The Auron MacIntyre Show - The Greatest Form of Government ｜ Guest： The Prudentialist ｜ 10⧸25⧸23

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00:00:30.540 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:32.060 I am Oren McIntyre.

00:00:33.360 Thank you for joining me.

00:00:35.520 So we have been working our way through the work of one of my favorite political theorists,

00:00:40.380 Joseph DeMaestra, and his incredibly important essay, Study on Sovereignty.

00:00:45.440 It breaks down all kinds of things about government,

00:00:48.480 what we need to understand about the nature of governments, people's, constitutions.

00:00:52.540 But today he's getting to the famous three governments by Aristotle,

00:00:57.260 kind of the standard three governments of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.

00:01:03.240 And so we're going to be looking at those three forms of government,

00:01:06.860 those three basic forms of government, and saying,

00:01:08.680 what is good about them?

00:01:09.860 What is bad about them?

00:01:11.200 What should we understand about the character of each one?

00:01:13.900 And doing that with me today is, of course, The Prudentialist.

00:01:16.980 Thanks for coming on, man.

00:01:18.100 Thanks for having me on again, Oren.

00:01:19.320 Always a pleasure.

00:01:20.740 Absolutely.

00:01:21.080 You've been soldiering through the series with me,

00:01:23.140 and I'm sure everyone is excited to see you back.

00:01:26.020 So before we get started, guys, two things.

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00:02:27.880 All right, guys, we're going to jump into study on sovereignty.

00:02:30.840 Joseph DeMaestro, what is the best type of government?

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00:04:00.820 All right, guys.

00:04:02.960 So like I said, we're looking at study of on sovereignty here, and we're getting to the point

00:04:06.740 where Demestra starts talking about the specifically the different forms of government.

00:04:11.420 Famously, Aristotle had three major forms of government rule by one or monarchy rule by the few or aristocracy

00:04:20.100 and rule by three, which would be kind of the polity or sorry, rule by many, which would be which would be the polity.

00:04:27.880 And then along with that, Aristotle also had kind of the worst versions of that.

00:04:33.360 So you had the monarchy, which is kind of the good version of rule by one.

00:04:37.340 And then you have a tyranny, which is a bad version of rule by one.

00:04:40.360 You have a rule of the few, which is aristocracy.

00:04:43.220 That's the good version of rule by a few.

00:04:45.300 And then you have oligarchy, which is the bad version of rule by the few.

00:04:49.060 And then you have polity, which is the good version of rule by many.

00:04:52.840 And then you have democracy, which is the bad version of rule by many.

00:04:56.040 So you have these three major forms of government. Now, we know at this point there are other factors involved. This is a simplification, obviously. But these are the classical three main categories. You can kind of put every other different kind of species of government under these three categories. And so that's how Joseph de Maestra approaches it here.

00:05:17.460 The first one he goes ahead and addresses is monarchy. And he goes ahead and addresses that first because he says, as you can see here in the quote, it can be said in general that all men are born for monarchy. This is the form of government is the most ancient and the most universal.

00:05:33.740 So he says this is the government that's going to kind of emerge naturally if you don't have anything else. This is kind of the original government that most peoples have or most places have. It's the thing that most things fall into.

00:05:45.960 And he says this kind of government is so natural to our way of being that we will just return to it without thinking if we're left to our own devices. And even though it's come out under much scrutiny, he makes the point that one of the reasons it comes under so much scrutiny is people tend to deny that there's not this universality of people, that different peoples are ruled by different forms of government.

00:06:13.180 And so many people look and they want the things that come from a republic. They want the liberty of the republic. But he says that is something that is only meant for a certain people, a certain few. It's not something you can spread to everybody.

00:06:26.420 You can't have this George W. Bush, you know, democracy in every country across the world of view of humanity. And so therefore, monarchy is often the answer, even though many people wish for some of the benefits of something like a republic.

00:06:41.560 You can't universally apply that. And so monarchy is the most prevalent throughout history.

00:06:45.900 Yeah, he's going to make it very clear in this chapter and through the rest of the study on sovereignty when it comes to respects to monarchy and its critics that each civilization has a particular way that people govern themselves.

00:06:58.300 Each people is different. Each nation or group of people are going to have a different understanding of how best to rule over themselves.

00:07:05.440 But at the root cause, whether you are a nomadic step people or you're out in the middle of, you know, Liechtenstein or whatever, you're going to come with some kind of rule by one.

00:07:16.600 It is natural. And when we start asking questions, why is it natural?

00:07:20.980 This is where you start having the interrogations on sovereignty or democracy or the rights and citizens of man.

00:07:27.640 This is sort of that sort of spiteful mutant sort of argumentation that you see nowadays where people criticize government or hierarchy or natural order to a point where he calls, you know, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

00:07:39.300 You know, he's still angry at God for never making him a prince or a leader of a principality and that his criticisms of monarchy in the social contract are the equivalent of a chambermaid's complaints.

00:07:49.800 And so he's making it very clear and established that there are natural orders to things that, you know, despite people judging them, as Orin and I discussed in the last episode, most people have never been towards that position of leadership.

00:08:03.540 So we can't judge Nero, but if Nero acts as a tyrant, he can be, as Hans Herma Hoppe might say, physically removed.

00:08:12.100 And it's a very important thing to consider. And I mean, in the text itself, he points out that we know how this supposition accords with history, but that's not the point.

00:08:22.280 What is important to repeat is that no people ever gave themselves a government, that every idea of convention and deliberation, that all sovereignty is a creation.

00:08:30.580 It is chimerical. And he starts talking about how some nations are, unfortunately, based on their particularisms, condemned to democracy.

00:08:39.440 He treats democracy as some kind of curse or a genetic abnormality for certain people, sort of that early political science HBD, I guess.

00:08:48.480 But it really does illustrate to DeMeister's point, as well as the points of earlier French political scientists like Jean Baudin,

00:08:55.860 that you're really looking at a order that has been, one, ordained by God, and two, is going to maintain the balance between rule over aristocratic merchant classes,

00:09:09.320 the masses of people, as well as to balance out the ecclesiastical authority of the church.

00:09:14.180 Because DeMeister, despite being an ardent Catholic, does live in post-reformation France and knows that there are sort of this tentative, awkward, bloody history between both the reformers and the Roman church.

00:09:26.640 Yeah, and that's going to be really key to kind of his talk about monarchy here, what you just mentioned, is managing all these groups.

00:09:35.240 That's one of the strengths that he sees in monarchy is the ability to manage all of the different social forces inside the nation to balance these different interests and to bring about the best result.

00:09:47.500 But before we get into that, I want to point out a few things that he says about the character of monarchy.

00:09:52.340 First, he talks about the difference between elective monarchies and hereditary monarchies.

00:09:57.900 And he says that many people like Rousseau believe that election is the best way to do these things, that even in the monarchical sense, you should elect your kings, not have the heredity.

00:10:10.040 He sees it the other way around.

00:10:11.520 He sees hereditary monarchies as a solution to elective monarchies.

00:10:16.960 He says a lot of people look at elective monarchies.

00:10:19.300 And if you've looked at them long enough, you realize that there's these great periods of instability because there's this lack of continuity between monarchs.

00:10:28.060 And there's all of this upheaval whenever one monarch is passed away or loses their election or in some ways removed from power.

00:10:36.300 And so this gap in sovereignty creates a huge crisis.

00:10:39.440 And so he says the hereditary monarchy is not some weird thing from history to be discarded, some backwards piece of technology that should be updated through elections.

00:10:51.400 He says it's exactly the opposite.

00:10:53.380 Cultures that had elected monarchs eventually understood that the stability of a hereditary monarch was far more valuable.

00:11:01.200 And he also says that, you know, while we might think that, OK, you might get a bad ruler, you know, that might come, of course, that's part of hereditary monarchy.

00:11:10.700 He says that is no less likely in any of these other forms of government.

00:11:15.840 Like there's nothing about the elective mechanism that makes it less likely to produce bad rulers.

00:11:22.360 And so therefore, we need to understand that bad rulers are a function of human nature and the fallen nature of man and not something that is exclusive to the monarchical form of government.

00:11:33.060 Yeah, and I think that's a really important thing that can't be understated when looking at DeMeister's breakdown of these three forms of governments is that, well, people will, you know, and he references his critics.

00:11:43.520 He's very clear and makes it very open that, you know, even monarchy does have its problems.

00:11:47.860 But out of the three that we're going to discuss, it does have the most effective capability at handling and managing the various groups between one another.

00:11:56.040 And I mean, he says that monarchy is a centralized aristocracy.

00:11:59.860 In all times and places, the aristocracy commands whatever form is given to government's birth and wealth are always placed in the first rank.

00:12:07.720 Nowhere do they rule more harshly than where their empire is not founded on law.

00:12:11.920 But in monarchy, the king is the center of this aristocracy.

00:12:14.920 It is indeed the aristocracy that commands us everywhere, but it commands in the king's name.

00:12:20.460 Or if you like, the king is illumined by the light of aristocracy.

00:12:23.940 So we're really getting into that hereditary understanding that there is a landed gentry.

00:12:28.880 The sons of the landed gentry are typically going to be well off. 1.00

00:12:32.040 The sons of manufacturers, usually their parents up until recent history, would establish a position for them to succeed it.

00:12:38.960 This is why you see thinkers like Curtis Yarvin always reference the New York Times because all of its editors have been in sort of the same family for the last several decades.

00:12:47.720 And it's illustrative of the fact that, you know, traditionally, people who are considered aristocratic have their sons, you know, geared up and trained in a position.

00:12:56.220 And when you have a monarchy, it is all centrally managed under one man that can help keep control over everything because the aristocracy has always been throughout history the one that leads.

00:13:07.100 And I think it's also important to notice here that he's saying that even under what we would call an absolute government, the iron law of oligarchy applies, right?

00:13:17.000 No one man ever rules a nation.

00:13:20.040 That organization is always multifaceted.

00:13:24.060 And so, yes, the king will upgrade the aristocracy by giving it a focal point.

00:13:29.980 And he'll talk more about what that means in a second.

00:13:32.640 But it is still a distributed network of power.

00:13:35.800 He's still working with these people.

00:13:37.760 And so it's creating a far more stable structure by which you can have that that power run.

00:13:43.580 But it doesn't mean that you just have one tyrannical guy operating in the center of that.

00:13:48.500 And he's going to make this argument here.

00:13:49.740 I'm just going to read some of this because I think it's really important.

00:13:52.520 He says a very remarkable truth was spoken at the opening of the Republican Lycie in Paris.

00:13:57.920 In absolute governments, the fault of the ruler can scarcely ruin everything at the same time because a single will cannot do everything.

00:14:06.260 But a Republican government is obligated to be essentially reasonable and just because the general will, once it goes astray, carries everything with it.

00:14:16.780 And this is an important truth that, for instance, Bertrand Juvenal picks up on is that the will of the people has been a key part of expanding the government in our current modern era.

00:14:31.440 A lot of people think of the will of the people, popular sovereignty, as the limiting check on government.

00:14:36.000 But he makes the exact different argument.

00:14:37.820 He says when the king was one person, he could only demand what one person could demand.

00:14:42.520 But when the public demands something, when the mob, when the people, someone ruling in their name, demand something, they can demand the entire country be mobilized.

00:14:52.600 Right.

00:14:52.760 And he says this is why we get the levy on mass.

00:14:55.340 This is why we get mass conscription, mass production.

00:14:57.820 This is why we get this idea of total control is justified from the government, because that comes from the invocation of mass sovereignty.

00:15:07.340 So he says, you know, look, if it's just the monarch and he calls for something that he even if he's singularly very powerful, he can't ruin everything.

00:15:17.220 But the people, if you're ruling in the name of the people, you must always be good, because if you make one mistake, you can carry the will of the entire people with you and you can crush everything with it.

00:15:28.220 He says this observation observation is most just.

00:15:32.160 It is far from true that the will of the king does everything in a monarchy.

00:15:36.080 It is supposed to do everything, and that is its great advantage of this government.

00:15:40.880 But in fact, its utility is almost wholly in centralizing advice and knowledge.

00:15:46.180 Religion, laws, customs, opinion, class and corporate privileges restrict the sovereign and prevent him from abusing his power.

00:15:54.360 It is striking that kings have been much more often accused of lacking will than overextending it.

00:16:01.460 And that's always it is always the king's council that rules.

00:16:05.400 And so that's speaking to what you were talking about, Prudentialist, about how the king's monarchy's ability under the king to manage all these different social forces.

00:16:14.860 You don't have to homogenize and unify public opinion.

00:16:18.880 You can have a sovereign who takes these different areas of the nation, be it the church, be it merchants, be it communities.

00:16:27.620 And you can take them and have them forge these things together because they can mediate all these interests in the name of the sovereign as where that might not be available in other forms of government.

00:16:38.620 Yeah, and I think the other thing that he really points out is answering both sort of Rousseau's objections and the concept of the balance of powers, checks and balances as we see them in more constitutional forms of the republic.

00:16:50.700 And I think it also applies very well today when we talk about the powers of the aristocracy or just really in general the wealthy.

00:16:58.240 There's been a lot of discussion on these more sort of socially democratic, quote unquote, conservatives that will tell you about the need to check against, you know, corporate power and such, and that we need to follow similar policies out of Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.

00:17:12.380 But I think Demeister offers a really good answer to this in turn, where he says, let's see here, here we go.

00:17:21.620 He says, now, it is one of the great advantages of monarchical government that by the aristocracy loses, as far as the nature of things permits, all that can be offensive to the lower classes.

00:17:32.940 It's important to understand the reasons, and he lies them out as the following, but he's going to tell us here that actually having a monarchy that manages and balances the needs of its aristocracy manages to ensure that most of the wealthy or most of the aristocrats don't end up doing things that are going to totally screw up the masses and get themselves killed by popular revolt.

00:17:54.260 And such as he discusses that, you know, since the influence of hereditary aristocracy is inevitable, the best can be imagined in order to deprive this influence in a way that may be too wearisome for the pride of lower classes, as it should not establish insurmountable barriers between the families in the state.

00:18:11.880 None of them should be humiliated by a distinction that they should never enjoy.

00:18:14.780 Listen, I'm never going to be the CEO of Apple, but at the same time, under a king, he would make sure that Tim Cook or Tim Apple, as Trump liked to call him, wouldn't be like rubbing it in my faces that, you know, I'm never going to have that.

00:18:27.800 In an age where there wasn't a lot of social mobility or economic mobility, the king would ensure that, hey, whatever sort of flex that you want to put on the people or try to have them working 20 hours a day is not going to work out.

00:18:40.620 Because if not, these people are going to, you know, kill you. But on top of that, you're now creating national disunity and insulting the name of God, but more importantly, the king.

00:18:50.100 And he says that in the order of these things will seem even more perfect if we consider the aristocracy of birth and office, already made very gentle by a right that belongs to any family and to any individual that enjoys the same extinctions.

00:19:00.700 They still lose out on all that may be too offensive to the lower classes by the universal supremacy, the man of the people who finds him insignificant compared to a great lord, compares himself to a sovereign.

00:19:11.520 And this title of subject, which submits them both to the same power and the same kind of justice, is the kind of equality that dulls the inevitable pain of self-respect.

00:19:19.500 So, again, both subject and aristocrat have to answer to the sovereign. They have to answer to the king.

00:19:25.840 And because both are going to be applied under the same form of justice, this sort of, you know, keeps the relationship between the lower and middle classes available.

00:19:34.280 And this goes back to what Oren was saying with Bertrand de Juvenel. Once you take out that high class and you let the aristocracy be it, or you let revolutionaries or a crowd of people, a Politburo rule, you're now going to see that Politburo sort of contrive against the lower classes to make sure that no alternative power structural, the middle, the aristocrats, ever have an opportunity to do so.

00:19:57.600 We saw this when it came to communism. We see this now today with our former progressive leftist form of government in the United States.

00:20:04.600 And so, you know, nearly 200 plus years ago, we've got de Meister calling out the obvious.

00:20:10.000 He also points out something that I think we can observe now in our own government.

00:20:13.540 He says that in republics, on the other hand, the distinction between persons exists as much as in monarchies, but it's harder and more offensive because it's not the work of the law.

00:20:23.100 And because popular opinion regards it as continue as a continual rebellion against the principle of equality admitted, admitted by the Constitution.

00:20:32.320 So he's saying, look, there's going to be differences in people like like people are different.

00:20:38.120 Some people are born smart. Some people are born strong. Some people are born capable and some people are not.

00:20:44.220 And that's going to exist no matter what. But in a monarchy and with the aristocracy under the monarch, it's understood that those things are privileges of law.

00:20:54.120 As we're in a republic, we're told everyone is supposed to be equal.

00:20:58.300 In fact, the Constitution itself says everybody's supposed to be equal.

00:21:01.260 And once we start observing that people aren't equal, well, we start getting this itch of why aren't people equal?

00:21:07.120 Why aren't people equal? And eventually we come to a couple of different conclusions and none of them are satisfactory in the monarchy.

00:21:13.820 We could say, well, there's a law that says this is the class, but we don't want to think about why people might not be equal under a republic.

00:21:21.100 And so that's why we turn ourselves inward and we start eating ourselves alive.

00:21:24.700 And that's why in America we have all these stories of racism and sexism and, you know, transphobia and like all these other systemic, you know, issues that are supposed to explain why things aren't equal.

00:21:38.420 And so instead of looking at people and their differences and understanding that those are going to be part of life, we come up with all these other stories.

00:21:46.540 And Demestrian knew that was going to happen.

00:21:48.040 He predicted that was going to happen specifically here.

00:21:51.840 And he says, monarchy kind of solves this problem because, you know, there's a guy who was born king and, you know, there are people who were born aristocrats and you don't have to look for other issues or other reasons.

00:22:01.260 You don't have to tear your civilization apart trying to justify inequality because you're you're because you're already expecting inequality.

00:22:09.260 It's part of life as we're in the Republican form of government.

00:22:12.120 But inequality is a problem and you the only way to fix it is a bunch of social engineering that kind of destroys your civilization.

00:22:19.920 Yeah.

00:22:20.100 And I mean, this is a time, of course, where the decadence of our modern day life, where you can be obese, poor, but still have a twelve hundred dollar phone isn't around.

00:22:29.860 But rather, this is a difference between the haves and the have nots when it comes to food or wealthy estates who can employ you.

00:22:36.540 Are you self-employed as a tradesman, whatever?

00:22:38.880 But it does illustrate a sort of harsher reality that we talk about in the West.

00:22:44.520 And we talk about America, especially in a more income oriented sense.

00:22:48.520 But we've lost that desire to address the hard realities that some of us are not born kings.

00:22:54.440 Some of us are not born exceedingly wealthy, even under the lies of that anyone can be anything.

00:23:00.320 And I think the de Maistre answers this quite clearly that we're always going to have that sense of resentment.

00:23:05.660 But if someone can manage the balance between resentments of the masses and those that already have got it made,

00:23:11.880 either by birth or by some form of extravagant wealth, the monarch becomes the answer to that.

00:23:17.620 And we've lost the plot because even when we want to have someone manage the powerful classes

00:23:22.740 and the powerful people of wealth and inequality, all that we're doing is that we're giving it to unelected bureaucrats

00:23:30.680 that by no right of birth or anything probably should be there because we do have an overproduction of elites.

00:23:36.540 We do have an education system that chooses the least qualified and we see that competency crisis in full.

00:23:43.100 And so when people say to answer these problems today under our democratic means,

00:23:47.620 they mean throwing it off to committees and throwing it off to members of Congress

00:23:51.220 that are instead going to be making themselves wealthy with this newfound power

00:23:55.680 that they've been established in order to cater to the masses.

00:23:58.180 Again, once you get rid of the king, Bertrand de Juvenel's model of power kicks into overdrive real quick.

00:24:04.980 So he also talks about something that a lot of people will criticize monarchy for, but he thinks is wrong.

00:24:10.100 He says a lot of people say there is no advance of merit under this system, right?

00:24:14.760 Everything's too rigid.

00:24:15.960 It's too any words against that.

00:24:17.580 To be fair, he says, look, if that can happen, it's really important that you allow what what

00:24:23.160 Bill Fredo Pareto would call a circulation of elites to occur.

00:24:26.200 You need to allow new blood to enter into your elite class.

00:24:29.600 You can't lock it off.

00:24:31.180 You can't just say there.

00:24:32.360 So there's a certain marriage.

00:24:33.700 There's a certain balance between an aristocratic privilege that allows people who have a noble birth and who who have the training and have kind of that that continuity to be part of it.

00:24:44.820 But you have to allow a for a certain amount of circulation to come in there, a certain amount of, you know, new blood to come in and talent to come in, or otherwise you will have problems.

00:24:55.020 But he says that the monarchy actually enables this in a couple of ways.

00:24:58.700 The first thing he says is that the unity of the sovereignty is more compelling than kind of the spirit of the people.

00:25:05.180 I'll just read this real quick because I've got it up.

00:25:06.940 In the government of several, sovereignty is by no means a unity.

00:25:10.980 And although parts making it up from a unit from a unity, it is far from the case that they make the same impression on the mind.

00:25:18.280 The human imagination does not grasp a unity that is only a metaphysical abstraction.

00:25:22.680 On the contrary, it delights in the separate and separating each element of the unity, general unity.

00:25:28.600 And the subject has less respect for a sovereign whose separational parts are not sufficient above him.

00:25:35.100 It follows that in kind in this these kinds of governments, sovereignty is not the same intensity or in consequence, the same moral force.

00:25:42.180 And so what he says is when you win a merit based thing in one of these disunified civilizations, you're not really seen as worthy.

00:25:53.420 It doesn't it doesn't transfer the same amount of kind of august respect for your achievements.

00:25:58.900 However, he says in a monarchy, actually, like the imagery, he says he calls the king a talisman, a talisman of magic power that gives direction to the rulers.

00:26:11.780 And so when the king appoints something, when he delegates a task and appoints someone to it, that elevates that person.

00:26:18.660 And so if you take somebody from a lower class who is deserving and you elevate them by delegating power to them as a monarch, that has a much more powerful effect than just somebody making a bunch of money by like starting a company in a garage somewhere.

00:26:36.260 And so he says this is a far more effective way to actually reward people and imbue their accomplishments and their elevation with an aspirational thing that will kind of pass down through the people.

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00:27:17.520 Yeah, I like how he describes that the word king is a talisman, that it has this magical authority to it.

00:27:25.540 Reminds me of our friend Carl Benjamin over at the Lotus Eaters.

00:27:28.560 He has this firm belief in the concept of magic, that there are words that we just have a special value, whether it be Englishman or monarchy or king.

00:27:36.540 And even Joseph de Maestro, even though French, probably has a long history with English.

00:27:40.500 I mean, they both sort of recognize that there is this desire or this power and weight and, I guess, aura of monarchy that comes with it.

00:27:51.000 And the last thing that he really does talk about is, of course, that with monarchy being sovereign and the fact that a king does establish the laws and the laws that are made by men are different from the ones that are ordained by God.

00:28:04.500 But, you know, de Maestro points out that the sovereign is the one that condemns people to death.

00:28:10.100 And that is something that, one, no ordinary person can even begin to comprehend.

00:28:14.000 We can say, oh, I wish that guy had, you know, died or whatever.

00:28:17.380 But it's a lot different than to be the one that orders the execution.

00:28:21.100 And the thing about the monarch that de Maestro points out is that because he manages the law and he is in charge of the law to enforce it both upon the subject and the aristocrat, that what is now labeled a crime is in this ruler's hands.

00:28:37.000 And you want that to be in the hands of one rather than by a committee and bickering where this can lead to, like what you had said, the popular masses revolting or leading to mass conscription, mass war, et cetera.

00:28:47.900 If one man can determine it and it is now obeyed by Christian law, as he points out, you have someone now who is far more effective to do it. 0.78

00:28:56.180 And he says that among us, ideas are different.

00:28:59.660 If a king in his private authority kills a man, European wisdom will not counsel retaliation or rebellion, but all the world will say this is a crime.

00:29:06.420 And on this point, they're not two ways of thinking.

00:29:08.420 An opinion of it is so strong, protects us sufficiently.

00:29:11.220 So one, we're already aware that the king can be held to law and we can, you know, remove him if need be.

00:29:17.300 But secondly, that abuses in regard to power, each monarchy in Europe has its own particular traits, for example, he says.

00:29:24.140 But we always see any of this where he gets to throw out my favorite word, the physiognomy of government.

00:29:29.840 You know, we each one has their own great character and monarchs have the capability to enforce it, to condemn men to death.

00:29:35.960 And it's going to be different on each people.

00:29:38.060 And he's sort of acknowledging that critics of monarchy, they always say, oh, a king is this, a king is that.

00:29:43.680 And it's very, very blanketed.

00:29:45.660 It's very universal.

00:29:46.600 It's very generalized.

00:29:47.840 But Demystra is pointing out sort of the nuance here that you don't see from sort of critics of monarchy, that each people, each character of our government, of our monarchy is innately unique to that people.

00:29:59.240 And it makes it harder to judge it and makes it more resilient for each person or nation.

00:30:03.480 Yeah, that's really critical.

00:30:05.420 Again, it's something that I think he talks about over and over again, whether it be constitutions or monarchies or, you know, folkways, laws, whatever it is.

00:30:15.960 He says you have to take into account the particularities of a people.

00:30:19.880 You cannot universalize this stuff.

00:30:21.920 You cannot say the king is this all the time in every place.

00:30:25.980 No, it will necessarily change, will necessarily be different.

00:30:29.420 We cannot judge it just looking at one example and try to broaden that to everything.

00:30:34.620 And I think that's a really critical thing.

00:30:36.360 It goes against almost everything that modern political theory tries to do.

00:30:41.080 Modern political theory wants a grand unifying theory.

00:30:43.940 I think that's part of the Faustian nature.

00:30:46.040 I think that's part of liberalism.

00:30:47.360 I think what we want is this grand unifying theory that will bring everything under its rule.

00:30:53.060 And the answer of Demestra over and over again is no, you can't do that.

00:30:57.140 That doesn't work.

00:30:57.920 And any time you try to do that, you will fool yourself or destroy something in the process.

00:31:03.160 He also talks about despotism here in a way that I think is really important. 0.99

00:31:07.300 He explains that monarchies are usually criticized for their despotism, but also for their weakness simultaneously.

00:31:17.280 They'll say that the monarch is a tyrant, but the monarch is also too weak.

00:31:25.000 And he says the reason you see this dual criticism simultaneously is that when people say that the monarchy is too tyrannical or it's too despotic,

00:31:36.020 what they're saying is that the monarch is not controlling the people he has delegated authority to.

00:31:41.860 And those people are crushing the average person, those aristocrats or those officers that have been delegated to.

00:31:49.160 They're crushing the average person and the king is not protecting the people because the king's job.

00:31:53.980 And again, this is something that Bertrand de Juvenal recognized.

00:31:56.800 The king's relationship is always directly with the people.

00:31:59.400 It is the king that is supposed to protect the people from the aristocrats.

00:32:03.060 And so if he's not doing that, then he's failing at his job.

00:32:05.800 And so he says, if people are saying the monarchy is too despotic, then it is usually because it is not strong enough to control its aristocrats.

00:32:17.080 And the people cannot fight back against those delegated authorities.

00:32:22.160 And so that's why you see it called too weak, but also too despotic simultaneously.

00:32:27.840 And he has this great passage about the nature of man that I want to read here because I think it's just so good.

00:32:32.560 How many faults power has committed and how steadfast it ignores the means of conserving itself.

00:32:40.640 Man is insatiable for power.

00:32:42.940 He is infinite in his desires and always discontented with what he has, what he has, loves only what he has not.

00:32:51.760 People complain of the despotism of princes.

00:32:54.340 They ought to complain about the despotism of man.

00:32:57.640 We are all born despots from the most absolute monarch of Asia to the infant who smothers a bird with its hand for the pleasure of seeing that there exists in the world a being weaker than itself. 0.96

00:33:12.260 There is not a man who does not abuse power.

00:33:15.120 And experience shows the most abominable despots.

00:33:18.460 If they manage to seize the scepter are precisely those who rant against despotism.

00:33:24.340 But the author of nature has set bounds to the abuse of power.

00:33:28.020 He has willed that it destroys itself once it has gone beyond its natural limits.

00:33:32.740 And I think that's such a beautiful thing saying even the infant that kills a bird, you know, just to know that it's stronger than something else.

00:33:41.240 That this is not a fault of kings, you know, we hear this idea that the powerful, the who seeks power is always going to be.

00:33:49.840 No, he says everybody abuses power.

00:33:53.320 This is human nature.

00:33:54.380 And so he says embracing this aspect of monarchy is not a weakness.

00:33:59.020 This is an understanding of just human nature itself.

00:34:01.540 And it can only be bound by this very powerful system of an understanding despotism.

00:34:08.360 And until you put it in the bonds of its oath to the people and to God and it's, you know, and everyone that kind of relies on it, people, the man's desire for power will always drive it to seek something weaker and crush it.

00:34:23.880 Yeah, absolutely.

00:34:25.200 And I think that this is where, again, you see that influence from Jean Baudon, who wrote six books on the Commonwealth during the time of the Reformation in the 1500s.

00:34:35.620 And, you know, he sort of categorizes monarchy into sort of three forms.

00:34:39.720 You have royal monarchy, which is sort of what we see de Maistre defending here.

00:34:44.260 But then you also have despotic or tyrannical forms of monarchy.

00:34:48.660 And despotic monarchy is always someone that is going to be enjoying the, you know, fruits of being able to rule over others and to seize them because they are stronger.

00:35:01.840 You know, despite the fact that we can be despotic and we can rob and we can go over it, we're also likely to be a prince or king that has the right over his possessions, but then robs them and then steals them in doing so because they can't because they're strong and they control these things.

00:35:18.720 And for de Maistre, this is a natural part of man.

00:35:22.460 This isn't part of the king.

00:35:24.400 But it does illustrate that unless you have, rather to have one person do it than to have a multitude, a mob of equally despotic people ruling over you.

00:35:34.340 And if we, you know, fail to acknowledge that inside all of us is a fallen nature in the Christian sense, then all we're doing is we're criticizing an office, a talisman, and not man itself.

00:35:45.900 And too many times that that criticism misses the mark when it comes to critics of monarchy.

00:35:51.280 So the next section here talks about aristocracy, and this one is much shorter for the reason that basically he just describes aristocracy as a monarchy without a king.

00:36:02.860 It's a government in which you still have the aristocracy, you still have the natural kind of ruling elite, but there's no central sovereign to kind of bind it all together.

00:36:14.900 And he says, of course, this has its own strengths and it has its own weaknesses.

00:36:18.360 He says this is going to be a wiser government anyways, but he says it's going to have less vigor because you don't have that centralizing force.

00:36:26.740 You don't have that person to drive these things forward to kind of give a spirit and animating force to the people and to manage these different parts inside the aristocracy.

00:36:38.780 Very interestingly, I just want to want to stop on a point real quick that he makes.

00:36:43.540 He says he talks about the natural aristocracy of physical strength.

00:36:47.980 He said this is just something that's going to emerge.

00:36:49.980 You're going to have hereditary aristocracy because those people are just physically stronger and more talented.

00:36:57.440 I thought this is interesting because, of course, it feels like we don't have that anymore, right?

00:37:01.180 And I think that that's a critical problem.

00:37:04.960 We've seen the overproduction of elites, especially when it comes to foxes, as you mentioned earlier.

00:37:10.220 We have what Pareto would call these class one residues that are basically all about combinations and intellect.

00:37:20.680 And we see very little lion anymore.

00:37:23.200 We see very few class twos coming to power and ruling.

00:37:27.260 And I wonder, Prudentialist, what you think about basically the fundamental relationship of man to government is in many ways, I think, now kind of skewed, maybe permanently, because this natural hierarchy that always had to observe of the strong, the physically strong, has faded away due to industrialization, due to modern warfare, these kind of things.

00:37:56.060 And we're kind of getting to the edge where that might be coming back.

00:37:59.500 I think people are starting to realize that technology will not solve the problem of combat in the way that many people thought it was.

00:38:07.340 But for a very long time, we've got to delude ourselves into the idea that we don't have to observe the hierarchy of physical force and that somehow that's low and dirty and base.

00:38:15.920 And the aristocracy of intelligence is the only thing that matters.

00:38:19.220 Yeah, there's this, I don't know, I mean, I think it's very clear that we can't go back to any sort of traditional semblance of monarchy.

00:38:28.280 I think that as it's been clear throughout history that lest there is a complete collapse of civilization, it's very hard to revert back to older forms of government.

00:38:40.320 There's sort of always the technology will adapt and evolve with how we rule.

00:38:44.140 And there is this sort of strange sensation to know that the media or the Internet has created this vast level of disintermediation for the masses, for the people, where it's no longer Walter Cronkite.

00:38:58.420 I mean, our last real television host, like that people would listen to or give the most attention to, Tucker Carlson, isn't even on TV anymore.

00:39:04.900 He's on Twitter. And to me, it sort of illustrates that our relationship to government is permanently skewed by technology rather than it's going to solve for it.

00:39:13.600 Because now any Joe Schmo, and this can both be a good thing, but I also think it has its negative consequences to where anyone with a Twitter account, anyone with a social media platform can garner a large enough following, a parasociality, a parapolitics that can corrupt people very easily into their own sort of despotic, petty idea of what power is when it comes to clout or a following.

00:39:35.700 But also at the same time that it blurs the distinction of, well, who's really more natural and fit to rule.

00:39:42.920 I think that we've really done away with that in some instances by the collegiate example, because we have an ideology that selects for aristocrats.

00:39:52.500 We have selection pressures that want people, as C.S. Lewis would write, you know, to castrate the gildings and then bid them to be fruitful, whether that be women freezing their eggs and staying in work until they're 45 or picking out individuals that don't have a family and just work themselves to death. 0.80

00:40:10.540 And not in any higher purpose or sense, whether it comes to say like a monastic or a tradesman that just never had the time, it's people serving a power structure that gives them the semblance of power.

00:40:22.240 So if anything, we've really gone away with the old aristocratic class and instead our circulation of elites has, by a mixture of immigration, progressive takeover of institutions and a generalizing form of progress that enables any sort of old guard action to never really come to fruition.

00:40:40.940 It allows us to have a relationship to government where if you're part of a certain group of people, you're not going to be getting very far, lest you adopt or you're already part of an old aristocratic family.

00:40:56.520 I mean, you see this really well with California.

00:40:59.040 It doesn't matter how anti-white things may get in California or how anarcho-tyranny it gets in California.

00:41:05.320 Gavin Newsom and people like Nancy Pelosi and their children and their grandparents and parents all descend from an aristocratic family long before California turned into what it was in the 1990s onward.

00:41:18.520 And so I think that what we're really beginning to see is a relationship to government where there's no trust, there is no semblance of majesty, otherwise it gets used as a platitude.

00:41:29.140 I mean, we saw this with the January 6th stuff, right, that, oh, well, it's our sacred temple of democracy.

00:41:34.600 And I don't think anyone feels like that anymore.

00:41:37.100 No one has that sense of history or grandeur or appreciation of even the magic that once came with American democracy.

00:41:43.780 And so when reading DeMeister, and I've been reading this section on aristocracy again, it's just, well, who are these families and who are they to be when anyone with money can immigrate, come in, take over a tech sector, give a bunch of money somewhere?

00:41:59.200 And the people that are supposed to represent you, and this all goes back to DeMeister's criticisms of democracy and the National Assembly, you know, instead we're being ruled by foreign money, we're being ruled by either the young or just puppets for the media, the inexperienced types.

00:42:15.820 AOC comes to mind as DeMeister talks about, well, what would you rather have, a 20-year-old king or a bunch of 20-year-old senators, take your pick, I'd pick the king.

00:42:25.140 And it illustrates to me that we're now living in a world where, if you're outside in the periphery, like I am, I live in the heartland, I live in flyover country, my ability to have influence on government, I acknowledge that I probably never will and won't.

00:42:39.000 And that's fine. But I think because we have the media and our technology, our relationship to government and our relationship to the perception of the masses leads us in this weird trap of performative, quasi-populist, just rage bait and yelling at the TV that doesn't accomplish much while we don't do anything about the institutions themselves.

00:43:02.020 It's easier to complain than it is to do anything else. But I'm rambling too long.

00:43:06.340 No, I mean, this goes back to something again that he says in this about aristocracy, because he attacks Rousseau's idea of the elected aristocracy, right?

00:43:15.040 And he says, no, for the same reason that the hereditary monarchy is better than the elected monarchy, the hereditary aristocracy is better than the elected, and for the reasons you gave.

00:43:24.580 He said that it ties people to a certain continuity, that it doesn't open you up to average, you know, random people coming in and being manipulated.

00:43:32.980 Again, you don't have that break in continuity. You have people who are deeply invested.

00:43:38.160 Also, very interestingly, he says that it's really important to have a mix of the young and the old.

00:43:43.900 He really emphasizes that inside the aristocracy, that one of the values of it is that it brings the young and the old together.

00:43:50.580 He says the young are to do good and the old are to prevent evil, which I think is a really interesting observation.

00:43:59.320 The young have the vitality, you know, and this is what they're also the rule he says for the king, right?

00:44:03.700 That they are the ones that are going to do good. They're going to feel compelled to take action.

00:44:08.360 They're going to be the ones that have the vigor. And again, we often just we often downplay that in our society.

00:44:14.200 As much as we are we are obsessed with youth, we often, while being obsessed with youth, actually dismantle or discard vigor, saying that that is not valuable.

00:44:26.540 What we all what we want is is always to be, you know, deliberating and waiting and thinking about everything.

00:44:32.660 But he says, no, there's a there's a vitality to the young, a vigor to the young, and they're going to do the good.

00:44:37.320 And then there are the old and their job is to prevent evil because they have the wisdom and they have the patience. 0.93

00:44:42.800 They don't have the vigor. They don't have the vitality to bring about the change that the young do.

00:44:48.180 But they do have the ability to temper that with wisdom because they've seen the evil.

00:44:52.720 They know what could come. And so they can encourage the young when they are doing vigorous things that are valuable.

00:44:58.180 But they can also slow things that might be done too quickly that would bring about evil.

00:45:04.200 And so there's this role of both the young and the old and that that should constantly be mixed into your aristocracy.

00:45:11.960 Yeah, and this is where for the rest of this little section on aristocracy, we get to see a large sort of refutation of Rousseau.

00:45:19.860 And it comes back to that natural order, the hierarchy of peoples and the importance to recognize that things develop.

00:45:27.940 They do take time and you do need that combination of young and old working together.

00:45:33.240 The wisdom of the experience to temper the vitality and the impulsiveness of the young.

00:45:38.800 This is why I mean, anyone reads the books of what gets called wisdom in the Old Testament,

00:45:44.000 you know, whether that be, you know, Proverbs or Ecclesiastes or the wisdom of Sirach and so on.

00:45:49.780 You're going to notice that it is fathers or fatherly patriarchal figures offering advice and commands to their sons.

00:45:58.180 And this is the same thing that we see being pointed out by de Maestra.

00:46:01.980 And when he goes on, he's sort of criticizing Rousseau and his complaints over Venice,

00:46:07.300 saying that, oh, you know, hereditary or aristocratic government is detestable.

00:46:11.760 The esteem of the world accorded for several centuries to that of Bern in no way contradict my theory.

00:46:16.760 For what makes this government not bad is that it is excellent, oh, profundity.

00:46:20.320 And he's quoting Rousseau when he says this about the judgment on Venice is no less curious.

00:46:24.500 Venice, he says, has fallen into hereditary aristocracy, which has so long been a dissolved state.

00:46:29.580 To which de Maestra responds and looks at the history of Venice and looks throughout the Middle Ages.

00:46:35.200 And he says, and I think quite poignantly, that Rousseau,

00:46:38.720 in saying Venice had fallen into aristocracy that is hereditary,

00:46:42.920 proves that he knows very little about the growth of empire.

00:46:46.080 If he had known, instead of fallen, he would have said achieved.

00:46:50.100 While the Venetians were only unfortunate refugees,

00:46:53.280 while the Venetians were only unfortunate refugees,

00:46:56.020 living in shacks on those islets one day would support many palaces. 0.86

00:46:59.980 It is quite clear to their constitution was not yet mature, strictly speaking.

00:47:03.900 They had none, since they did not enjoy absolute independence,

00:47:06.760 which had been contested for so long.

00:47:08.720 But in the year 697, they already had a leader powerful enough to have given us to think that he was sovereign.

00:47:14.060 Now, where there is a leader, at least a non-despotic leader,

00:47:17.480 there is a hereditary aristocracy between this leader and the people.

00:47:21.300 The aristocracy formed itself impeccably, like a language matured in silence.

00:47:25.580 Finally, at the beginning of the 12th century, it took on legal form,

00:47:28.460 and the government was what it must be.

00:47:30.360 Under this form of sovereignty, Venice filled the world with its fame,

00:47:33.580 to say the government degenerated by thus attaining the natural dimensions of said government.

00:47:38.520 Rome degenerated when the institution of the tribunes, as I've noted earlier with Cicero,

00:47:42.860 gave legal form to constitutional power, but disordered the power of the people.

00:47:47.400 So when we start writing down our constitutions, as we mentioned earlier with Lycurgus and Sparta,

00:47:51.880 once we start writing or giving down laws and assemblies to other people,

00:47:56.580 we disordered them because we finally disrupt what is natural,

00:47:59.880 that people will associate with those that are a collection of aristocrats that are in charge,

00:48:04.860 establishing the good and imbuing authority, that talisman, that magic, that faith, that power,

00:48:11.320 to eventually a sovereign, a ruler.

00:48:13.220 And in doing so, actually having a hereditary aristocrats that are socialized and trained in values

00:48:19.800 and understand their role in society and are aware that heavy is the head that wears the crown

00:48:25.620 and heavy is the head that those that suggest power to that king,

00:48:29.400 once you get rid of that and once you establish a constitution, a national assembly, or democracy,

00:48:34.600 you have disrupted the natural balance between the relationship of father and son,

00:48:38.820 aristocrat to the king, the king to his subjects,

00:48:41.500 and in turn, you really just, as Demaistria said in other works,

00:48:45.720 that you would spit in the face of God himself.

00:48:49.140 So the final form of government, of course, that he talks about here is democracy.

00:48:53.680 And, you know, he already mentioned this a little bit in the aristocracy chapter,

00:48:59.340 but he says basically there is no such thing as pure democracy.

00:49:03.020 The idea of a pure democracy simply does not exist.

00:49:06.060 The people cannot be sovereign over themselves.

00:49:08.260 And so when we're talking about democracy, we're really talking about an elective aristocracy.

00:49:15.180 And so he uses the phrase republic now most of the time in this.

00:49:19.740 And this is, I think, important because, again, a lot of Americans,

00:49:24.200 every time I talk to conservatives, they love to say this.

00:49:27.320 We're not a democracy.

00:49:28.860 We're a republic.

00:49:29.980 And it's like, OK, explain the difference to me.

00:49:31.960 They don't know, right?

00:49:35.680 So, like, he's saying that, of course, you're not a pure democracy.

00:49:41.420 There has never been a pure, direct democracy constantly.

00:49:45.680 You know, maybe it happens for a second, but that's basically just mob rule.

00:49:50.420 There is always, at best, some form of voting, some form of representation.

00:49:58.400 So if you say we're not a democracy, you're a representative republic,

00:50:02.920 you're just saying we're the only type of democracy that actually works,

00:50:05.860 which means you're still a democracy.

00:50:07.600 You're just calling yourself the more reasonable form of democracy.

00:50:12.240 And that's fine.

00:50:13.180 There's nothing wrong with that.

00:50:14.340 But understand that calling yourself a representative or a constitutional republic,

00:50:18.240 you're just a democracy.

00:50:19.740 That's what that means.

00:50:20.940 So he says, OK, so there's no such thing as a pure democracy.

00:50:24.540 But then he says, OK, so what is a democracy?

00:50:26.340 He says, it's an association of men without a sovereign.

00:50:30.440 And he makes clear there's no purely voluntary association.

00:50:35.080 We love to think about that.

00:50:36.280 Again, that's the liberal idea.

00:50:37.680 Everything is voluntary.

00:50:39.240 The destruction of all bonds not continuously chosen, right?

00:50:44.000 That it's all about getting rid of that.

00:50:46.780 And instead of having, you know, kings that are put in place by God or by nature

00:50:51.820 or, you know, through some kind of virtue of birth.

00:50:55.060 Instead, everything is entered into voluntarily.

00:50:59.360 We don't have a government.

00:51:00.880 We have a social contract.

00:51:02.540 You know, we come from the original position of the state of nature.

00:51:05.500 We have these arbitrary, contrived things that allow us to believe that we have,

00:51:10.540 through our own volition, we have created the government.

00:51:13.100 We have given it its validation.

00:51:18.520 And his answer is like, no, I'm sorry.

00:51:20.220 Like, that's not a real thing.

00:51:22.000 There is no purely voluntary association.

00:51:24.680 He says, but what you can have, what you can have is this sovereignty that is supplemented

00:51:31.220 or that is supplemented by the public spirit.

00:51:34.320 And he says, this is the critical part of the republic.

00:51:37.020 This is what allows a healthy republic.

00:51:38.740 And he does, again, he does believe there are healthy republics, even though, like you said,

00:51:42.860 it's not his favorite form of government.

00:51:44.420 He says that this can be the right form of government for people who are born to it.

00:51:48.440 And he says, and he gives them some credit here.

00:51:51.760 He says the critical part of the public spirit is the wisdom and virtue of the people.

00:51:59.460 He says, if you do not have a virtuous and wise people who are uniquely talented and uniquely

00:52:07.020 virtuous, then you cannot have a republic because you have to have that public spirit.

00:52:11.340 That public spirit has to stand in for the binding association that the monarch would

00:52:18.220 usually create.

00:52:19.440 And he says, so he says, it's very critical.

00:52:21.440 And of course, our founders knew this again, you know, the constitution, it's only made for

00:52:25.860 a virtuous people.

00:52:27.420 It's not good for any other, but this is the thing that everyone wants to discard.

00:52:30.860 Even conservatives want to discard this.

00:52:32.540 They say, well, we can just export democracy to everybody.

00:52:34.900 No, you can't.

00:52:35.640 Why?

00:52:36.080 Well, because they're not virtuous and they're not particularly talented.

00:52:39.440 And if you want to have, if that's, I mean, that's literally what he says here.

00:52:42.700 You have to have virtuous and talented people.

00:52:44.340 And if you don't have those uniquely virtuous and talented people, then you can't have the

00:52:49.660 public spirit that binds people together and makes a republic work.

00:52:53.340 And so he says, that's the key thing that stands in, in that association is that public

00:52:57.980 spirit built on the virtue, the morality, and the, and the quality, the talent of the people.

00:53:06.240 Absolutely.

00:53:07.000 And I think that the, the key thing that you, you'll see in this little section, if you

00:53:10.820 have the text in front of you, if you have a copy of it, you'll, you'll notice that DeMeister

00:53:15.280 is just like, listen, uh, the idea of a pure democracy, this is a philosopher's wet dream.

00:53:20.200 It's nothing that's actually real.

00:53:21.900 You understand why in previous sections of these studies on sovereignty, that DeMeister

00:53:26.700 is basically calling for just like a total shutdown of philosophers until we can find

00:53:31.300 out what the hell is going on as, as Trump would say.

00:53:34.280 But, um, you know, neither does, and this is where he's also going against sort of anarchists.

00:53:38.640 He says, you know, pure democracy doesn't exist.

00:53:40.720 Neither does the state of purely voluntary association.

00:53:43.580 One starts only from this theoretical power to understand.

00:53:46.540 And it is in the sense that one can affirm that sovereignty is born at the moment when

00:53:50.560 sovereign begins, not to all people, but it is strengthened as it is less than all of

00:53:54.920 the people.

00:53:55.860 Um, and this is where he starts arguing that once you try to, um, articulate like, oh,

00:54:01.520 well, we can have a stronger authority, but still have a democracy.

00:54:04.860 All that you're doing is, is that you're still weakening the power of the sovereign and you're

00:54:09.220 only making government uglier.

00:54:10.860 And we get back to the, this physiognomy checks of, of various governments and various mixed

00:54:15.240 forms of monarchies and democratic institutions alongside of them.

00:54:19.940 Once this begins to happen, eventually one over the other is going to win out, whether it

00:54:25.060 be the, the, the popular masses, as we saw in the French revolution, as we've seen every

00:54:29.500 time we've sort of expanded our voting base, uh, and the power of the executive in the

00:54:34.460 sovereign gets decreased, uh, further and further.

00:54:37.260 And he says, therefore, a Republican people, uh, a people less governed than any other.

00:54:41.840 We understand that the working of sovereignty must be supplemented by public spirit.

00:54:45.320 And this is what Oren was talking about.

00:54:47.020 If you don't have that public spirit, if you don't have the ability to recognize where

00:54:50.400 authority lies or who's the actual sovereign person, that spirit can be whipped up into

00:54:54.780 a frenzy.

00:54:55.440 It can be whipped up into the most useless things imaginable under these sort of philosophical

00:55:00.100 ideas of egalitarianism or the pursuit that every person can be a senator or anyone can

00:55:06.200 be this, that, or the other.

00:55:07.320 And all that you do is that you erase, lessen, and destroy the natural bonds between aristocrats,

00:55:15.140 the people, potential kings and sovereigns.

00:55:17.900 And you're lessening the ability for the law itself to have any power over anybody leading

00:55:23.640 into a more anarcho form of despotism of democracy, which again, we've seen throughout history and

00:55:30.240 especially now in the United States.

00:55:31.900 That's right.

00:55:32.680 Yeah.

00:55:32.900 And he, he talks about some more characteristics of democracy.

00:55:36.360 He says, you know, that, that the Republic can be the most extreme good and the most extreme

00:55:41.460 bad that the, the, he says it can reach higher heights than monarchy, but it also quickly

00:55:46.320 reaches lower lows.

00:55:48.020 He also says it's really critical for Republics to stay small.

00:55:52.500 So this is a city state thing.

00:55:54.120 This is, this is not something that you say expand to a multi-continent empire across, I

00:55:59.920 don't know, say North America.

00:56:01.620 And so, you know, he says that this is something that because of the nature, because you have

00:56:06.440 to keep that public spirit, this, you need to build those associations and for those public

00:56:10.780 spirits and associations to stay vital, they must stay tight and small.

00:56:15.160 So if you're going to adopt the Republican form of government, if you're going to be a

00:56:18.540 democracy, then you should not expand into an empire.

00:56:22.220 He says, he says, republics are, are terrible empires.

00:56:26.640 They, they, they form terrible empires because they, because once that association has been

00:56:31.000 expanded beyond kind of the natural polis of kind of the, the voting public, you're, it's

00:56:37.640 going to break down.

00:56:38.560 You're going to see interests enter in that should not be there.

00:56:41.220 He also believes that justice in a Republic is usually not as good it because it vacillates

00:56:48.840 again between weak and brutal because it's always trying to respond to the will of the

00:56:52.780 people, uh, as where the monarch is, you know, trying to meet out a justice, his position

00:56:57.660 is secure.

00:56:58.420 He can be more fair.

00:56:59.740 He says that the, the, you know, the democracy is constantly catering to the masses, which

00:57:05.780 means that sometimes it will be too weak to those that are, that are garnering praise from

00:57:10.440 the masses.

00:57:10.800 And it will be too brutal to those that the masses are hating.

00:57:14.980 And then finally, he says that, uh, democracies need to be tempered by the aristocracy because

00:57:22.360 the people choose bad leaders, right?

00:57:25.200 He says, it says the people are just going to choose bad leaders.

00:57:27.600 You need to have that filtration mechanism.

00:57:29.300 And again, this is something that the American founders knew, which is why democracy was limited

00:57:35.580 to a very small group of people in the United States when it was founded.

00:57:38.940 And it only applied to one half of one third of the branches of government.

00:57:42.900 You only directly elected Congress.

00:57:45.640 Senators weren't directly elected.

00:57:47.620 Your, your, your judicial branch was obviously, uh, was appointed and your, uh, uh, uh, and your,

00:57:55.020 or, um, sorry, I suddenly have forgotten the branches of government.

00:57:58.120 Uh, so okay.

00:58:01.200 So most of our leaders.

00:58:02.340 Yeah.

00:58:02.520 And your executive, your, your, your president has been, was obviously not directly chosen

00:58:08.520 either.

00:58:08.880 He was, uh, he was, uh, chosen by the electoral college.

00:58:11.980 So there was a lot of buffer, a lot of aristocratic buffer between the, the public will and the actual

00:58:18.820 rule of the government built into the original constitution.

00:58:21.520 But we've stripped a lot of that out of our current system.

00:58:25.680 And of course you can see that the left is already, you know, continues, it continues

00:58:29.620 to want to destroy what's left.

00:58:30.940 They want to destroy the Supreme court.

00:58:32.720 They want to destroy, uh, the, the electoral college. 0.71

00:58:35.660 And so they continue to, to eat away at this base of the aristocracy so that they can get 0.90

00:58:40.520 to directly to the will of the people and rule by manipulating the will of the people without

00:58:44.980 that aristocracy in between to provide a buffer. 0.75

00:58:47.520 Yeah.

00:58:48.740 And this is another important thing that he points out when it comes to, uh, the size

00:58:53.020 and scope of government, but he also refers to those that are elected or, or quote, you

00:58:57.540 know, citizen sovereigns.

00:58:58.680 And he talks about this when it comes to, to Athens, when Rousseau tells us in the preamble

00:59:03.300 of the social contract, and the quality of a citizen of a free state is that he is part

00:59:07.360 sovereign.

00:59:07.940 A sudden smirk breaks out in the most benevolent leader.

00:59:10.860 You only count in a Republic as far as birth alliances and great talent can give you influence.

00:59:15.900 A simple citizen is effectively nothing.

00:59:18.640 The men of this class in Athens were worth so little that they refused to attend to the

00:59:22.720 assembly.

00:59:23.560 Those who so refused had to be threatened with a fine and they had to be prompt be promised

00:59:27.220 a salary or to put it better in alms of the three obols to induce them to come to the square

00:59:32.160 and make a quorum prescribed by the law, which must have assumed endlessly in their, um, meetings.

00:59:38.800 Uh, in the comedies of Aristophanes, one often finds jokes about these rulers.

00:59:41.980 It's so much procession that nothing is better known in the history of these, uh, citizens.

00:59:47.220 And so what he's referring to there is just that all these people would, they had to be

00:59:50.960 promised a salary.

00:59:51.840 They actually had to do it.

00:59:52.860 If you're sovereign and you're part of the system to vote and it matters so little because,

00:59:57.480 you know, you're, anyone else can outvote you or everyone else has the same title.

01:00:01.260 It's no one special, you know, like if we're all, if we're all sovereign, then nobody's

01:00:05.600 really sovereign.

01:00:06.220 And you have to be coerced to actually vote and do so and then make a salary.

01:00:10.100 And then you start robbing the treasury and you just spend your time making money constantly,

01:00:14.680 just debating back and forth, these lofty ideas in the assembly or in a Congress or in

01:00:19.840 a magistrate or legislature.

01:00:22.000 And, uh, again, this is why it only works with a small selective group of people with limited

01:00:26.880 power, limited authority, limited, uh, franchisement, because if not, nobody cares.

01:00:33.460 And less and less people are likely to be inclined, uh, to vote.

01:00:38.260 And this is why even in America, our voter participation rates are never above 60% more.

01:00:44.080 It's somewhere a little over half the country really cares and the other half doesn't at

01:00:47.340 all.

01:00:48.780 So finally, he kind of wraps up this study of democracy by saying a few things about elite

01:00:55.460 theory.

01:00:55.940 Really?

01:00:56.360 He, he, he gives us our, our pro to elite theory.

01:00:58.540 He says, it's very clear that the people do not influence elections.

01:01:02.380 It's the elites that influence elections.

01:01:04.660 And so when we talk about elections, even in a Republic, we need to understand that they're

01:01:09.160 actually the will of the aristocracy.

01:01:11.720 They're a battle of the aristocracy over the collective will of the people.

01:01:15.520 It is not actually something that's reflective of the, the, the popular sovereignty.

01:01:20.500 He also says that due to kind of the, the necessary type of people for a Republic, because a Republic

01:01:29.640 needs a very virtuous and very talented people, an amazing degree of virtue and talent, they're

01:01:35.880 short-lived.

01:01:36.500 He says, he's just, they're, they're just naturally short-lived, even though they might

01:01:39.480 be the right form of government for the time.

01:01:41.940 And, and this is something he said earlier.

01:01:44.460 Uh, we, we talked about in earlier episodes, he said, look, the government, there is a right

01:01:48.280 answer to what is the right form of government, but it's different for each people.

01:01:51.540 So it's, it's not relative.

01:01:52.900 There is a right answer, but it depends on reflective of what the people are like.

01:01:57.760 And it will change over time because people will change over time.

01:02:00.320 So you might have been best governed by a Republic at one point, and you might be best governed

01:02:04.920 by another form of government at another point.

01:02:06.940 And he says, the reason for that, especially with the Republics is you have to have a, a

01:02:11.020 very high degree of talent, a very high degree of virtue.

01:02:13.640 You basically need to, you need to be, uh, you need to be in Galt's Gulch.

01:02:18.840 You, uh, you need to be in Ayn Rand's perfect civilization for the Republic to work.

01:02:23.580 You have to have that, that shining moment of everyone being competent and everyone being

01:02:27.800 virtuous and everyone being self-governing.

01:02:30.280 And if you have that high concentration of that in your populace, then yeah, you can be a

01:02:35.020 Republic for a while, but don't expect that to go on in perpetuity.

01:02:38.060 It's, it's a short-lived form of government because eventually that virtue does atrophy.

01:02:43.140 Eventually you will lose that, that degree of excellence.

01:02:46.820 And when that happens, you will no longer be effectively governed as a Republic.

01:02:51.600 So he says, because of the nature of Republics, because the nature of a good democracy, a Republic

01:02:57.260 is that it is short-lived by its, by its, uh, necessity.

01:03:01.820 And it has to be small in order to keep its quality.

01:03:05.360 Then he says, Republican government can't really be a universal government.

01:03:09.420 Democracy can't really be a good universal government because it is by necessity only for

01:03:15.520 a very specific, virtuous, moral people.

01:03:17.800 And only for the limited time in which they maintain that role.

01:03:20.860 And it has to stay small in order for them to maintain it for any generous amount of time.

01:03:25.300 And so I think he might look at America today and say, that's an amazing run.

01:03:30.260 You had an amazing quality of people and as, and it made sense as a Republic for a good

01:03:34.760 amount of time, but you've expanded too far.

01:03:37.480 You've fallen away from these aspects and that might not continue to be the universal

01:03:42.340 good for you to be ruled in this manner.

01:03:45.040 Yeah.

01:03:45.700 And he really does make a point both by refuting and going point by point with Rousseau's social

01:03:51.040 contract, but also referring back to the Athenians and other small democracies.

01:03:55.300 This is, is that, listen, a lot of the perfect forms of governments for gods are going to

01:04:00.720 be proposed by people who are by nature are fallen.

01:04:03.420 These kinds of ideas where everyone is sovereign, they don't live very long.

01:04:06.940 And when you try to expand upon them, you spit in the face of history that every great empire,

01:04:12.260 which is the natural course of all nations and peoples to try and pursue, even if they don't

01:04:17.120 succeed or not.

01:04:18.460 You know, he even calls out Rousseau being a petty, small minded man for not wanting to

01:04:23.320 be like these great men, not wanting a large and massive empire, but instead pursuing a

01:04:27.660 more democratic form of it and acknowledging that the social contract must exist for his

01:04:32.640 ideas of man in a state of nature.

01:04:35.280 And so, you know, De Meister really does point out that these things aren't meant to last.

01:04:40.340 And when they do, they inevitably decay because you blur the line between aristocrat, sovereign

01:04:45.480 and citizen.

01:04:46.740 And even then, when that happens, it falls into anarchy.

01:04:50.500 And eventually you just start right back from sort of that evolutionary beginning.

01:04:54.160 And eventually a king and a sovereign will arise.

01:04:56.880 So why would you want to destroy what is already natural, existing and orderly and, you know,

01:05:03.460 pursue a democratic form of government where everyone's a sovereign?

01:05:06.340 And theoretically, everyone could be in the Congress for a year.

01:05:09.740 You just have to wait, you know, 10,000 years for every citizen in America to do it.

01:05:14.640 And so De Meister is very clear to point out that, you know, democracies, again, that very

01:05:19.360 classic argument you see all the time in political science, first year students, great on paper,

01:05:24.780 awful in practice.

01:05:25.640 But De Meister is just like any examination of the history of antiquity and in the Christian 0.97

01:05:30.720 world really does illustrate that these things do not work on scale.

01:05:35.200 All right, we're going to go over and switch to the questions of the people.

01:05:40.060 But before we do, Mr. Prudentialist, what should people be looking for over in your channel?

01:05:44.900 Sure.

01:05:45.240 So I just put out a new video called Bottleneck Wars that sort of looks at, you know, genetic

01:05:50.000 bottlenecks as well as civilizational ones and some thoughts on some recent science fiction

01:05:54.300 in American pop culture.

01:05:56.820 Alongside that, just find me over at theprudentialist.substack.com.

01:06:00.280 I've got a really great article called Marshall McLuhan's War, which sort of analyzes the media

01:06:04.440 landscape and how we perceive the news as well as the current conflicts going on in

01:06:10.300 Israel and Ukraine.

01:06:11.700 So just find me there at theprudentialist.substack.com, YouTube, anywhere else.

01:06:15.920 Just look for that frog profile picture.

01:06:18.160 Yep.

01:06:18.320 Enjoyed that recent video, guys.

01:06:19.500 Make sure that you go and check that out.

01:06:21.240 All right.

01:06:22.160 So Tom here for 10 pounds, just dropping a nice donation.

01:06:27.240 Thank you very much, man.

01:06:28.040 I appreciate you watching and supporting.

01:06:31.200 Let's see, John Saxon here for two pounds.

01:06:34.540 Who decides what is and isn't tyrannical?

01:06:37.720 All right.

01:06:38.040 So this is one of my favorite questions.

01:06:40.660 Who decides?

01:06:41.660 And the answer is whoever has power.

01:06:45.720 This is the answer.

01:06:47.060 This is always kind of a thing people get into.

01:06:49.240 It's like, but who decides what religion is right?

01:06:51.020 Who decides what's tyranny? 0.52

01:06:52.480 Who decides?

01:06:53.220 The powerful.

01:06:54.680 That's the answer.

01:06:55.860 You know, men with swords or men with the ability to move men with swords.

01:06:59.640 This has always been true.

01:07:00.580 This will always be true.

01:07:02.180 And when we throw out this question of like, who's going to decide those things?

01:07:05.680 Like there's a natural understanding.

01:07:07.240 I think there's a certain amount of, and again, this is going to go from people to people,

01:07:11.220 which is what Demester would say, right?

01:07:13.060 You might have in, you know, he kind of invokes the idea of the Asian god king, right?

01:07:17.560 So in these kind of Asian despots, they're going to be able to wield way more power over 1.00

01:07:22.940 their people because that's just kind of a natural thing that has produced itself in many

01:07:28.120 of these civilizations.

01:07:29.900 There might be other people in England or in America that would allow far less power

01:07:37.060 to be exercised over them.

01:07:38.780 And they're going to either hit that moment of tyranny where they're going to push back

01:07:42.380 once power has been exercised over them or they're not.

01:07:44.720 And they're going to allow that to continue.

01:07:45.840 And guess what?

01:07:46.340 That's when you'll decide what's too tyrannical, which is why it's really hard when we sit

01:07:50.300 around and say the United States or other European countries.

01:07:53.040 And we look around the world and we say, hey, that place is despotic.

01:07:56.720 That place is tyrannical.

01:07:57.840 Well, maybe by our standards, but maybe the people there prefer to be ruled that way.

01:08:01.620 Or maybe they don't.

01:08:02.600 But it's not something that we are always able to understand because we're just assuming

01:08:06.680 that our values, our understanding of power, our understanding of government is universal.

01:08:11.380 But it's not.

01:08:12.180 And that's kind of Demester's main point is, you know, that this is going to vary from civilization

01:08:17.340 to civilization and looking for a universal standard of what is tyrannical or what's the

01:08:21.600 exact amount of government power, the exact amount of input from the people that's going

01:08:26.320 to just work for every single human across the globe is to not understand human nature.

01:08:31.320 And that's always going to lead you to ruin.

01:08:33.380 Yeah.

01:08:33.940 And to expand on this, let's look at one of the larger influences on that of Joseph de Maestro,

01:08:39.580 which was John Bodon just a few hundred years earlier.

01:08:42.560 I mean, he categorizes monarchy or sovereignty really into three areas.

01:08:46.820 You have royal, tyrannical, and despotic.

01:08:49.640 And with tyrannical monarchy, he argues that tyrannical monarchy is one where a monarch tramples

01:08:54.580 underfoot the laws of nature, that he abuses the natural liberty of his subjects by making

01:08:58.760 them slaves, stealing the property of his own.

01:09:02.420 You know, unlike the Greek word for tyrant, which was an honorable term, you know, now it 0.87

01:09:08.180 signifies a prince that has come to power without the goodwill of his subjects, that the people

01:09:13.080 who allow to voluntarily give up authority to this sovereign, whether it be by the aristocrats

01:09:18.480 or the subjects, this is someone that just steals, robs, plunders, kills, murders, rapes 0.98

01:09:23.060 for himself.

01:09:23.900 And this is something for us to sort of understand back to what de Maestro is saying, that, listen,

01:09:28.360 we're not kings.

01:09:29.140 We can't really judge the guy, but when it comes to the law, which is applied both to

01:09:34.660 the people based on their character or their nationality or ethnicity, but also because

01:09:39.640 it is applied equally to aristocrat and subject, we too can look at the king and acknowledge

01:09:46.160 that what he is doing is criminal and thus tyrannical. 0.96

01:09:50.200 And when that line of tyranny is crossed, as de Maestro has said, you can kill Nero. 0.99

01:09:54.460 You can physically remove him.

01:09:56.900 So we've got another just straight up donation here from Belial Bradley for $5.

01:10:02.660 Thank you very much, man.

01:10:03.560 Very much appreciate that.

01:10:05.940 We've got JDL41 for $20.

01:10:11.000 Enjoy your content.

01:10:11.900 I rarely get to watch live.

01:10:13.060 Well, thank you very much, man.

01:10:14.000 I appreciate you coming by live when you can.

01:10:15.960 I appreciate you contributing when you can.

01:10:18.740 Of course, all of these episodes, guys, are available on Blaze TV.

01:10:22.080 You can watch the VODs on YouTube and Rumble and Odyssey.

01:10:25.320 You can listen to the audio on your McIntyre show on all your podcast networks, Apple, Spotify,

01:10:31.080 all that stuff.

01:10:32.000 So you can always catch it later.

01:10:34.120 And I'm sure many of you do.

01:10:35.720 But it's great to have people live, of course, because we get to answer questions.

01:10:38.540 You guys get to chat.

01:10:39.580 We get to interact.

01:10:40.780 And it's really nice to have that community atmosphere.

01:10:43.020 It's a nice thing about the show.

01:10:44.480 Yes, I do the episodes that are just the interviews or we do the episodes that are just me doing

01:10:50.140 the essays, but it's really nice that we have the live streams and we get to talk to each

01:10:54.440 other.

01:10:54.640 We get to hang out.

01:10:55.360 That's an important part.

01:10:56.400 And it's been nice because I've been going to conferences and I've actually been getting

01:10:59.280 to meet people who have been commenting on my videos and jumping in and live chats and

01:11:03.200 those things for years.

01:11:04.380 And so it's been really cool to kind of see that community, not just online, but actually

01:11:09.360 in person as well.

01:11:10.300 Joshua Beebe for $9.99, service guarantees citizenship or public is the best form of

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01:11:22.300 the self-reliance and water culture that comes most naturally.

01:11:25.540 I mean, yeah, I mean, I know a lot of people get, you know, get their knickers in a twist

01:11:29.520 about Starship Troopers, but yeah, no, that's just a great, that's just a great answer to

01:11:35.300 this question.

01:11:35.820 And again, this is part of what Joseph de Maistre says about the natural aristocracy.

01:11:40.020 The natural aristocracy will come from people often who have the physical ability to fight,

01:11:46.900 have the, you know, they have earned the right of their position in the aristocracy through

01:11:51.380 combat.

01:11:52.120 The aristocracy in most civilizations was a martial class at some point.

01:11:56.980 And so this is a very natural way for Anglo people, yes, but for many others to kind of

01:12:01.580 have this.

01:12:02.420 And so you can have a form of Republic in which the aristocracy naturally assembles itself under

01:12:07.220 military service.

01:12:08.200 And I say, this is somebody who does not have any military service under belt.

01:12:11.040 So I get it.

01:12:11.820 Like I would not be qualified to, to, you know, kind of, kind of put this in, but I honestly

01:12:16.840 think that that's a pretty solid way to organize a civilization.

01:12:21.420 If you don't have that, you need to have something like it because our current system,

01:12:25.060 you know, it's, it's like the, the, the people who have to be begged in Athens to go vote.

01:12:32.140 What, why would you want those people to be part of, of your ruling class?

01:12:35.260 That doesn't make any sense.

01:12:36.700 Yeah.

01:12:36.900 It just illustrates exactly what sort of de Maistre said.

01:12:39.500 Each different group of people, each different region is going to have a form of government

01:12:43.720 that is perfectly in line to the characteristics and I guess blood or hereditary nature of those

01:12:49.880 people.

01:12:50.220 And sadly we've sort of just universalized that, especially in the West towards all.

01:12:55.480 And I think it's been a great disservice to both the nations of Europe, as well as the

01:12:59.060 people of the United States.

01:13:01.000 Joshua again here for $1.99.

01:13:02.600 Are you familiar with min-maxing of John Rawls?

01:13:05.400 So I don't know if that's a, it's a joke or if you're making a specific reference.

01:13:08.800 I'm very familiar with John Rawls.

01:13:10.640 Uh, I've, I've, uh, read John Rawls.

01:13:13.180 I've read critiques of John Rawls.

01:13:14.920 I'm, I'm pretty familiar with most of John Rawls.

01:13:16.660 So I'm familiar with a lot of his, you know, kind of abstract concepts and the way that

01:13:21.180 he, he wants to update liberalism.

01:13:23.360 Uh, there's, there's kind of that joke in modern philosophy, you know, all of, all of

01:13:27.020 philosophy was a footnote to Plato and all of modern philosophy is a footnote to John

01:13:31.100 Rawls.

01:13:31.940 Um, that's pretty sad, but it is, it is the way that he is often seen in, in kind of the

01:13:37.100 modern philosophical academy.

01:13:39.100 Yeah.

01:13:39.600 I don't know, I don't know how many people are trying to min-max John Rawls, perhaps this

01:13:43.320 administration or just general American democracy, but, uh, min, min-maxing builds or glass

01:13:48.000 cannons, uh, as soon as something comes their way, they break.

01:13:50.640 That's a excellent transition there.

01:13:52.280 Yes.

01:13:52.780 Uh, Matt, uh, Gritier here for one 99, just another one.

01:13:55.920 That's a donation.

01:13:57.040 No super chat, but thank you very much, man.

01:13:58.860 I really appreciate that.

01:14:00.580 All right, guys.

01:14:01.360 Well, we are going to go ahead and wrap it up.

01:14:03.160 I think everybody so much for coming by had a lot of great comments and questions.

01:14:07.120 Of course, want to thank the Prudentialists for coming on.

01:14:09.980 Excellent co-host, always there to help me with the political theory and other episodes.

01:14:14.500 Make sure that you're checking out all of his work.

01:14:17.120 And of course, guys, if this is your first time here, make sure that you go ahead and

01:14:20.520 subscribe to the channel.

01:14:22.300 And if you want to get these broadcasts as podcasts, check out the Orrin McIntyre show

01:14:26.100 on your favorite podcast platform.

01:14:28.200 Thanks for coming by guys.

01:14:29.220 And as always, I'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - October 25, 2023

The Greatest Form of Government ｜ Guest： The Prudentialist ｜ 10⧸25⧸23

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