Joseph DeMaestra's essay, Study on Sovereignty breaks down the three basic forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. What is good about them and what is bad about them? And what should we know about the character of each one?
00:04:02.960So like I said, we're looking at study of on sovereignty here, and we're getting to the point
00:04:06.740where Demestra starts talking about the specifically the different forms of government.
00:04:11.420Famously, Aristotle had three major forms of government rule by one or monarchy rule by the few or aristocracy
00:04:20.100and rule by three, which would be kind of the polity or sorry, rule by many, which would be which would be the polity.
00:04:27.880And then along with that, Aristotle also had kind of the worst versions of that.
00:04:33.360So you had the monarchy, which is kind of the good version of rule by one.
00:04:37.340And then you have a tyranny, which is a bad version of rule by one.
00:04:40.360You have a rule of the few, which is aristocracy.
00:04:43.220That's the good version of rule by a few.
00:04:45.300And then you have oligarchy, which is the bad version of rule by the few.
00:04:49.060And then you have polity, which is the good version of rule by many.
00:04:52.840And then you have democracy, which is the bad version of rule by many.
00:04:56.040So 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.
00:05:17.460The 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.
00:05:33.740So 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.
00:05:45.960And 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.
00:06:13.180And 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.
00:06:26.420You 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.
00:06:41.560You can't universally apply that. And so monarchy is the most prevalent throughout history.
00:06:45.900Yeah, 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.
00:06:58.300Each people is different. Each nation or group of people are going to have a different understanding of how best to rule over themselves.
00:07:05.440But 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.
00:07:16.600It is natural. And when we start asking questions, why is it natural?
00:07:20.980This is where you start having the interrogations on sovereignty or democracy or the rights and citizens of man.
00:07:27.640This 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.
00:07:39.300You 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.
00:07:49.800And 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.
00:08:03.540So we can't judge Nero, but if Nero acts as a tyrant, he can be, as Hans Herma Hoppe might say, physically removed.
00:08:12.100And 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.
00:08:22.280What 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.
00:08:30.580It is chimerical. And he starts talking about how some nations are, unfortunately, based on their particularisms, condemned to democracy.
00:08:39.440He treats democracy as some kind of curse or a genetic abnormality for certain people, sort of that early political science HBD, I guess.
00:08:48.480But it really does illustrate to DeMeister's point, as well as the points of earlier French political scientists like Jean Baudin,
00:08:55.860that 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,
00:09:09.320the masses of people, as well as to balance out the ecclesiastical authority of the church.
00:09:14.180Because 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.
00:09:26.640Yeah, 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.
00:09:35.240That'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.
00:09:47.500But before we get into that, I want to point out a few things that he says about the character of monarchy.
00:09:52.340First, he talks about the difference between elective monarchies and hereditary monarchies.
00:09:57.900And 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.
00:10:11.520He sees hereditary monarchies as a solution to elective monarchies.
00:10:16.960He says a lot of people look at elective monarchies.
00:10:19.300And 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.
00:10:28.060And there's all of this upheaval whenever one monarch is passed away or loses their election or in some ways removed from power.
00:10:36.300And so this gap in sovereignty creates a huge crisis.
00:10:39.440And 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.
00:10:53.380Cultures that had elected monarchs eventually understood that the stability of a hereditary monarch was far more valuable.
00:11:01.200And 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.
00:11:10.700He says that is no less likely in any of these other forms of government.
00:11:15.840Like there's nothing about the elective mechanism that makes it less likely to produce bad rulers.
00:11:22.360And 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.
00:11:33.060Yeah, 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.
00:11:43.520He's very clear and makes it very open that, you know, even monarchy does have its problems.
00:11:47.860But 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.
00:11:56.040And I mean, he says that monarchy is a centralized aristocracy.
00:11:59.860In all times and places, the aristocracy commands whatever form is given to government's birth and wealth are always placed in the first rank.
00:12:07.720Nowhere do they rule more harshly than where their empire is not founded on law.
00:12:11.920But in monarchy, the king is the center of this aristocracy.
00:12:14.920It is indeed the aristocracy that commands us everywhere, but it commands in the king's name.
00:12:20.460Or if you like, the king is illumined by the light of aristocracy.
00:12:23.940So we're really getting into that hereditary understanding that there is a landed gentry.
00:12:28.880The sons of the landed gentry are typically going to be well off.
00:12:32.040The sons of manufacturers, usually their parents up until recent history, would establish a position for them to succeed it.
00:12:38.960This 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.
00:12:47.720And 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.
00:12:56.220And 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.
00:13:07.100And 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?
00:13:37.760And so it's creating a far more stable structure by which you can have that that power run.
00:13:43.580But it doesn't mean that you just have one tyrannical guy operating in the center of that.
00:13:48.500And he's going to make this argument here.
00:13:49.740I'm just going to read some of this because I think it's really important.
00:13:52.520He says a very remarkable truth was spoken at the opening of the Republican Lycie in Paris.
00:13:57.920In absolute governments, the fault of the ruler can scarcely ruin everything at the same time because a single will cannot do everything.
00:14:06.260But a Republican government is obligated to be essentially reasonable and just because the general will, once it goes astray, carries everything with it.
00:14:16.780And 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.
00:14:31.440A lot of people think of the will of the people, popular sovereignty, as the limiting check on government.
00:14:36.000But he makes the exact different argument.
00:14:37.820He says when the king was one person, he could only demand what one person could demand.
00:14:42.520But 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.
00:14:52.760And he says this is why we get the levy on mass.
00:14:55.340This is why we get mass conscription, mass production.
00:14:57.820This is why we get this idea of total control is justified from the government, because that comes from the invocation of mass sovereignty.
00:15:07.340So 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.
00:15:17.220But 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.
00:15:28.220He says this observation observation is most just.
00:15:32.160It is far from true that the will of the king does everything in a monarchy.
00:15:36.080It is supposed to do everything, and that is its great advantage of this government.
00:15:40.880But in fact, its utility is almost wholly in centralizing advice and knowledge.
00:15:46.180Religion, laws, customs, opinion, class and corporate privileges restrict the sovereign and prevent him from abusing his power.
00:15:54.360It is striking that kings have been much more often accused of lacking will than overextending it.
00:16:01.460And that's always it is always the king's council that rules.
00:16:05.400And 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.
00:16:14.860You don't have to homogenize and unify public opinion.
00:16:18.880You can have a sovereign who takes these different areas of the nation, be it the church, be it merchants, be it communities.
00:16:27.620And 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.
00:16:38.620Yeah, 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.
00:16:50.700And I think it also applies very well today when we talk about the powers of the aristocracy or just really in general the wealthy.
00:16:58.240There'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.
00:17:12.380But I think Demeister offers a really good answer to this in turn, where he says, let's see here, here we go.
00:17:21.620He 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.
00:17:32.940It'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.
00:17:54.260And 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.
00:18:11.880None of them should be humiliated by a distinction that they should never enjoy.
00:18:14.780Listen, 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.
00:18:27.800In 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.
00:18:40.620Because 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.
00:18:50.100And 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.
00:19:00.700They 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.
00:19:11.520And 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.
00:19:19.500So, again, both subject and aristocrat have to answer to the sovereign. They have to answer to the king.
00:19:25.840And 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.
00:19:34.280And 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.
00:19:57.600We saw this when it came to communism. We see this now today with our former progressive leftist form of government in the United States.
00:20:04.600And so, you know, nearly 200 plus years ago, we've got de Meister calling out the obvious.
00:20:10.000He also points out something that I think we can observe now in our own government.
00:20:13.540He 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.
00:20:23.100And because popular opinion regards it as continue as a continual rebellion against the principle of equality admitted, admitted by the Constitution.
00:20:32.320So he's saying, look, there's going to be differences in people like like people are different.
00:20:38.120Some people are born smart. Some people are born strong. Some people are born capable and some people are not.
00:20:44.220And 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.
00:20:54.120As we're in a republic, we're told everyone is supposed to be equal.
00:20:58.300In fact, the Constitution itself says everybody's supposed to be equal.
00:21:01.260And once we start observing that people aren't equal, well, we start getting this itch of why aren't people equal?
00:21:07.120Why aren't people equal? And eventually we come to a couple of different conclusions and none of them are satisfactory in the monarchy.
00:21:13.820We 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.
00:21:21.100And so that's why we turn ourselves inward and we start eating ourselves alive.
00:21:24.700And 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.
00:21:38.420And 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.
00:21:46.540And Demestrian knew that was going to happen.
00:21:48.040He predicted that was going to happen specifically here.
00:21:51.840And 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.
00:22:01.260You don't have to tear your civilization apart trying to justify inequality because you're you're because you're already expecting inequality.
00:22:09.260It's part of life as we're in the Republican form of government.
00:22:12.120But inequality is a problem and you the only way to fix it is a bunch of social engineering that kind of destroys your civilization.
00:22:20.100And 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.
00:22:29.860But rather, this is a difference between the haves and the have nots when it comes to food or wealthy estates who can employ you.
00:22:36.540Are you self-employed as a tradesman, whatever?
00:22:38.880But it does illustrate a sort of harsher reality that we talk about in the West.
00:22:44.520And we talk about America, especially in a more income oriented sense.
00:22:48.520But we've lost that desire to address the hard realities that some of us are not born kings.
00:22:54.440Some of us are not born exceedingly wealthy, even under the lies of that anyone can be anything.
00:23:00.320And I think the de Maistre answers this quite clearly that we're always going to have that sense of resentment.
00:23:05.660But if someone can manage the balance between resentments of the masses and those that already have got it made,
00:23:11.880either by birth or by some form of extravagant wealth, the monarch becomes the answer to that.
00:23:17.620And we've lost the plot because even when we want to have someone manage the powerful classes
00:23:22.740and the powerful people of wealth and inequality, all that we're doing is that we're giving it to unelected bureaucrats
00:23:30.680that by no right of birth or anything probably should be there because we do have an overproduction of elites.
00:23:36.540We do have an education system that chooses the least qualified and we see that competency crisis in full.
00:23:43.100And so when people say to answer these problems today under our democratic means,
00:23:47.620they mean throwing it off to committees and throwing it off to members of Congress
00:23:51.220that are instead going to be making themselves wealthy with this newfound power
00:23:55.680that they've been established in order to cater to the masses.
00:23:58.180Again, once you get rid of the king, Bertrand de Juvenel's model of power kicks into overdrive real quick.
00:24:04.980So he also talks about something that a lot of people will criticize monarchy for, but he thinks is wrong.
00:24:10.100He says a lot of people say there is no advance of merit under this system, right?
00:24:33.700There'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.
00:24:44.820But 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.
00:24:55.020But he says that the monarchy actually enables this in a couple of ways.
00:24:58.700The first thing he says is that the unity of the sovereignty is more compelling than kind of the spirit of the people.
00:25:05.180I'll just read this real quick because I've got it up.
00:25:06.940In the government of several, sovereignty is by no means a unity.
00:25:10.980And 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.
00:25:18.280The human imagination does not grasp a unity that is only a metaphysical abstraction.
00:25:22.680On the contrary, it delights in the separate and separating each element of the unity, general unity.
00:25:28.600And the subject has less respect for a sovereign whose separational parts are not sufficient above him.
00:25:35.100It follows that in kind in this these kinds of governments, sovereignty is not the same intensity or in consequence, the same moral force.
00:25:42.180And 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.
00:25:53.420It doesn't it doesn't transfer the same amount of kind of august respect for your achievements.
00:25:58.900However, 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.
00:26:11.780And so when the king appoints something, when he delegates a task and appoints someone to it, that elevates that person.
00:26:18.660And 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.
00:26:36.260And 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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00:27:17.520Yeah, I like how he describes that the word king is a talisman, that it has this magical authority to it.
00:27:25.540Reminds me of our friend Carl Benjamin over at the Lotus Eaters.
00:27:28.560He 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.
00:27:36.540And even Joseph de Maestro, even though French, probably has a long history with English.
00:27:40.500I 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.
00:27:51.000And 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.
00:28:04.500But, you know, de Maestro points out that the sovereign is the one that condemns people to death.
00:28:10.100And that is something that, one, no ordinary person can even begin to comprehend.
00:28:14.000We can say, oh, I wish that guy had, you know, died or whatever.
00:28:17.380But it's a lot different than to be the one that orders the execution.
00:28:21.100And 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.
00:28:37.000And 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.
00:28:47.900If 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.
00:28:56.180And he says that among us, ideas are different.
00:28:59.660If 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.
00:29:06.420And on this point, they're not two ways of thinking.
00:29:08.420An opinion of it is so strong, protects us sufficiently.
00:29:11.220So one, we're already aware that the king can be held to law and we can, you know, remove him if need be.
00:29:17.300But secondly, that abuses in regard to power, each monarchy in Europe has its own particular traits, for example, he says.
00:29:24.140But we always see any of this where he gets to throw out my favorite word, the physiognomy of government.
00:29:29.840You know, we each one has their own great character and monarchs have the capability to enforce it, to condemn men to death.
00:29:35.960And it's going to be different on each people.
00:29:38.060And he's sort of acknowledging that critics of monarchy, they always say, oh, a king is this, a king is that.
00:29:47.840But 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.
00:29:59.240And it makes it harder to judge it and makes it more resilient for each person or nation.
00:30:05.420Again, 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.
00:30:15.960He says you have to take into account the particularities of a people.
00:30:57.920And any time you try to do that, you will fool yourself or destroy something in the process.
00:31:03.160He also talks about despotism here in a way that I think is really important.
00:31:07.300He explains that monarchies are usually criticized for their despotism, but also for their weakness simultaneously.
00:31:17.280They'll say that the monarch is a tyrant, but the monarch is also too weak.
00:31:25.000And 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,
00:31:36.020what they're saying is that the monarch is not controlling the people he has delegated authority to.
00:31:41.860And those people are crushing the average person, those aristocrats or those officers that have been delegated to.
00:31:49.160They're crushing the average person and the king is not protecting the people because the king's job.
00:31:53.980And again, this is something that Bertrand de Juvenal recognized.
00:31:56.800The king's relationship is always directly with the people.
00:31:59.400It is the king that is supposed to protect the people from the aristocrats.
00:32:03.060And so if he's not doing that, then he's failing at his job.
00:32:05.800And 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.
00:32:17.080And the people cannot fight back against those delegated authorities.
00:32:22.160And so that's why you see it called too weak, but also too despotic simultaneously.
00:32:27.840And he has this great passage about the nature of man that I want to read here because I think it's just so good.
00:32:32.560How many faults power has committed and how steadfast it ignores the means of conserving itself.
00:32:42.940He is infinite in his desires and always discontented with what he has, what he has, loves only what he has not.
00:32:51.760People complain of the despotism of princes.
00:32:54.340They ought to complain about the despotism of man.
00:32:57.640We 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.
00:33:12.260There is not a man who does not abuse power.
00:33:15.120And experience shows the most abominable despots.
00:33:18.460If they manage to seize the scepter are precisely those who rant against despotism.
00:33:24.340But the author of nature has set bounds to the abuse of power.
00:33:28.020He has willed that it destroys itself once it has gone beyond its natural limits.
00:33:32.740And 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.
00:33:41.240That 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.
00:33:54.380And so he says embracing this aspect of monarchy is not a weakness.
00:33:59.020This is an understanding of just human nature itself.
00:34:01.540And it can only be bound by this very powerful system of an understanding despotism.
00:34:08.360And 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.
00:34:25.200And 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.
00:34:35.620And, you know, he sort of categorizes monarchy into sort of three forms.
00:34:39.720You have royal monarchy, which is sort of what we see de Maistre defending here.
00:34:44.260But then you also have despotic or tyrannical forms of monarchy.
00:34:48.660And 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.
00:35:01.840You 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.
00:35:18.720And for de Maistre, this is a natural part of man.
00:35:24.400But 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.
00:35:34.340And 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.
00:35:45.900And too many times that that criticism misses the mark when it comes to critics of monarchy.
00:35:51.280So 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.
00:36:02.860It'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.
00:36:14.900And he says, of course, this has its own strengths and it has its own weaknesses.
00:36:18.360He 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.
00:36:26.740You 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.
00:36:38.780Very interestingly, I just want to want to stop on a point real quick that he makes.
00:36:43.540He says he talks about the natural aristocracy of physical strength.
00:36:47.980He said this is just something that's going to emerge.
00:36:49.980You're going to have hereditary aristocracy because those people are just physically stronger and more talented.
00:36:57.440I thought this is interesting because, of course, it feels like we don't have that anymore, right?
00:37:01.180And I think that that's a critical problem.
00:37:04.960We've seen the overproduction of elites, especially when it comes to foxes, as you mentioned earlier.
00:37:10.220We have what Pareto would call these class one residues that are basically all about combinations and intellect.
00:37:23.200We see very few class twos coming to power and ruling.
00:37:27.260And 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.
00:37:56.060And we're kind of getting to the edge where that might be coming back.
00:37:59.500I think people are starting to realize that technology will not solve the problem of combat in the way that many people thought it was.
00:38:07.340But 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.
00:38:15.920And the aristocracy of intelligence is the only thing that matters.
00:38:19.220Yeah, 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.
00:38:28.280I 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.
00:38:40.320There's sort of always the technology will adapt and evolve with how we rule.
00:38:44.140And 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.
00:38:58.420I 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.
00:39:04.900He'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.
00:39:13.600Because 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.
00:39:35.700But also at the same time that it blurs the distinction of, well, who's really more natural and fit to rule.
00:39:42.920I 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.
00:39:52.500We 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.
00:40:10.540And 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.
00:40:22.240So 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.
00:40:40.940It 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.
00:40:56.520I mean, you see this really well with California.
00:40:59.040It doesn't matter how anti-white things may get in California or how anarcho-tyranny it gets in California.
00:41:05.320Gavin 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.
00:41:18.520And 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.
00:41:29.140I mean, we saw this with the January 6th stuff, right, that, oh, well, it's our sacred temple of democracy.
00:41:34.600And I don't think anyone feels like that anymore.
00:41:37.100No one has that sense of history or grandeur or appreciation of even the magic that once came with American democracy.
00:41:43.780And 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?
00:41:59.200And 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.
00:42:15.820AOC 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.
00:42:25.140And 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.
00:42:39.000And 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.
00:43:02.020It's easier to complain than it is to do anything else. But I'm rambling too long.
00:43:06.340No, 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?
00:43:15.040And 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.
00:43:24.580He 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.
00:43:32.980Again, you don't have that break in continuity. You have people who are deeply invested.
00:43:38.160Also, very interestingly, he says that it's really important to have a mix of the young and the old.
00:43:43.900He really emphasizes that inside the aristocracy, that one of the values of it is that it brings the young and the old together.
00:43:50.580He says the young are to do good and the old are to prevent evil, which I think is a really interesting observation.
00:43:59.320The young have the vitality, you know, and this is what they're also the rule he says for the king, right?
00:44:03.700That they are the ones that are going to do good. They're going to feel compelled to take action.
00:44:08.360They're going to be the ones that have the vigor. And again, we often just we often downplay that in our society.
00:44:14.200As 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.
00:44:26.540What we all what we want is is always to be, you know, deliberating and waiting and thinking about everything.
00:44:32.660But 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.
00:44:37.320And then there are the old and their job is to prevent evil because they have the wisdom and they have the patience.
00:44:42.800They don't have the vigor. They don't have the vitality to bring about the change that the young do.
00:44:48.180But they do have the ability to temper that with wisdom because they've seen the evil.
00:44:52.720They know what could come. And so they can encourage the young when they are doing vigorous things that are valuable.
00:44:58.180But they can also slow things that might be done too quickly that would bring about evil.
00:45:04.200And so there's this role of both the young and the old and that that should constantly be mixed into your aristocracy.
00:45:11.960Yeah, and this is where for the rest of this little section on aristocracy, we get to see a large sort of refutation of Rousseau.
00:45:19.860And it comes back to that natural order, the hierarchy of peoples and the importance to recognize that things develop.
00:45:27.940They do take time and you do need that combination of young and old working together.
00:45:33.240The wisdom of the experience to temper the vitality and the impulsiveness of the young.
00:45:38.800This is why I mean, anyone reads the books of what gets called wisdom in the Old Testament,
00:45:44.000you know, whether that be, you know, Proverbs or Ecclesiastes or the wisdom of Sirach and so on.
00:45:49.780You're going to notice that it is fathers or fatherly patriarchal figures offering advice and commands to their sons.
00:45:58.180And this is the same thing that we see being pointed out by de Maestra.
00:46:01.980And when he goes on, he's sort of criticizing Rousseau and his complaints over Venice,
00:46:07.300saying that, oh, you know, hereditary or aristocratic government is detestable.
00:46:11.760The esteem of the world accorded for several centuries to that of Bern in no way contradict my theory.
00:46:16.760For what makes this government not bad is that it is excellent, oh, profundity.
00:46:20.320And he's quoting Rousseau when he says this about the judgment on Venice is no less curious.
00:46:24.500Venice, he says, has fallen into hereditary aristocracy, which has so long been a dissolved state.
00:46:29.580To which de Maestra responds and looks at the history of Venice and looks throughout the Middle Ages.
00:46:35.200And he says, and I think quite poignantly, that Rousseau,
00:46:38.720in saying Venice had fallen into aristocracy that is hereditary,
00:46:42.920proves that he knows very little about the growth of empire.
00:46:46.080If he had known, instead of fallen, he would have said achieved.
00:46:50.100While the Venetians were only unfortunate refugees,
00:46:53.280while the Venetians were only unfortunate refugees,
00:46:56.020living in shacks on those islets one day would support many palaces.
00:46:59.980It is quite clear to their constitution was not yet mature, strictly speaking.
00:47:03.900They had none, since they did not enjoy absolute independence,