One of the most horrific but telling things I have ever read about the
difference between a monarchy and a republic was written by Robert Katz
in the last chapter of his book, “The Fall of the House of Savoy” on the
subject of the end of the late Kingdom of Italy. In a paragraph
praising the republic for what I would call listlessness and lack of
ambition, Mr. Katz wrote, “Italy has fared well without the monarchy and
its recurrent, restless dreams. The country no longer pretends to great
powerhood. A president sits now in the Quirinal. Few people abroad know
his name. The republic has no plan to march for glory.” I suppose one
could easily cite this as a sort of test. If you can read lines like
that and think, as Katz does, that this is a good thing, you must be a
republican. If you think they are horribly tragic, you are probably a
monarchist. This could be “Exhibit A” in making the case that liberal
republicanism saps the morale of a great people. Personally, one of the
things that I find most despicable, damnable and insidious about, in
this case, the Italian republic, is that it has made people comfortable
with mediocrity.
Simply consider the context. Italy, a land with almost nothing in the
way of natural resources besides mineral water, once conquered the
entire Mediterranean basin, ruled the known world and in many ways
created western civilization as we know it. The cultural legacy of Italy
alone was fought over by the great powers that rose up after the fall
of Rome for centuries. Italian religious spread Christianity to distant
shores and Italian navigators discovered new continents. Even after
centuries of being divided and ruled by foreign powers, the Italians
reunited, won their independence and, despite being the last out of the
gate, set out again and built an empire that reached from the Alps to
the Horn of Africa. When the Kingdom of Italy was brought down in World
War II and this modest, most recent of the European colonial empires was
demolished, we see the result in the waves of “refugees” from Eritrea
and Somalia of what becomes of such places when the benefits of Roman
civilization were withdrawn. Yet, led by a corrupt, top-heavy, talking
shop that dispenses social welfare, people are dulled into passive
acceptance with their elite always assuring them that this is the best
they can expect.
I take a different view. I say that those, “recurrent, restless dreams”
which Katz faults the House of Savoy for, are essential for the health
and morale of any people. The liberal elites do not want this though,
they simply want listless, passive consumers. They want fuel for their
machine and nothing more. They do not want people to think, to dream or
to aspire to greatness. Italy is only one example of this but it is a
stark one. The republican ruling class has taken a population who are
the sons and daughters of the Caesars and taught them to be content with
being second-rate, even third or fourth-rate. If this were being done
by parents, in a family, people would surely call it child abuse. Forget
Augustus and Trajan, forget Legnano, forget Venice and Genoa, forget
the Medici, Farnese and all the great houses of the Renaissance, forget
the great strides, from Turin to Naples, forget the “fourth shore” and
all those who sacrificed there, from those led by Scipio to those led by
Graziani, forget the model plantations of Somaliland, forget the great
art, the great buildings, the great music and literature. Just watch
football on TV, wait for your check and buy yourself something nice.
Something “Made in China”. Whatever you do, just don’t show any
ambition.
Not every nation, of course, has the origins of the Roman Empire in
their background, but most do have some period, long or short, of
greatness that they once achieved. Lithuania, for example, regarded
today as a minor Baltic state, overlooked by most, was a force to be
reckoned with in the Middle Ages. Lithuania dominated Eastern Europe,
controlling an area that stretched all the way from the Baltic to the
Black Sea. Bulgaria, after the fall of the Byzantines, was the Bulgarian
Empire, dominating the Balkans. They certainly had spirit, they
certainly had high morale as when that empire was destroyed, the Bulgars
did not lapse into apathetic acceptance. They strapped on their armor,
fought back and built the Second Bulgarian Empire which again dominated
the Balkans. They had what it takes to do great things and the blood in
their veins was no different than that which flows in the veins of
Bulgarians today. I look at most of the nations of the western world
today and I want to shake them by their collective collars and shout,
“YOU’RE BETTER THAN THIS!” What would your ancestors think of you if
they could see you now?
One of the many southern European countries known for being in
particularly bad shape economically is Portugal. Some take a fatalistic
view of the situation but I do not. A cousin of mine is of Portuguese
ancestry and she has a work ethic that would put the Puritans to shame.
Portugal, yes, is a relatively small country but consider how it
started. It had to fight for its liberation from Moorish rule and then,
despite having relatively little land, a small population and few
resources, Portugal still had ambition, still had a vision. They took
risks, they tried new things and they became the leader in exploration,
cartography, navigation and global trade. They built an empire that
stretched from Brazil, all around Africa, the Middle East, India,
Southeast Asia and East Asia. They controlled virtually every major
trade route and became the wealthiest country in Europe. The Kingdom of
Portugal did all of that and the Kingdom of Portugal started with far
less than what the Portuguese Republic has today. We know what great
things were possible because they actually did them. There can be no
excuse for settling for mediocrity with so many great achievements in
your past.
Unfortunately, the fact that a few countries have allowed their kings to
still live in their palaces and still call them kings, does not make
them immune from this republican mentality, this socialist dependency
and consumerist apathy. Monarchies in which the monarchs have been
virtually taken prisoner by the ruling class often have the same
affliction and none seems worse off than the nominal Kingdom of Sweden.
The Swedes, at this rate, may well go down in history as the first
nation to actually die from political correctness. It doesn’t have to be
this way. Sweden does not have to be the way it is now. The Kingdom of
Sweden, the Christian heirs of the Vikings, once dominated northern
Europe. In fact, for a brief time, the King of Sweden dominated most of
eastern as well as northern Europe. The Swedes once had the audacity to
fight Russia and more than once the Swedes won wars against mighty
Russia. They made the Baltic Sea a Swedish lake and played a decisive
role in European, even world affairs. And what did they have to begin
with? Again, they were a country with little useful land, a small
population, few to no resources and had much more powerful neighbors
like the Germans and the Russians, yet they still proved capable of
great things. We know what Swedes can do and as long as the Swedes are
Swedes, there is no reason they cannot be great again.
I will not go on at length like this but it is all the more frustrating
because I easily could. Russia, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Germany,
Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, France, Spain and so
on. Each has a similar story in this regard. Each one has been far, far
greater than what they are now. Each one is capable of so much more than
what they have been coddled into accepting in this present year. In the
past, the liberals and even the socialists claimed that under each of
their systems, the people would be delivered from poverty and they would
then be free to pursue greater things. It was a lie. Credit capitalism
or socialism as you please, hardly any country these days is not a
combination of the two, the result of freedom from poverty has not been
the freedom to pursue greatness but a dull, sullen, sickeningly
contented apathy. Which is not to say that there are none who struggle
in our modern world, far from it, but generally speaking more people
today live on some sort of government assistance than at any time
previously and as long as they have their bread and circuses, their
government cheese and their cable TV, their only concern is not losing
that rather than trying to gain something more.
This is not surprising given who is in control of what people are
taught, what they see and hear on a daily basis. In the past, people
took great risks, tried new things, struck out into unknown seas, for
the chance of fortune and glory and to bring salvation to the heathens.
Today, however, those who did this are shamed, vilified and their
motivations have been stripped from the modern populace. The desire for
profit is terrible, we are told (though the ones doing the telling seem
to profit a great deal), very out of step with our egalitarian ideals.
To convert the heathen is likewise a monstrous notion, we are told, for
the only ones who do not defame Christianity among our current elite are
the ones who say that St Paul got it all wrong and that Christianity is
not about converting others to save their souls but accepting the
heathens as they are and not doing anything to change them or make them
feel in the least bit challenged or uncomfortable. The republican
mentality has drained the morale of people everywhere, created an
infantile society more servile than any that bowed, kneeled or kowtowed
to a prince. The republic has drained away the motivation and the
inspiration of once great peoples. Is it any wonder they are now dying
off in record numbers?
To return to the original example of the Kingdom of Italy, regular
readers may recall a post from last year in which I pointed out an
article by one Andrew Roberts of “The Telegraph” who denounced Donald
Trump as the American version of the late Duce of Fascism, Benito
Mussolini. His evidence for this boiled down to little more than the
slogan, “Make America Great Again”. This proves the point very well, I
think, about someone who truly embodies the republican mindset of today.
I am sure Mr. Roberts would detest any number of things about the
Fascist regime in Italy, such as its suppression of the socialists and
Marxists, its insistence that men be masculine and women be feminine,
its teaching of religion in schools and its encouragement of Italians to
marry and have very large families. However, what most offended Mr.
Roberts in this instance was that Mussolini wanted to ‘make Italy great
again’, he wanted top-tier status, he even wanted to rebuild the Roman
Empire. Simply the desire that your nation be great is considered a
crime to these disgusting people and I have no hesitation and absolutely
no shame in saying that, given the choice between the views of Andrew
Roberts and those of Benito Mussolini, I would take the Duce every time,
call me what you like.
When people have nothing to believe in and nothing to strive for, they
sink into apathy and slow death. We are seeing this happen right before
our eyes. It is a psychological sickness everyone must strive to
overcome and save others from. I will not be as blunt as I might about
the opinion of Robert Katz as he passed away from cancer a few years
ago. However, given that he was sued for libel by the Pacelli family for
some outrageous things he wrote about Pope Pius XII, I consider myself
in good company for being completely opposed to his point of view. Italy
has not “fared well without the monarchy” specifically because it no
longer has the “recurrent, restless dreams” of the House of Savoy. Other
than that, he is correct, “The republic has no plan to march for
glory.” but it certainly does seem to have a plan to march toward the
doom of western civilization entirely. That alone, I would think, would
be enough to make any rational person an ardent monarchist.
