I think that in the context of the economic crisis of recent months, the huge undocumented population, the high level of the corruption in the current regimes and the lack of leadership as many people see these things. My question is, “If we were to somehow move towards radical change what changes should we consider?’ I think that the Confederate and the Revolutionary periods are both important founts of inspiration for many discontented people. However, I suppose I want to broaden the dialog to include some influences which are the least likely to be seriously considered. I want to address the royalist tradition.
I am drawn to including this Facebook Note for a variety of reasons. I am drawn to it because of my feeble attempts to promote the recognition of heroism on the part of Kimberly Munson. I am drawn to the subject because one of the networks had a presentation of the Prince and Me trilogy of movies. Further, I have been commenting on the relationship of the UK and other members to the European Union and the way that shapes other complex and diverse relationships across the planet ands the future of all things human. The note I am including in this blog post is about royalism and royalty.
In the Facebook context it was posted after many other posts that did a better job of leading up to the message and measure of this note because those posts had more to say about the royalty of Jesus and about both ancient Arcadian and modern Acadian royalty than I have posted so far on this WordPress blog. But this is a time in my life when I am not as concerned with a perfectly coherent presentation as I have been at times in the past. So I am including this post without all due preparation of ye few, ye brave, ye readers of my little blog. Another reason I may be writing this post now is that the New Orleans Saints have just won their eighth game in a row and they hold up the banner of the Fleur de Lis which has been a symbol of all French Royalty, of Bourbon Royalty and of the Acadian Royal Line as well. So read ahead if you wish, My Facebook Note.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009 at 9:02pm |
My brother graduated on May 17, 2009. He was my last sibling who could earn a degree ( I have a different brother who is mentally handicapped and cannot earn any college degree ). John Paul graduated. Next month he will marry the young woman he loves. We took a picture of John Paul, myself, my mother, my brother Joseph, my sister Mary and her husband Chris who all graduated from (USL) UL-L. I was the first, then Mom, then Mary & Chris close in time, then Joseph and then John Paul. My sister Sarah and took the picture. She and I each have a degree from LSU, she got her bachelors there and I got my masters degree there. I think of all the young people pouring out into the economy. According to a huge variety of people who claim to know something we are in an economic crisis. I think that more and more people are acknowledging that we also have long-term economic problems related to wasting the earth. This year’s university and college graduates in America nad many other countries have done what they could to get where they are and did not choose the time of their birth. They hope for the best and yet perhaps are entering one of the worst job markets to exist in a very, very long time.
What a challenge that is for all of them. I also listened to Barack Obama’s speech at the Notre Dame Commencement. I listened to it on delayed broadcast on one of the C-SPAN networks, C-SPAN 2 I think. It was a good speech if I had not already hardened into an adversarial position and point of view towards President Obama then I think it would have gotten him substantial good will from me. However, it at least did not do anything to increase ill-will or hostility on my part. He seemed to offer the kind of olive branch to pro-lifers which actually has some value when it comes from a president. The abolition of the conscience clause by the FOCA bill had it been passed would have morally justified civil war and revolution ( that would not have happened but it would have been morally justified). Obama said words which if he were not lawyer and politician speaking in public would fairly be taken as an assurance not to abolish the clause which allows health care workers not to perform abortions for reasons of conscience and pro-life institutions not to provide them as one of their scheduled services. Whatever happens in the future in itself it seemed a speech aimed at not providing occasion and justification for new hates and new rage.
Since I do not feel compelled to use this Facebook Note in venting new and justified hateful criticism against President Obama I will use it to discuss briefly an economic point of view which is a fundamental attack on the idea that the Market and the State itself are the only arbiters of economic life and exchange. I am going to explain true and pure royalism as it defines its ideals of that ideology’s most vital institutions — the Court and the House. Explaining them I will not get to the advocacy of a specific plan to make them real. In this case I am reminded of what many capitalist leaders quoted from a financial sage when Russia began to move into post Soviet reality. The rather articulate money man expressed his view of the problem this way “It is easier to turn an aquarium into fish soup than to turn fish soup into an aquarium”. But of course fish populations can produce several soups and soup once consumed is simply shit and used up energy. The capitalist world is also dead from a royalist point of view. But it is also possible to resurrect it just as the post-Soviet money man was trying to resurrect capitalism. A king or royal sovereign need not and usually does not in any meaningful way own everything in the realm. Discussing the property of a royal sovereign is too much for this note but I will merely insist that it is a complex subject admitting of much variety from realm to realm. However in a very non capitalist way the King or royal sovereign does dominate the economic life of the court and less so but still the royal house. It is remarkable how maintaining a court tends to increase a variety of forms of economic flow and exchange. It is amazing how it tends to strengthen family fortunes and family small businesses. It is amazing how cheap even the finer courts are when one considers competing ways of maintaining a national symbol and making a global impression. It is amazing how they can appeal to the Few and the Many.
I personally should state clearly that I perceive my own economic failures as and lacks as being more massive than I can easily describe or believe sometimes. Yet despite that I am willing to write about economics for a variety of reasons. I think I have spent a lot of effort because evolution requires more energy than entropy.
The time we live in is a time of economics. It is an age of economics. The last twenty years perhaps have seen a resurgence of other issues and ways of being. However, capitalism, communism, socialism, National Socialism, most of fascism and other American political oddities like “Silverism” and “Free Soilism” are defined and define themselves mostly in economic terms. In the Philippines the Federation of Free Farmers, The Grange in the USA, the Priest-Worker Movement in France, the (original not the current) Green Revolution and a variety of population related movements have had broad social agendas like the macroeconomic systems listed above. But they viewed the road to social transformation was and is seen in economic terms by most in such groups. Writing of roads is especially evocative for me today because I live out in the country and the significant highway between my home and my hometown is currently closed while they work on the small bridge nearby. So I am taking a much longer route real country back roads. It costs me quite a bit in time and money. However, it is not philosophically troubling for me to endorse the idea that people and governments should repair and maintain bridges. I just have to put up with any inconveniences that are necessary for that to occur in a reasonable way and with reasonable dispatch.
So in a similar way we all can develop enough civic virtue to accept some of those activities which we see as necessary in an economy even when there is a present inconvenience to us. When the relationship between selfishness and civic virtue is such that people no longer accept the necessary real and metaphorical bridge repairs in their economy then a society is doomed to some very bad and relatively immediate trouble. That is perhaps a difficult to evaluate but very certain social litmus test.
I think that for me there is always a range of demands for which long-term investment, plain old gambling and paying off old debts is appropriate. However, there is always a balance with one’s own immediate needs and the immediate needs of one’s dependents. Society must recognize that individuals and families are well positioned to perceive their needs and to meet them. Society must also see that family and individual interests are very important because a starving, poorly housed, uneducated and ill transported mass of individuals and families form a weak and pathetic society. Such people may have great moral capital after losing a just war or after some unforeseeable catastrophe but one cannot applaud the continuance such a state of affairs from many morally viable point of view. The great strength of some economic systems we have abandoned is that they maintained certain foci of continuous economic stimulus through good times and bad. Enduring spark plugs and repair shops existed not affected much by quarterly earnings.
One of my great interests in life is ancient Greek political science. This science is based on the idea of the role and characters of the One, the Few and the Many. In a very much less significant way they also studied the role of the All and the None. These would be basic components of society. I want to discuss these components and their functions a bit in economic terms in this Facebook Note. The One or monarch had the role in the ideal state of preserving those parts of the economy which were most needed and useful to the Few for the Few and likewise what was useful for the Many for the Many. There were tides and changing balances but not as frequent catastrophe as in an unmixed democracy.
Monarchy and royalism are two different things but they are somewhat related things. In popular culture in America a king is most understood as a man with a pointy metal hat who lives with his queen in a big house with guards and has something to do with a country. No understanding much deeper than that can be taken for granted. I want to lay out in this Note a realistic view of what royalism at its very center is meant to be like and what its economic costs and benefits might be. I want to discuss and analyze the court and royal house from an institutional point of view.
One thing about the” Few” is that while the word translates to about the same thing as “a minority” the implications are distinct and the associate ideas are different. Yet on the other hand there are certain facts about being an identifiable group that is a minority which cannot be changed regardless of how society develops or interprets power. In a perfectly Royalist USA there would be some black and more nonblack African-American Titled Aristocrats but more who were from the white majority and higher ranks abounding in a few ethnicities with none excluded. These titled persons, high-ranking courtiers and military officers as well as US Senators would be the Few. They would have some preserved rights and would be in a different position than either ethnic or political minorities in our current political and economic system.
The Royal Court and House is a powerful economic institution which I wish to discuss in some detail from a historic point of view. In my most recent note I mentioned or repeated the idea or claim that the King of the Arcadians is the First and Father of all Earthly Kings. While that may be difficult to believe, since I do believe it is logical for me to speak and write on the basis of that belief. So here are some thoughts about the nature, origins and function of Royal Houses and Courts. There is also the issue of the monarchy as we have discussed it above in the passages on the political science of the ancient Greeks. The royal courts and houses are and are meant to be a special place in which a portion of the few and the many are joined to and made to clearly orbit around the one when that one has assumed a royal character. That character in turn is tied to family and house of a royal character.
It should surprise nobody who is actually thinking that there is what the Motion Picture Association of America would classify as an R rated or NC-17 rated quality to the royal establishment in its own rights and own ideals because there is a real sense in which the royal court and house function best as the juncture of human capacity for the forbidden with the ideals honored by the realm which produce the prohibitions. A perfect King of Sweden even today would at least find the idea of drinking a toast from his enemy’s skull lined with gold to make a cup interesting. This would be a part of his heritage which would add richness to his celebration of the Eucharist, his toasting on state occasions and his conflict with his foes wether he does the cup thing or not. If he is great souled enough to be a great king then he can be such a man and in context make life less obscene and not more so than it would have been. With sexual morality this is even more the case.
In its ancient essence the royal family and house joins into one thing a number of traits, qualities and institutions which are not likely to exist otherwise. This is really one of the great purposes of a royal house. The way I see this and would encourage my readers to see it is that in terms of royal houses and courts there is a rather narrow range of ideals which are the ideals of the Royalist tradition. These are not the exact ideals of Christianity or any other official or popular religion. They are not the ideals of any particular nation or economic system. They are the ideals that are intrinsic to royal monarchies on Earth. As the royal house and royal court is adapted to any particular set of ideals specific to a religion country, time and people then the institution undergoes a transformation which is similar to a market process. Investments, sales and purchases are made in which values and rights are transformed into a state in which the institution can exist and thrive. But for the start of this part of our discussion let us consider what the values or disparate elements are in their pure form:
1. Executive and Judical policy and Politics especially.
2. Family name, brand and tradition.
3. Religion and Especially sense of Duty to the Most High
4. Monument Preservation
5. War and a special role for old, wounded and crippled warriors
6. Hunting and wildlife management
7. High Marriage
8. Polygamy
9. Prostitution
10. Licensed and Localized Deviance.
11. Gardening
12. Ethnic Traditionalism
13. Internationalism and Diplomacy
14. Production of Royal children, support of families and Dynastic Ambition.
1. The legislative functions in the royalist ideal will come from a variety of processes which involve principally three sources. First, tradition and Constitutional law as one thing possible to modify but in a category deserving respect. Second the will of the Many in the legislative process. Thi.rd the will of the Few in the legislative process. The One who is royal should have some limited legislative prerogatives but should be the clearly defined last resort in the Judiciary and supreme authority in the Executive. Royal protocol is meant to make all these portions of the system work well together. around all the tables and hearths where likely future kings are growing up these political processes should be in the air, in at least occasional conversation, notes and schedules. These influences form the future monarch. Succession politics are especially important. However, if we get to that discussion at all then we will touch on it under part 14.
2.Genealogies, family histories, coats of arms, parties, rolls of guests and invitees are all part of the experience of royal family. They train all the royals to see property in title as a major portion of any property they can have or aspire to and form a context for the rest of their lives together.
3. “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter by the grace of the Lord”, the Lord’s Anointed, King or Queen by the Grace of God and other phrases and titles can abound. It is possible on the fallen and confused earth for a pantheist or polytheist in the fullest sense to be a legitimate monarch and royal sovereign. However, it is an imperfection in the claim. Even if the realm is pantheist or polytheist the royal monarch is meant to represent the Most High sovereign whom the Hebrew Psalms call the “Great King over all the Gods” — in both worship and study the royal house should be a place where the honor and claims of the ultimate King are recognized and honored. An atheist king is really a Tyrant although he may benefit himself and his realm by drawing on what element s he can of the royalist tradition into his tyranny.
4. In a royalist society when a great building or place is in danger of becoming a ruin it is presumed that it becomes the property of or falls to the use of the royal house and court. The royal house and court also are preservers of monuments which are not architectural or spatial. The King and Queen especially should have a variety of roles in awarding honors, keeping an archive and overseeing but not merely creating lesser lines of succession. Military honors and monuments, religious ones, industrial and agricultural honors and the records associated with all of this have a special relationship to the court.
5. In many cases the king should be a very skilled and accomplished warrior who has some notable physical limitation. He should gather around himself those injured and limited in past wars who are still able to do some fighting and can still understand much about the nature of war.
6. “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter by the grace of the Lord” is a phrase that describes the ideal king and many of his retainers. Hunting provides an excuse to preserve wild lands in quantity which is a vital role of royals. It should allow royals to help bring in food without competing with as many workers as with most occupations in their kingdoms. Hunting provides occasion for the practice of warlike skills and the rearing of princelings and others who will have some basic warrior skills outside of military formalities.
7. The ideal royal monarch is a male a king. However, in the ideal royalist civilization there will always be a small minority of female monarchs who are Queens, Princesses or other such in their own right and hold their own sway over their realms with their husbands as consorts. One of the reasons for these few exceptions is to strengthen the status of those relatively many High Wives of Kings who are Queens by Marriage. These Queens must know that when times are bad their roles will contract relative to the King’s powers and court. But the ideal and norm should always be:
I. The Queen has her own chambers and court within a court which is composed of two parts. The inner one of women only and the outer one of men and women.
II. At least some titles and holdings which are hers separate from her husband.
III. A guard which is of high quality and composed of warriors loyal to her directly.
IV. An allowance which is just hers and is fixed from the royal treasury.
V. She is the King’s senior most adviser and courtier and sits beside him on the highest occasions of state.
VI. Her highest honors and greatest protocol obligations go in a particular order. The King,the Queen Mother – mother of the King, her oldest Son who is heir to the king, the highest ranking members of her maiden family. Within her inner court this is the one aspect where her protocol is not that of the family or realm at large.
VII. Ideally the King should have no mistress or other lovers for the first two or three years of his marriage to the Queen. He should provide for earlier mistresses a suitable position but not be intimate with them during that time.
8. Polygamy is basically essential to maintaining a royalist system. It can be restricted and minimized but that is not a good thing for the royalist monarchy it is simply possible. All marriages other than the High marriage ought to be overseen by a wife who is not the queen but is of high rank. The harem will always have ritual tributes and protocol acknowledgements of both the Queen Mother and the Queen. Ideally, these women will have specified legislative and diplomatic responsibilities and portfolios which are not negligible. They should have their own places but also a space for them and their women guests only and there they should entertain the Queen and Queen Mother separately on scheduled occasions. A small harem of less than ten women can struggle along with little institutional organization. The large harem is fully an institution of vast importance performing many roles that cannot be well described in this note.
9. Prostitution interfaces with the royal house and family in a range of ways and at a range of levels. It is vital that many of the other elements in this composite be quite strong in order for this not to overcome and destroy all the rest and the sum and whole of all. However, prostitution is strongly connected to the idea and practice of royalty as an institution. Among the elements that function to keep royal prostitution working as it must are the following.
I. Relatively easy forgiveness for almost any sexual past offenses or injuries sustained by royal women. However, it is forgiveness because the penalties which go all the way to death are still possible.
A special note is that the ideal queen and king will have been exclusive and affectionate lovers for a few years after marriage and they will retain some sexual congress thereafter. thus the firstborn will be the king’s biological son. But in ancient times and the ideal there is no heir apparent and as the king turns to his mistresses the queen will spend time with the most accomplished and stylish men in the realm and elsewhere. There should be a lot more dreaming than doing but it is absurd to think that queen is really and truly expected never to have sex with any of them.
II. Royal immunities and a king who really will kill men who turn palaces into brothels. Only that will work well.
III. Polygamy in which the mistresses or plural wives of the king generally have no sexual relations with any other men during the years when they are really active with the king.
IV. Women of varied degrees including courtesans who are open and well-regulated prostitutes.
V. Non-prostitution of almost all newlyweds and both class and ethnic endogamy which allow a maintenance of blood filiation by multiple lines within the royal community despite new bloodlines unacknowledged.
VI.By most traditions and all non-murderous ones both merit and election as well as birth must enter into the succession of the highest royal titles.
10. The court and the royal house are places where others who are not average or normal per se can earn a place of freedom and some peace by offsetting usefulness and excellence. This is also a very important function of the royal court or house. Sex is also an issue here. In the ideal royal court there are all the sexual types I have already mentioned but there are also places and roles for the truly temporarily, permanently and sporadically celibate people. Officers and soldiers from genteel families have the opportunity to move to court and have their wives function as extraordinary mistresses or harem members of the king or princes with children being reared as their own. Women who are unacceptable as acknowledged mistresses or plural wives can marry homosexual men who are willing to assist in discretion and family duties. These and some monastic and semi monastic types who are discreet homosexuals rather than true celibates can form part of a community within a community that engages in homosexual relations at their own risk and with understanding of their unique roles and limits at court. There should be acknowledgement that homosexuality goes on but not open relationships between particular men. On the other hand the court is the ideal place for the mistress of high-ranking clerics in any religious tradition to keep their mistresses. For reasons that are hard to explain here a Catholic monarch would have supreme policy reasons to reward a heterosexual bishop who had been a devoted celibate pastor with a fine mistress and a house to keep her in near court. All children are taught that a husband and wife belong to each other sexually and are the parents of the wife’s children. That is in fact the truth and the language evolves over time. Religious and ethnic minorities and diplomats are also expected to be able to live at court within a different set of rules and tolerances.
11.Gardening is very important at court and in royal families. ideally a good amount of food is grown by royals retainers and domestics not working ver hard at it but working with the help of a few professional gardeners. This food helps with feasts in the good times, charity and survival in the bad times. Exotic herbs, narcotic and alcoholic plants of very high quality should ideally be produced, refined and both sold and provided to guests at court. Princes and princesses should do a little labor in the garden because it is run by the family and their work can be consistent with their personalities not geared to drudgery. An ideal king would prune plats are something a few hours each month and actually enjoy it.
Preservation of rare plants and birds, herbal medicine, flowers for interior decoration and green spaces for sport and recreation ought all to exist as part of the master plan of gardening.
12. Because of some leisure and the availability of people to assist them in various ways the royal courts and houses should be able do agreat deal to honor and preserve various ethnic traditions of the realm. They will especially honor their own but they will also find the proper ways to acknowledge those of ethnicities larger and smaller than their own.
13. Internationalism and diplomacy ought to be part of the air of court. Map rooms, gifts from foreign royals and teachers and some marriages should reinforce the presence of diplomats and the foreign service. People having lived at court should have absorbed a certain amount of education in diplomacy and international affairs.
14. It is in this total context that succession and the production of heirs for the preservation of dynasties is to be best understood. There is no way to estimate the total value to a political system of maintaining a royal house and court when it is all that it should be.
My sister Sarah celebrated her birthday on May 18. She has that sort of royalist sensibility that pervades all she does though as for as I know she has never been political about it in the way that I am and have long been. But in Mexico and America I have often seen her do things that help sustain the royalist heritage in North America. Her baptismal name Sarah Anthea can be translated from Hebrew and Greek as “Princess of Flowers” and I often called her that when she was small. I like the fact that she is descended from Joseph Broussard, Severin Leblanc and that the line of the Basileus Arkadios is evident in her. She is 33 and I hope she lives long and prospers as we move from this Star Trek year towards the future. I wonder what her economic potential might be in an aquarium instead of fish soup.
Most of the royal sovereigns left in the world are in Europe. While all of them have some qualities of the ideal court I describe above none of them are exact duplicates of it. None of them are really very close to it. That is not all that surprising. But Spain, the United Kingdom, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands Monaco and few other places seem to be struggling along in Modern Europe with some version of the royalist ideal. Because I basically have a royalist point of view I tend to see possible royalist solutions to American problems. I see things royalism and royalist institutions could possibly contribute to ongoing problems of race, class, labor, religion and growth. I do not think we will see those solutions applied in my lifetime but it is not technically and formally impossible. So while I am not planning any violent demonstrations nor suggesting that American Royalism will become politically viable I am suggesting that it is not the same kind of impossibility as burning water in your lawnmower tomorrow.
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