Should the US return to monarchy

[BeBMan]

Maybe this whole "no kings" approach of 1776 was a mistake

A small minority of humans suffer from personality disorders such as narcissism and psychopathy. People with these disorders feel an insatiable lust for power. People with narcissistic personality disorder desire constant attention and affirmation. They feel that they are superior to others and have the right to dominate them. They also lack empathy, which means that they are able to ruthlessly exploit and abuse others in their lust for power. Psychopaths feel a similar sense of superiority and lack of empathy, but the main difference between them and narcissists is that they don't feel the same impulse for attention and adoration. To an extent, the impulse to be adored acts as a check on the behavior of narcissists. They are reluctant to do anything that might make them too unpopular. But psychopaths have no such qualms.

At the other end of the scale, people with a high level of empathy and compassion usually aren’t interested in power. They prefer to be "on the ground," interacting and connecting with others. They may even refuse the offer of a high-status position because they’re aware that higher status will disconnect them (although for a non-empathic person, that is part of its appeal). So this leaves positions of power open for people with psychological disorders (or at least with a high level of ambition and ruthlessness, even if not a fully fledged psychological disorder).

Throughout history, these pathological individuals have always risen to the top. In some ways, pre-industrial feudal societies restricted them, since power was often bequeathed by birth rather than attained by individual efforts. The demise of the feudal system was certainly a positive step towards greater equality and democracy, but a negative side effect was that it gave psychopaths and narcissists greater opportunity to attain positions of power.
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(Bolding by someone)

SnipSnapped from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...907/pathocracy

Seems to be an established thing that sociopaths thrive at high levels, be it in the economy, or in politics (I haven't done any research on this, but hey this thread would be pointless otherwise, so let's go with it).

Going back to hereditary rule may limit the worst things here. Of course if the righteous heir to the next WH would be the sociopath in the royal family too we'd be pretty helpless.

[Lorizael]

lol LOL. "hrm hrm in feudalism people just stick to the hereditary line" is wildly ahistorical. History is replete with examples of an heir coming to power... and then a bunch of people deciding someone else should be in power and either launching a bloody coup or starting a civil war. In a democracy, instead, whoever doesn't get to be in charge just goes "oh well, we can always try again next time." And next time is usually only a few years away. There are counterexamples, for sure (Athens swinging between tyrants and democracy, pogroms in the post-Reconstruction South when blacks won local elections, etc.), but overall democracies are vastly better at sticking to "the rules" of who gets to be in charge.

[Uncle Sparky]

King Henry and Queen Meghan?
Or should RuPaul be Queen?

[BeBMan]

lol LOL. "hrm hrm in feudalism people just stick to the hereditary line" is wildly ahistorical. History is replete with examples of an heir coming to power... and then a bunch of people deciding someone else should be in power and either launching a bloody coup or starting a civil war. In a democracy, instead, whoever doesn't get to be in charge just goes "oh well, we can always try again next time."

If random examples are enough I point to a variety of military coups in the 20th century alone doing away with democratic rule. Otoh much of the upheaval in monarchies is a struggle for the throne, so leaves the overall system of rule intact, just with a different guy/family on top who then seek to continue their hereditary line - successfully or not.

Not to mention that civil wars aren't limited to a particular system. Given that modern democracy is still relatively young compared to monarchic systems I'm not sure how both would compare in the field of long-term stability.

However, I'm not arguing in favor of monarchy here (surprise). I just think illiberal democracies/tendencies which are on the rise aren't that much better.

[Elok]

Yay, Psychology Today is parroting Curtis Yarvin's bull**** now. No. Royal legitimacy helped somewhat but the rules often had weird loopholes or ambiguities; the Hundred Years' War and Wars of the Roses were both (lengthy) disputes over who was rightful king (first of France, then once that was done of England). Also War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Austrian Succession, arguably the start of the Thirty Years' War ... haven't done a study, but it seems likely "who should be king" is one of the most common causes of war in a monarchy, if not the most common. Up till the time of the Reformation, that is--the Reformation being an essentially political event severing a bunch of northern states from Papal power, and in that sense still about who's going to be king. And those are in states with established rules about who gets to be king. Byzantine and Roman Empires, not so lucky ... less familiar with non-European examples, but my poor understanding is that the Chinese weren't a whole lot better in that respect.

Also American democracy is over two centuries old now, we've had one constitution the whole time, and one five-year civil war caused by a flaw in that constitution, since fixed. Modern analogs to monarchy would be, I guess, dictatorships? Which have the problem where the one-guy-in-charge system is backed up purely by violence, with no sanction from centuries of precedent where it's (mostly) established that it stays in one family. You can't invent legitimacy overnight, so the best way to build it long-term is to give people a sense that the system rewards them for compliance with it. Democracy, in particular liberal democracy, is the best way anybody's found yet. Coups overthrowing well-entrenched democracies are quite rare; Japan, Italy, and Germany, for example, were all fairly new to democracy prior to WWII. In fact, the latter two had existed as unified states for less than a century.

[The Mad Monk]

All monarchies start as dictatorships. The only real difference is cultural acceptance and time in power.

[BeBMan]

Yay, Psychology Today is parroting Curtis Yarvin's bull**** now. No. Royal legitimacy helped somewhat but the rules often had weird loopholes or ambiguities; the Hundred Years' War and Wars of the Roses were both (lengthy) disputes over who was rightful king (first of France, then once that was done of England). Also War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Austrian Succession, arguably the start of the Thirty Years' War ... haven't done a study, but it seems likely "who should be king" is one of the most common causes of war in a monarchy, if not the most common. Up till the time of the Reformation, that is--the Reformation being an essentially political event severing a bunch of northern states from Papal power, and in that sense still about who's going to be king. And those are in states with established rules about who gets to be king. Byzantine and Roman Empires, not so lucky ... less familiar with non-European examples, but my poor understanding is that the Chinese weren't a whole lot better in that respect.

Also American democracy is over two centuries old now, we've had one constitution the whole time, and one five-year civil war caused by a flaw in that constitution, since fixed. Modern analogs to monarchy would be, I guess, dictatorships? Which have the problem where the one-guy-in-charge system is backed up purely by violence, with no sanction from centuries of precedent where it's (mostly) established that it stays in one family. You can't invent legitimacy overnight, so the best way to build it long-term is to give people a sense that the system rewards them for compliance with it. Democracy, in particular liberal democracy, is the best way anybody's found yet. Coups overthrowing well-entrenched democracies are quite rare; Japan, Italy, and Germany, for example, were all fairly new to democracy prior to WWII. In fact, the latter two had existed as unified states for less than a century.

I dunno who Curtis Yarvin is. The article is very much in favor of liberal democracy, FWIW, and does not at all try to go into a "which one is better" contest.

It's just concerned that today's democracies attract (increasingly?) folks who aren't interested at all in maintaining it. That seems to be the main diff to cases/conflicts about - for example - who should be king, which continues monarchy, just under another guy.

All those wars above certainly include other than dynastic issues, they're also to various degrees about power, influence, resources (if "only" land and people). I don't think they tell much about the stability of monarchic rule in general, or at least not more than for example the Korean War reveals about the stability of the US (zilch, admittedly for Korea it's very different).

[Elok]

Oh crikey, I actually read the article, and ... wow, what a bloody tosser. What is this nonsense? He thinks military aristocracy--where legitimacy of rule was directly tied to willingness and ability to jump on a horse and kill people with a long pointy stick, frequently frightened men fleeing on foot--was less likely than democracy to foster antisocial impulses? And of course candidacy for office should be gated behind approval by his profession; that will fix all our problems! It wouldn't, say, result in political candidates being effectively vetted for opinions acceptable to psychiatrists, undermining the legitimacy of the whole system. Nossir. And all this is ostensibly based on a guy who wrote a book on the problems of dysfunctional government by studying the Nazis--one of the most dysfunctional governments ever--but whose conclusions nonetheless apply, in a meaningful way, to representative democracy. Etc. etc. I'm sorry, but I could do a line-by-line close reading of this article and absolutely fill your browser window with howlers. Not going to, though. This is just piss-poor reasoning through and through.

Also, "ponerology" makes me giggle because, well, you know.

[Bereta_Eder]

snip snip

[BeBMan]

Oh crikey, I actually read the article, and ... wow, what a bloody tosser. What is this nonsense? He thinks military aristocracy--where legitimacy of rule was directly tied to willingness and ability to jump on a horse and kill people with a long pointy stick, frequently frightened men fleeing on foot--was less likely than democracy to foster antisocial impulses? And of course candidacy for office should be gated behind approval by his profession; that will fix all our problems! It wouldn't, say, result in political candidates being effectively vetted for opinions acceptable to psychiatrists, undermining the legitimacy of the whole system. Nossir. And all this is ostensibly based on a guy who wrote a book on the problems of dysfunctional government by studying the Nazis--one of the most dysfunctional governments ever--but whose conclusions nonetheless apply, in a meaningful way, to representative democracy. Etc. etc. I'm sorry, but I could do a line-by-line close reading of this article and absolutely fill your browser window with howlers. Not going to, though. This is just piss-poor reasoning through and through.

Also, "ponerology" makes me giggle because, well, you know.

That's a nice bit of rhetorics, but mostly nonsense.

Legitimacy in feudalism rests on divine right and/or having royal family ties (or other aristocratic on the lower levels), not primarily on military capability. If the latter was the primary source of legitimacy kings who became unfit for combat due to age, illness etc. would automatically lose theirs.

And the Nazis coming to power is a prime example how a civil/democratic society is overturned by people who actually rose within the same system they then did away with. So it is absolutely relevant here.

[Lorizael]

If the latter was the primary source of legitimacy kings who became unfit for combat due to age, illness etc. would automatically lose theirs.

Again, this is a thing that happened! Not automatically, but frequently.

[Elok]

Also I wasn't referring to kings specifically but to warrior-aristocrats in general--a knight who doesn't fight isn't really a knight, and the government mostly consisted of nesting sets of guys who owed military service to the guy above them. Warrior-aristocrats (of any era) do not embody anybody's idea of enlightened liberal values, which is part of the reason why reactionaries keep holding them up as an ideal.

[The Mad Monk]

So if we return to monarchy it will be King Donald I followed by King Donald II?

...sure.

[giblets]

Yay, Psychology Today is parroting Curtis Yarvin's bull**** now.

Sounds like we're all ****ed.

[Aeson]

I could go for monarchy on a few conditions:

Monarch is chosen via lottery.

Monarch forced to live the lifestyle of the bottom decile of wealth.

Monarch can behead up to 100 people a year in the top decile of wealth, for any reason.