Writes Mr. Theodore Harvey over at his weblog Royal World:
I dislike Vladimir Putin because he is not a monarchist, not because he is not a democrat. We need to get rid of the ridiculous neoconservative notion that every country on earth should necessarily be a democracy; autocracy seems to be what's natural for Russia.
The Mad Monarchist reflects on World War One – and on France.
Bryce Laliberte says:
Most people aren't given the ability to think for themselves because society doesn't need most people to think for themselves.Over at The American Conservative, C. Boyden Gray, former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, visits the thinking of Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, and others.
Egalitarianism ruins everything. A real reform would be to restore all the hereditary peers and expel the fake "life" ones.
281 years ago today*, Franz Joseph Haydn was born.
Today is the septennial anniversary of this weblog. Seven years ago today, this blog was launched.
Since this blog was launched on the day of the promulgation of the constitutional amendment making parliamentarism a part of the written Constitution of the Kingdom of Norway, whose bicentennial anniversary is this year.
Yours truly is, BTW, working on a forthcoming book, to be published this year, in connection with the bicentennary, as project manager, editor, and contributor. The book is to be released later this year, and the central question we pose is whether the Constitution really gives us freedom. It will be published in Norwegian.
Judge Andrew Napolitano on The Daily Show:
This video explains the Nash equilibrium (it may also explain political parties tendency to move to the center, and also give priority to center – or not-so-loyal – voters):
This date marks the birthday of two notable gentlemen, albeit with births more than a century apart and in two different calendars, to be especially noted in this 225th anniversary year of the first inauguration of George Washington as chief executive.
On this date in 1706, 308 years ago, Mather Byles was born.
Two dozen years short of two centuries ago today, William Edward Hartpole Lecky was born.
Mather Byles supported the Loyalist cause during the American War for Independence. He spoke out with these words:
Which is better - to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three thousand tyrants one mile away?W.E.H. Lecky was an Irish statesman, historian, and political theorist. He wrote of the American rebellion:
The disruption of America from the British Empire was largely due to the encroachments of Parliament on the ancient prerogative of the Crown; and no small part of the success of English colonial government is due to the class of men who have been appointed governors.
In this centenary year of the outbreak of World War One, 108 years ago today, A.J.P. Taylor was born.
Amongst what the notable historian wrote was:
Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police.
Half a decade short of a century ago today, the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Family arrived at the Austro-Swiss border in an Imperial train and departed Austria – under the protection of the icon of this weblog, Lt.-Col. Edward Lisle Strutt.
At Feldkirch, the Emperor-King issued the Feldkirch Manifesto, declaring the November 11 power renunciation – so often referred to as an abdication, but erroneously so – null and void, and denouncing the authority of the republican government.
Fünfundneunzig Jahre Interregnum sind genug!
Five years short of a century ago today, the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Family departed the hunting lodge at Eckartsau, where the Emperor-King and his family had been in internal exile since the end of the war, under various protection, the last three and a half weeks led by this weblog's icon, Lt.-Col. Edward Lisle Strutt.
The family left for external exile in the Helvetic Confederation in an Imperial train, also under the protection of Lt.-Col. Strutt, after the latter's clever defeat of Karl Renner's abdication demand.
In this Norwegian constitutional bicentennial year, 186 years ago today, Henrik Johan Ibsen was born. Incidentally, it is also World Storytelling Day.
Please feel free to visit or revisit my centennial article on Ibsen.
Three years short of a century ago today, the Emperor of Russia was forced to abdicate.
A quarter of a century ago today, Her Imperial and Royal Majesty Empress-Queen Zita passed from this world in her 97th year. She had lived roughly half a month short of 67 years as Empress-Queen Dowager.
Dr. Tom Woods interviews Professor Kevin Gutzman:
A dozen decades ago today, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen passed on.
Wrote Chilton Williamson, Jr.:
Even so, [Stephen] -- believing as he did, with Tocqueville, that mass democracy was the inevitable future, whether it worked or not -- maintains that he has nothing to recommend as a substitute for universal suffrage. The old ways, many of them as bad in their own time as new ones are in ours, were being swept away "like haycoocks in a flood." "The waters are out and no human force can turn them back." Only, "I do not see see why as we go with the stream we need sing Hallelujah to the river god."
Karen Hudes and Daniel McAdams on RT's CrossTalk with Peter Lavelle discussing the NSA:
97 years ago today, the February Revolution broke out in the Russian Imperial capital.
In the passing year we have seen much madness. For instance, the quest to send women to the front marches on.
Enjoy these videos:
Two centuries and half a dozen years ago today, Frederik Stang was born.
In this Norwegian bicentennial year, it is worth noting that the system of government that basically ended in the constitutional struggle in the 1880s bore his name.
Writes Mr. William S. Lind over at The American Conservative:
An unfortunate legacy of the Cold War is the negative attitude some American conservatives yet harbor toward Russia. Conditioned for decades to see Russia and the Soviet Union as synonymous, they still view post-communist Russia as a threat. They forget that Tsarist Russia was the most conservative great power, a bastion of Christian monarchy loathed by revolutionaries, Jacobins, and democrats. Joseph de Maistre was not alone among 19th-century conservatives in finding refuge and hope in Russia.previous
Over at The American Conservative, Wilfred M. McClay reviews William Murchison's The Cost of Liberty: The Life of John Dickinson. Dr. McClay in particular notes:
As the historian Forrest McDonald has speculated, Dickinson, who was admired even more than Jefferson for the eloquence of his pen and was an older and more seasoned man, might well have been the one invited to draft the Declaration—if only he had signaled a willingness to “swallow his scruples and voted for independence.” Had that happened, McDonald continued, the Declaration “would have been based upon English constitutional history rather than, as was Jefferson’s, upon natural-rights theory—with vastly different implications.”Also at The American Conservative, Paul Robinson reflects on how Russia could have stayed out of the Great War. Writes Dr. Robinson:
Durnovo disliked the Franco-Russian alliance. Republican France and Tsarist Russia had nothing in common. The conservative German Empire, by contrast, was a much more natural ally.Over at RadixJournal.com, Dr. Sean Gabb makes a case for the English landed aristocracy.
The world is a mess. Everyone deplores it. But not enough people yet draw the obvious conclusion: Modern Political "Progress" Is Not Working!Utters Outis Nusquam:
Modernity did not replace tradition with reason, it replaced tradition with opinion polls.MEP Daniel Hannan reflects on where Nazism belongs on the political spectrum.
In this Norwegian constitutional bicentennial year, two years short of a century ago today, Professor Yngvar Nielsen passed on.
Yngvar Nielsen was an advisor to and friend of King Oscar II. He was a tutor to the King's sons. Professor Nielsen was a historian, and politically, he belonged to the losing side of the constitutional “evolution” of the late 19th and early 20th century.
In this Norwegian constitutional bicentennial year, 27 years ago today, Bertrand de Jouvenel passed away.
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