Writes “Bonald” over at his weblog Throne and Altar:
“Democracies don’t fight. WWI was a war between democracies and authoritarian states.” Why don’t we count Germany as a democracy? Everybody knows it had a deliberative body, the Reichstag, with multiple parties. Did the king have some remaining powers? Is that it? Democrats are real absolutists, aren’t they? It’s not enough to have a parliament; it must be all-powerful.previous
Over at Alternative Right, wrote Mr. Richard Spencer:
Mass democracy and tolerance are inherently wonderful, except when they aren't.
94 years ago today, the bête noire of this weblog learned of the Zimmermann Telegram.
Sixteen score and two years ago today (February 13 in the Julian Calendar), William and Mary were proclaimed sovereigns – in the so-called Glorious Revolution.
Best wishes to His Majesty King Harald V of Norway on his 74th birthday!
If only it were in my power to give His Majesty more power for his birthday.
An olympiad ago today, the Norwegian Parliament unanimously passed a Constitutional Amendment to include parliamentarism in the written Constitution – the day before His Majesty's 70th birthday.
A few months ago, yours truly applied for the post of Governor of Norges Bank.
Last Thursday, the Governor gave his annual address. Over at Liberaleren, yours truly has had an alternative address published (in Norwegian).
Two years short of a century ago today, Raymond Poincaré became President of the French Third Republic.
Four score and a dozen years ago today, a draft covenant for the League of Nations was presented by the Persona Non Grata of this weblog.
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227 years ago today, the Treaty of Paris was ratified by the Congress of the Confederation.
Best wishes to Hans-Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein, on his 66th birthday!
A year short of a century ago today, the Emperor of China was forced to abdicate.
235 years ago today, Sir James Wright, Governor of the Province of Georgia, escaped imprisonment by the rebels in Savannah.
150 years ago today, Jefferson Davis received word he had been made President of the Confederate States of America.
Two to the power of eight years ago today, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu passed from this world.
A quarter of a millennium and nine years ago today (January 31 in the Julian Calendar), Gouverneur Morris was born.
Four score and a long dozen years ago today, Ukraine came to terms with the Central Powers.
362 years ago today (January 30 in the Julian Calendar), Charles I was decapitated.
137 years ago today, the icon of this weblog was born.
Lt.-Col. Strutt was the British officer who was sent on a mission under the personal initiative of His Britannic Majesty George V to command the protection of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial-Royal Family in its internal exile. The Lt.-Col. scared almost the living daylights out of Dr. Karl Renner, Chancellor of the “Republic of Austria,” so the Imperial-Royal Family could leave without any abdication.
Lt.-Col. Strutt became Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire shortly after this mission.
This web log honors this great man by having him as its icon.
A year short of three score years ago today, Her Britannic Majesty ascended the throne at Treetops.
A century ago today, Ronald Wilson Reagan was born.
Over at Mises Daily, Jeff Riggenbach goes through the man and his policies and rhetorics.
George F. Will had a review of an olympiad old book almost an olympiad ago.
Wrote George Will:
[N]ostalgia for Ronald Reagan has become for many conservatives a substitute for thinking. This mental paralysis – gratitude decaying into idolatry – is sterile: Neither the man nor his moment will recur. Conservatives should face the fact that Reaganism cannot define conservatism.Further:
The 1980s, he says, thoroughly joined politics to political theory. But he notes that Reagan's theory was radically unlike that of Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservatism, and very like that of Burke's nemesis, Thomas Paine. Burke believed that the past is prescriptive because tradition is a repository of moral wisdom. Reagan frequently quoted Paine's preposterous cry that “we have it in our power to begin the world over again.”Mr. Will continued:
Diggins's thesis is that the 1980s were America's “Emersonian moment” because Reagan, a “political romantic” from the Midwest and West, echoed New England's Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Emerson was right,” Reagan said several times of the man who wrote, “No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.” Hence Reagan's unique, and perhaps oxymoronic, doctrine – conservatism without anxieties. Reagan's preternatural serenity derived from his conception of the supernatural.Moreover:
Reagan's popularity was largely the result of “his blaming government for problems that are inherent in democracy itself.” To Reagan, the idea of problems inherent in democracy was unintelligible because it implied that there were inherent problems with the demos – the people.And:
As Diggins says, Reagan's “theory of government has little reference to the principles of the American founding.” To the Founders, and especially to the wisest of them, James Madison, government's principal function is to resist, modulate and even frustrate the public's unruly passions, which arise from desires.This blogger would add that said founding removed an important check, namely the monarchical order, initially only domestically, but this was an important initial step, and it would have tremendous long-term effects, not only on America, but also on the world.
“The true conservatives, the founders,” Diggins rightly says, constructed a government full of blocking mechanisms – separations of powers, a bicameral legislature, and other checks and balances – in order “to check the demands of the people.” Madison's Constitution responds to the problem of human nature. “Reagan,” says Diggins, “let human nature off the hook.”
“An unmentionable irony,” writes Diggins, is that big-government conservatism is an inevitable result of Reaganism. “Under Reagan, Americans could live off government and hate it at the same time. Americans blamed government for their dependence upon it.” Unless people have a bad conscience about demanding big government – a dispenser of unending entitlements – they will get ever larger government. But how can people have a bad conscience after being told (in Reagan's First Inaugural) that they are all heroes? And after being assured that all their desires, which inevitably include desires for government-supplied entitlements, are good?Concluded Mr. George Frederick Will:
If the defining doctrine of the Republican Party is limited government, the party must move up from nostalgia and leaven its reverence for Reagan with respect for Madison. As Diggins says, Reaganism tells people comforting and flattering things that they want to hear; the Madisonian persuasion tells them sobering truths that they need to know.
74 years ago today, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced his plan to pack the SCOTUS.
94 years ago today, those United States broke diplomatic relations with Imperial Germany.
A century and three years ago today, His Most Faithful Majesty Carlos I of Portugal and the Prince Royal were assassinated.
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