[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
Castles have Kings & Queens, Kings & Queens rule subjects, and power is kept by a “family” through linage.
[/quote]
Monarchs on average taxed about 2-5% of income. Not even Genghis Khan would’ve taxed people at the rates that democratic nation states tax citizens. And why are taxes so high? Because the citizens have voted their way into the public treasury. A monarch traditionally is a non-partisan head of state and mediates between the different factions in society. This is in stark contrast to the head of state in the US; the leader of a political party. The monarch has a longterm vested interest in the society and so longterm economic stability and security are of primary importance to the monarch, unlike the head of state in a republic.
Because the monarch is not beholden to party politics or populist political ideologies like socialism, monarchies are the only systems of government that have longterm viability and stability. When the ancien regime in France collapsed the forces unleashed plunged Europe into the first actual world war in history; the Napoleonic Wars were fought on four continents. The century that followed was plagued by revolutionary violence(vanguard Communists and anarchists and anarchists/nihilists) on a massive scale in the colonies and internally. This is not a history lesson. I’m explaining what happened in Europe that brought about Bolshevism and fascism and completely destroyed Western civilisation as it was known before the US became a great power. Specifically, it was the collapse of the Bourbon regime and subsequent century of chaos and revolution that followed; by 1916 the remaining continental dynasties(Habsburg, Hohenzollern and Romanov) were teetering on collapse and the German General Staff deliberately sent Lenin back into Russia as a ideological subversion plot against the Russians in desperation > Russian Revolution > Bolshevism > The Second World War.
The legitimacy of those older power structures has been contested over and over again in Europe and what replaced them was almost universally bad. This is something Americans missed entirely. The US was an exception and a mythical ideology developed linking revolution with liberty as cause to effect; means to ends. A deep ideological hostility to monarchism and imperialism flourished in the collective consciousness. Accompanied by hostility to imperialism and colonialism; a distrust of European powers; political isolationism. This was very ironic in the antebellum South which had developed into a kind of feudal aristocracy. I’m not criticising it though. I’m an admirer of Southern agrarianism and the social structures of the South, leaving aside the slavery.
Everything you see going wrong today in the third world is due to the collapse of the colonial powers. I can scarcely think of anywhere that wasn’t convulsed in sectarian and political violence when the colonial powers pulled out. Terrorism is political and ideological and always an expression of nationalist, pan-nationalist or internationalist impulses. It arises where the old established powers whether they be native or foreign collapsing.
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Say what you want about how discombobulated our current election process has become, but we get 8 years or so, and POTUS can’t give his “throne” to anyone. [/quote]
The US will be a backwater within a generation and it won’t survive in anything like its current form. Mark Steyn gives a pretty good prognostication of what will happen in the US over the next few decades. I highly recommend his book America Alone. As a sort of European Canadian he’s removed from the party politics and idiosyncrasies of domestic politics over there. And Samuel P Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations is a pretty accurate assessment of the geopolitical scene in the 21st Century(although I don’t agree with some of his strategic assessments).[/quote]
I agree with your post, SM, but how can the world(or even a single nation) come back from DDDDEEEEMMMMOOOOCCCCRRRRAAAACCCCYYYY? The only way out, as far as I can see, is to wait for the collapse.
