Welcome. My name is Guzziferno, author of Reflection . I’m happy to have you as a visitor to my blog about Reflection. This project is very special to me, and I hope to share some of its collective ideologies with you here.
I’ll be using this blog to interact with you about Reflection, expanding on some of the topics in it and posting on some of the ideas related to my book. This is a great place for you to get to know me, and I’m looking forward to getting to know you, too. What did you think of Reflection? What questions do you have for me? How do you relate to my book?
I’ll be returning here frequently with new posts and responses to feedback from you.
Introduction:
Of the many subjects discussed in my book, Government is one of the main subjects of concern and focus, as I believe it is a key to solutions regarding most of the various subject matter and topics raised within it (Legal industry and destruction of family, industrial destruction of ecology, destruction of international peace for profit, and economic slavery). It has become evident over time that as an individual, or a community, that most of us have very little decision making power and control over the many issues which run past us and are rapidly decided on daily,, issues which should concern and involve us. Our general public participation and involvement in specific issues are also lower than most other nations and can be measured in many ways.
(Israel’s Supreme Court hears thousands of cases annually, while the U.S. Supreme Court hears less than a hundred [not to say that civil unrest and protest have not had greater impact on their courts decisions] and why its greedy and destructive power hungry government tried to eliminate it in 2023).
(The Constitution may have in its initial design been constructed to prevent the people’s advancement and any changes proposed by the people for that purpose allowing control of government to remain in the hands of an elite group as Prof. Robert Ovetz explains. His point in that out of 10,000 amendments proposed throughout its history, only 27 have been accepted is interesting and well taken. This is also reinforced by the strange undemocratic concept of the “electoral college, gerrymandering, delegates and super delegates process involved in our voting system).
Despite this fact, alternatively many of its original ideals have actually been re-interpreted and, amended to a greater degree [not by general national consensus] but by statutes and many new forms of lower categorical laws exercised by courts, states and the federal government, and the elite minority who control them, as well as the special interests groups who fail to consider society in its entirety, but only for their own specific agendas or interests at the cost of others).
It is important to note that I do not blindly support any totalitarian systems of government, or support the injustices that any — or all other systems of government have imposed on past societies. (Despite years of educational and media programing, I have now become aware of the fact that good and evil are not defined simply by “claimed” dictatorships or democratic systems,,, or that they themselves do not simply define good or evil.)
(“Every state is a dictatorship” ~ Antonio Gramsci )
Yet, considering the growing human population, the necessity of a proper governing system is paramount to the overall security and survival of our species and the global environment we depend on.
Throughout my continuous studies on past systems of government I have come to understand that each of the many common systems repeatedly empowered have been flawed to a measurable extent. These flaws differ from system to system as the principles, priorities, methods, and concentrated efforts of each system differ. This may be a reflection of the different levels of allowed greed, indifference, and ignorance practiced within the social culture of that time, before a society reacts with impulsive mends to growing problems previously unattended and purposely avoided. Human society has repeatedly swung from policy extremes of left to right for ages. In remembering a political sign carried by an independent party member once in our nation’s capital, it read;
“Under Republicans Man Exploits Man, ~ Under Democrats it’s just the opposite”.
As in various systems from monarchies to systems of [self-proclaimed] “self-government”, I believe the answer is somewhere in the middle where many ideologies can be brought together, used to some extent with more attention concentrated on the issues rather than political camps. This policy in fact has, and is presently being used by existing financially powerful groups which also greatly influence government direction. The problem is in the objectives which drive these mixed or selective policy uses,, and the evidence that these preferred policies of choice are hand-picked for the purpose of perpetuating their own growing empowerment and enhance their self-profit potentials. The wider spectrum of unused policies and methods from all past systems of government which could enable and secure all levels of society [or the whole], and the environment, are the ones that are now being avoided and buried under the grave marker of socialism and authoritarianism. Socialist governments have also been targeted for outright destruction by more established forces of finance when all other methods to suppress and outwit them fail.
The avoidance of dealing with social issues, leaves us in an arena of conflicted separated groups, values, variable policy directions and priorities (In an ever shifting, perpetually fluid system, designed for the rulers benefit). Conflicting separated groups can consist of various social and financially powerful groups to independent State governments who control, appropriate and mismanage Federal or central government funds, (as in cases which span from supporting and empowering oversized, overfed bureaucracies which generate increasing State profit at any cost [while under-funding essential regulatory departments within them], to cases where for example only one quarter of the dollars provided to State welfare programs actually reach those citizens in need).
“Foolish and unrealistic hopes can lead to harmful ambitions, but they can lead to destructive behavior in the opposite way as well—through the nurture of idleness and apathy. To illustrate this, Plato draws a parallel between political and medical hopes. Citizens who are not adequately educated or governed tend to adopt laws which repeatedly need to be amended. Because they avoid addressing the need for more fundamental political improvements, such citizens, live like those sick people who, through licentiousness, aren’t willing to abandon their harmful [or selfish] way of life… . Their medical treatment achieves nothing, except that their illness becomes worse and more complicated, and they’re always hoping [ἐλπίζοντες] that someone will recommend some new medicine to cure them” – (Plato, Republic 425e–426a)
Today governing methods are desperately requiring necessary change, but like laws these changes will require enforcement and maintenance if they are to be effective. Sacrifices must be endured starting at the top of the social pyramid. They [the lawmakers] must also move in the same direction for any progression in prioritizing and resolving the present day problems, ones affecting everyone [again without special privilege to harmful singular or special interests and powers of finance]. Can these changes be realized in what seems to be a perpetual chaotic social state of variable multi self-interests, in constant opposition and competition among themselves? Considering the lack of consistently united and thinking societies participating in government historically, have some collective or “centralizing” authoritarian systems of the past demonstrated any value to the government of their time, and what were the circumstances of their systems prior to their arrival? In respect to the historical struggle between “singular plutocratic or elitist interests” versus the common good, and the various systems of past authoritarian leaderships in resolving these repeated conflicts, problems, and their repeated re-occurrences or resurrections to date, I would like to note these historical passages and perspectives.
Why were dictators repeatedly accepted by the people if they hated absolute control and monarchy?
From Caesar to Marcus Aurelius, Justinian and later autocrats ~ whose accumulated centuries of rule and leadership greatly enhanced society, or cured what was previously unsolvable by other systems or forces — to these other systems and forces in government whose control and actions stemmed from selfish greed and worked for those ends. ~
In the example of Napoleon;
“The revolution was initiated only in Paris by Parisians, not the nation’s people. They were in immediate proximity of the reigns of power, and urban societies (increased by impoverished herds from the countryside) suffered the most in times of economic chaos (Reasons historically against super urbanization and expanding industrial societies [and their increasing symbiosis], and now to include the growing severity of ecological damage they bring).
There is another element present though, that is needed to understand why the people of France, even the people of Paris, accepted Napoleon so readily. You see, the Republic that Napoleon overthrew, called “The Directory”, was not the Republic that the Parisians and other radical revolutionaries fought for. Far from being any sort of populist state, the Directory was run by and for the interests of a few wealthy commoners. Whenever anyone, Royalist or Revolutionary, opposed to their interest came close to winning a political victory by forceful protest, they simply sent in the army to nullify the results. That was why it was called the Directory; it directed democracy to suit the interests of its ruling cabal, (Oligarchs again, Sire?)
The Directory was hated by Royalists and Revolutionaries equally, and its sole base of support was the army. Napoleon, through his victories in Italy, had gained the adoration of the soldiers, and thus the support of the army. When Napoleon launched his coup he didn’t win so much because he had wide support; he won because there was literally no one willing to defend the Directory. Because the Directory had already used the army to purge Royalism and Radicalism, there also wasn’t that much support left for either alternative that could have capitalized on the chaos. In 1799, when Napoleon took power, the choice was not between Republicanism and Monarchy; it was between Oligarchy and Monarchy (sounds familiar? ) and,, one led by a man who had proven himself to be competent. (This was the result of the Directory’s abusive, [self serving] economic policies causing its economic downfall, as in the tendency of other traditionally uncontrolled capitalistic states, — today’s wars now being between global oligarchs, not just opposed political ideologies)
By the time Napoleon had declared himself Emperor, he had truly turned France around. He had fixed the economy and instituted many reforms (by dictatorial decree). At that point, no one but the most radical Republicans opposed him assuming the title of Emperor — and there weren’t as many radical Republicans as many assume. – (Noah Weiner)
Earlier in history, wealthy entities of oligarchs – or capitalist contractors were known as the Publicani which emerged in the old Roman Republic. They were contracted to provide many overall public services, and logistical services which included materials for the military previously provided by the government directly (Identical to our modern Defense Logistics Agency, various military contracting centers, and DCMA contracting operations). In all the empirical provinces they eventually influenced and controlled national and international policies (derived through control of [delegated] tax collecting, material supply, services, and costs) and finally control of the policy makers themselves (influence, bribery and graft) in programs that would advance their own profits, as growing oligarchs of all nations continue to do to this day. Although many government representatives or consuls of the old republic were murdered for opposing, and by the opposing senators, for trying to introduce legalized reforms to balance the years of growing economic imbalance and damage they [Publicani and like-minded Senators] caused,, it took Caesars dictatorial power to reform the laws and eliminate the resulting lower middle class or social majority debt that was now destroying the economy leading to, and during their civil war. — (Mike Duncan / Michael Grant)
“Those who do not learn from history (and not just by their selected portions of historical study, but all of it) are forced to repeat it”.
Mussolini’s new system of government was considered by many scholars from various political categories, as the most revolutionary change in 20th century government, (only to be matched by Napoleon’s reforms a century earlier). His form of socialist government influenced the larger socialist parties and governments in Spain, Austria, England and the United States, where this form of socialist influence would finally be adopted in Roosevelt’s own new form of government [as were Bonaparte’s reforms by Europe’s later governments].
The wonder in its success was sometimes interpreted as genius. This due to its resulting 20 year achievements prior to the war, and due to having had the ability to actually institute it into a real working system of government (with the will and consent of the people), and against all odds opposing it; which within itself, can be considered a miracle (especially against the perpetual powerful capitalist bourgeois’ forces of opposition to any change).
“Democracy is a regime nominally without a King, but it is ruled by many kings — more absolute, tyrannical and ruinous than one sole king, even though a tyrant”- Mussolini
But its success can also be attributed to simpler and more practical reasons, and those are in enforcing an economic system of government that practices a higher level of equality and justice, forced upon all economic classes and higher levels of society [without eliminating them, as in Russia]. This ironically providing a system which enables society greater security for all, by all [by understanding and enforcing the necessary limits of balance on every class], and in its many ways and its many provisions mirrors our vision of democracy even more so than today’s imbalanced and self-claimed “democratic governments”. The results of his economic and government reforms after 1922 were quoted as “quite spectacular”.
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood let alone believed by the masses.” – Plato
Prince Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha crowned king of Bulgaria at the age of six survived the Second World War during the Nazi occupation when he was a child. After the Russian occupation and coup de ’tat which followed, the royal family was seized and ferried to a new location. They expected that they would also be executed like his uncle and other regents, (following the historic fate of the Russian royal family by the communist). Although this did not happen, they were kept under guard for 50 years. Simeon returned from exile in 1996 to a popular reception several years after the Berlin wall fell. During this following decade, most Bulgarians believed that the new democratic government had done little for them after the fall of the Berlin wall, reinstating their old king. Simeon self-demoted himself from king to prime minister in order to be more useful and break monarchal customs which prevented them from entering politics. Years later in an interview after having worn both hats he said that “he could not see any single system as being the best, but certainly monarchy was something more flexible. Where politicians, which I have been, only works for only 4 or 5 year terms (in conflicting regional interests), the king works for a generation [less conflict and more consistency for wider national interests] to think and plan 25 years ahead roughly. The more people get upset with politicians the more monarchy has functioned”. (Source BBC 2023)
(Although conflict can be a good thing despite resulting procrastination in multi-party parliaments by preventing runaway singular mistakes by singular rulers, the parliamentary or congressional representatives must also be morally driven and supportive of all or the entire society’s needs or it becomes as potentially dangerous as any other form of singular or unjust / biased system of government)
In my admiration of stoic values in both ancient Greek philosophy and the Roman Mos Maiorum, which were found in concepts of traditional family structure, patriarchy, maternity with paternity, and finally central government; I would also like to add here several individual public commentaries from a political blog I came across which I found personally interesting in their expressed logic, and only to the limited extent of the quotes that I am displaying here, and regarding strictly political philosophies of governing and not any racial and religious categorization’s. Regarding all discussions on fascism, I am strictly referring to the structured government of Italian Fascism and not Nazism as we have been programed to believe to be one and the same. My additional thoughts are highlighted in parenthesis.
Commentator K.R.B.;
Despite the totalitarianism of Fascist states, there were varying degrees of decentralization, if one keeps in mind that Fascist ‘corporatism’ did not refer to the empowerment of oligarchic corporations, but to the contrary, the empowerment of functional professional, occupational and cultural ‘corporations’ (by which is meant a corpus or ‘body’) which for the Anglophone might better be looked on as ‘guilds’ or ‘syndicates’.
The aim of Fascism was the creation of an organic state, the corporations serving as organs of the social organism, with the state acting as the coordinating ‘brain’. The administration of welfare and social security, employment, family benefits, and the like, devolved to the corporations down to their most localized bodies, to factory, township and village levels.
One might say that while Fascism aims to create the social organism, libertarianism and communism are social cancers – the first aiming to divide the social organism according to contending individuals; the second, according to contending classes.
There is a woeful lack of understanding of where the Italian Fascist ideas [also] came from. The idea of ‘Corporatism’ is from Catholic social teaching as described in the Rerum Novarum encyclical of 1891. (Corporatism ideology has been expressed since ancient Greek and Roman societies, with integration into Catholic social teaching and Socialist Democratic political parties, (which today dominate European governments and provide greater social provisions and basic securities than our own capitalist system of government)
(And despite the maintenance of businesses and industries, Mussolini’s government was by no means an entity of “boot licking capitalist body guards” as opposing political left extremist incorrectly criticize.)
Commentator T.S.;
“Fascism was a means that went too far and became an end in itself. As with many issues and governments, this issue can be easily resolved through Aristotle’s golden mean “Anything taken to an unnatural extreme becomes a warped parody of its former self”. Additionally, a great amount of slack must be given to the Italian Fascists, who found themselves overwhelmed by hostile powers and who had less time to realize their dreams than the Communist nations ended up having as western allies” (despite their adopted form of Communism’s ultimate failures in post war Eurasia, as similarly with the present direction of our own paradoxical form of “self-governing” Republic).
In response to “Fascism is a forced State and you cannot rebuke it”;
“There’s no reason to believe — that only means specific (dictatorial) states, and excludes those you selectively choose to be loyal to, but all States. . . . But many people touting this [or any] Supreme Statist ideology [evidently] don’t apply any of these [various political ideological] standards consistently, but selectively / tactically, because they don’t actually believe in their principles at all. If they’re only applied selectively, then they’re not real principles but tactics (for personal or singular gains, as in perhaps western capitalist states now claimed Constitutional Republics)
Furthermore, nature abhors a vacuum, especially in regard to power. The odd allergy to state power [in America] is only found on the Right (despite their own imposed extreme party principles). Historically, The Left has no qualms about it, and thus has had great success. The attitude that “power always corrupts” only serves to ensure that those who are inherently corrupt wield power unimpeded while those who are virtuous render themselves unable to exercise their virtue in the political realm.” (Similar view of Richard W. Child, “Relflection” pages 45-46, financial absolute powers versus revolutionist)
“The third point I wish to address is – the idea that corporations cannot perform traditional state functions, such as the use of force and the enforcement of taxes, [or, that they can never wield ultimate governing power over the state]. At first glance this appears to be a strong argument. But who ultimately wields more power, the President and Congress or the various private interests they must court to get elected and remain in office? Why run for Congress when you can make a Congressman your pet poodle? This has worked (for both the American right and left) to ensure that state power is used almost exclusively against their enemies, and rarely against their partners and pawns. And the fact that mega-corps design tax loopholes has become common knowledge even among the most apolitical.”
“There is also the matter of a potential power vacuum between the state and business. A perfect balance between state and corporate power would be ideal, but such a thing would be too delicate to last, anyway. One must eventually predominate over the other, like one side in a game of tug-of-war. It is simply the nature of the dynamic (Corporatist States possibly being the only example of the closest proper working balance ~ Italy 1922-42 and modern China, with the overall ruling state still maintaining the authoritative edge).
The question is thus whether the state will rule business or vice versa, and to what extent. The threat of business conquering government is the Achilles’ heel of any liberal democracy. As Oswald Spengler* explained in The Decline of the West, “It is symptomatic that no constitution knows of money as a political force, it is pure theory that they contain, one and all.” The state must rule business, or business will rule the state. It is a zero-sum game.”
“It is therefore better to embrace a political order in which the state openly and honestly rules over business, but in which there are limits as to how it does so. Attempting to achieve a balance will invariably slide into the nearly absolute rule of the state by private business. The state being predominant is not a perfect option, but it is preferable, since government is nominally public and business is private”.
*(Though not a supporter of the Nazis, having refused their racial policy in its early stages; Spengler, however, regarded the transformation of ultra-capitalist mass democracies into dictatorial regimes as inevitable, and he had expressed some sympathy for Benito Mussolini and the Italian Fascist movement (adopted by FDR, Mosley in UK, Dollfuss in Austria and Franco in Spain) as a first symptom of this development – David Engels, This rationalization was quite similar to that of Joseph Schumpeter’s prediction that uncontrolled capitalism would eventually be managed by State corporatism).
The US constitutional order abhors national government, and thus business interests such as banks, railroads, and the industrial robber barons were able to corrupt it soon after its inception. The Founders’ naïve hope that ambition and private enterprise would check each other backfired and ultimately aggrandized those interests. As a result, these same greedy industrial interests hijacked the federal government in order to launch their war against the South, which permanently injured the states’ rights, that the Constitution was ironically designed to protect” (And in the following century the same expanding industrial interests conducted the economic wars and exploitation of the entire equatorial and southern global hemisphere). [*Slavery was a personal concern reserved only by the president and a small group within the northern congress]
Furthermore, one of the best American presidents, Teddy Roosevelt, aptly wielded state power in domestic affairs in order to bust trusts, found the national park system, and passes the Meat Inspection and Pure Food and Drug acts while increasing US naval power abroad. It would be accurate to describe President Roosevelt as a proto-ecofascist. That Teddy is remembered as a beloved leader and not as a dark lord (also by the grace of domestic and not foreign press) should thoroughly rebuke the claim that the use of state power inherently corrupts. (Alternatively, in having a hand in promoting the Spanish American war, Roosevelt was an example of the balance between destructive State power and constructive State power, a closer mirror of Mussolini’s political life)
In regards to free capitalist enterprises exercising self-atoning measures without government regulations, intervention, and mandates, and driven by a self-conscious moral compass alone;
“One could point to numerous examples of businesses now having to serve woke ideas such as diversity and equity, which had already been around in less virulent forms for decades in the form of human resources commissars. Is this the examples of “morally conscious corporations”, or alternatively of modern American government control, bullying business? Actually, no — it is [supposedly woke] businesses bullying other businesses that are not in lockstep with their agenda. Such enterprises simply fall outside the current Fascist synthesis of state and corporate power.
(This tool can also be used by big corporations to attack competition using morally driven or popular motives and agendas that attract public support in order to monopolize control,, with the aid of *controlled law and media, not unlike totalitarian systems and tactics).
*Controlled law – Congress & appointed officials, Independent Legislators, corporate attorneys and other minorities who continually change fundamental laws, those authorities who enforce selective laws or ignore other laws and accept lobby money) [Executive branch officials, Legislative branch officials, Regulator’s, Security and exchange commissions, Judicial Branch officials from Supreme to family / criminal Courts, etc.]
In regards to the claim that “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.” There is actually some truth to this when Fascism [as well as other systems of government] abandons the Aristotelian golden mean and goes awry. All things else being equal, it is more efficient for issues to be handled at the lowest level possible — i.e., by the citizenry or local government. But civil society in America has all but withered today. Government overreach is one reason for this, but not the sole reason [selective special interests focus for political advantage, financial power manipulation, media manipulation, social and educational depravity and misdirection, low public involvement, etc.] One need only live for a brief time in a European country to observe the marked contrast.
The inverse of this dictum is also true. The lack of civil society requires a strong government to kick-start it, and then gradually back off. (But with the perpetual instinctive drive to prioritize self or greed by certain forces, within a sea of a non-opposing and an indifferent “herd society”, can you really back off?)
I do not claim that Fascism is an ideal form of government. However, no ideal government can exist in the Kali Yuga — or in the post-modern / post-industrial world, if one prefers to discard Traditionalist metaphysics. But Fascism is at least functional, which is the best we can currently hope for. And while Fascism comes with the danger of falling into excess, the excesses of liberal democracy and unfettered capitalism have proven to be far worse, both in probability and magnitude. It is they [not fascism] who have become indistinguishable from Communism (communism as it has been practiced by brutal eastern governments to date, and not in theory).
This naturally leads to the argument that adopting fascist principles, we will become what we are fighting against. But Statism is not like Sauron’s ring of power, regardless of what the libertarians claim. Otherwise, all of the governments in history would have descended into evil. The anti-statist sentiment which defines America is a relatively recent phenomenon spawned by the Enlightenment’s hatred of monarchy, which by the 1700s had degenerated into a parody of traditional kingship. This overreaction had some merit in its day, but is now an anachronism.
( This “anti-statist phenomenon” was also used by Anglo-American Oligarch’s before and after the Second World War to establish an anti-culture to any form of Authoritarian Statist regulatory power. This anti-culture continues today [with the new global oligarchs] by blaming our inability to control our excesses and their problematic results, and their unavoidable austerity measures as the other party’s resulting “Fascism”. This is despite having had discarded this doctrine of working government policy since or after 1943. The only part still being broadly misused being its title, now being synonymous to every perceivable evil or thing we hate, in a world of growing hate, per growing instability and insecurity. This growing insecurity is proving to be a product of uncontrolled capitalism which is now becoming a global system of government, growing viral, globally ~ as it is in its nature and tendency to do so.
Alternatively, the importance of Statism or central government was already being contemplated as early as the 1700’s in quotes by John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Andrew Jackson who realized that as president he represented the wider needs of the nation as opposed to his congressional constituents,, despite the simultaneous expulsion of the British monarchy. In fact, it was not the absolute power of British monarchy that imposed economic stress on the colonies;
“The “taxation without representation” we refer to primarily took the form of the Townsend Acts introduced by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Townshend. King George III made no such demands. He was a constitutional monarch. The British Prime Minister and Parliament governed at this point, and had done so since 1721. They [their demands] were mostly abandoned due to protests from the American colonists, although the tax on tea was retained in order to demonstrate to the colonists that Parliament held the sovereign authority to tax its colonies. This tea tax was reinforced with the Tea Act 1773, which the British Prime Minister, Lord North, introduced in order to reduce the massive amount of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and undercut the price of illegal tea, smuggled into Britain’s North American colonies“, This private corporate power among others being the true primary ruling power or “legislative authority” directing British policy, laws and government. )
“Public virtue (service to the state above self) is the foundation of a republic……… Public passion must be superior to all private passions” — John Adams
“When economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny.” — John Adams
“There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution” – John Adams
And up in to the 20th century with the policies of two Roosevelt presidencies, and after;
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”-JFK. )
Commentator K.V.;
“Many call it “libertarianism,” but I think it is just the priors of classical liberalism, and the antipathy towards the exercise of political power and the state within the so-called “conservative movement” (and liberal) that is holding us back as a civilization. The fact that the West abhors state sovereignty whereas the Chinese state embraces it, is able to subordinate China’s oligarchs to the national interests of China as a geopolitical entity, and strategize politically in the long-term is why the Chinese are on track to defeat us in the long run.
The execution of Charles I marks a cataclysmic moment in European history that I think is given insufficient attention in these circles. Prior to the English Civil War, the figure of the monarch was regarded as the representative of the people. He was the head in the sacred “body politic” which considered society as a social organism, as opposed to an atomistic collection of individuals with competing and conflicting interests. While members of parliament would try to appropriate this title of “representative” from the monarch, the idea was generally scoffed at.
King James often chided parliament, reminding them that they represented only the partisan interests of various counties and localities and were not capable of acting for the people as a whole: “I account not all that to be done by the commons of the land which hath been done by you” [i.e., the assembled members of parliament]. Representing the polity as a whole and pursuing the national interest was something that could only be done by the monarch himself.
Consequently, the radical transformation of political thought which transpired during the English Civil War, and particularly the king losing his title of “representative” to parliament, caused Thomas Hobbes considerable confusion: “I know not how this so manifest a truth, should be of late so little observed; that in a monarchy, he that had the sovereignty from a descent of six hundred years, was alone called sovereign, had the title of majesty from every one of his subjects… was notwithstanding never considered as their representative; the name without contradiction passing for the title of those men [i.e., the parliamentarians], which at his command were sent up by the people to carry their petitions.”
(Those who once carried the petitions to the king then taking royal, or now executive decision making powers into their own hands, and in exactly who’s best interest?, and within the new realm of legal lobbies or legal bribery now openly practiced in the halls of Congress)
For pretty much the entirety of European civilization, from the Greeks to Heidegger, the figure of the monarch or the dictator was generally considered the sacred representative of the people as a coherent political organism. However, nowadays conservatives (and liberals) have some sort of inability to comprehend the state in these terms. Conservatives always assert that the Fascists [as many other past dictatorships] somehow “tricked” or “deceived” or “hypnotized” the masses into adoring and following them, because, they cannot comprehend the concept of the monarch or the dictator – the “sovereign” – as representing and embodying the people as a coherent and organized social organism.
Ironically, the monarch was generally considered the friend of the masses against the nobility / oligarchy throughout history. The monarch would intercede on behalf of the people at large against the exploitation’s of petty oligarchs and landlords. The historian David Carpenter writes about how the Magna Carta was actually harmful for the peasants, because it delivered special protections to the barons from the king which allowed them to exploit their peasants more directly without royal interference. Even in Plato, the tyrant who opposes the oligarchy of rentier elites, or “drones,” is the regime that is most closely associated with democracy. It is an enormous travesty that England and America have appropriated the word “democracy” given that liberal states have always been the least populist, being more connected with rentier elites, oligarchs, and the merchant class than with the mass of people.
( It is estimated that half the Athenian population lived under slavery during its age of democracy, and its legacy only survived Persian conquest with the aid of Sparta’s military autocracy.,, E.g. U.S slavery under the constitution )
Contemporary historians like N.A.M. Rodger emphasize that replacing absolutism with liberal parliamentary government was essential for empowering the merchant elite – what they call “the public” or “civil society” – and making Britain the first major globalist merchant empire” (And, predominantly under the influential power of the British East India Company)
Commentator V.;
The step from well-meaning Democratic Socialism to Fascism is much smaller than anyone dares admit. Looking through the early 20th century with clarity, it’s plain to see how Mosley came from Labour, Mussolini came from the Italian socialist party, (and FDR followed with the policies of the New Deal), Fascism is a labor movement. This is not some immense deception, as some Marxists like to claim, it’s not Capitalism masquerading as Socialism like a wolf in sheep’s clothing: it is a sincere evolution of Progressive values. It’s clear to me that Fascism is Progressivism after you put it through a world war (and prior impotent governments). It is Progressiveness with teeth and urgency, laser-focused on dealing with the post-WW1 political issues in Europe. One of the biggest lies peddled in history and today is that Fascism is hyper-capitalism, when in truth Liberalism is hyper-capitalism (as is presently evident). Fascism seeks immediately to check hyper-capitalism and force it at gunpoint to work for the people, while Liberalism would be happy to let it run wild while forcing the people at gunpoint to work for IT. [ And, or with the threat of starvation, homeless and destitute ~ “Now being a much more civil authority”]
(There is a tendency to classify all authoritarian states as evil despite their many political differences). Libertarians would watch one man walk up a hill and another walk into a lake, and proclaim walking to be the problem instead of the direction one picks to walk in – they’re the same when it comes to Statism, they would rather have us all stateless and rudderless and prey to the vultures of capital. It’s clear whose interests they serve and it’s not the interests of the people at large.
In Conclusion;
In America today the existing forces that drive our present system of government, have taken the initiative to end nuclear arms control agreements. We are now on a hyper spending spree to increase defense spending despite our increasing debt and danger. We are incapable — or refuse to advance peace talks (which would require limiting global expansion policies for ourselves and our allies), provide all classes of citizens with basic securities in every social field, defend our ecology (which would require reducing our growth policies), and we now capitalize on the politics of individual rights over community, as we capitalize and profit on their many resulting problems now out of control. With each new problem is created a new market with a new expense to deal with it. Our media now has honed in on specific words used to program public thought in the old “game of blame” and distraction, and the polarized sides use the same shock designations on each other. Our medias daily word of choice today is Fascism,, just as in the 1950’s it was Communism. One can only contemplate through deep reflective thinking, how primal, barbaric and futile our actions can be when we use and vent our frustration on past demonized ideologies or every perceived evil of the past while ignoring the fact that in “present real time” it is we that now direct our actions and destiny and not deceased figures of history and foreign systems of past government. To blame our present day mistakes, malice and indifference on anything beyond ourselves and our present system of government, rests on the verge of lunacy,, but this selfish irresponsible behavior is repeatedly evidenced historically and is evidently in our nature (avoidance of personal responsibility and personal sacrifice). As for perceived evils versus what is or was good, – history shows that there are no absolutes.
“It can be said that EVERY form of historical government has always been run with a “capitalist nature” by a minority of controlling individuals, almost identically.” – Antonio Gramsci
And yet the present destructive powers of libertarianism and uncontrolled capitalism and their oligarchical products, which are now the sole existing powers profoundly directing modern government [hence society] and have been for decades, are still allowed to continue their attritional destructive path — regardless what we label them, while supporting them directly and indirectly. Perhaps what we are dealing with is simply unmanaged selfish greed regardless the acronyms and many political party titles. Any steps to mitigate this growing selfishness and irresponsibility by deed and rule of law are immediately found repulsive, by all of us. Perhaps it is human nature alone that will decide the fate of humanity.