Category: communitarian

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A monarchical rant

I came across this socialist rant against the monarchy and the idea of monarchy, which stimulated the creative juices. I thought it was worth responding to.  First the case against monarchy, from the World Socialist Website, which I am  sure you will enjoy for its over-the-top-ness..

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/09/17/pers-s17.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws

 

“The capitalist class buried the ghosts of its republican ancestors long ago. Confronting social and political crises of unprecedented magnitude, they turn to autocracy and authoritarianism as bulwarks in defense of their privileges and recognize in monarchy an institutional form of their class aspirations.

Monarchy is an institution of colossal stupidity, a barbarous vestige of the feudal past; its persistence is an embarrassment to humanity. Founded on heredity, shored up with inbreeding, intermarriage and claims of divine right, the monarchic principle enshrines inequality as the fundamental and unalterable lot of humanity and maintains this lot with the force of autocratic power.

The kings and queens enthroned by this principle are stunted by more than just hemophilia and the Habsburg jaw. Their social function distills in their lineage the most concentrated reaction. Elizabeth II was cousin to the Tsarist Romanovs; her Nazi-sympathizing uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 and headed off to Germany with his Nazi-sympathizing wife to salute Adolf Hitler.

The royal family is marked by the sorts of scandals that develop among those with a great deal of unearned money and unspent time. Her son, Prince Andrew, sold arms to autocratic regimes and paid £12 million to cover up his role in sex trafficking underaged girls with Jeffrey Epstein. Her grandson, Prince Harry, used to dress up in full Nazi regalia.

It was in defiance of the monarchic principle that the American Declaration of Independence stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This conception fueled the American Revolution. Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, which historian Gordon Wood termed “the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era,” directly attacked not just George III but the very existence of monarchy, writing:

In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshiped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.

Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the US Constitution codified this principle for the new nation: “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States.”

Immense concentrated private wealth, founded on exploitation and inequality, and the unending expansion of empire have stamped out any trace of such democratic sentiments in the American ruling elite. They no longer, in the phrase of Milton, prefer “hard liberty before the easy yoke of servile pomp.” They seek to defend their interests through autocratic rule and look with welcome upon the principle of monarchy.

On the order of President Biden, US flags were deferentially lowered for the dead queen, placed at half-staff for 12 days. Elizabeth II is separated from George III by generations; Biden is separated from Jefferson by an unbridgeable historical chasm.

Over the past six years we have witnessed a turn among the ruling elite around the globe to openly autocratic and dictatorial forms of rule as social and political crisis have sharpened and turned deadly. It is this that fuels the unrestrained adulation in the American media for the dead queen and the crown she wore. An unprecedented political crisis grips the United States. The idea of a monarchical system, of an autocratic head of state who stands above the conflict, has a powerful appeal to the embattled bourgeoisie.

The media give voice to these longings and package them for popular consumption. The phrase of J.A. Hobson, writing of imperialism at the opening of the 20th century, is apt: “snobbish subservience, the admiration of wealth and rank, the corrupt survivals of the inequalities of feudalism.” The deferential and servile talking heads of television news cultivate these traits. Often dressed up as progressive by identity politics, the monarchic principle is everywhere glorified, from Wakanda to Beyoncé to Downton Abbey.

The relentless adulation for the dead queen is mind-numbing. It is tempting to hunker down and weather the storm of stupidity. It must, however, be taken seriously, for it is a warning.”

To which I responded as follows:

I always love these rants against constitutional monarchies. The same way I enjoy Richard Dawkins railing against God with his materialist conception of reality. Both conflate a shallow form of instrumental reasoning with great depth of insight. Both misunderstand critically what makes people tick. Both are suffused with an obvious condescension to the large proportion of humanity that believes in the institution of constitutional monarchy and believes in God. Both think that an atheistic republic of means and ends would be better (by what criteria I ask?) for humans. Both fail to understand that God and kings are adaptive, in a Darwinian sense, in that they  promote group cohesion and cooperation.

 

When we say ‘God save our gracious King’, we ask one imaginary friend, power and ruler of the universe to help another imagined ruler fulfil his much less important earthly-scale job. Otherwise we have to swear allegiance to an abstraction like the Constitution and the flag. You do not escape imaginary political and emotional constructs by de-feudalizing them.

 

Quote: “the monarchic principle enshrines inequality as the fundamental and unalterable lot of humanity -yes it does, and suck it up, because it is the truth of the human condition – and maintains this lot with the force of autocratic power.” No, but by the force of allegiance to something greater than ourselves and the persons who embody that greatness. The Crown is all of us. We participate ina greatness which is not ours. We have elected politicians for the actual exercise of power, but they are in a real way restrained by having to be polite and subordinate to the monarch.

None of which prevents me from thinking Charles III is an eco-babbler, and saying so.

In short, my God is greater than your god, and much more powerful than your rational association of self interested actors seeking maximum personal autonomy, or whatever it is that socialists do in their miserable little lives.

 

Someone should read Peter Turchin’s War and Peace and War, on the subject of asabiya, the power of societies to cooperate for collective purposes. The term is taken from the Arabic philosopher of history, Ibn Khaldun. Then we might have a meaningful exchange about monarchies that dealt with what they actually do, rather than what socialists think they do.

A better anti-monarchical argument is presented by the barbarian Ygritte presenting the casefor equality in this excerpt from Game of Thrones: “You know nothing, John Snow”.

 

 

 

 

 

What the right gets right about the trucker revolt

A left-wing writer on the trucker rebellion is fascinating. She looks at the trucker revolt as “right wing”, though I am sure the organizers of the trucker blockade of Ottawa streets have no such conception of themselves, and would reject it if they were called it. It also has a strange flavour of a person who lives in a bubble peering out from it dimly to discern, as Bob Dylan said many years ago, “something happening here an’ you don’t know what it is, do you? Mr. Jones”

Emma Jackson writes:

“Whether we want to admit it or not, there’s a lot that the anti-mandate movement is getting right from an organizing and movement-building perspective.

“For starters, in stark contrast to the Left, the past few days have revealed how much better the Right is at meeting people where they’re at.

“Instead of building an insular movement restricted to people who agree with each other 93 per cent of the time, the Right has successfully tapped into widely held resentment and built a mass on-ramp for people with highly divergent views. It’s why the Freedom Convoy isn’t just being ardently defended by white supremacists on Rebel News, but also by anti-vaccine Green Party supporters in the inboxes of mainstream environmental organizations.”

<snip>

Imagine the power that comes from not insisting that everyone agree on everything before you agree to act together! Who knew?

“In the anti-mandate movement, everyone’s participation is welcome. Of course, this also extends to participants brandishing yellow star pins, thin blue line badges, and flags with swastikas—a level of acceptance that should never be tolerated.

“But the degree to which thousands are willing to come to the defense of the movement the second its racist and antisemitic elements are exposed—insisting that they’re just a “few bad apples”—is telling. It proves their commitment to building and defending the biggest possible “we,” against the smallest possible “them”—in this case, the liberal establishment, mainstream media, and those of us naïve enough to be under the spell of both.

It’s also evidence of their collective disdain for any whiff of social elitism—something that is likely only being exacerbated by the urban left’s impulse to wag our fingers at these “backward, selfish people.”

Translating from the wokish, they are open, and anti-snobbish and to borrow her phrase, committed to the biggest possible “we”.

“In order to actively and constantly be recruiting everyday working people into your base (i.e. build power), you actually have to talk to them and ground your recruitment in the everyday institutions and networks they belong to. It’s obvious that the anti-mandate and anti-vaccine crowd is doing just that by engaging in one-on-one conversations with their neighbors, co-workers, and complete strangers, and listening to their collective grievances.

“But the anti-mandate movement isn’t just recruiting participants one-by-one, they’re also successfully bringing entire institutions into the movement and providing them with opportunities to visibly show their support. They’ve successfully recruited evangelical churches, private trucker associations, and far-right outlets like Rebel News, all of whom are fueling the movement—whether by distributing ham sandwiches at rest stops or amplifying their message to hundreds of thousands of people on YouTube.”

<snip>

They have genuine, broad based support. They build coalitions. Who knew?

Emma Jackson continues;

“Labour’s institutional heft is unparalleled, but those of us belonging to other movement threads—climate justice, anti-racism, Indigenous solidarity— must also reflect on how it is that the far-right is doing a better job of recruiting our own family, friends, and co-workers into their movements, than we are into our own.

“Insularity has prevented the left from reaching the mainstream. We have an opportunity to examine our tendency to build organizations that feel more like exclusive clubs for the “already woke,” than they do welcoming spaces for political education and transformation where people feel deeply valued and needed.”

Emma, Emma, listen to Uncle Dalwhinnie:

  1. There is no such thing as the “far right”. The “right” and “the far right” are left wing mental constructions. Those inside the Marxist thought prison imagine that everyone who opposes them is in their own, equally restrictive, thought-prison.  Not so. The only people inside the thought prison are the political left (in my experience) . Other people are quite free to disagree, argue, and have a beer together.  David Horowitz write about this sudden realization when he left the political Left, which he wrote about it “Radical Son”, which is a must-read for all evolving soon to be former Marxists.
  2. Precisely what makes the political left an exclusionary cult is its false but wholly sincere sense of its moral superiority. If you give up believing in your moral superiority, you realize you are a sinner like the rest of the sinners. Then yu are ready to build broad coalitions politically and even religiously.
  3. Living without moral superiority is really difficult. Millions do it every day. If the political Left tried it, they might find themselves being listened to.

Trumpophobia 3

3. Differentism versus inclusivism

By far the most interesting cause of people voting for Trump is explained by reference to one of the enduring divisions of the human species, writes Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic Monthly.

Of the several views of why people choose Trump over his opponents, one is the important discovery that some people do not like or react well to differences. As Friedersdorf explains the research, this has less to do with racism as such than with ‘differentism‘, of which race-ism, tribal-ism, national-ism are examples, but which do not exhaust the categories of differences.

In one sense this is a big obvi-ism. As Jonathan Haidt explained better and more generously in The Righteous Mind, people differ along several axes. Psychological research has identified six such axes, of which procedural fairness and equality of outcome are the two that most engage the ‘liberal’ mind. Group cohesion/treason and the sacred versus the profane are two other such differences, and naturally conservatives score higher in concern for the sacred and for group cohesion.

The author on whom Friedersdorf relies is Karen Stenner, who wrote “The Authoritarian Dynamic“. The treatment accorded the more conservative personality type by Stenner is far less generous that Haidt’s. Stenner seeks to pathologize the syndromes. From the Amazon book blurb:

” This book addresses that question by developing a universal theory of what determines intolerance of difference in general, which includes racism, political intolerance, moral intolerance and punitiveness. It demonstrates that all these seemingly disparate attitudes are principally caused by just two factors: individuals’ innate psychological predispositions to intolerance (“authoritarianism”) interacting with changing conditions of societal threat. The threatening conditions, particularly resonant in the present political climate, that exacerbate authoritarian attitudes include, most critically, great dissension in public opinion and general loss of confidence in political leaders.”

Friedersdorf describes Stenner’s methodology as follows:

” Stenner began her research with a questionnaire that probed the attitudes of her subjects toward child-rearing. Their answers indicated the extent to which they think that it’s more important for kids to obey their parents, have good manners, be neat and clean, and follow the rules—or alternatively, that it’s more important that they are responsible for their own actions, and creative, curious, independent thinkers who follow their own conscience and show good judgment. Designed to provide an unobtrusive, bare-bones measure of each subject’s fundamental stances toward conformity and difference, the child-rearing questionnaires were scored and the subjects arrayed from most libertarian to most authoritarian.”

It is entirely natural that child-rearing has a huge impact on how personalities develop. It is also evident that there is continuum between rule obeying behaviour and independence, and moreover, that there is no inherent superiority whereby the curious and independent minded are to be placed above the obedient and conformist, though liberals might like to think so. Or do they confess to believing in a cognitive and moral superiority to people like themselves? Of course they do.

Stenner observed that “fears regarding immorality and crime, claims about the critical need to reestablish some normative order, and elaboration of plans for accomplishing this” occupied the bulk of “their psychic space,” consuming a hugely disproportionate share of their time and energy.”

Who defines hugely disproportionate?

“Ultimately,” Stenner contended, “much of what we think of as racism, likewise political and moral intolerance, is more helpfully understood as ‘difference-ism,’” defined as “a fundamental and overwhelming desire to establish and defend some collective order of oneness and sameness.”

Both Stenner and the coverage of her book by Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic Monthly constantly insinuate that concern for a normative order is, in some real fashion, an aberration, a morally inferior position, and that it connotes political “authoritarianism”, a political doctrine, rather than “communitarianism”, which has a much more agreeable sound. If you read a conservative thinker like Thomas Sowell or the British philosopher Roger Scruton, you would gain an entirely more generous perspective on concern for a normative order. Concern for the general state of society, for community and for public and private order is not the exclusive concern of the anxious, the ill-educated, or the authoritarian. People who raise their children to analyze and make intelligent choices are not simultaneously without concern for the state of society.

Indeed, I call the current obsession with diversity and inclusion “inclusivism”. It is a doctrine that holds, for instance, that the student body of a cognitively elite institution should be constituted by racial or ethnic groups in proportion to their presence in the general population; that differences in incarceration rates or rates of being shot by police cannot justifiably be different according to race or ethnicity, but must be uniform across society as a whole. The failure or inability to make relevant and justifiable discriminations is the bane of modern society.

Stenner describes the phenomenon as “innate psychological dispensations to intolerance” and calls it “authoritarianism“. This is a dreadful failure to analyze properly and a gross insult to some of the attitudes that have elevated us from living in caves. Some people are intolerant of dirt and disorder, of rodents in the basement, of shit in drinking water. What is tolerated or not tolerated lies on a spectrum. Some people think there needs to be a decision in any given society to drive either on the right or the left, but not both. Some people are rule enforcers, some rule breakers. When to obey and what rules not to obey is a matter of the most careful judgment. Personalities differ in their propensities to conform or break rules, and these propensities are to some extent capable of being different according to political or religious regimes.

The pathologization of political difference begins in Stenner’s characterization of those who want a rules-based order as “authoritarian”. Her analysis, and that of Friedersdorf reporting on it are no more than another form of snobbish condescension towards those whose anxieties for a sense of community are greater than their own.

At the root of all such characterizations of Trump supporters lies the firm belief that those who do not like him are cognitively and morally superior.