The Auron MacIntyre Show - Power in 'Lord of the Rings' ｜ Guest： The Middle-earth Mixer ｜ 10⧸23⧸25

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00:00:30.440 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:33.340 I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:00:36.980 Whenever the issue of power comes up, whenever we talk about using power or the need to exercise power,

00:00:44.040 the response is always something along the lines of, well, the one ring is dangerous.

00:00:48.880 You have to be careful about power.

00:00:51.220 You must reject the call of power because ultimately power corrupts and destroys and divides.

00:00:57.500 But I think this is a shallow reading of the different book that they are referencing, the Lord of the Rings series.

00:01:04.380 Because ultimately, while yes, there is a message about power in there, there's also a message about right authority.

00:01:10.880 The last book is, of course, called Return of the King, and this is seen as a good thing.

00:01:15.740 So it doesn't look like Tolkien is ultimately rejecting the use of power, but he does have some very important things to say about the nature of power.

00:01:23.940 Joining me to discuss that today is Lord of the Rings aficionado and one of the best meme accounts on Twitter, MiddleEarthMixer.

00:01:30.140 Thank you so much for coming on, man.

00:01:31.780 Thank you so much for having me.

00:01:33.100 I really appreciate it.

00:01:34.580 I'm excited.

00:01:35.080 Of course.

00:01:36.680 Well, we're going to get into Lord of the Rings, what Tolkien believed about power, the exercise of power, monarchy, and Lord of the Rings.

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00:02:44.580 All right, Mixer, so like I said, we hear this debate all the time, right?

00:02:49.580 Especially now when people are kind of looking at the presidency of Donald Trump, and even in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, there are some people like myself saying, look, we must exercise a level of power.

00:03:00.700 We have to punish evil.

00:03:02.600 We have to secure the well-being of our people.

00:03:06.000 We can't ultimately simply ignore the violence and these kind of things.

00:03:09.900 But every time something like that is said, we always hear, well, what about the one ring?

00:03:15.440 What about power?

00:03:16.400 What about this draw?

00:03:17.800 You must reject it.

00:03:18.940 You must throw it into Mount Doom.

00:03:20.480 You must destroy this authority.

00:03:22.440 And I just think that that's the wrong way to look at how power is addressed in the Lord of the Rings.

00:03:28.660 We can go a bunch of different places with this, but maybe we start with the one ring itself.

00:03:34.560 Is the one ring just a symbol of power or does it have other meanings Tolkien is trying to communicate to us?

00:03:42.300 Well, Tolkien certainly didn't believe in allegory.

00:03:44.920 So the one ring is not an allegory for any one thing.

00:03:48.580 If there's a theme that you can attach with it, great.

00:03:51.800 That's wonderful.

00:03:52.620 That's a lesson you can teach yourself.

00:03:53.960 But before we talk about that, I kind of want to just preface how I want to approach this today.

00:03:59.700 Sure.

00:04:00.180 I used to know a legal scholar by the name of Dr. Guy Ferdon, and she wrote a book called A Republic, If You Can Keep It.

00:04:08.020 And there was, I don't remember if it was jurisdiction or jurisprudence, and I apologize to her if she oversees this.

00:04:15.460 But she identified the definition of what I believe was jurisprudence to be lawful use of lawful authority.

00:04:25.960 That is so relevant to the concept of power in Lord of the Rings, right?

00:04:30.800 Because there is lawful use of lawful authority, which translates to power, that many characters have and have permissions to do so by the creator god, Iluvatar.

00:04:45.280 And then there are characters who commit unlawful use of unlawful authority.

00:04:52.400 And Sauron creating the one ring would be a perfect example of that.

00:04:57.500 So that's the angle I want to take it today.

00:05:00.620 It's not that the use of power is wrong in order to get something important done.

00:05:06.800 It's how is it being used?

00:05:08.940 And does this character in the books, are they remaining within the boundaries that have been set upon them by their creator?

00:05:16.700 So one of the things that I think goes somehow past people's heads, even though it's literally in the titles of the book, is as you say, one of the big themes is that the king has a specific duty to exercise power, right?

00:05:34.160 A large theme in the book is, in many ways, we're looking at these different aristocratic classes.

00:05:41.500 We're looking at these different leaders.

00:05:43.500 And in many ways, they all fail because they reject their duty.

00:05:48.440 They reject their kingly authority. 1.00

00:05:51.420 So obviously, kind of the first one that comes to mind is Aragorn, is Strider, right?

00:05:57.360 He's not taking on his role as the true king.

00:06:01.820 And because he's not in that position of the true king, there are others who are less worthy who are ruling in his place.

00:06:11.260 I can't.

00:06:12.220 Sorry to interrupt you, but I'll go ahead.

00:06:14.700 Let you finish up.

00:06:15.940 No, no, no.

00:06:16.200 Go ahead.

00:06:17.200 I was just going to say, I can't imagine a better segue into what I was just about to dive into.

00:06:23.380 So for this, I thought it would be fruitful, since everybody wants to make arguments about, you know, we shouldn't, we should never grasp at power.

00:06:33.940 We should never take any level of authority.

00:06:35.660 I'd like to tell a story from start to finish of what happened when a leader in the Lord of the Rings universe did not take up proper authority when they were supposed to,

00:06:48.060 and the externalities that it placed on everyone and all of the fallout because of that original issue.

00:06:55.420 Can I, will you indulge me for a second?

00:06:56.880 Can I jump into some lore?

00:06:58.560 Okay.

00:06:58.800 So I want to talk about why the political situation in Gondor is broken, right?

00:07:05.080 For all my lore heads, you'll enjoy this.

00:07:10.040 Isildur, his father, his brother, they come to Middle-earth.

00:07:14.860 They flee the destruction of Numenor, and they establish two kingdoms.

00:07:20.880 These kingdoms are under the ultimate authority of Elendil, their father, right? 0.60

00:07:25.440 And then the brothers rule Gondor in the south.

00:07:27.800 There is some distance between the two kingdoms, so it requires there to be kind of a tetrarchy with the sons being subservient to the father up in Arnor in the north.

00:07:38.980 And after the War of the Last Alliance, after the prologue of the Fellowship of the Ring, if you will,

00:07:48.040 Anarion, who isn't in the movies, he's Isildur's brother.

00:07:50.980 He is killed in the battles leading up to that moment in the prologue.

00:07:56.400 And Elendil, of course, is killed as well.

00:07:58.800 So Isildur is faced with an issue.

00:08:00.960 He needs to go up to the north and claim kingship over both kingdoms.

00:08:05.020 And that was the original vision.

00:08:08.220 So he puts his nephew, Meneldil, the son of Anarion, his brother, in charge of Gondor in the south.

00:08:15.540 You will be responsible for ruling this.

00:08:17.920 I'm going to go claim high kingship in the north, and you will be under me.

00:08:22.280 That was how it was supposed to be set up.

00:08:24.600 Unfortunately, again, if you watch the prologue, you see that Isildur is cut down in the disaster in Gledon Fields,

00:08:31.660 and the ring falls down into the river.

00:08:34.460 So Isildur's youngest son, who is at that point not old enough to take the throne in the north and claim high kingship,

00:08:41.720 he's sent with the elves, and he has to wait until he can become king until he's old enough.

00:08:47.720 So what essentially happens is Anarion, his brother's son, that becomes the new line of kingship in the south.

00:08:55.660 And from that point forward, all of the kings of Gondor come through that line as opposed to Isildur's.

00:09:03.080 So that's one of the reasons why Aragorn isn't on the throne.

00:09:05.780 I did a whole podcast about why Aragorn isn't on the throne and why he has to take it.

00:09:10.820 So if you want to go listen to that, it's on Spotify.

00:09:15.560 So you have the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom.

00:09:18.820 At this point, they are severed.

00:09:20.080 And you fast forward years into the future, there is now a situation where they rarely talk to each other.

00:09:28.320 You know, there's some trade going on probably, but the distance is just so great, and they're completely disconnected.

00:09:33.820 There's a war in the north.

00:09:36.380 The witch king is intent on destroying Arnor. 1.00

00:09:40.520 And there's a king called Arvadui.

00:09:43.060 He's king in the north.

00:09:44.360 So he is of the line of Isildur, and he is told by a prophet that you must either let your kingdom be destroyed or claim both the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom and unite man against this threat coming in from the north.

00:10:04.220 And if you aren't able to get that done, I'm paraphrasing, of course, you're going to die and your kingdom is going to die.

00:10:11.180 And so Arvadui, he takes the wife of the Gondorian, or he takes a Gondorian wife. 0.62

00:10:19.520 She is a princess, the daughter of the king.

00:10:21.340 The king of Gondor in the south dies with no male heir.

00:10:25.000 So he is now married to the daughter of the old king.

00:10:29.080 And he says, hey, by rights of the fact that I am an heir of Elendil, and I am married to the last king's daughter, I'm going to take both kingdoms for myself, and we're going to unite and fight this threat that's coming from the north.

00:10:47.340 And there's two things that happen.

00:10:51.680 Arvadui is not strong enough, he's not charismatic enough to essentially go and assert his claim.

00:10:59.920 He sends kind of a weak message, a strongly worded email, if you will, to the Gondorian elite.

00:11:08.340 And the Gondorian elite, led by the steward at the time, they are too prideful to accept an heir of Isildur from the north.

00:11:18.240 They say, no, we're good, we'll find our own guy.

00:11:21.480 And they reject his claim.

00:11:23.320 And he just accepts that.

00:11:24.980 Arvadui goes, okay, fine, nothing I can do.

00:11:27.420 You guys said no.

00:11:28.160 And so what comes to happen is, is they find a distant cousin of one of the last kings, weak, weak claim to the throne.

00:11:39.440 And his name is Ernil.

00:11:41.980 And they put him in the position of kingship, instead of giving the rightful authority to Arvadui, because, again, he didn't have the gall to go claim it for himself.

00:11:54.040 And, you know, let's not forget, the Gondorians were too prideful. 1.00

00:11:58.220 In their pride, they made this mistake.

00:12:01.640 Ernil has one son named Ernor.

00:12:04.980 So he's king, and he has a prince.

00:12:08.640 And then up in the north, Arvadui, he's the last king.

00:12:11.940 The prophecy comes true. 0.53

00:12:13.160 His kingdom gets destroyed.

00:12:15.020 His son survives.

00:12:16.400 And through his son comes Aragorn.

00:12:18.360 But there's not enough people left to have a kingdom, right?

00:12:21.540 So they just, the kingdom just crumbles.

00:12:24.660 And in the south, Ernil, who is a good guy, well-intentioned, not that great of a king, he dies, has one son, Ernor.

00:12:35.300 And Ernor goes and decides to have a duel with the witch king, because he's so full of pride himself. 0.93

00:12:41.980 He's like, I can go fight this guy myself.

00:12:43.540 So he goes, challenges the witch king to a duel, and he's never seen again. 0.97

00:12:47.340 So we can only assume that he's horrifically tortured and killed.

00:12:52.640 And that's the last king of Gondor.

00:12:55.660 So the line is broken, and then the stewards take over, all because they were too prideful to accept this king's claim from the north,

00:13:03.520 while the king's claim in the north, him not being strong enough to go seize the throne himself.

00:13:08.580 But this shirk of responsibility from everyone involved and his inability to take power created the political disaster that made for why men were so weak by the time you get to the Fellowship of the Ring.

00:13:26.320 Does that make sense?

00:13:28.120 Yeah, no, that's a great illustration.

00:13:29.580 Again, it's not the rejection of power that ultimately is the goal there.

00:13:37.720 In fact, the complete rejection is a problem, because ultimately, Tolkien recognizes that power will exist, that this void will be filled.

00:13:46.680 And if it's not filled with the appropriate people, the worthy people, those who belong in the line,

00:13:51.960 if you're too arrogant to accept right authority, you will be ruled by inferior men, right?

00:13:58.260 It's not that you won't be ruled.

00:13:59.920 The stewards are there instead of the kings, but they are simply inferior versions of a king, right?

00:14:05.800 You're still going to have the stewards there, but ultimately, you're getting an inferior leadership because you rejected rightful authority.

00:14:16.020 And it has nothing to do with you needing to destroy.

00:14:19.220 At no point is it, well, we've got to destroy the kingship.

00:14:21.520 The problem is that the kings exist.

00:14:22.940 And if we just throw off the lordship of these kings, then ultimately, we will become free or we'll become strong or we'll have escaped the trap of power.

00:14:31.800 No, exactly the opposite, right?

00:14:33.140 That ultimately, you have to invest in these things.

00:14:36.040 You have to claim rightful authority.

00:14:37.380 There is no running away from responsibility.

00:14:39.600 And we do see that over and over again that it's interesting because Denethor is obviously a character that kind of invokes a lot of disgust in people when they kind of watch the movie.

00:14:53.640 And ultimately, one of the reasons, at least as I understand it, I'm nowhere near as versed in the book as you are, but ultimately, one of the reasons is that he has spent too much time looking into the Palateer, right?

00:15:04.280 He spent too much time viewing the forces that Sauron has amassed.

00:15:10.860 And the fact that...

00:15:12.300 Doomscrolling.

00:15:13.540 Exactly.

00:15:13.960 Well, exactly.

00:15:14.620 That's really the thing, right?

00:15:16.100 And so this is an interesting thing because he is, in a way, more learned on the topic than other rulers, right?

00:15:25.120 Like, he has the knowledge, he has seen at these things, and as somebody who analyzes power on a regular basis, who peers into the Palateer from time to time, I can kind of sympathize with this problem, right?

00:15:38.780 Because when you analyze power, when you look at the totality of power, it's very easy to be overwhelmed by it, to say there's just no way to escape, right?

00:15:48.840 His rational mind told him that ultimately there was no victory over these forces.

00:15:54.540 And so even though he's filling the role, and I would say this is a good allegory to many of our conservative leaders, right?

00:16:00.180 He's filling the role of leadership because it has to be filled, but he is inadequate to the task because he is trapped by the reality that he sees in the glass, in the power.

00:16:12.280 And so he becomes this, you know, you say a doomer, right?

00:16:16.180 Like, and that's his real problem.

00:16:18.420 And so he never feels the call to, like, return his people back to their rightful place.

00:16:26.360 He simply falls into depression after the loss of his first child.

00:16:30.760 He, you know, basically tries to kill himself and the other child because ever since his wife died, he's, like, trapped in this, you know, in this depression.

00:16:40.460 And that, in a lot of ways, feels like what we're getting from the David Frenches, right? 0.68

00:16:45.120 Like, they're, like, look, we have to go along with power.

00:16:47.960 That's just the way things are.

00:16:49.740 We can't push back against it.

00:16:51.320 There's no hope of victory this way.

00:16:52.780 We have to play inside the rules that the power has set up for us.

00:16:56.360 And ultimately, I'm kind of willing to burn myself and my movement down as long as ultimately, like, I didn't become this thing that I'm warning people about, right?

00:17:06.660 I'm warning about the evils of power.

00:17:09.000 So as long as I don't care if the people around me kind of die to this, that I ultimately kind of sacrifice my, you know, very real son in a very, again, the connections here are really good.

00:17:21.600 Like, you know, the older version of conservatives willing to sacrifice their children to avoid, like, you know, becoming this thing, you know, is very much the same thing that we saw from the steward of Gondor.

00:17:32.160 And I just thought that was, like, an interesting contrast of what happens when you have an unworthy ruler sitting on the throne.

00:17:39.820 He's dooming himself.

00:17:41.120 He's filling the role, but he's dooming his people in the meantime because he simply refuses to see another way out or to find a true heir that should be able to bring Gondor back to its glory.

00:17:54.740 Absolutely. And when you read the books, Denador actually is a much more fleshed out, tragic.

00:18:05.440 You don't have the same level of resentment for him because you see this tragedy that has taken place inside this once great man, a man who should be in triumph over his enemies, who carries the majesty of those who came before him.

00:18:23.480 But that blackpilling, so to speak, does happen to him.

00:18:29.480 And we see Tolkien creates this foil of characters between Denador and Theoden as what is the proper response when everything is on fire, quite literally, how should a man respond?

00:18:46.820 And Theoden had every, you look at the similarities, both lost a son, both lost an heir, both have everything crashing and burning around them.

00:18:56.280 And where Theoden rises to the occasion and chooses hope with a little help from Gandalf, of course, they had to go in there and take out the trash.

00:19:07.320 They had to remove Grima, who I love Grima because he is the quintessential archetype for the sneaky government bureaucrat, right?

00:19:17.920 He's such a great character, the mischievous counselor, you know, there's so many of those in our government today that need to be kicked to the curb.

00:19:30.500 And Tolkien uses that to show us, hey, even when everything around you seems insurmountable, hopelessness is only for those who can't see the end.

00:19:44.640 And in Denador's mind, he thought he saw the end because Sauron really was whispering to him over years and years and years.

00:19:53.100 He thought he had an edge over the enemy and really Sauron was using this thing to cause him to really only show him things that he wanted him to see.

00:20:04.240 Well, of course, Theoden is another great example, right?

00:20:09.260 Because you have, as you say, that influence of the counselor.

00:20:12.940 And in many ways, obviously, we know that our government is constantly receiving, as you say, these demoralizing, destructive advice from bureaucrats, you know, people coming in.

00:20:25.840 You can't do that. You don't have the authority. You can't make these decisions. You can't take these actions, right?

00:20:30.920 In a way, the council is paralyzing. It's meant to be paralyzing.

00:20:35.560 It's meant to stop you from taking your rightful authority and taking the honorable action.

00:20:40.600 And you have to remove that influence, right? You need that removed.

00:20:45.100 But also, really critically, the way that he has ultimately woken up, again, if I remember correctly, it's been a little while, but Gandalf puts the sword in his hand, right?

00:20:54.180 And this is what it means.

00:20:55.340 It's from the movie.

00:20:57.460 Oh, that's only from the movie?

00:20:59.080 Yeah, I believe so. I believe that's only from the movie.

00:21:02.780 Anyone can feel free to correct me on that, which I'm sure they will, but I believe that's just in the movie.

00:21:08.260 And it's been a while since I've read the original book, so yeah, that could be the case.

00:21:12.920 But I still find that to be a very...

00:21:14.160 Actually, that might be in the book. Sorry. Go ahead.

00:21:16.840 Either way, the point is, it's a very moving symbol, right?

00:21:19.900 Because it's not until...

00:21:21.560 Once that picture of authority, right?

00:21:24.560 Kingly authority.

00:21:25.720 And not just, you know, he's not handing him the scepter.

00:21:27.400 He's not handing him a crown.

00:21:28.700 He's handing him the sword, right?

00:21:30.600 And like, it's time for you to act.

00:21:32.520 It's time for you to bring justice.

00:21:34.340 It's time for you to fulfill and exercise your power in the most lethal way possible, right?

00:21:39.780 And he's awoken to his duty and his need to return to being...

00:21:43.600 Yeah, I remember. I'm sorry. That's going to bother me.

00:21:45.860 That's going to bother me.

00:21:46.720 I just remembered.

00:21:47.940 So Grima had his sword locked up because everybody is going to rail on me if I don't correct this.

00:21:53.760 Grima had his personal sword locked away.

00:21:57.380 So Theoden couldn't touch it.

00:21:58.980 And then it's returned to him after he's restored.

00:22:01.380 Sorry for that interruption.

00:22:03.580 Yeah, I don't want the...

00:22:05.700 They'll come for me.

00:22:07.760 This guy's no authority.

00:22:09.140 He doesn't know anything.

00:22:10.580 Where's his credibility?

00:22:11.920 But yeah, I just feel like that's a beautiful portrayal of like what stirs the king back to a noble action, right?

00:22:18.820 Is he has to feel the weight of the instrument of his office.

00:22:22.880 The sword, the rifle sword he has been entrusted with as the civil magistrate has to be felt in his hand before he can once again truly return to who he is and behave honorably.

00:22:35.160 Yeah, and it's a great analogy there, you know, if you're looking for it, that the counselor, the sneaky counselor had the means of power and authority.

00:22:46.560 If you want to look at a sword that way, certainly to take violent action if you have to as a king.

00:22:51.480 And he had that locked away and hidden.

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00:23:26.700 Absolutely.

00:23:27.560 So I think that it's really interesting also, of course, when we look at Boromir, right?

00:23:34.620 Because, of course, this is seen as the main moment of temptation with the ring, right?

00:23:40.900 Like, this is the one everyone points to, obviously, in the movies.

00:23:44.420 It's a key part of the first movie is that kind of rejection or that attempt to steal the ring and take the authority and take the power.

00:23:54.840 And, you know, in that moment, of course, he is reaching for something.

00:23:58.240 So we should probably, while we have pushed back against the idea that Tolkien is speaking against power unilaterally,

00:24:04.120 there is something that we are warned about him trying to embrace, right?

00:24:09.020 Because he is the son and the heir of the steward, right?

00:24:14.500 The kings are gone, and the steward of Gondor has Boromir and Faramir.

00:24:20.140 And Boromir is, in some ways, insecure about his power, right?

00:24:26.400 Like, ultimately, he knows he's the eldest son.

00:24:28.720 He knows that he's the heir.

00:24:30.340 But at the same time, he's not really a king.

00:24:33.000 He's not really of that line.

00:24:35.380 And so he's preparing to fill a role which he doesn't truly belong in.

00:24:41.560 And he can kind of feel that, right?

00:24:43.080 And so the ring, to him, represents, like, this otherworldly power that he could take control of, maybe, is the way to look at it.

00:24:50.280 It's something of evil that he could borrow to win legitimacy in that place, in that role that he otherwise wouldn't have.

00:24:59.640 So I don't know if you want to talk on Boromir and kind of his connection there.

00:25:04.120 But I do find that.

00:25:04.660 And we know that Boromir has these thoughts, this inner battle within him.

00:25:10.360 Because we know from his childhood that he would often complain that, you know, why doesn't my father have the authority of kingship?

00:25:17.320 But he is the one who's putting it on the line for this kingdom.

00:25:22.040 He's the one who's sticking his neck out for our people, who's working tirelessly.

00:25:25.840 And he didn't feel like that was right growing up.

00:25:30.900 And I believe we learned that in Faramir's discussion with Frodo and Sam, when Frodo and Sam find out that Boromir has been slain.

00:25:42.640 And so we know that.

00:25:47.500 We know that he's having this inner struggle.

00:25:49.700 And that inner struggle is pushing him to do certain things with, obviously, what he thinks are good intentions.

00:25:57.180 And it's, I think it's important to make a distinction between, like, all right, if power has to be seized, it can't be power that causes you to sin, right?

00:26:11.640 But if it doesn't cause you to sin, and it is needed for the moment, then that authority needs to be filled.

00:26:20.860 And the power that Boromir was reaching for in that moment was unlawful use of unlawful authority.

00:26:29.380 That was Sauron.

00:26:31.680 Sauron created this thing.

00:26:33.320 Now, in Boromir and Faramir's defense, they didn't know a whole lot about what this weapon was.

00:26:42.900 They knew about a thing.

00:26:45.560 They knew it was a Sealdor's Bane.

00:26:47.200 They knew it was a craft of the enemy.

00:26:48.880 But this thing was made by Sauron in order, as a means to concentrate his power that he was illegally using outside the will of Iluvatar.

00:27:04.180 So because it has that clear sin aspect to it, whether Boromir is willing to admit that or not, and sometimes you really have to be guided by wisdom and just thinking.

00:27:21.360 That's the difference between Faramir and Boromir is Faramir was more humble in his approach.

00:27:27.320 He listened to right judgment and understood that this was a thing, and he said it himself, you know, I wouldn't pick this thing up off the road if I found it, not if the entirety of the kingdom of Gondor depended on it.

00:27:49.440 So that's the difference there, is Boromir is reaching for something that intuitively he should feel is wrong.

00:27:56.080 Now, in real life, we should be guided by the Holy Spirit, you know, to see when things are unclear, those are the triggers within ourselves.

00:28:07.520 And in the books, Tolkien uses, he describes something called the secret fire, and a lot of people debate on, like, how much is the secret fire, which is the power of the creator?

00:28:19.260 How much is it involved in the regular decision making of people in Middle Earth?

00:28:23.060 But I think you have evidence of it throughout the books, is that this idea of Iluvatar's power moving in Middle Earth, it speaks to people, it whispers.

00:28:37.360 So that's where Boromir committed his flaw.

00:28:40.580 And deep down, he really did know that, you know, he admits that as much to Aragorn.

00:28:45.320 He says, I've failed.

00:28:46.060 So that would be where he made his mistake.

00:28:51.120 Oh, and guys, I'm sorry, I should have mentioned this at the beginning, but we are pre-recording this.

00:28:55.400 I'm actually traveling on Friday.

00:28:57.360 So when this comes out, we aren't live.

00:28:59.300 So unfortunately, we'll not be able to answer questions today.

00:29:02.080 Sorry about that.

00:29:02.840 I'll make sure to include a notice when we start the actual stream.

00:29:06.240 But most of what we discussed so far has been obviously in the book, right?

00:29:11.160 Because that's the context most people are making those associations with.

00:29:16.200 But I think it is also useful to look at Tolkien's actual beliefs because he was a real person in the real world.

00:29:22.580 And that obviously informed what he's writing about.

00:29:25.440 So beyond the fact that he's writing about monarchy and the need to have these different authorities and to assume authority as king and not doing so is itself a sinful, is a flaw, is falling short.

00:29:39.100 We also know that ultimately someone like Tolkien supported Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War, which shocks a lot of people.

00:29:51.000 But it makes a lot of sense when you realize that he was a ardent Catholic.

00:29:54.340 And if you know anything about the Spanish Civil War, it was really bad.

00:29:58.880 Like they were throwing nuns off of the sides of cliffs after raping them.

00:30:04.600 They were gutting priests.

00:30:06.540 This was a deeply evil revolution.

00:30:09.760 Now, a lot of people don't like Franco because they tend to associate him with fascism.

00:30:14.000 I think that's a wrong way to understand Franco.

00:30:16.120 But I understand given the connections of the different people he was associated with at that time, there's a reason that sticks.

00:30:23.420 But even knowing this, you know, Tolkien says, ultimately, you know, I support Franco because he's stopping the ravaging of the Catholic Church in Spain. 0.95

00:30:32.980 And that's really important to me as a Catholic.

00:30:34.700 In fact, he was so committed to this that this actually became a falling out between him and C.S. Lewis.

00:30:39.660 And Lewis ultimately kind of breaks off their friendship in no small part because of this fact.

00:30:47.600 So it's very interesting because even if you look at the, you know, we don't have to do just these, you know, extrapolations of what he meant in the book and, you know, try to interpret how he felt about power.

00:30:58.820 It's clear that when the chips are down, he believed that ultimately embracing a authority that was protecting Christians in a time of persecution was worth it.

00:31:09.840 Even if he ultimately might have had some misgivings about the way that was done or the man in charge or the allocation of the power, he would embrace a dictator like Franco if it meant stopping the communist murder of a large number of Christians.

00:31:24.180 Yeah, Tolkien did certainly support Franco, and that is, as you said, something that tends to upset a lot of people.

00:31:31.520 And I don't think it's as complicated as everyone really makes it out to be.

00:31:36.760 You know, it's not it's not something that you have to write essays over.

00:31:40.440 It's it's a simple matter of the fact that the token was a Catholic above all else.

00:31:46.700 And the communists had you can call them the Republicans or whatever and do all the coping you want. 0.50

00:31:53.760 But the communists and the left had full control of the other side of the pendulum in the Spanish Civil War, and they were committing all kinds of atrocities against the church.

00:32:02.760 So that was something that Tolkien absolutely could not stomach under any circumstances.

00:32:07.780 So I don't believe it was a difficult choice for him.

00:32:10.680 I do. Obviously.

00:32:13.460 Obviously, he would say that I didn't support everything.

00:32:16.760 You can't you can't support everything in war.

00:32:18.900 You know, Tolkien supported the allies in World War One and Two, but he would often make criticisms of propaganda coming from the allied side.

00:32:30.040 He would often he was a huge critic of the atom bomb and was horrified of them.

00:32:35.280 So there's there's things that he would acknowledge that were wrong about what what any one side has done.

00:32:43.760 But ultimately, he was able to have the cognitive ability to be like, well, I clearly don't I don't want these people to have power.

00:32:52.800 You know, that's that's that's easy.

00:32:55.040 So that's that's a simple explanation, I think.

00:32:59.760 And I don't think sorry, go ahead.

00:33:02.720 No, I was gonna say I'm with you.

00:33:04.420 I don't think it I don't think you need a bunch of mental gymnastics out of this one.

00:33:08.620 He looked at people murdering, you know, nuns and priests and, you know, destroying the church.

00:33:14.380 And he said, I don't know who the other guys are, but I'm against those guys.

00:33:18.240 Like the guys raping nuns and throwing them off the side of a cliff.

00:33:22.580 But I'm against that guy and I'm willing to whoever God sends to stop this.

00:33:28.180 I'm on I'm on that side.

00:33:29.740 It's I think it's really just that simple.

00:33:32.140 Yeah, it is.

00:33:33.300 I do want to I know you kind of wanted to use some external sources and I do want to talk about that.

00:33:38.560 But I want to also just make a brief mention of what does restoration look like in the books?

00:33:46.960 Can we can I touch on that real quick?

00:33:48.660 Absolutely. So one of the questions I wanted to answer is when it comes to politics in the book.

00:33:55.180 And again, when you're reading Lord of the Rings, your your mind shouldn't be what political message should I get out of this?

00:34:00.080 That's not where you should be at all.

00:34:01.820 But when it comes to politics, what does what does good order look like?

00:34:05.940 And good order looks like the restoration of the reunited kingdom of Gondor and Arnor.

00:34:12.100 And that is a vast dominion under Aragorn.

00:34:16.520 So for anyone to say that all power is bad, I want you to go on Google right now and look at a map of the restored kingdom of Arnor and Gondor, because it's I mean, it covers the entire thing top down and stretches all the way out east.

00:34:33.160 And it is a celebration.

00:34:35.880 It's a celebration of that restoration.

00:34:38.000 It's a celebration of that order.

00:34:40.260 And no one's making an argument for, oh, should we have monarchies now?

00:34:43.640 That's not what I'm saying.

00:34:44.520 But it's important to note that for Tolkien, what that good looked like was a monarchy and a monarchy that acts as a conductor, not as not a total state.

00:35:00.660 Tolkien talked a lot about, you know, a lot about the total state.

00:35:03.120 I think you wrote a nice, nice book on that.

00:35:07.360 Tolkien was an enemy of the total state.

00:35:10.160 And what that monarchy looked like in the restored kingdom was you could use the Shire as a great example.

00:35:16.780 So when it's restored and the northern kingdom is rebuilt, Aragorn has a political situation with the Shire where there's a mayor and there's a Thane.

00:35:27.200 And they loosely report to him, but they are mostly left to govern their own affairs.

00:35:34.740 They are under him.

00:35:35.960 They are under his protection.

00:35:38.220 Like I said, he acts as a conductor of an orchestra, but they are left to live peacefully to themselves.

00:35:45.200 And that kind of sacred, if you want to call it medieval anarchy or sacred medieval anarchy where authority looks more like a patchwork, you know, as opposed to this huge state full of bureaucracy and people who are...

00:36:09.100 The bureaucracy is what the Shire looked like when it was scoured, right?

00:36:14.460 During the scouring of the Shire, there's rules posted everywhere.

00:36:18.660 Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, they return, they come over the bridge, and the first thing they see is a bunch of hobbits locked in this disgusting house where there's a list of rules on the wall.

00:36:29.980 You know, you read that and you go, oh, this is a lot of times what liberal democracy looks like.

00:36:35.400 You know, this, if you want to call it the HRification of government.

00:36:41.180 That is what Tolkien hated.

00:36:43.520 He despised it.

00:36:45.040 He talked about throwing people in prison who used the term, who used the word state in any other definition besides just referring loosely to what has historically been the nation of England.

00:36:56.720 So that's what a restored monarchy looks like, is this, is Aragorn being a noble protectorate under the authority of the creator, which that essentially comes through like Gandalf.

00:37:12.460 Gandalf is the mastermind, if you want to say that, behind him returning to the throne.

00:37:18.420 Gandalf is pushing the events of Middle-earth in that direction, himself acting as the priest for the king.

00:37:27.180 So that's, that's what right power looked like to him.

00:37:31.540 I'm really glad you brought that up because I was, my next point was going to be him, you know, the quote that people like to throw around is him talking about being an anarchist, right?

00:37:40.500 Like, and, and they don't understand because they're not familiar.

00:37:43.440 They never finished that quote, though.

00:37:44.680 Yeah.

00:37:45.400 Well, go ahead.

00:37:46.080 Finish that quote, actually.

00:37:47.000 So he says, I could be described as an anarchist and, and I'm, this isn't verbatim.

00:37:54.400 I'm, uh, doing it off the top of my head, but I could be described as an anarchist, which is to say that I don't believe in whiskered men with weapons, uh, pointed at everyone.

00:38:07.160 Or he says, or everyone stops at anarchist.

00:38:10.140 He says, or an unconstitutional monarchist.

00:38:14.660 Right.

00:38:14.820 Right.

00:38:16.100 So it's like, uh, those are very different and you have to square those two.

00:38:21.100 And, and what does he really mean by that?

00:38:23.380 And what he really means is, is sacred monarchy, one that acts as an orchestra conductor that does not interfere with the family church or, or individual property owners.

00:38:36.560 That's, that's more, or the, the community, the village, if you will.

00:38:40.360 Uh, that's, that's more what he means by that.

00:38:42.940 The, the, the, the, the power and the ability to solve a problem should be as close to the problem as possible.

00:38:50.920 It should not be zoomed out.

00:38:53.340 Tolkien hated the machine.

00:38:55.920 And when he used the word machine, he's not talking about any, he's not talking about a car or a plane.

00:39:02.520 He's talking about the machine and the abstract, the machinification of every aspect of our lives.

00:39:09.540 It's the machinification of, of government because now, now government is figuring out how to surgically control you to surgically have a stake in every aspect of your life.

00:39:23.360 That is what Tolkien repudiated and hated more than anything else.

00:39:27.240 And this is really what shows you that a lot of people have a cartoonish understanding of what a monarchy looked like, right?

00:39:35.540 When you say the words feudal anarchy, like that just, for most people, like their brain just shuts down immediately when those two words are mentioned next to each other.

00:39:43.700 Cause they're like, well, no, uh, kings get to do whatever they want and they have total authority.

00:39:49.380 Anarchy, anarchy is the absence of authority.

00:39:51.580 And therefore you can't have feudal Kings and anarchy, but this is a terrible definition.

00:39:57.240 Right.

00:39:57.560 The reason you ended up with feudalism is that the Europeans after the fall of Rome couldn't create centralized states.

00:40:06.540 They didn't have the power.

00:40:07.920 They didn't have the logistics.

00:40:09.280 They didn't have the institutions.

00:40:11.540 And so you needed this patchwork of different Lords, different, uh, fiefdoms, uh, that were under the control of these different nobles.

00:40:19.440 And the King was just the first among nobles, right?

00:40:23.100 He was the, the, the top noble, but he still had to acquire the assistance of his bannermen.

00:40:30.420 This is why you even get parliaments in the first place, right?

00:40:33.520 The King basically needs a place where he can lobby all the rich nobles and get their money so he can go to war.

00:40:38.800 Right.

00:40:39.260 But he still has to lobby them.

00:40:40.560 Like he has to convince them if he doesn't have their banners, if he doesn't have their tax money, if he doesn't have their levies, then he cannot go and do what he wants to do.

00:40:49.500 And so the King is in a constant negotiation with these nobles about like how to get things done.

00:40:54.860 And that means it's very hard to centralize power in a state apparatus because so much, much of it is distributed down into the people.

00:41:02.660 If you read something like the ancient city by Cologne, you get the same idea that ultimately the different tribes and the different, uh, you know, uh, aristocrats and their control over their tribe.

00:41:13.820 Like the gins really kept the central power from Rome from being able to create this like organized state.

00:41:20.940 And he marks the transition from kind of the, uh, Republic inevitably to the empire to the fact that over and over again, the central government destroyed the authority of these regional rulers of these nobles of these heads of the gins, these, uh, these patriarchs, they lost the control of their, uh, of over their people.

00:41:41.060 And every time the people thought this was some kind of liberation because, Oh, look, the, this, this Lord is no longer over me, but actually they were just handing that authority to the state.

00:41:50.300 Right.

00:41:50.900 And this is kind of the, the argument to make in the total state is that what we've done is we keep handing power over to the bureaucracy in hopes that we can escape the power and authority of our regional rulers, these different spheres of authority.

00:42:01.880 But instead what we've done, instead of free us from government authority, we've just created a complete lack of barriers to overall centralization of authority.

00:42:10.740 And so when Tolkien's talking about this medieval anarchy, it really is anarchy in the sense that there is no true central state, that it's all just a constant negotiation between these kind of regionalized powers.

00:42:22.500 And that's what he was looking at. So when he said King, he didn't think centralized authority. He actually thought the opposite, that the King was a way to keep the authority from being totally centralized.

00:42:34.920 So I just think it's interesting because so few people grasp what real monarchy looked like, that they just kind of think about some movie they saw where the King said off with his head and like that's it, right? That's what Kings are.

00:42:46.800 Yeah, it's important. Whenever you read any letter from Tolkien, you have to look at it from the perspective of a person who believes in idealism that the West once had that has been lost, right?

00:43:01.660 And people are reading his letters and they see modern words in there that mean completely different things to them.

00:43:08.380 And then they go, Oh, look, you know, Tolkien, Tolkien would have supported genital mutilation in a, in a, you know, it's, it's like crazy.

00:43:16.300 The, the, the conclusions I've seen people come to, but the one point I wanted to make is a lot of people ask like, okay, well, what was, what is the power?

00:43:27.440 Like, like, what does Tolkien mean? What does the power level look like of a monarch? And I mentioned the quote about, and he's like, or an unconstitutional monarchy.

00:43:36.880 It's not because he doesn't not support in, in an ideal world, a constitution because he doesn't believe that the King's power should be restrained.

00:43:48.100 He doesn't support a constitution because, and it's for the same reason that a lot of the anti-federalists didn't want to have a bill of rights, right?

00:43:56.240 They don't want to have a document that says, here's as close to the line the King can get before committing evil, right?

00:44:04.620 Because then you can figure out ways to get around those.

00:44:07.940 So that if I had to take a guess was why, and I, and I believe I'm right, was why Tolkien believed that.

00:44:14.900 It wasn't so there would be unchecked power, but that there would actually be in the longterm, more checked power because you wouldn't have a situation where the King knows exactly what he can and can't get away with.

00:44:28.340 And more often than not, those, those documents actually tend to deteriorate, right?

00:44:34.200 And the governing power tends to get, get away with more and more and more as time goes on.

00:44:38.360 And if you talk about the patchwork and the medieval anarchy, you say, you could ask yourself the question, like, who's more powerful, the local Lord or the King?

00:44:48.780 Well, it depends on who you ask, right?

00:44:51.160 Because a local Lord is going to have more loyalty from the people, if he's a good, if he's a good leader, from the people who live under him and are closest to him.

00:45:01.400 So that's where their loyalty is going to lie.

00:45:04.640 And that's the kind of society that Tolkien thought was best, right?

00:45:11.520 Is local people having the most loyalty to whoever their local leaders are.

00:45:17.000 And that creates this, fighting factions oftentimes actually creates a better situation, right?

00:45:23.900 Right.

00:45:24.040 Again, it's not even something that our founders didn't know, right?

00:45:27.720 Like, ambition was supposed to check ambition, right?

00:45:30.260 That's what Federalist 51 is all about.

00:45:32.120 They knew that rules didn't check power.

00:45:34.720 Power checks power, right?

00:45:36.240 And without power confronting itself, without different powers pushing back against each other, someone will rule, right?

00:45:44.920 And so you have the situation where, yes, technically some unelected bureaucrat in, I don't know, the civil rights division of the United States government has more power than most kings could have imagined throughout history, right?

00:45:58.440 Like he snaps his finger and tomorrow he can dictate what every business and every institution and every religious organization in the country has to believe and has to carry out in their private dealings, right?

00:46:11.520 Like you're basically, like it's, they can make it more or less illegal for you to think certain things or believe certain things, act in certain ways and no one elected them.

00:46:20.220 There's no check on the cower, but also no one's going to call them king, right?

00:46:23.180 Like there's no, and so it is the, it is the most empty seat of authority moment imaginable, right?

00:46:29.300 Because you have this person who is not worthy of leadership, who has no accountability, who has no honor, who has no, you know, no tie to the line of true honorable succession.

00:46:39.940 And yet they are the one wielding all of the power and authority in that situation, more power than any legitimate king throughout most of history would have had.

00:46:49.300 And so I think that just getting rid of the title of monarchy does not remove power, right?

00:46:55.120 Like just saying, oh, we don't have king, you know, we just had the no kings protest, right?

00:46:58.620 No kings, no kings.

00:46:59.440 At least we don't have a king.

00:47:01.220 Right, right, right.

00:47:02.100 Yeah, the government of California can steal your child if you don't want to chop their genitals off. 1.00

00:47:06.520 But there's no king, no monarch, right?

00:47:09.960 And that's what, no monarch in history would have thought of subjecting every parent in their entire civilization to this like weird mutilation sacrifice ritual.

00:47:21.760 And if they don't do it, they lose their children.

00:47:23.540 Like no, no, no king throughout history would have thought that this was ultimately going to be like a good idea.

00:47:28.120 And they also wouldn't have even had the ability to do so.

00:47:30.760 Right, right, right.

00:47:31.560 You think about medieval England, those leaders did not have the ability to control in such a mechanistic way how everybody, as you said, you can snap your fingers and then every business government organization does this thing.

00:47:47.580 You know, they wouldn't have been able to do that.

00:47:48.640 Exactly. So I think it's just very interesting that the misinterpretation of what monarchy was, the ahistorical understanding of how it worked, and just the way that people throw around Tolkien as this like anti-authority guy.

00:48:04.820 When if we look at any of the stuff that he's talking about, it's not a rejection of authority, it's a rejection of unrighteous authority.

00:48:14.340 And it's an encouragement over and over again, like we said, one of the big themes of these books is that you must have the right people assuming authority and that there is a cost for not exercising power, for not assuming your proper role, for shunning or for being too arrogant to accept lawful rule, right?

00:48:32.560 Like there is ultimately a consequence. So that's kind of just what I think we hit on most stuff. Is there any other aspects that you wanted to touch on before we go?

00:48:40.200 No, I think, you know, we were going to go about 45 minutes, right? I think that pretty much, I think we've covered the gauntlet of it. I was going to maybe talk about Numenor, but I think we've reached a good ending place. 0.97

00:48:51.340 I think to, to summarize it though, is if you, if you take anything away from this podcast, it's the one ring is unlawful use of unlawful authority.

00:49:06.740 And there are characters who need to rise to the occasion of lawful use of lawful authority. And that is, that is a theme throughout all of the books, not just Lord of the Rings, but the entire legendarium, you know, go, go read the Silmarillion.

00:49:24.300 There's plenty of examples of kings that needed to do the right thing at the right time. And if they don't do those things, then people suffer.

00:49:31.840 Absolutely. All right. Well, we'd like said, no, uh, super chats today because we are prerecorded. So sorry, guys. Uh, can't answer any of your questions today before we go. Is there anywhere you want to direct people? I know you got the podcast, uh, the, the, uh, the, uh, Twitter account, anything else people should know about.

00:49:49.780 So, uh, yeah, I plan to come out with a bunch of new content in 2026, uh, big plans. I paused the podcast for a while because my nine to five and dad life

00:50:00.940 got pretty busy, but, uh, right now you can find me on Twitter at middle earth mixer. And then you can see my old episodes on Spotify and Apple. Um, and I plan to come out with more stuff soon.

00:50:14.420 Excellent. We'll make sure you're following them. So, you know, when those new episodes come out. And of course, if it's, if it's your first time on this channel, you need to subscribe on YouTube, click the bell notification. So, you know, when we go live, if you want to get these broadcast as podcasts, you need to subscribe to your Mac entire show on your favorite podcast platform.

00:50:29.180 And when you do please leave a rating or review, it really helps with the algorithm magic. Thank you everybody for watching. And as always, I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - October 24, 2025

Power in 'Lord of the Rings' ｜ Guest： The Middle-earth Mixer ｜ 10⧸23⧸25

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