Senatus et Populus

A century ago today, Amendment XVII to the United States Constitution was officially declared ratified. The amendment provided for mandatory popular election of United States Senators.


Previously: Directly Elected U.S. Senators

An Assassin Sets Out...

A year short of a century ago today, Gavrilo Princip left Belgrade for Sarajevo.

Peter Hitchens recently revisited World War I, and Mr. Hitchens also has some thoughts on Goodbye to All That.

The Lion of Lans

14 years ago today, Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn passed away.

This blog brings to you an article by the late author – in two parts (H/T: Anarcho-Monarchism).

Please feel free to browse previous posts.

Police and Parking

Jeremy Drew documents and comments on police in Las Vegas:

The American Union and Rethinking

Over at The American Conservative, Joseph Baldacchino reviews Donald Livingston et al.'s Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century.

Loyalists to Canada

230 years ago today, United Empire Loyalists arrived in Canada.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila at 100

A century ago today, Nicolás Gómez Dávila was born.

Some aphorisms:

• As long as they do not take him seriously, the man who says the truth can live for a while in a democracy. Then, the hemlock.
• Democratic parliaments are not forums where debates take place, but rather where popular absolutism registers its decrees.
• Being of “divine right” limited the monarch; the “representative of the people” is the representative of absolute Absolutism.
• In order to oppress the people, it is necessary to suppress in the name of the people that which stands out from the people.
• Revolutions are frightening, but election campaigns are disgusting.
• Liberty is the right to be different; equality is a ban on being different.
• No folktale ever began this way: Once upon a time, there was a president…

Constitution Day

A year short of two centuries ago today, the Constitution of the Kingdom of Norway was signed.

A previous May 17 performance by the Royal Guards:

Ron Paul Going Forward

RT reported a few weeks ago:

The full video of the opening of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity:

Ron Paul on Boston

MSNBCs take on police activity in Massachusetts dissected (H/T: Daniel McAdams):

And here's more (if there is any doubt, I do not endorse the text at the very end):

Fürst Metternich

A dozen score years ago today, Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar, Fürst von Metternich-Winneburg zu Beilstein was born.

Osnabrück of Westphalia

365 years ago today, the Treaty at Osnabrück of the Peace of Westphalia was signed.

Paul, Rogers, and Farage

Ron Paul, Jim Rogers, and Nigel Farage spoke at recently at a conference in Chile. Here are some clips of their speaking:

Thoughts from Warner and Hitchens

Gerald Warner and Peter Hitchens have a few reflections.

Over at Scotland on Sunday, Mr. Warner:

• in defense of Hungary
• against the “Enlightenment”

Over at his MailOnline blog, Mr. Hitchens:

• on the money mess
• on chivalry

Mr. Hitchens also reflects on the evolution of marriage over at The American Spectator.

Quote of the Month (April)

Writes Mr. Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. over at his blog:

As if seeking to prove the truth of Democracy, the God That Failed in a sentence, Obama says that tyranny is impossible, because "the government is us."

previous

April Thoughts

ABM - A View From The Praires has some thoughts on primogeniture. The same blogger apparently has a plan for reactionary government in Canada.

Tea at Trianon has a post on the cake myth.

Some pseudonym says:

I wonder how many of the "don't read internet comments!" people think democracy is a good idea.

Anomaly UK has some thoughts on a reactionary transition.

Over at Nepali Netbook, says Maila Baje:

What would the Nepali Congress do about the damage that has already been done to Nepal’s ability to exercise its sovereign options? Here, the onus would fall heavily on the Nepali Congress, too, because much of that damage was inflicted by its rash desertion of the monarchy in the first place.

Writes Mr. Scott Ferrie over at his weblog The Paleo Revolt:

The American Ideology is Neo-Romanism. We worship the pagan god called the modern day, hyper-centralized, welfare-warfare state ruling over a global empire. Imperial Warlords are worshiped as demigods and our insane love for ‘democracy’ has transformed civil society into a real life example of ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ where competing interests plunder the rest of society for personal benefit in a short-sighted piranha-fest. Restore the traditional monarchy, restore the enforcement of the U.S. Constitution, or decentralize the modern nation-state out of existence. Any of those options will help.

Royal World has a post on the Dutch change of the throne.

So does Radical Royalist, who also posted on a restored German monarchy gaining support.

Forbes on Gold

Steve Forbes gives his thoughts on what is going on with gold:

And more from Mr. Forbes:

Cash War News

Over at Circle Bastiat, Prof. Joseph Salerno reports on the war on cash in Sweden.

Ortega y Gasset at 130

A baker's dozen decades ago today, José Ortega y Gasset was born.

A quote of choice:

There is one fact which, whether for good or ill, is of utmost importance in the public life of Europe at the present moment. This fact is the accession of the masses to complete social power. As the masses, by definition, neither should nor can direct their own personal existence, and still less rule society in general, this fact means that actually Europe is suffering from the greatest crisis that can afflict peoples, nations, and civilisation.

And another one:

I know well that many of my readers do not think as I do. This also is most natural and confirms the theorem. For although my opinion turn out erroneous, there will always remain the fact that many of those dissentient readers have never given five minutes' thought to this complex matter. How are they going to think as I do? But by believing that they have a right to an opinion on the matter without previous effort to work one out for themselves, they prove patently that they belong to that absurd type of human being which I have called the "rebel mass." It is precisely what I mean by having one's soul obliterated, hermetically closed. Here it would be the special case of intellectual hermetism.

Kierkegaard 200

Two centuries ago today, Søren Kierkegaard was born.

Writes Jon Bartley Stewart in his 2009 book Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries:

[Frederik Christian] Sibbern was the Danish defender of absolute monarchy, an advocate of the advisory Assembly of the Realm and critically disposed toward the age's ideas about democracy and constitutional monarchy. On these points Kierkegaard was generally in agreement with him.

Writes (the late) D. Anthony Storm on Kierkegaard's The Single Individual:

Perhaps there is no other work where Kierkegaard so clearly and emphatically spells out the value of the individual versus the masses. [quoting Kierkegaard:]

There is a view of life which conceives that where the crowd is, there is also the truth, and that in truth itself there is need of having the crowd on its side. There is another view of life which conceives that wherever there is a crowd there is untruth, so that (to consider for a moment the extreme case), even if every individual, each for himself in private, were to be in possession of the truth, yet in case they were all to get together in a crowd—a crowd to which any decisive significance is attributed, a voting, noisy, audible crowd—untruth would at once be in evidence (p. 110).

Previously: Søren Kierkegaard