Unfortunately, this is a purely superficial comparison that no more repeats the same tired and foolish conceptions, and simply perpetuates a luciferian lie. It overlooks all the essential. Since the Enlightenment the West has been brainwashed and deviated in favor of its vision of individualist autonomous man–wholly secularized and turned towards this life alone. Modern man has fallen into a mortal intellectual trap in misconceiving and taught to despise the Christian civilization that is the true Western heritage. Was it perfect? Of course not–men are men,and therefore there will always exist abuses, but “men without religion are knaves.” Like it or not, European man + Christianity = the medieval age.
For a corrective, read Regine Pernoud’s “Those Terrible Middle Ages!” If you read French,
“Pour en finir avec le Moyen Age.”
This is what globalism, elite Liberalism intends. The destruction of the Middle Class, no growth and no development for the poor countries, the emerging economies and even reversing the developing nations as we see in Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, the ME and NA, and many other regions.
The Elite One Worlders are the Feudal Lords and they own nearly everything. Why would they want new wealth created? Why would they want to share fresh water, clean air, mobility, inventions, investment capital, innovation, communications, local, regional or geopolitical power?
They don’t. And they will kill billions of people as easily as they kill tens of millions of people. That is Feudalism.
It is on a rampage around the globe. It begins, not with just wealth accumulation and fascist hold on power. The root of it is satanism.
When humans turn from the life spirit of the universe and put themselves up as gods, there is only one form of government that can sustain them.
Feudalism is again the enemy of mankind because it is at war with Deity.
Your post made me recall not merely everything about the Macbeth-Clintons, but one thing in particular.
When the full import of what WikiLeaks had on her, struck Lady MacBeth, she tried, on-camera, to explain exactly what the crime he (not she!) had committed was. She reached for the term “affront against the International Class”.
It used to be called lese majeste.
Your post is perfect.
Agree but differ on one detail: the feudal lord was bound to the customary law and moral obligation of caring for his serfs. I know that in effect he had the arbitrary power to do as he liked, but there were constrains on that power.
Compare that with the unfettered power of capital today. Even a slave owner in the 1800s South had some interests in being humane to his slaves.
The basis of feudalism is land ownership: In the middle ages, you either owned land or you were a slave (serf). Then it was the king and the church who owned the land. Today, after the mortgage crisis especially, the vast majority in the US rent.
The comparison couldn’t be clearer.
You only have to make some very slight adjustments in language: Land is now called ‘real estate’ or ‘hard assets’, and ‘Serf’ or ‘peasant’ is now called ‘wage slave’ or ‘homeless’.
The only people who could object to the comparison in the picture, would be modern day land owners and their vassals/publicists.
No, you can live peacefully in your home, I mean those who dedicate or have dedicated in tbe past to speculate on real state. And, in this pack, I include all the smartass who took advantage of the real state buble of 2008 to drain their neighbors and become rich or accomodated enough so as to now try to do what could be necessary to mantain the state of affairs.
Trump does not speculate in real estate.
He buys to own and build a Branded Property, sell parts of it as condos, rent and lease other parts of it, in a permanent, not speculative form.
His Towers and Resorts and Golf Courses-resorts/hotels/developments all are permanent.
He provides jobs, most of which are 365/24/7 staffings. People tend to work for him for decades.
He’s a landlord, yes. But many people benefit from a developer like Trump. He raises the values of surrounding properties, neighborhoods, towns. He buys from vendors foods, furniture, art works, liquors, wines, beers. He improves environments. He brings improved fire and police services with his high end, highly taxed properties.
These are good things. He may cater to rich and ultra wealthy, but the emission of money and the radiation of higher values are excellent tradeoffs.
Generally, his locations employe a thousand or more staff. His construction projects usually touch 1500 or more workers for prolonged periods of more than one year and up to three years.
I think he is a very positive force for betterment of workers in many trades and professions.
He will transform the face and skyline, transportation hubs, pipelines and railroads of America.
Concentration on infrastructure will mean less attention and funding for military hegemony by the US. That is a huge difference.
We’ve been waiting for 60 years for a turn from global hegemony.
There is great variety of both usefulness and uselessness, good and evil, in the practice of owning and managing improved land, which can vary between agricultural and grazing land to more highly developed land going up several floors and housing families or office space.
The root of the “real” designation in “real property” or “real estate” is simply the fact that land or land with improvements on it (structures, houses, most commonly) is not transportable like cash, metals, diamonds or valuable goods. Or perishable stocks of foodstuffs.While all of the latter may disappear and be moved elsewhere, that will ordinarily not happen with “real property” unless it is on a coast of a major body of water that severely erodes it, washing it away. In comparison to land, therefore other forms of wealth are more fleeting, less “real” IN THAT LIMITED SENSE.
I disagree, however with the idea that land or real (improved) property is THE source of wealth. IMHO it is not. It is increases in the productive powers of labor brought about by human creativity that is the source of real wealth, some of which accrues to land and improved land for more desirable living spaces and areas, vacations, places to shop, or factories to make things in, but that’s an effect, not a cause.
In all the above examples real estate is not the source of any wealth. It is actually either a vital or relatively superfluous (a Trump casino, or a Steven Wynn casino, or anyone one else’s casino!) or even damaging, wasteful OVERHEAD cost of either supporting what does produce wealth, or siphoning away from that which DOES produces wealth: The human brain informing muscles and machines to make productive physical changes that enable societies of human beings to reproduce themselves at hopefully higher levels of existence, culture, education and leisure time devoted to spiritual enrichment rather than debasement. .Real estate is overhead, not production. But if it’s a school, or hospital, or shelter for a family, it is NECESSARY overhead. I may vote for Trump on the hunch that it may buy some time to stop war, But I am unable to argue that any casino is “necessary”.
There’s much more to say on the subject, in terms of the fine points of distinction, but the first thing is to not automatically react like a bull to a red cape to words like “real estate” or “capital” or “investments” or “jew” or anything else, the way Hitlery and the neocons react to “Russia”!!!!!!!
Don’t be like them! Discernment, discernment, discernment of the vast differences and ranges of qualities of intent and effect within the complex realities inadequately expressed by the sounds of such words or the letters of the alphabet designating those sounds, is a further, necessary step.
I am against feudalism and convinced that physiocrat slave owner Thomas Jefferson was wrong and Alexander Hamilton was correct in opposing the slave power of Virginia and in identifying manufactures, labor saving creativity as the most needed input into agriculture, not the same old same old muscular exertions by people or farm animals, very, very little of which Jefferson ever pitched in on, even as a young man, I’ll wager..
In England it’s called “land rent.” You don’t own the property, the King does. But, it’s really the same as US property ownership with real estate tax.
No, the basis of feudalism–and by this is meant feudalism up until the 14th century and the black plague–is nost certainly not land ownership. Please study up on the subject of land entitlement in those times, you are just repeating cliches. Why not base yourself on accurate knowledge rather than on groupthink? I recommend you start by studying, without preconceptions or passion, Pernoud’s book.
OK, I studied up on it: In fact you’re incorrect: Feudalism does in fact, specifically, relate to land ownership.
Pernoud’s apologisms were specifically and only about France. Pernoud infers that the king also had responsibilities, it wasnt all fun. He states that some serfs could do quite well, it wasn’t all hell. He states that the children of serfs could aspire to be serfs on the same land as their parents when they died. This seems almost civilized.
*rolls eys* :-)
Please check Pernoud’s book again, and/or broaden your reading a little on the subjects of feudalism and/oe revisionism.
This is why returning to a Monarchy based system, with the Church again as a factical power, as some claim to desire, at least for Russia, has no sense for anyone in the two last levels, i.e. the majority of the population in the world, and in any country.
So , the better is the soonest possible to go forgetting in becoming again princes, princesses boyars and so on, because, simply, it’s not going to happen.
Let all that for childrens’ fairytales and those impossible dreams of adults to dream about.
We are “to the webs” of the same system based on our explotation and theft.
We want changes, but not to what others already have known in the past, no thanks, we prefer something new, inclussive for all in sharing and enjoying all the wealth and richness in tbe world, which are huge enough for all to have covered not only their basics needs but also to alllow living even in plenty of security and comfort if it not were for the insignificant number belonging to the last levels on the top who want all only for them and their brethren.
Enjoy, if you ever were able to do such a thing from, by or with anything or anybody in your damned life, that I doubt, while you could, because your days are numbered.
It’s enough to watch 5-10 minutes, just to get the grammar.
And now I am ready for the ad-hominem Kalibr missile barrage! ;)
My humble Trivium batallion will handle even the Star Wars (RIP Nicht-Sohn), don’t be shy like Obungu with his Syrian no-frei zone! :D
Cheers for the open minded & double Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster for the remaining cosmic plankton…
This reminded me of an analysis I worked out in the 1980’s about the situation in the US (in could have been Worldwide in the capitalist countries).If you go to the “local” level.Society is structured with the local rich and their political elite as the “Lords”. Under them are their helpers,police,attorneys,store owners,as the “Vassals”. And everyone else as the “Serfs”.That as I said was at a local level of society,town,county,and state level.Once you get past that into the “national” level,you reach,the corporate leaders,the extremely rich,top military,media,and the high political classes at a federal level.Those in Medieval terms would be classed as the “High Nobility”.With the very highest of those figures being in Medieval terms a “Royal State Council” that is similar to the ” deep state” in our modern World.These groups are somewhat “fluid”,in that over time some “very few” others from the lower elements “might” join the higher elements. But very rarely do members of the higher “Nobility” sink into the lower classes.All those elements including the lowest,have lived their lives within that class structure.They understand how it works. And so defend it.Each of them “believes” that they will end up being one of the “lucky few” that ascends the ladder into the “High Nobility”.There lays the problem societies face in making meaningful change.Which is why only full social revolutions have ever in the past been able to make changes. Whether for good or bad,but make changes to societies.
# 236 (alphabetical order) at Current Membership of the Committee of 300 (March 31, 2013)
“Three hundred men, all of whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves.” –Walter Rathenau, 1909, founder of the mammoth German General Electric Corporation
The Committee of 300 is a product of the British East India Company’s Council of 300 … …
Globalization which manifests itself through “free trade” is all about wealth concentration.
A small predatory elite that carefully mask itself behind huge Coporations, work quietly to merge, consolidate and buy up and buy out everything and anything of value, worldwide.
Free Trade as pushed by Western interests is all about prying markets open worldwide, so that they can be plundered and the local population exploited.
No Unions.
Zero Hour Contracts.
Longer and longer work hours for less and less.
These are the folks behind monstrosities like TPP who negotiate behind the scenes to strip countries of their borders and workers of their rights.
People like Hillary Clinton are conscripted to be their Global Compradors.
Some countries get bullied, some are bamboozled, others are blackmailed, the rest gets bought.
No banker got jailed for the colossal crimes that were perpetrated in the 2008 Financial Meltdown.
Not one!
Instead we heard the banks were ‘too big to fail’, and they received $billions in tax payer bailouts, while millions of persons lost their homes and their jobs.
Wikileaks revealed that Hillary Clinton was paid to give secret, feel good speeches to these persons.
But you have to remember that it was during her husband’s administration, that the banking and media regulations were loosened and eliminated where necessary.
The banks then set about packaging and re-packaging all types of toxic instruments that were backed by lies and slight of hand trickery and sold to the unsuspecting.
While Billy Boy was preoccupied showing Monica Lewinsky new Cigar tricks in the Oval Office, guys like Robert Rubin were busy at the Treasury green lighting high crimes and misdemeanors.
And Alan Greenspan was at the FED being swept away with ‘irrational exuberance’.
The Coporate Criminals and War Barons now insist on an upgrade to Clinton 2.0.
I don’t think most Americans are aware of what is happening though, I guess they are just too busy keeping up with the Kardashians or watching Dancing with the Stars or Game of Thrones.
While Ignorance is bliss, but it can also prove fatal.
If the parallels are curious, appealing and indeed unavoidable, they’re as much arbitrary, struggling to be qualitative, but mostly frame themselves in descriptions of power/influence (the concepts “by rank” occludes) which will hardly allow us the transformation of the reality referred.
A concerted ownership of most levers of the economy, most means of enforcement, most cultural authority does not perpetuate any system “as is”. It always changes “into was” eventually.
I wish we could promote more general insight of how the system actually evolved/evolves.
I didn’t say this in the way, like this hierarchy only apply to US. (even if the comparaison to the old time is quite a stretch).
It was more about all the image chosen and term was US. (from Simpson, Condolizza, Obama, Dimon, Bernanke).
All are US figure whereas the system is way more international then this. Like your example with Russia. Given the US would have more top position in the current state, but couldn’t another top representative then Condolizza couldn’t be chosen to represent this disparity ? or the simpson…
It make me think this was more oriented toward an US public… and since I view US as quite aristocratic with their educational system and everything is not quite the best to demonstrate a world issue..
Someone once defined a “fool” as a person who keeps responding to the same situation in the same way, expecting a different result. Perhaps the best illustration of this infirmity is found, every two years, in the system known as voting, wherein millions of people are induced to go the polls and vote for candidates who keep promising to carry out the unfulfilled promises they made in the previous election!1
Occasionally in these corrupt, degenerate, upside-down times there are political elections we are expected to take part in. We are supposed to do our “duty as citizens of the free democratic world” and “defend our way of life”. Against what is never properly defined. It is typical that the word ‘our’ is used in order to drag everyone down to the same level. Is it really my way of life and is it really my duty to defend it? What am I actually asked to defend? If we really have freedom of choice should I not be free to choose not to defend something I can’t even say I wanted? If I decide not to take part in the democratic process and not vote, instantly accusations come flying that I’m not “doing my duty”, or that I’ve resigned and therefore have no right to comment and even less, to complain. They tell me it is the most passive thing not to vote and imply that because of that I’m somehow morally corrupt.
But if I really want a change; if I would really want to do something about the situation what else could I do in an upside-down world than to abstain from voting? Is it not my “democratic right”? If we live in an upside-down world, is not what is considered “active” in reality “passive” and vice versa?
What is democracy?
Most people think of democracy as being “good”. It represents everything which most people consider valuable and precious. The modern mass media uses democracy as a label for ideas, values and principles they consider “right”. Often one sees and hears people say things like “it is my democratic right”, or “it is everyone’s democratic duty” – to vote, for example. “Sound democratic values” is another cryptic expression often used by everyone from world leaders and influencial businessmen to journalists and ordinary people. No one ever questions or defines these vague expressions. We all are expected to “know” what is understood by them – not only that, but we all are expected to have the exact same understanding of them.
But are all points above really what democracy is?
No. The things mentioned above are all relative values and vague or non-existent definitions given the word democracy by the people using them in this fashion.
Democracy is a form of government. It has no intrinsic value. Moreover, democracy is the rule of “the people”. At least “the people” like to think so. But who are the people? Are they really qualified to rule and if so, by what authority are they qualified to rule? Who do the rule over? Themselves?
The fact is that the people can never rule, be it in a democracy or any other form of government. The people are incapable of ruling. The people are always the ruled in any form of government. In a democracy the people delegate their power to a representative who is supposed to represent their interests. In other words, the people surrender – give up their power over themselves to another person. How likely is it that that person is going to represent the voter instead of himself and his own interests? How likely is it that the voter’s interests and the interests of the voter’s political representative are identical?
Democracy is the rule of the many over the few. We always hear that “it is the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people”. Yes, these people concede, the minority do not get their way but at least most people do and that is fair. As long as you agree with the majority you don’t have to suffer their decision. This could be likened to the popular description of
democracy as two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner. Is what the majority decides always the best decision – for all? On what basis do they take their decision? Are they so well-informed as to be able to take a balanced and weighed decision having taken every aspect into consideration? And is it really they, the majority, who take the decision?
If someone suddenly collapses in the street would the people gathered around take a vote to decide who should take care of the injured person? Would it not be more likely that the question would be raised “is anyone a doctor”? In other words, one would look for someone with qualifications, competence and skill who is trained to deal with an injured person. No need for a vote, common sense decides the course of action.1
It is a mystery to me that no one has applied to democracy the age-old maxim of divide et impera.
The democratic system divides the population into parties of ostensibly differing policies and ideologies. Let us say we have 5 major parties in a country. If the population would divide their votes equally between the five parties they would get 20% each with a voting participation of 100%. This way no party gets the upper hand. So let us give one party 30%, another 28%, 23%, yet another 15% and the last one 4%. The party with 30% of the votes wins and gets to rule. But 30% is actually a minority not a majority, which means that our theory of most people getting their way is not true. The actual percent is of course lower because 100% electoral participation is a fantasy. This is why it is more important for the democratic politicians to convince the people to vote – no matter for whom, because the lower the number of voters participating in an election, the less justified are the politicians to claim the system is legitimate. If fewer and fewer people actually did surrender their power to the politicians claiming to be their representatives eventually the system would implode.
If we go deeper into the issue democracy is the manipulation of the masses – the mass mind – by a minority to further their own interests. But is this minority qualified to rule over the majority? Are they in possession of the qualities demanded to have the authority to wield the political power and take decisions that have consequences for everyone? Today it is unquestionable that the authority to rule is derived from economic wealth. Quantity of economic assets decide who becomes a ruler. What we in fact have is the rule of quantity over quality; quantity of money over quality of ideals. You can advocate for any ideology – no matter how degenerate and corrupt – if you have enough financial support, while advocating for the highest, most noble ideals is bound to fail without any money to support it in the political arena. A most fitting example is the recent creation of a political party advocating paedophilia in Holland. Without financial support and powerful connections this idea could never get any media coverage.
Now, the more parties in a democratic system of government the more division in the country and hence the smaller minority that rules over an ever larger majority who didn’t vote for the ruling party. Most people would want to believe that the more political parties there are available, the greater the “freedom of choice” – the more political parties, the more political opinions you’re allowed to have, seems to be the logic – only the people would not want to put it that negatively. Of course, supporting any political party outside the established ones is very suspicious and highly questionable – after all: the established political parties have been “authorized” by the political establishment itself.
Like I mentioned above, these days democracy is so hollow that politicians up for elections don’t even care if the people actually vote for them, as long they vote. It’s like the feeble-minded politically correct say: “it’s not the winning that’s important, it’s the taking part.” Personally, I don’t intend to take part in this hollow charade anymore. I’m not interested to be on the “winning” side.
I have alluded somewhat vaguely to the merits of democracy. One of them is quite obvious: it is, perhaps, the most charming form of government ever devised by man. The reason is not far to seek. It is based upon propositions that are palpably not true and what is not true, as everyone knows, is always immensely more fascinating and satisfying to the vast majority of men than what is true. Truth has a harshness that alarms them, and an air of finality that collides with their incurable romanticism. They turn, in all the great emergencies of life, to the ancient promises, transparently false but immensely comforting, and of all those ancient promises there is none more comforting than the one to the effect that the lowly shall inherit the earth. It is at the bottom of the dominant religious system of the modern world, and it is at the bottom of the dominant political system. The latter, which is democracy, gives it an even higher credit and authority than the former, which is Christianity. More, democracy gives it a certain appearance of objective and demonstrable truth. The mob man, functioning as citizen, gets a feeling that he is really important to the world – that he is genuinely running things. Out of his maudlin herding after rogues and mountebanks there comes to him a sense of vast and mysterious power—which is what makes archbishops, police sergeants, the grand goblins of the Ku Klux and other such magnificoes happy. And out of it there comes, too, a conviction that he is somehow wise, that his views are taken seriously by his betters – which is what makes United States Senators, fortune tellers and Young Intellectuals happy. Finally, there comes out of it a glowing consciousness of a high duty triumphantly done which is what makes hangmen and husbands happy.
All these forms of happiness, of course, are illusory. They don’t last. The democrat, leaping into the air to flap his wings and praise God, is for ever coming down with a thump. The seeds of his disaster, as I have shown, lie in his own stupidity: he can never get rid of the naive delusion – so beautifully Christian – that happiness is something to be got by taking it away from the other fellow. But there are seeds, too, in the very nature of things: a promise, after all, is only a promise, even when it is supported by divine revelation, and the chances against its fulfillment may be put into a depressing mathematical formula. Here the irony that lies under all human aspiration shows itself: the quest for happiness, as always, brings only unhappiness in the end. But saying that is merely saying that the true charm of democracy is not for the democrat but for the spectator. That spectator, it seems to me, is favoured with a show of the first cut and calibre. Try to imagine anything more heroically absurd! What grotesque false pretenses! What a parade of obvious imbecilities! What a welter of fraud! But is fraud unamusing? Then I retire forthwith as a psychologist. The fraud of democracy, I contend, is more amusing than any other, more amusing even, and by miles, than the fraud of religion. Go into your praying-chamber and give sober thought to any of the more characteristic democratic inventions: say, Law Enforcement. Or to any of the typical democratic prophets: say, the late Archangel Bryan. If you don’t come out paled and palsied by mirth then you will not laugh on the Last Day itself, when Presbyterians step out of the grave like chicks from the egg, and wings blossom from their scapulae, and they leap into interstellar space with roars of joy.
I have spoken hitherto of the possibility that democracy may be a self-limiting disease, like measles. It is, perhaps, something more: it is self-devouring. One cannot observe it objectively without being impressed by its curious distrust of itself—its apparently ineradicable tendency to abandon its whole philosophy at the first sign of strain. I need not point to what happens invariably in democratic states when the national safety is menaced. All the great tribunes of democracy, on such occasions, convert themselves, by a process as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity. Lincoln, Roosevelt and Wilson come instantly to mind: Jackson and Cleveland are in the background, waiting to be recalled. Nor is this process confined to times of alarm and terror: it is going on day in and day out. Democracy always seems bent upon killing the thing it theoretically loves. I have rehearsed some of its operations against liberty, the very cornerstone of its political metaphysic. It not only wars upon the thing itself; it even wars upon mere academic advocacy of it. I offer the spectacle of Americans jailed for reading the Bill of Rights as perhaps the most gaudily humorous ever witnessed in the modern world. Try to imagine monarchy jailing subjects for maintaining the divine right of Kings! Or Christianity damning a believer for arguing that Jesus Christ was the Son of God! This last, perhaps, has been done: anything is possible in that direction. But under democracy the remotest and most fantastic possibility is a common-place of every day. All the axioms resolve themselves into thundering paradoxes, many amounting to downright contradictions in terms. The mob is competent to rule the rest of us—but it must be rigorously policed itself. There is a government, not of men, but of laws – but men are set upon benches to decide finally what the law is and may be. The highest function of the citizen is to serve the state – but the first assumption that meets him, when he essays to discharge it, is an assumption of his disingenuousness and dishonour. Is that assumption commonly sound? Then the farce only grows the more glorious.
I confess, for my part, that it greatly delights me. I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately wasteful, extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous men. Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is necessary to human government, and even to civilization itself – that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle. I do not know: I report only that when the suckers are running well the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating. But I am, it may be, a somewhat malicious man: my sympathies, when it comes to suckers, tend to be coy. What I can’t make out is how any man can believe in democracy who feels for and with them, and is pained when they are debauched and made a show of. How can any man be a democrat who is sincerely a democrat?
“The most decisive argument against democracy can be summed up in a few words: the higher cannot proceed from the lower, because the greater cannot proceed from the lesser; this is an absolute mathematical certainty that nothing can gainsay. And it should be remarked that this same argument, applied to a different order of things, can also be invoked against materialism; there is nothing fortuitous in this, for these two attitudes are much more closely linked than might at first sight appear. It is abundantly clear that the people cannot confer a power that they do not themselves possess; true power can only come from above, and this is why—be it said in passing—it can be legitimized only by the sanction of something standing above the social order, that is to say by a spiritual authority, for otherwise it is a mere counterfeit of power, unjustifiable through lack of any principle, and in which there can be nothing but disorder and confusion. This reversal of the true hierarchical order begins when the temporal power seeks to make itself independent of the spiritual authority, and then even to subordinate the latter by claiming to make it serve political ends. This is an initial usurpation that opens up the way to all the others; thus it could be shown, for example, that the French monarchy was itself working unconsciously, from the fourteenth century onward, to prepare the Revolution that was to overthrow it; it may be that we shall have the opportunity some day to expound this point of view adequately, but for the moment we can only refer briefly to it in passing.
If the word ‘democracy’ is defined as the government of the people by themselves, it expresses an absolute impossibility and cannot even have a mere de facto existence—in our time or in any other. One must guard against being misled by words: it is contradictory to say that the same persons can be at the same time rulers and ruled, because, to use Aristotelian terminology, the same being cannot be ‘in act’ and ‘in potency’ at the same time and in the same relationship. The relationship of ruler and ruled necessitates the presence of two terms: there can be no ruled if there are not also rulers, even though these be illegitimate and have no other title to power than their own pretensions; but the great ability of those who are in control in the modern world lies in making the people believe that they are governing themselves; and the people are the more inclined to believe this as they are flattered by it, and as, in any case, they are incapable of sufficient reflection to see its impossibility. It was to create this illusion that ‘universal suffrage’ was invented: the law is supposed to be made by the opinion of the majority, but what is overlooked is that this opinion is something that can very easily be guided and modified; it is always possible, by means of suitable suggestions, to arouse, as may be desired, currents moving in this or that direction. We cannot recall who it was who first spoke of ‘manufacturing opinion,’ but this expression is very apt, although it must be added that it is not always those who are in apparent control who really have the necessary means at their disposal. This last remark should make it clear why it is that the incompetence of most prominent politicians seems to have only a very relative importance; but since we are not undertaking here to unmask the working of what might be called the ‘machine of government’, we will do no more than point out that this incompetence itself serves the purpose of keeping up the illusion of which we have been speaking: indeed, it is a necessary condition if the politicians in question are to appear to issue from the majority, for it makes them in its likeness, inasmuch as the majority, on whatever question it may be called on to give its opinion, is always composed of the incompetent, whose number is vastly greater than that of the men who can give an opinion based on full knowledge.”
There was talk recently of a sort of “Book Club” possibly being begun in the Vineyard of the Saker. Several of us have had some preliminary discussion about it. I suppose its implementation is delayed till after the US election?
If it goes forward you could put Ideas Have Consequences in the queue. I suggested a 4 week lag time between announcement of a new appearance of a book in the queue and the appearance of it in the “club” with the opening remarks by the suggestor of the title, followed by a thread by commenters. That way, others who were intrigued by those same remarks when the title joined the queue would have time to read it, if they chose to read it.
It will be found as a general rule that those parts
of the world which have talked least of equality have in the
solid fact of their social life exhibited the greatest frater
nity. Such was true of feudal Europe before people suc
cumbed to various forms of the proposal that every man
should be king. Nothing is more manifest than that as this
social distance has diminished and all groups have moved
nearer equality, suspicion and hostility have increased. In
the present world there is little of trust and less of loyalty.
….
Shakespeare concluded his wonderful discourse
on degree with reference to “an envious fever.” [“Troilus and Cressida,” Act 1, Scene 3] And when
Mark Twain, in the role of Connecticut Yankee, undertook
to destroy the hierarchy of Camelot, he was furious to find
that serfs and others of the lower order were not resentful
of their condition. He adopted then the typical Jacobin pro
cedure of instilling hatred of all superiority. Resentment, as
Richard Hertz has made plain, may well prove the dynamite
which will finally wreck Western society. to our first principles, that rebellion against distinction is
an aspect of that world-wide and centuries-long movement
against knowledge whose beginning goes back to nominal
ism.
Sorry about the messy copy. The sentence ending “wreck Western society” should be followed by what follows below. Also, the quote is from Richard Weaver’s “Ideas Have Consequences,” the chapter “Distinction and Hierarchy.”
————
We must repeat, then, with reference to our first principles, that rebellion against distinction is an aspect of that world-wide and centuries-long movement against knowledge whose beginning goes back to nominalism. For it requires only a slight transference to say that, if our classifications of the world of physical nature are arbitrary, so,too are those of human society. In other words, after we grant that those generalizations about the world which we necessarily make—and this is a necessity no one can really deny— do not express an objective order but only afford convenient modes, the same must be granted about society. With this conceded, inherent pattern is gone; nothing is justified that does not serve convenience, and there remains no court of appeal against subversion by pragmatism.Thus, repudiation of knowledge of what is destroys the basis of renewal. It is not fantastic but, rather, realistic to see as an ultimate result of this process the end of civilization.
This meme / graph is a presumption and that makes it a lie. There’s no integrity in presumption when you got ‘everyone else’ on the bottom, because that collective are the ones keeping the tax system alive. They make government bonds possible. Besides, the .3% class and above should’ve been consolidated into one even if your chart accurately represent current sociological trends.
Unfortunately, this is a purely superficial comparison that no more repeats the same tired and foolish conceptions, and simply perpetuates a luciferian lie. It overlooks all the essential. Since the Enlightenment the West has been brainwashed and deviated in favor of its vision of individualist autonomous man–wholly secularized and turned towards this life alone. Modern man has fallen into a mortal intellectual trap in misconceiving and taught to despise the Christian civilization that is the true Western heritage. Was it perfect? Of course not–men are men,and therefore there will always exist abuses, but “men without religion are knaves.” Like it or not, European man + Christianity = the medieval age.
For a corrective, read Regine Pernoud’s “Those Terrible Middle Ages!” If you read French,
“Pour en finir avec le Moyen Age.”
This is what globalism, elite Liberalism intends. The destruction of the Middle Class, no growth and no development for the poor countries, the emerging economies and even reversing the developing nations as we see in Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, the ME and NA, and many other regions.
The Elite One Worlders are the Feudal Lords and they own nearly everything. Why would they want new wealth created? Why would they want to share fresh water, clean air, mobility, inventions, investment capital, innovation, communications, local, regional or geopolitical power?
They don’t. And they will kill billions of people as easily as they kill tens of millions of people. That is Feudalism.
It is on a rampage around the globe. It begins, not with just wealth accumulation and fascist hold on power. The root of it is satanism.
When humans turn from the life spirit of the universe and put themselves up as gods, there is only one form of government that can sustain them.
Feudalism is again the enemy of mankind because it is at war with Deity.
Your post made me recall not merely everything about the Macbeth-Clintons, but one thing in particular.
When the full import of what WikiLeaks had on her, struck Lady MacBeth, she tried, on-camera, to explain exactly what the crime he (not she!) had committed was. She reached for the term “affront against the International Class”.
It used to be called lese majeste.
Your post is perfect.
@ Larchmonter
Agree but differ on one detail: the feudal lord was bound to the customary law and moral obligation of caring for his serfs. I know that in effect he had the arbitrary power to do as he liked, but there were constrains on that power.
Compare that with the unfettered power of capital today. Even a slave owner in the 1800s South had some interests in being humane to his slaves.
The basis of feudalism is land ownership: In the middle ages, you either owned land or you were a slave (serf). Then it was the king and the church who owned the land. Today, after the mortgage crisis especially, the vast majority in the US rent.
The comparison couldn’t be clearer.
You only have to make some very slight adjustments in language: Land is now called ‘real estate’ or ‘hard assets’, and ‘Serf’ or ‘peasant’ is now called ‘wage slave’ or ‘homeless’.
The only people who could object to the comparison in the picture, would be modern day land owners and their vassals/publicists.
“Real state”, that’s the word, and so, to what level do you think “The Donald” belongs?
Yes, of course, to the land owners” of the past.
This is why I find delusional, if not veiled interested, placing any hope in that individual.
So is owning my own home enough to be put to death by the proletariat in your scenario or do we have to go bigger?
No, you can live peacefully in your home, I mean those who dedicate or have dedicated in tbe past to speculate on real state. And, in this pack, I include all the smartass who took advantage of the real state buble of 2008 to drain their neighbors and become rich or accomodated enough so as to now try to do what could be necessary to mantain the state of affairs.
And you know it.
Trump does not speculate in real estate.
He buys to own and build a Branded Property, sell parts of it as condos, rent and lease other parts of it, in a permanent, not speculative form.
His Towers and Resorts and Golf Courses-resorts/hotels/developments all are permanent.
He provides jobs, most of which are 365/24/7 staffings. People tend to work for him for decades.
He’s a landlord, yes. But many people benefit from a developer like Trump. He raises the values of surrounding properties, neighborhoods, towns. He buys from vendors foods, furniture, art works, liquors, wines, beers. He improves environments. He brings improved fire and police services with his high end, highly taxed properties.
These are good things. He may cater to rich and ultra wealthy, but the emission of money and the radiation of higher values are excellent tradeoffs.
Generally, his locations employe a thousand or more staff. His construction projects usually touch 1500 or more workers for prolonged periods of more than one year and up to three years.
I think he is a very positive force for betterment of workers in many trades and professions.
He will transform the face and skyline, transportation hubs, pipelines and railroads of America.
Concentration on infrastructure will mean less attention and funding for military hegemony by the US. That is a huge difference.
We’ve been waiting for 60 years for a turn from global hegemony.
There is great variety of both usefulness and uselessness, good and evil, in the practice of owning and managing improved land, which can vary between agricultural and grazing land to more highly developed land going up several floors and housing families or office space.
The root of the “real” designation in “real property” or “real estate” is simply the fact that land or land with improvements on it (structures, houses, most commonly) is not transportable like cash, metals, diamonds or valuable goods. Or perishable stocks of foodstuffs.While all of the latter may disappear and be moved elsewhere, that will ordinarily not happen with “real property” unless it is on a coast of a major body of water that severely erodes it, washing it away. In comparison to land, therefore other forms of wealth are more fleeting, less “real” IN THAT LIMITED SENSE.
I disagree, however with the idea that land or real (improved) property is THE source of wealth. IMHO it is not. It is increases in the productive powers of labor brought about by human creativity that is the source of real wealth, some of which accrues to land and improved land for more desirable living spaces and areas, vacations, places to shop, or factories to make things in, but that’s an effect, not a cause.
In all the above examples real estate is not the source of any wealth. It is actually either a vital or relatively superfluous (a Trump casino, or a Steven Wynn casino, or anyone one else’s casino!) or even damaging, wasteful OVERHEAD cost of either supporting what does produce wealth, or siphoning away from that which DOES produces wealth: The human brain informing muscles and machines to make productive physical changes that enable societies of human beings to reproduce themselves at hopefully higher levels of existence, culture, education and leisure time devoted to spiritual enrichment rather than debasement. .Real estate is overhead, not production. But if it’s a school, or hospital, or shelter for a family, it is NECESSARY overhead. I may vote for Trump on the hunch that it may buy some time to stop war, But I am unable to argue that any casino is “necessary”.
There’s much more to say on the subject, in terms of the fine points of distinction, but the first thing is to not automatically react like a bull to a red cape to words like “real estate” or “capital” or “investments” or “jew” or anything else, the way Hitlery and the neocons react to “Russia”!!!!!!!
Don’t be like them! Discernment, discernment, discernment of the vast differences and ranges of qualities of intent and effect within the complex realities inadequately expressed by the sounds of such words or the letters of the alphabet designating those sounds, is a further, necessary step.
I am against feudalism and convinced that physiocrat slave owner Thomas Jefferson was wrong and Alexander Hamilton was correct in opposing the slave power of Virginia and in identifying manufactures, labor saving creativity as the most needed input into agriculture, not the same old same old muscular exertions by people or farm animals, very, very little of which Jefferson ever pitched in on, even as a young man, I’ll wager..
Fair enough Fatima,
That being said and somewhat tangentally… Who in the west or anywhere else really owns their property when there is a real estate tax?
In England it’s called “land rent.” You don’t own the property, the King does. But, it’s really the same as US property ownership with real estate tax.
No, the basis of feudalism–and by this is meant feudalism up until the 14th century and the black plague–is nost certainly not land ownership. Please study up on the subject of land entitlement in those times, you are just repeating cliches. Why not base yourself on accurate knowledge rather than on groupthink? I recommend you start by studying, without preconceptions or passion, Pernoud’s book.
OK, I studied up on it: In fact you’re incorrect: Feudalism does in fact, specifically, relate to land ownership.
Pernoud’s apologisms were specifically and only about France. Pernoud infers that the king also had responsibilities, it wasnt all fun. He states that some serfs could do quite well, it wasn’t all hell. He states that the children of serfs could aspire to be serfs on the same land as their parents when they died. This seems almost civilized.
*rolls eys* :-)
Please check Pernoud’s book again, and/or broaden your reading a little on the subjects of feudalism and/oe revisionism.
@Anonymous
You “studied up on it.” Well, that was fast :-) Good ol’ widipedia.
“He states that some serfs could do quite well…”
Regine is a woman’s name. :-)
@ Anon
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This is why returning to a Monarchy based system, with the Church again as a factical power, as some claim to desire, at least for Russia, has no sense for anyone in the two last levels, i.e. the majority of the population in the world, and in any country.
So , the better is the soonest possible to go forgetting in becoming again princes, princesses boyars and so on, because, simply, it’s not going to happen.
Let all that for childrens’ fairytales and those impossible dreams of adults to dream about.
We are “to the webs” of the same system based on our explotation and theft.
We want changes, but not to what others already have known in the past, no thanks, we prefer something new, inclussive for all in sharing and enjoying all the wealth and richness in tbe world, which are huge enough for all to have covered not only their basics needs but also to alllow living even in plenty of security and comfort if it not were for the insignificant number belonging to the last levels on the top who want all only for them and their brethren.
Enjoy, if you ever were able to do such a thing from, by or with anything or anybody in your damned life, that I doubt, while you could, because your days are numbered.
https://youtu.be/p3JH65KNomw
Nice discussions & comments indeed. But you still buy into the shadow voting circus, right? That’s called…. uhmm…. a contradiction, or a non-sense…?
Is Donald Trump an Illuminati Agent?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZlgSjm9KIo
It’s enough to watch 5-10 minutes, just to get the grammar.
And now I am ready for the ad-hominem Kalibr missile barrage! ;)
My humble Trivium batallion will handle even the Star Wars (RIP Nicht-Sohn), don’t be shy like Obungu with his Syrian no-frei zone! :D
Cheers for the open minded & double Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster for the remaining cosmic plankton…
This reminded me of an analysis I worked out in the 1980’s about the situation in the US (in could have been Worldwide in the capitalist countries).If you go to the “local” level.Society is structured with the local rich and their political elite as the “Lords”. Under them are their helpers,police,attorneys,store owners,as the “Vassals”. And everyone else as the “Serfs”.That as I said was at a local level of society,town,county,and state level.Once you get past that into the “national” level,you reach,the corporate leaders,the extremely rich,top military,media,and the high political classes at a federal level.Those in Medieval terms would be classed as the “High Nobility”.With the very highest of those figures being in Medieval terms a “Royal State Council” that is similar to the ” deep state” in our modern World.These groups are somewhat “fluid”,in that over time some “very few” others from the lower elements “might” join the higher elements. But very rarely do members of the higher “Nobility” sink into the lower classes.All those elements including the lowest,have lived their lives within that class structure.They understand how it works. And so defend it.Each of them “believes” that they will end up being one of the “lucky few” that ascends the ladder into the “High Nobility”.There lays the problem societies face in making meaningful change.Which is why only full social revolutions have ever in the past been able to make changes. Whether for good or bad,but make changes to societies.
So where does Mr. Jacob Rothschild falls?
Just asking?
# 236 (alphabetical order) at Current Membership of the Committee of 300 (March 31, 2013)
“Three hundred men, all of whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves.” –Walter Rathenau, 1909, founder of the mammoth German General Electric Corporation
The Committee of 300 is a product of the British East India Company’s Council of 300 … …
http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/current-membership-of-the-committee-of-300/39507
Globalization which manifests itself through “free trade” is all about wealth concentration.
A small predatory elite that carefully mask itself behind huge Coporations, work quietly to merge, consolidate and buy up and buy out everything and anything of value, worldwide.
Free Trade as pushed by Western interests is all about prying markets open worldwide, so that they can be plundered and the local population exploited.
No Unions.
Zero Hour Contracts.
Longer and longer work hours for less and less.
These are the folks behind monstrosities like TPP who negotiate behind the scenes to strip countries of their borders and workers of their rights.
People like Hillary Clinton are conscripted to be their Global Compradors.
Some countries get bullied, some are bamboozled, others are blackmailed, the rest gets bought.
No banker got jailed for the colossal crimes that were perpetrated in the 2008 Financial Meltdown.
Not one!
Instead we heard the banks were ‘too big to fail’, and they received $billions in tax payer bailouts, while millions of persons lost their homes and their jobs.
Wikileaks revealed that Hillary Clinton was paid to give secret, feel good speeches to these persons.
But you have to remember that it was during her husband’s administration, that the banking and media regulations were loosened and eliminated where necessary.
The banks then set about packaging and re-packaging all types of toxic instruments that were backed by lies and slight of hand trickery and sold to the unsuspecting.
While Billy Boy was preoccupied showing Monica Lewinsky new Cigar tricks in the Oval Office, guys like Robert Rubin were busy at the Treasury green lighting high crimes and misdemeanors.
And Alan Greenspan was at the FED being swept away with ‘irrational exuberance’.
The Coporate Criminals and War Barons now insist on an upgrade to Clinton 2.0.
I don’t think most Americans are aware of what is happening though, I guess they are just too busy keeping up with the Kardashians or watching Dancing with the Stars or Game of Thrones.
While Ignorance is bliss, but it can also prove fatal.
If the parallels are curious, appealing and indeed unavoidable, they’re as much arbitrary, struggling to be qualitative, but mostly frame themselves in descriptions of power/influence (the concepts “by rank” occludes) which will hardly allow us the transformation of the reality referred.
A concerted ownership of most levers of the economy, most means of enforcement, most cultural authority does not perpetuate any system “as is”. It always changes “into was” eventually.
I wish we could promote more general insight of how the system actually evolved/evolves.
But the difference between monarchs and bankers is that bankers will go to hell because they works on Sundays.
this is too american centered….
The Central Bank in Russia is still beholden to the FED and/or Western Best Practices so I would politely disagree with your assessment.
I didn’t say this in the way, like this hierarchy only apply to US. (even if the comparaison to the old time is quite a stretch).
It was more about all the image chosen and term was US. (from Simpson, Condolizza, Obama, Dimon, Bernanke).
All are US figure whereas the system is way more international then this. Like your example with Russia. Given the US would have more top position in the current state, but couldn’t another top representative then Condolizza couldn’t be chosen to represent this disparity ? or the simpson…
It make me think this was more oriented toward an US public… and since I view US as quite aristocratic with their educational system and everything is not quite the best to demonstrate a world issue..
The Illusion Of Democracy
Someone once defined a “fool” as a person who keeps responding to the same situation in the same way, expecting a different result. Perhaps the best illustration of this infirmity is found, every two years, in the system known as voting, wherein millions of people are induced to go the polls and vote for candidates who keep promising to carry out the unfulfilled promises they made in the previous election!1
Occasionally in these corrupt, degenerate, upside-down times there are political elections we are expected to take part in. We are supposed to do our “duty as citizens of the free democratic world” and “defend our way of life”. Against what is never properly defined. It is typical that the word ‘our’ is used in order to drag everyone down to the same level. Is it really my way of life and is it really my duty to defend it? What am I actually asked to defend? If we really have freedom of choice should I not be free to choose not to defend something I can’t even say I wanted? If I decide not to take part in the democratic process and not vote, instantly accusations come flying that I’m not “doing my duty”, or that I’ve resigned and therefore have no right to comment and even less, to complain. They tell me it is the most passive thing not to vote and imply that because of that I’m somehow morally corrupt.
But if I really want a change; if I would really want to do something about the situation what else could I do in an upside-down world than to abstain from voting? Is it not my “democratic right”? If we live in an upside-down world, is not what is considered “active” in reality “passive” and vice versa?
What is democracy?
Most people think of democracy as being “good”. It represents everything which most people consider valuable and precious. The modern mass media uses democracy as a label for ideas, values and principles they consider “right”. Often one sees and hears people say things like “it is my democratic right”, or “it is everyone’s democratic duty” – to vote, for example. “Sound democratic values” is another cryptic expression often used by everyone from world leaders and influencial businessmen to journalists and ordinary people. No one ever questions or defines these vague expressions. We all are expected to “know” what is understood by them – not only that, but we all are expected to have the exact same understanding of them.
But are all points above really what democracy is?
No. The things mentioned above are all relative values and vague or non-existent definitions given the word democracy by the people using them in this fashion.
Democracy is a form of government. It has no intrinsic value. Moreover, democracy is the rule of “the people”. At least “the people” like to think so. But who are the people? Are they really qualified to rule and if so, by what authority are they qualified to rule? Who do the rule over? Themselves?
The fact is that the people can never rule, be it in a democracy or any other form of government. The people are incapable of ruling. The people are always the ruled in any form of government. In a democracy the people delegate their power to a representative who is supposed to represent their interests. In other words, the people surrender – give up their power over themselves to another person. How likely is it that that person is going to represent the voter instead of himself and his own interests? How likely is it that the voter’s interests and the interests of the voter’s political representative are identical?
Democracy is the rule of the many over the few. We always hear that “it is the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people”. Yes, these people concede, the minority do not get their way but at least most people do and that is fair. As long as you agree with the majority you don’t have to suffer their decision. This could be likened to the popular description of
democracy as two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner. Is what the majority decides always the best decision – for all? On what basis do they take their decision? Are they so well-informed as to be able to take a balanced and weighed decision having taken every aspect into consideration? And is it really they, the majority, who take the decision?
If someone suddenly collapses in the street would the people gathered around take a vote to decide who should take care of the injured person? Would it not be more likely that the question would be raised “is anyone a doctor”? In other words, one would look for someone with qualifications, competence and skill who is trained to deal with an injured person. No need for a vote, common sense decides the course of action.1
It is a mystery to me that no one has applied to democracy the age-old maxim of divide et impera.
The democratic system divides the population into parties of ostensibly differing policies and ideologies. Let us say we have 5 major parties in a country. If the population would divide their votes equally between the five parties they would get 20% each with a voting participation of 100%. This way no party gets the upper hand. So let us give one party 30%, another 28%, 23%, yet another 15% and the last one 4%. The party with 30% of the votes wins and gets to rule. But 30% is actually a minority not a majority, which means that our theory of most people getting their way is not true. The actual percent is of course lower because 100% electoral participation is a fantasy. This is why it is more important for the democratic politicians to convince the people to vote – no matter for whom, because the lower the number of voters participating in an election, the less justified are the politicians to claim the system is legitimate. If fewer and fewer people actually did surrender their power to the politicians claiming to be their representatives eventually the system would implode.
If we go deeper into the issue democracy is the manipulation of the masses – the mass mind – by a minority to further their own interests. But is this minority qualified to rule over the majority? Are they in possession of the qualities demanded to have the authority to wield the political power and take decisions that have consequences for everyone? Today it is unquestionable that the authority to rule is derived from economic wealth. Quantity of economic assets decide who becomes a ruler. What we in fact have is the rule of quantity over quality; quantity of money over quality of ideals. You can advocate for any ideology – no matter how degenerate and corrupt – if you have enough financial support, while advocating for the highest, most noble ideals is bound to fail without any money to support it in the political arena. A most fitting example is the recent creation of a political party advocating paedophilia in Holland. Without financial support and powerful connections this idea could never get any media coverage.
Now, the more parties in a democratic system of government the more division in the country and hence the smaller minority that rules over an ever larger majority who didn’t vote for the ruling party. Most people would want to believe that the more political parties there are available, the greater the “freedom of choice” – the more political parties, the more political opinions you’re allowed to have, seems to be the logic – only the people would not want to put it that negatively. Of course, supporting any political party outside the established ones is very suspicious and highly questionable – after all: the established political parties have been “authorized” by the political establishment itself.
Like I mentioned above, these days democracy is so hollow that politicians up for elections don’t even care if the people actually vote for them, as long they vote. It’s like the feeble-minded politically correct say: “it’s not the winning that’s important, it’s the taking part.” Personally, I don’t intend to take part in this hollow charade anymore. I’m not interested to be on the “winning” side.
Last Words
by H. L. Mencken (1926)
I have alluded somewhat vaguely to the merits of democracy. One of them is quite obvious: it is, perhaps, the most charming form of government ever devised by man. The reason is not far to seek. It is based upon propositions that are palpably not true and what is not true, as everyone knows, is always immensely more fascinating and satisfying to the vast majority of men than what is true. Truth has a harshness that alarms them, and an air of finality that collides with their incurable romanticism. They turn, in all the great emergencies of life, to the ancient promises, transparently false but immensely comforting, and of all those ancient promises there is none more comforting than the one to the effect that the lowly shall inherit the earth. It is at the bottom of the dominant religious system of the modern world, and it is at the bottom of the dominant political system. The latter, which is democracy, gives it an even higher credit and authority than the former, which is Christianity. More, democracy gives it a certain appearance of objective and demonstrable truth. The mob man, functioning as citizen, gets a feeling that he is really important to the world – that he is genuinely running things. Out of his maudlin herding after rogues and mountebanks there comes to him a sense of vast and mysterious power—which is what makes archbishops, police sergeants, the grand goblins of the Ku Klux and other such magnificoes happy. And out of it there comes, too, a conviction that he is somehow wise, that his views are taken seriously by his betters – which is what makes United States Senators, fortune tellers and Young Intellectuals happy. Finally, there comes out of it a glowing consciousness of a high duty triumphantly done which is what makes hangmen and husbands happy.
All these forms of happiness, of course, are illusory. They don’t last. The democrat, leaping into the air to flap his wings and praise God, is for ever coming down with a thump. The seeds of his disaster, as I have shown, lie in his own stupidity: he can never get rid of the naive delusion – so beautifully Christian – that happiness is something to be got by taking it away from the other fellow. But there are seeds, too, in the very nature of things: a promise, after all, is only a promise, even when it is supported by divine revelation, and the chances against its fulfillment may be put into a depressing mathematical formula. Here the irony that lies under all human aspiration shows itself: the quest for happiness, as always, brings only unhappiness in the end. But saying that is merely saying that the true charm of democracy is not for the democrat but for the spectator. That spectator, it seems to me, is favoured with a show of the first cut and calibre. Try to imagine anything more heroically absurd! What grotesque false pretenses! What a parade of obvious imbecilities! What a welter of fraud! But is fraud unamusing? Then I retire forthwith as a psychologist. The fraud of democracy, I contend, is more amusing than any other, more amusing even, and by miles, than the fraud of religion. Go into your praying-chamber and give sober thought to any of the more characteristic democratic inventions: say, Law Enforcement. Or to any of the typical democratic prophets: say, the late Archangel Bryan. If you don’t come out paled and palsied by mirth then you will not laugh on the Last Day itself, when Presbyterians step out of the grave like chicks from the egg, and wings blossom from their scapulae, and they leap into interstellar space with roars of joy.
I have spoken hitherto of the possibility that democracy may be a self-limiting disease, like measles. It is, perhaps, something more: it is self-devouring. One cannot observe it objectively without being impressed by its curious distrust of itself—its apparently ineradicable tendency to abandon its whole philosophy at the first sign of strain. I need not point to what happens invariably in democratic states when the national safety is menaced. All the great tribunes of democracy, on such occasions, convert themselves, by a process as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity. Lincoln, Roosevelt and Wilson come instantly to mind: Jackson and Cleveland are in the background, waiting to be recalled. Nor is this process confined to times of alarm and terror: it is going on day in and day out. Democracy always seems bent upon killing the thing it theoretically loves. I have rehearsed some of its operations against liberty, the very cornerstone of its political metaphysic. It not only wars upon the thing itself; it even wars upon mere academic advocacy of it. I offer the spectacle of Americans jailed for reading the Bill of Rights as perhaps the most gaudily humorous ever witnessed in the modern world. Try to imagine monarchy jailing subjects for maintaining the divine right of Kings! Or Christianity damning a believer for arguing that Jesus Christ was the Son of God! This last, perhaps, has been done: anything is possible in that direction. But under democracy the remotest and most fantastic possibility is a common-place of every day. All the axioms resolve themselves into thundering paradoxes, many amounting to downright contradictions in terms. The mob is competent to rule the rest of us—but it must be rigorously policed itself. There is a government, not of men, but of laws – but men are set upon benches to decide finally what the law is and may be. The highest function of the citizen is to serve the state – but the first assumption that meets him, when he essays to discharge it, is an assumption of his disingenuousness and dishonour. Is that assumption commonly sound? Then the farce only grows the more glorious.
I confess, for my part, that it greatly delights me. I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately wasteful, extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous men. Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is necessary to human government, and even to civilization itself – that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle. I do not know: I report only that when the suckers are running well the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating. But I am, it may be, a somewhat malicious man: my sympathies, when it comes to suckers, tend to be coy. What I can’t make out is how any man can believe in democracy who feels for and with them, and is pained when they are debauched and made a show of. How can any man be a democrat who is sincerely a democrat?
The Meanings of Freedom
By John Hospers
http://johnhospers.com/Articles/TheMeaningsofFreedom.pdf
————
Freedom and Democracy
by John Hospers
http://unz.org/Pub/Freeman-1984jun-00331?View=PDF
On the Illusion of Democracy–Rene Guenon
“The most decisive argument against democracy can be summed up in a few words: the higher cannot proceed from the lower, because the greater cannot proceed from the lesser; this is an absolute mathematical certainty that nothing can gainsay. And it should be remarked that this same argument, applied to a different order of things, can also be invoked against materialism; there is nothing fortuitous in this, for these two attitudes are much more closely linked than might at first sight appear. It is abundantly clear that the people cannot confer a power that they do not themselves possess; true power can only come from above, and this is why—be it said in passing—it can be legitimized only by the sanction of something standing above the social order, that is to say by a spiritual authority, for otherwise it is a mere counterfeit of power, unjustifiable through lack of any principle, and in which there can be nothing but disorder and confusion. This reversal of the true hierarchical order begins when the temporal power seeks to make itself independent of the spiritual authority, and then even to subordinate the latter by claiming to make it serve political ends. This is an initial usurpation that opens up the way to all the others; thus it could be shown, for example, that the French monarchy was itself working unconsciously, from the fourteenth century onward, to prepare the Revolution that was to overthrow it; it may be that we shall have the opportunity some day to expound this point of view adequately, but for the moment we can only refer briefly to it in passing.
If the word ‘democracy’ is defined as the government of the people by themselves, it expresses an absolute impossibility and cannot even have a mere de facto existence—in our time or in any other. One must guard against being misled by words: it is contradictory to say that the same persons can be at the same time rulers and ruled, because, to use Aristotelian terminology, the same being cannot be ‘in act’ and ‘in potency’ at the same time and in the same relationship. The relationship of ruler and ruled necessitates the presence of two terms: there can be no ruled if there are not also rulers, even though these be illegitimate and have no other title to power than their own pretensions; but the great ability of those who are in control in the modern world lies in making the people believe that they are governing themselves; and the people are the more inclined to believe this as they are flattered by it, and as, in any case, they are incapable of sufficient reflection to see its impossibility. It was to create this illusion that ‘universal suffrage’ was invented: the law is supposed to be made by the opinion of the majority, but what is overlooked is that this opinion is something that can very easily be guided and modified; it is always possible, by means of suitable suggestions, to arouse, as may be desired, currents moving in this or that direction. We cannot recall who it was who first spoke of ‘manufacturing opinion,’ but this expression is very apt, although it must be added that it is not always those who are in apparent control who really have the necessary means at their disposal. This last remark should make it clear why it is that the incompetence of most prominent politicians seems to have only a very relative importance; but since we are not undertaking here to unmask the working of what might be called the ‘machine of government’, we will do no more than point out that this incompetence itself serves the purpose of keeping up the illusion of which we have been speaking: indeed, it is a necessary condition if the politicians in question are to appear to issue from the majority, for it makes them in its likeness, inasmuch as the majority, on whatever question it may be called on to give its opinion, is always composed of the incompetent, whose number is vastly greater than that of the men who can give an opinion based on full knowledge.”
For those who actually read entire books–a very great book:
Ideas Have Consequences–Richard Weaver
Pdf download:
http://www45.zippyshare.com/v/ZvuMP6h1/file.html
There was talk recently of a sort of “Book Club” possibly being begun in the Vineyard of the Saker. Several of us have had some preliminary discussion about it. I suppose its implementation is delayed till after the US election?
If it goes forward you could put Ideas Have Consequences in the queue. I suggested a 4 week lag time between announcement of a new appearance of a book in the queue and the appearance of it in the “club” with the opening remarks by the suggestor of the title, followed by a thread by commenters. That way, others who were intrigued by those same remarks when the title joined the queue would have time to read it, if they chose to read it.
BOOK REVIEW
The Myth of Democracy
http://www.unz.org/Pub/ModernAge-1997q1-00048?View=PDF
It will be found as a general rule that those parts
of the world which have talked least of equality have in the
solid fact of their social life exhibited the greatest frater
nity. Such was true of feudal Europe before people suc
cumbed to various forms of the proposal that every man
should be king. Nothing is more manifest than that as this
social distance has diminished and all groups have moved
nearer equality, suspicion and hostility have increased. In
the present world there is little of trust and less of loyalty.
….
Shakespeare concluded his wonderful discourse
on degree with reference to “an envious fever.” [“Troilus and Cressida,” Act 1, Scene 3] And when
Mark Twain, in the role of Connecticut Yankee, undertook
to destroy the hierarchy of Camelot, he was furious to find
that serfs and others of the lower order were not resentful
of their condition. He adopted then the typical Jacobin pro
cedure of instilling hatred of all superiority. Resentment, as
Richard Hertz has made plain, may well prove the dynamite
which will finally wreck Western society. to our first principles, that rebellion against distinction is
an aspect of that world-wide and centuries-long movement
against knowledge whose beginning goes back to nominal
ism.
Sorry about the messy copy. The sentence ending “wreck Western society” should be followed by what follows below. Also, the quote is from Richard Weaver’s “Ideas Have Consequences,” the chapter “Distinction and Hierarchy.”
————
We must repeat, then, with reference to our first principles, that rebellion against distinction is an aspect of that world-wide and centuries-long movement against knowledge whose beginning goes back to nominalism. For it requires only a slight transference to say that, if our classifications of the world of physical nature are arbitrary, so,too are those of human society. In other words, after we grant that those generalizations about the world which we necessarily make—and this is a necessity no one can really deny— do not express an objective order but only afford convenient modes, the same must be granted about society. With this conceded, inherent pattern is gone; nothing is justified that does not serve convenience, and there remains no court of appeal against subversion by pragmatism.Thus, repudiation of knowledge of what is destroys the basis of renewal. It is not fantastic but, rather, realistic to see as an ultimate result of this process the end of civilization.
GOD being the absolute power that resides over the 3 offices that exist alongside each other king priest prophet, three offices between God and man.
On the other hand you have satan and the fallen angels that try to destroy god and man by infiltrating these 3 offices to grab power and destroy.
This meme / graph is a presumption and that makes it a lie. There’s no integrity in presumption when you got ‘everyone else’ on the bottom, because that collective are the ones keeping the tax system alive. They make government bonds possible. Besides, the .3% class and above should’ve been consolidated into one even if your chart accurately represent current sociological trends.