Quote of the Month

Writes “Deogolwulf” at his eloquent weblog The Joy of Curmudgeonry in an exceptionally well-phrased post:

Democracy, in order to appeal, must whisper to every man a fundamentally undemocratic falsehood: that he can choose his government. Therein lies a confusion of democratic thought: the confusion of the power of the people with the liberty of the person. When a man says he is free under a democracy because he can choose his government, already the falsehood is fully grown. He cannot do any such thing. He is given a say in how his country is to be governed, but this degree of power is so tiny as to be almost non-existent; and yet for this, he is willing to give up his fate to an overwhelming power, and he calls his subjection to this power — freedom!

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Liberty vs. Leviathan

The Western Confucian brings a new blog, Liberty vs. Leviathan, to our attention.

Book on American Conservatism

Ray Nothstine reviews Alfred S. Regnery's Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism.


H/T: Western Confucian

A Likeable Wilson

Over at the Daily Mail, historian A.N. Wilson rails against the latest “New Labour” plans for the monarchy – involving “sexual and religious discrimation.”

A.N. Wilson concludes:

[I]t need not happen, and let us hope to God that the Queen – who somewhat to her shame allowed the disgraceful wreckage of the Lords without even questioning what was happening – will at last put her foot down. Enough is enough.

This is a Wilson of a completely other sort than the one whose revolution this weblog's mission it is to unplug, although his reference to the French Bourbon regime as tyrannical is debatable at best.

The story of the rise of Anglicanism – and other branches of Protestantism, for that matter – is very much a story of the state placing itself over the Church. This story now continues by the state attempting to free itself completely from whatever there may be left of Christianity's restraint on the power of the state. The current drive for religious “freedom” for the monarchs of Europe is part of that story.

His Majesty King Harald V of Norway was reported earlier this year to have put His Majestic foot down on a proposal in the works to abolish the constitutional provision on the monarch's religious beliefs.

Let us hope Her Britannic Majesty can show similar Majestic courage as her second cousin across the North Sea.


Link (Daily Mail) via The Monarchist.

Global Financial System?

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Mr. Gordon Brown, speaking at UN Headquarters, wants a new financial order. So the UN News Centre reports, also reporting a similar approach by the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia.

Gordon Brown wants “transparency,” which probably means that no bird shall fall to the ground without the government having it on record. He also wants “oversight of global capital flows,” which probably means that no man can tax-free go where man has or has not gone before.

It is indeed interesting that the solution to the failure of a central bank run system with fiat currencies is a more centralized system. Are we to have a global central bank now? A global fiat currency?

Media Monarchy has more on a “new financial world order.”

Crisis Today

Those United States Representatives have rejected the bailout plan, news of which the Mises Economics Blog brings to our attention.

Mr. Frank Shostak makes the case that the “rescue package” is a Trojan horse.

Dr. Jörg Guido Hülsmann is interviewed on the Lew Rockwell Show about the situation.

LRC has launched The Recession Reader.

The Honorable Ron Paul made the case that the bailout plan would destroy the dollar:



Now it seems that his colleagues have listened to him.

"The Birth of Freedom"

The Western Confucian brings our attention to a documentary film, the Birth of Freedom, reminding us also of positive features of medieval times.

Keep Male Priority

Over at the Guardian, Geoffrey Robertson repeats well known poor rhetoric about what belongs in the 21^st century.

He seems to be in need of making more acquiantances with politicians, to paraphrase an ennobled former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Merit equals selection by Parliament? On what planet does he live?

Mr. Robertson applauds the plans for abolition of priority to males.

There are reasons for not sending women to the front. There are reasons why most CEOs are men. And please don't tell my it is because there has been a conspiracy against women!

We do not want the ambitious to seek the highest office. That is a very good reason for not opening the highest office for everyone, letting the ambitious demagogues rise to the top.

In this day and age, where royals need not look to other royals, or aristocrats at the least, for marriage it is perhaps even more important to stick to tradition. The ambitious are more often men than women. Shall we have ambitious men marry themselves to the top?

The Archduke Otto and the Crisis

HIRH the Archduke Otto in an interview with yours truly:

Let’s go back to the end of World War II. The United States opened the gates for inflation with the decision of the paper gold. I was at the time very much against that sort of approach. I think we now are starting to pay for it.

Anti-Bailout Petition

Brought to this blogger's attention by the Western Confucian, a new petition is brought to your attention, in addition to the petition to end the Fed.

There's a petition up to stop the bailout of Wall Street.

By all means, please do feel free to sign.

Financial Crisis Overload

Creating credit out of thin air will cause problems, as the present crisis shows.

Something to read in the present crisis:

• The Ludwig von Mises Institute: The Bailout Reader
• The Ludwig von Mises Institute: Daily Articles Archive
• Jim Quinn: The Mugging of America
• Bob Murphy recommends buying gold and silver.
• Gary North wants to compile a list of the clueless.
• Jeff Snyder: Plus ça Change You Can Believe In
• Ms. Lila Rajiva has 25 questions for the U.S. Treasury Secretary.
• LewRockwell.com September 2008 Blog Archive

Something to listen to:

• Congressman Dr. Ron Paul on the Lew Rockwell Show
• Dr. Robert Higgs on the Lew Rockwell Show
• Lew Rockwell on the Michael Reagan Talk Show

The Western Confucian has:

• Justin Raimondo on Meltdown and Empire
• Paul or Paulson?
• A Message from Ron Paul
• LRC on the Meltdown and Bailout
• The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

"Puerto Rico's Rightful Owner"

Over at the weblog The Eutychus Perch, “Hurricane” reflects on the transition from monarchy to modern government.

Rubber Stamping – No Such Thing?

Her Excellency Mrs. Quentin Bryce, “named by the Prime Minister as Governor-General” of the Commonwealth of Australia, “head of state,” is reported to have said in an interview:

[S]ometimes the comment is made about rubber stamping. I don't think signing any document is a matter of rubber stamping.

Link via The Monarchist.

An Age of Royal Non-Intervention

Over at the Daily Mail, A.N. Wilson gives an extract of his new book Our Times: The Age of Elizabeth II.

Some of what A.N. Wilson says:

It is often said that she has never put a foot wrong. Yet a conspicuous feature of her life as Head of State has been the way she has accepted recommendations for peerages, as well as the mangling of the House of Lords perpetrated by Tony Blair, without any apparent question.

In this, she differs markedly from her grandfather, George V, who prevented Asquith from creating 500 Liberal peers to force through Lloyd George's budget and certainly would have insisted upon a plausible alternative system being in place before the Second Chamber was deprived of its hereditary element.

There was no reason, constitutional or otherwise, why the monarch could not have questioned some of the rum coves Harold Wilson nominated for honours.

Similarly, common sense and decency should surely have prevented her from ennobling Jeffrey Archer (perjurer, liar, cheat) or Conrad Black (shady businessman, asset stripper and, eventually, imprisoned fraudster) or the gang of unworthies elevated by Blair, having offered loans or gifts to New Labour.

The Queen has many virtues but political courage is not one of them, and in allowing Parliament thus to fall further into disrepute she was in the wrong. The same can be said of other issues.

She is known to be agitated by the state of the Established Church as it moves through a series of self-imposed crises, but apparently feels powerless to intervene. Why? Is she not the Supreme Governor of the Church?

She is deemed to be worried about the danger to the Union posed by Scottish nationalism, but once again she seems to do nothing about it.

All these matters are the direct responsibility of the Head of State herself, not of her advisers, and her inactions are more serious criticisms of her than that her voice is a pain in the neck.

Link (Daily Mail) via The Monarchist.

The Bald Eagle and the Throne

Dominic Sandbrook reviews Frank Prochaska's The Eagle and the Crown: Americans and the British Monarchy (along with Bronwen Maddox's In Defence of America).


H/T: Royal World

Ignorant Yankee Voters

Rick Shenkman is an associate professor of history at George Mason University and the author of Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter.

Over at the Washington Post, Professor Shenkman explores five myths.


H/T: American Monarchist

Welcome, "Lord Soleil"

American Monarchist welcomes Thronum Dei to the monarchist blogosphere. Yours truly seconds. The new blog is added to my blog roll.

Gerald Warner Drinks to the Grand Old Duke

Prince Philip told politicos what to do, and Gerald Warner drinks to that.

Also at The Monarchist.

King Olav V

51 years ago today, Crown Prince Olav of Norway, born Prince Alexander Edward Christian Frederik of Denmark, ascended to the ancient throne of St. Olav as King Olav V, upon the demise of his father, King Haakon VII.

In this Present Crisis...

“They” tell us that the world financial crisis is over. If so, that is only temporarily. If it now seems to be gone, it will come back and hit us hard again. Eventually, central bank “rescue operations” will fail.

The Western Confucian has a nice list of articles and a list of Ron Paul videos.

This is a long story, which started with Woodrow Wilson's creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. Well, it actually started before that, but that's an even longer story.

Here's one of many available videos on the United States Dollar and Gold:



Here are a couple of quotes too:

Professor Martin van Creveld in his book The Rise and Decline of the State:

Finally, once the state had become so powerful that it was able to determine what did and did not count as money, the financial restraints which had always limited the actions of previous rulers also dropped by the wayside. The ultimate outcome of all these developments was an increasingly violent series of explosions, beginning with the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and culminating in the era of total war between 1914 and 1945.

Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe in his book Democracy – The God That Failed:

As hard as they tried, monarchical rulers did not succeed in establishing monopolies of pure fiat currencies, i.e., of irredeemable government paper monies, which can be created virtually out of thin air, at practically no cost. No particular individual, not even a king, could be trusted with an extraordinary monopoly such as this[.]

It was only under conditions of democratic republicanism – of anonymous and impersonal rule – that this feat was accomplished.

Quote of the Month (August)

“Irish Tory” at the weblog Irish Tory:

The problem with most 'Constitutional Monarchs', is that they are in fact, not very 'constitutional' at all, they are absent monarchs or plastic monarchs. Kings and queens without power sidelined by bitter republicans who resent the symbolism they represent. Too many monarchs are imprisoned, imprisoned at the politicians pleasure, with the Sword of Damocles hanging over them, the slime ball politicos ready and waiting for an excuse to abolish that monarchy.

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Frederik Stang

This year in Norway marks the 200^th anniversary of the birth of our national poet and writer Henrik Wergeland.

I do indeed respect and admire his talent and his literary achievements and contributions to our culture. However, he was a republican and staunch supporter of and believer in the French Revolution.

There is an official site for the anniversary in Norwegian. The anniversary is being celebrated and marked in many ways. I was at an exhibition at our national library this weekend about him.

There is another 200^th birthday this year, namely that of Prime Minister Frederik Stang. The system we had before we got parliamentary Cabinets in the Kingdom of Norway is often called the “System Stang,” which Mr. Stang was a supporter of. Mr. Stang stepped down before the “final battle,” leaving that to his successor, Christian August Selmer.

One has hardly heard anything about Frederik Stang's anniversary this year.

I do believe the difference in celebration level of the too has not only to do with Wergeland being a talented poet and writer, but that it also has to do with the bias in favor of political “progressives.”

Yours truly was, by the way, born in a street named after Frederik Stang.

Happy anniversary to Frederik Stang. May he continue to rest in peace.

Cited

I have recently been cited at a Spanish-speaking blog. The post has a few good quotes in English on democracy by other thinkers.

The Siamese Monarchy

An interesting forum thread at the website of the Lonely Planet discusses the role of the Siamese King.

Swaziland

The Wilsonian World Order threatens to overtake the Kingdom of Swaziland as well. So Reuters reports.