over a thriving economy, Coolidge's laser beams were far more powerful and effective. Coolidge was the vice president who inherited the chief executive job when the scandal-plagued Warren Harding died in August 1923. Elected in his own right in 1924, he presided over a nation still enjoying record prosperity when he retired from the White House on March 4, 1933. In a new biography, titled simply Coolidge, Amity Shlaes has highlighted some of the remarkable achievements the nation enjoyed during Coolidge's time in the White House.

Under Coolidge, the top income tax rate came down by half, to 25 percent. Under Coolidge, the federal budget was always in surplus. Under Coolidge, unemployment was 5 percent or even 3 percent. Under Coolidge, Americans wired their homes for electricity and bought their first cars or household appliances on credit. Under Coolidge, the economy grew strongly, even as the federal government shrank.

Under Coolidge, the rates of patent applications and patents granted increased dramatically. Under Coolidge, there came no federal antilynching law, but lynchings themselves became less frequent and Ku Klux Klan membership dropped by millions. Under Coolidge, a man from a town without a railroad station, America moved from the road into the air.

Not bad for a man critics have derided for decades as a "do-nothing president." It was precisely by making sure the government did less than "progressives" desired that Coolidge left room for the American people to do more, as "the business of America" prospered. In an era of growing prosperity, the rich, while paying at a lower rate, actually paid a greater share of the income tax than they had under the higher rates. And it was not only the rich who prospered in the days of  "Coolidge prosperity." As President Kennedy would later observe, "A rising tide lifts all boats." The man called "Silent Cal" couldn't have said it better himself.

Both Kennedy and Ronald Reagan realized that lower rates of taxation could spur increased productivity that would result in higher yields of revenue. Both men, accordingly, pushed tax cuts for economic growth. While Kennedy was not inclined to praise Calvin Coolidge, Reagan riled Democrats by replacing the portrait of Harry Truman in the Cabinet Room with a painting of Coolidge.

The gesture was symbolic, but symbols don't balance budgets, and neither did Reagan. During his eight years in office, the beloved Gipper, for all his conservative rhetoric, presided over a near doubling of the federal budget and near tripling of the national debt. Republicans could blame the Democrats in Congress, though Republicans held a majority of the Senate seats for the first six years of Reagan's tenure and could have blocked spending measures passed by the House. And, of course, Reagan could have made more frequent use of the veto. As it was, though the spending priorities differed, the budgets passed by Congress were often slightly less than those proposed by Reagan. Despite his professed admiration for Coolidge, it may be that Reagan, a former New Deal Democrat, never got over his infatuation with Franklin Roosevelt.

Historians and political scholars over the years have placed Coolidge anywhere from 23rd to 33rd in polls ranking U.S. presidents. Perhaps because he neither started a war nor prolonged an economic crisis, he will likely never make the "great" or even "near great" category. Coolidge seemed to anticipate that and seemed not at all to mind. Lincoln's rhetoric was made immortal in no small part by his seemingly homespun ability to wrap grandeur in humility. "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here," he said at Gettysburg, thereby ensuring through the power of his eloquence that the world would long remember what he said there. Coolidge, in his less grand but no less wise rhetoric, uttered a simple but profound thought that might amaze those who like to rate presidents according to their "greatness":

"it is a great advantage to a president, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know he is not a great man."
Lord Jesus Christ Most High Son of God have Mercy On Me a Sinner (Jesus Prayer)

"You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore." – Christopher Columbus
911!
"Let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth's sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won. "— Louisa May Alcott

"From man's sweat and God's love, beer came into the world."St. Arnold (580-640)

Geocentrism holds no possible atheistic downside.

Greg

Quote from: Kaesekopf on June 16, 2013, 05:29:58 PM
Quote from: Greg on June 16, 2013, 05:23:00 PM
Minimum Government.  I'd vote for anyone who would massively cut government to the bare bones and make adults responsible for their own actions and inactions.

You're a madman!

:lol:

Perhaps, but it is no less unlikely than a Catholic Monarchy.
Contentment is knowing that you're right. Happiness is knowing that someone else is wrong.

voxxpopulisuxx

Quote from: Greg on June 16, 2013, 07:47:06 PM
Quote from: Kaesekopf on June 16, 2013, 05:29:58 PM
Quote from: Greg on June 16, 2013, 05:23:00 PM
Minimum Government.  I'd vote for anyone who would massively cut government to the bare bones and make adults responsible for their own actions and inactions.

You're a madman!

:lol:

Perhaps, but it is no less unlikely than a Catholic Monarchy.
Yeah in the USA no less  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Lord Jesus Christ Most High Son of God have Mercy On Me a Sinner (Jesus Prayer)

"You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore." – Christopher Columbus
911!
"Let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth's sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won. "— Louisa May Alcott

"From man's sweat and God's love, beer came into the world."St. Arnold (580-640)

Geocentrism holds no possible atheistic downside.

MilesChristi

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

LouisIX

#20
It seems to me that the only "advantage" to an elected monarchy (and by elected I mean continually elected; obviously if you're starting a monarchy from scratch you're probably going to begin by electing someone somehow) is that it's a check against the risk of hereditary monarchy.

But the major downfall of any election is that often times men push for election.  If the electors are wise they won't choose someone they know to be pushing for his own election, but men are smart, subversive, cunning, etc.  With the elections, what often happens is that the man willing to go the furthest wins.  This is a definite weakness of elections.  The lying, conniving, conspiring men rise to the top.  Hereditary monarchy erases this altogether (so long as you can stop assassinations).

Of course, the risk with hereditary monarchy is that you'll happen to eventually get a bad monarch.  But, in my opinion of the ideal scenario, there are numerous Catholic kingdoms which can be called upon to intervene by the Church if one monarch goes rogue and deviates from Church teaching or mistreats his subjects.
IF I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

Greg

Contentment is knowing that you're right. Happiness is knowing that someone else is wrong.

The Harlequin King

Quote from: LouisIX on June 17, 2013, 12:09:53 AMBut the major downfall of any election is that often times men push for election.  If the electors are wise they won't choose someone they know to be pushing for his own election, but men are smart, subversive, cunning, etc.  With the elections, what often happens is that the man willing to go the furthest wins.  This is a definite weakness of elections.  The lying, conniving, conspiring men rise to the top.  Hereditary monarchy erases this altogether (so long as you can stop assassinations).

I personally prefer men with ambition who want to rule versus those who don't. I understand why one might disagree, though, so I won't press the point.

QuoteOf course, the risk with hereditary monarchy is that you'll happen to eventually get a bad monarch.  But, in my opinion of the ideal scenario, there are numerous Catholic kingdoms which can be called upon to intervene by the Church if one monarch goes rogue and deviates from Church teaching or mistreats his subjects.

Ideally, yes. In practice, it doesn't look good because some nations are exponentially more powerful than others. I can't think off the top of my head of a single event in history when a Catholic monarchy ever successfully intervened against the ruler of another independent state for the better. The most notorious example, of course, is Philip II's armada. 16th century Spain versus England was as uneven a match as the modern US versus Mexico.... and the English still won! An embarrassment for Catholic-dom to this very day. And I don't recall any Catholic powers successfully intervening for Ireland.... ever.

In the modern context, if the US were a Catholic monarchy but our king became a heretic/tyrant, it's unlikely that foreign intervention would ever be an option. If every state in the EU were an orthodox monarchy, our military would still steamroll them all in a traditional slugfest. Even if China went Catholic, they'd need a much bigger reason to overthrow our king than just because the Pope asked them to.

The Harlequin King

Quote from: ImperialGuardsman on June 15, 2013, 11:18:42 PMNow, if the best form of governemnet is one that mirrors as closely as possible Heaven, would not an absolute monarchy be best?

That's one to way to look at it. By that logic, the state should also provide as much welfare as possible for everyone because in heaven, everything is provided for by God, and no one has to work.

LouisIX

Quote from: The Harlequin King on June 17, 2013, 04:01:12 PM
Quote from: LouisIX on June 17, 2013, 12:09:53 AMBut the major downfall of any election is that often times men push for election.  If the electors are wise they won't choose someone they know to be pushing for his own election, but men are smart, subversive, cunning, etc.  With the elections, what often happens is that the man willing to go the furthest wins.  This is a definite weakness of elections.  The lying, conniving, conspiring men rise to the top.  Hereditary monarchy erases this altogether (so long as you can stop assassinations).

I personally prefer men with ambition who want to rule versus those who don't. I understand why one might disagree, though, so I won't press the point.

QuoteOf course, the risk with hereditary monarchy is that you'll happen to eventually get a bad monarch.  But, in my opinion of the ideal scenario, there are numerous Catholic kingdoms which can be called upon to intervene by the Church if one monarch goes rogue and deviates from Church teaching or mistreats his subjects.

Ideally, yes. In practice, it doesn't look good because some nations are exponentially more powerful than others. I can't think off the top of my head of a single event in history when a Catholic monarchy ever successfully intervened against the ruler of another independent state for the better. The most notorious example, of course, is Philip II's armada. 16th century Spain versus England was as uneven a match as the modern US versus Mexico.... and the English still won! An embarrassment for Catholic-dom to this very day. And I don't recall any Catholic powers successfully intervening for Ireland.... ever.

In the modern context, if the US were a Catholic monarchy but our king became a heretic/tyrant, it's unlikely that foreign intervention would ever be an option. If every state in the EU were an orthodox monarchy, our military would still steamroll them all in a traditional slugfest. Even if China went Catholic, they'd need a much bigger reason to overthrow our king than just because the Pope asked them to.

All quite true, but an ideal scenario would also feature much, much smaller kingdoms than the entire countries of China and America.
IF I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

The Harlequin King

Quote from: LouisIX on June 17, 2013, 04:43:49 PM
All quite true, but an ideal scenario would also feature much, much smaller kingdoms than the entire countries of China and America.

I'm also in favor of smaller governments. A king ruling a population of only one million is a lot more accessible to the common man than a king ruling a population of a billion. But what do you think about those guys who say we all need to be subject to the rule of a single, worldwide Holy Roman Emperor?

Adeodatus

This thread has been great so far.

As to who I would nominate for fascist ruler... I can't think of anyone in particular, because to me the ideal ruler is not someone who seeks to rule or be famous but seeks to serve his country silently and well. As far as ambition goes... it does take some ambition to rule or even to stand for office (I'm looking at you, Fred Thompson). I think that Spain did well with General Franco because his ambition did not seem to extend beyond the scope of patriotism, something which can be said of few men.

On the other hand, Franco's regime barely outlasted him because I believe that, for all his virtues, he was shortsighted. The "technocrats", essentially cientificos, had no organized interest in maintaining the national movement, which had ceased to function politically and was merely an element of the cursus honorum. Thus heroic Spain reverted to secularism and then to socialism.

If you could somehow integrate the best points of a Franco and a Jose Antonio, or at least have a Caudillo who took seriously the necessity of continuous struggle (not the chaos of permanent revolution but the ever-presence of social, cultural and moral militancy), he to me would be an ideal leader.

I personally see no promise for monarchy in the USA because we have no tradition of it and people could not be persuaded that it was even reasonable. I believe it is in our culture to seek a meritocracy and monarchic succession is no longer a necessary means to ensure a modicum of merit in a ruler.

As to the question of smaller states... I think it is the nature of the stronger state to want to consume the weaker. This is not always territorial in nature, but can happen economically. Historical circumstances can forestall the process, and there are always reverses, but the smaller the state the less defense it has against the larger one. The USA has essentially a single overall culture (such as it is) and that can be the basis, as it has in the past, for a superpowerful state. It would seem silly to break it up unless necessary.
¡Viva Cristo Rey!
Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai E?ad

LouisIX

Quote from: The Harlequin King on June 17, 2013, 05:12:49 PM
Quote from: LouisIX on June 17, 2013, 04:43:49 PM
All quite true, but an ideal scenario would also feature much, much smaller kingdoms than the entire countries of China and America.

I'm also in favor of smaller governments. A king ruling a population of only one million is a lot more accessible to the common man than a king ruling a population of a billion. But what do you think about those guys who say we all need to be subject to the rule of a single, worldwide Holy Roman Emperor?

I think that can only work with some real sense of monarchical subsidiarity.  Regional kings should govern their subjects and answer to an Emperor.  The Emperor, given his distance from the people, should attempt to rule only on issues which require some broad judgment for the entire empire.  Local affairs should be dealt with in-kingdom (so to speak) as much as possible.
IF I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

OCLittleFlower

Okay -- I just had a few random thoughts reading your OP, so I'm quoting you and saying them but I'm not really DEBATING in any real sense.

Quote from: Adeodatus on June 15, 2013, 06:23:44 PM
I know a lot of people support Catholic monarchy as a good form of government. I look upon it fondly as well: my avatar is a Carlist requete after all. However, as a practical matter the form of government that I advocate for my homeland is actually Fascism. I expect that if the discussion takes off and remains an actual discussion we'll tease out the reasons for that eventually.

I also think of Monarchy as a general ideal, but I don't know how a hypothetical "King of America" would be chosen, even if everyone was an awesome Monarchist Trad.  Is that part of your reason for preferring Fascism?

I'm not sure what I think the best form of government for the modern day US is -- especially when we start talking about things in terms of "realistic."

Quote from: Adeodatus on June 15, 2013, 06:23:44 PM
By "monarchy" I mean a state in which some portion of actual political power resides in the hands of a sole ruler whose position is to some extent hereditary and whose succession is likewise not governed wholly by electoral procedures. So a monarch might come to reign as part of a "house", such as being the eldest son, or might be chosen by noble electors from among a set of eligible nobles, etc. Essentially, the monarch must be a hereditary aristocrat and must actually take some significant part of the governance of his state.

By this definition, North Korea is a sort of monarchy, in very loose terms.  At the very least, the current leader took over after his father and grandfather.  Obviously, it isn't a Catholic monarchy and the people aren't treated well by nearly anyone's definition.  But their government has become hereditary, even if it isn't in a formalized way.
-- currently writing a Trad romance entitled Flirting with Sedevacantism --

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OCLittleFlower

Quote from: The Harlequin King on June 16, 2013, 03:59:02 PM



If I were the hypothetical ruler, I'd impose a semi-hereditary succession. All of my children would be potential heirs, and I would nominate my successor in a will that could only be opened after my death. This system was sometimes used by the Chinese emperors and ensured both a degree of competition and quality control while maintaining the continuity of the dynasty.

Interesting.  I can see the merits, of course, but there are also drawbacks, IMO.

For one thing, the sons (and daughters?) might misrepresent their merits to their father.  For another, the "rejects" won't know they are being rejected, so basically they are orienting their lives toward winning a competition they may not actually win.  Whereas, if they were aware that, as the non-heir apparent, they could plan ahead and live their lives accordingly.
-- currently writing a Trad romance entitled Flirting with Sedevacantism --

???? ?? ?????? ????????? ???, ?? ?????.