Docgrubb’s Weblog

(I’ll warn any beforehand – this post might ramble or diverge on various tangents.)

The WSJ had a piece two Saturdays ago,  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120916539836346183.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks  , which reviewed part of our current energy conundrum and also how ‘pols will be pols’, we can count on it.  This post is not about energy or climate, but I’ll use my online comment/response to that article to introduce my actual topic:

     “No one could get elected…on a platform that called explicitly for increased energy prices.”  You can say that again.  And more broadly: no one could get elected advocating any austerity or sacrifice.  We haven’t heard any since Churchill’s “blood, sweat, and tears”, and he was already in-office at the time.  This is perhaps the fundamental flaw of democracy, and it is related to the “bread and circuses” tenet learned from another failed republic.  Only an autocrat can say “no” to a populace.  Franklin’s response to the folks on the street was, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”  Well, we haven’t kept it, we’re in the process of losing it, and the proof is in our incomprehensibly large deficits and debts, our current credit crisis, the absurd government response to it (the “stimulus” rebate), our personal fiscal over-extension, and the imploding U.S. dollar, which is the policy of dollar hegemony rebounding to crush us.  And more’s the pity.  For an undisciplined people will inherit a tyrant.  The “choice” (if there ever is one) comes down to which kind of tyrant – the traditional Monarch, restrained by common law and a powerful ecclesiastical structure, or the twentieth century-brand dictator, restrained by nothing other than his number of thugs and gulags.  I’ll take the former.  But how on earth do we go back?”

Yes, I consider myself a monarchist.  As acquaintances know, I have a bumper sticker that reads: “Don’t blame me – I’m a monarchist”.  And as my brother and wife and a friend or two know, I’m off my rocker enough that I mean no joke.  Well, perhaps a little, as the unsuspecting expect a second line of ”I voted for Kerry”, or something similar.  But I want my line two to say, in effect, that we’re in a mess because we cannot, as Voltaire and probably Hamilton (and likely many fleeing Tories) feared, rule ourselves.  As for universal suffrage, I won’t even go there in this public medium – ask me in person.  Anyway, maybe it’s easy to defend such a system today – without the abuses of the ancien regime burned on my psyche.  And maybe, like a liberal who’s been mugged, I too would revert – but only to a small “r” republican – if I were so burned.  But I’ll take my chances, as I’m unlikely ever to have to eat my words, especially as it’s so improbable I’ll ever be under a king, as opposed to a dictator. 

Not to pick on John McCain (he’s the least pandering of the three candidates, and something of a budget hawk), but in the same week as the above article, he was giving newsmen their copy, and the rest of us proof of democracy’s flaw, when he whined about the poor response to Hurricane Katrina.  Here’s why.  Even a benevolent monarch with a treasury flush with revenue might, at his most generous, make the following offer after the disaster: ”We can help you rebuild you houses on higher ground, or we can rebuild the levies and leave the houses wholly up to you, but we can’t do both.  Take your pick.”   But where is our “representative” government?  Trying to recollect many millions of dollars that were ‘inappropriately’ dispensed, and now fending off a trial lawyers’ suit about unsafe formaldehyde levels in the gov’t’s mobile housing units! 

Then McCain did further pandering, advocating a ‘gas-tax holiday’ for the summer.  This is where my and liberals’ (at least the green kind) sympathies overlap – we don’t think Americans need any further spoiling.  I watched in dismay the other day at patients who arrived before our office opened.  They idled their Cadillac SUV waiting for us to unlock.  But it wasn’t hot out – it was an early May morning, with very pleasant air about; it literally couldn’t have been any nicer.  And I’m sure they even had power windows to help them lower them – too lazy or stupid to enjoy fresh air and save a non-renewable resource.   It reminded me of a similar instance from the lower class, about a year ago, when I watched wh*te-tr*sh (don’t want to offend those less judgmental than myself) idling at a Burger King drive-through in their muffler-challenged hulk, waiting for their swill-wrapped-in-landfill, wasting my grandchildrens’ petrol.  It was then it dawned on me (again):  maybe Americans have too much freedom.   Remove Nature’s restraint imposed by want, removed via an artificial affluence, and voil`a : waste, and no surprise.  There’s just no one telling the profligate or the stupid what NOT to do.    Part of this is due to the demise of social condemnation (a victim of tolerance), where fear of reproof from social equals or superiors was a great check on unapproved behavior.  Another cause is artificial affluence, made possible by… no, just scroll down and read “Conspiracy Theory” below.  But do I want a gov’t, like the Soviets, telling us what to do, where to live, &c.?  Not at all.  But where is some balance?  Maybe in Europe’s past?

But I’m rambling, and showing my bitterness.  Not an Obaman, class-warfare bitterness, but a bitterness over our squandering of this most excellent experiment in self-rule the ages have ever witnessed.  But my tangents are articles (or books) unto themselves, so I’ll return to monarchy, for, soon enough, when the whole thing crashes around us, everyone will have their own disillusionment with democracy.  (Will they realize that, between the enacting of the 17th Amendment, the ignoring of the 10th, universal suffrage, the modern habit of direct ballot referendums, and the human-nature-ignoring,-doomed-to-failure abandonment of the gold standard, to be sure, we never gave true republicanism a chance in the modern era?)

How can I defend something as preposterous as monarchism?  Well, my quick response when time is limited, and which doesn’t hold up to much examination, is the following.  In a monarchy, when something is wrong or unjust, you only have to convince one fool to change his mind.  In a democracy one has to convince anywhere from twenty million to two hundred million fools to change theirs.  This latter is a horribly expensive and daunting task, and is also an impossible one if the fools also happen to be apathetic.  Now please don’t leave comments about the errors in this argument, for I already know them.  I told you this is my quick and lazy answer. 

A more sound argument is a religious one.  I remind small-d democrats that monarchism just happens to be the last form of human government that God granted His approval of, if somewhat begrudgingly, and with warnings.  This story is found in I Samuel 8.   The verdict  was given in verse 22: ”The LORD answered, “Listen to them, and give them a king.”  Although godly men founded the US, and mayhap God even directed their constitutional draftings, yet not since Samuel has He given a direct approval of a form of government.  And I can’t help but contemplate, that, had I been alive in 1776, I would have sided with Tories and trundled off to Canada. 

My newest, yet-to-apply custom bumper sitcker reads:  “De-moc-ra-cy  – n.  the right of the people to crown their own fools.”  All the words of this post above the Samuel citation was composed last summer before the election.  On re-reading, I had invested too much to waste it, so I’m finishing it off, but without up-dating the foregoing.  But the intervening election has confirmed even more the sentiments of my sticker.  

And my conviction about monarchism.