democracy is a huge circlejerk

[Potjeh]

Besides, what did Jesus say that hasn't already been said by Zoroaster?

[xdragonlord18]

How can we at all speak of objective morality without Christ?

Sense of justice is an innate instinct, you don't need any religion for it. Heck, there's experiments showing that capuchin monkeys have a notion of justice. Are they Christian?

Yeah, the absence of lies on the list of the mortal sins of Christianity calls into question the whole concept. And the eternal question: if there is no god, then whose slaves are we? :\

The only lie told by Christianity is that the bible is historical fact. God is whatever is most important to you, not some person floating in the sky. We are indeed slaves to the things we value most.

[Ysh]

This is very interest thread! I have take some time to ponder these postings.

Monarchy selects unwilling rulers. Democracy only those most lusting for power.

This is true flaw of voluntary leadership I think. As saying is going, ''with great power includes great responsibility.'' To a responsible man, which I think is trait possessed by ideal ruler, to gain this additional power will be great burden to him. If he must consider how his actions will affect all men, this maybe spreads him too thin, and he is unable to care for himself and his family. Similarly, he paints himself a target for any other men seeking this power, again at risk for himself and his family. The men most interested in this position are the men who downplay or disregard this drawback and seek only power. Surely this is no good!

On other hand, I am not sure unwilling is what we will want either. Really, we wish to select for good rulers, not unwilling rulers. I am not convinced that unwilling can be proxy trait for good. If, for example, all currently elected positions in my country were instead selected from the population at random, would this be improved state? My intuition tells me that answer here is no, but perhaps my intuition is incorrect. I suspect winning political office becomes lottery of dollars, as these men sell their new power to the same types that are currently running for office anyway. Except now I have even less power to stop them, since I have no vector to attempt to prevent these types from entering office (i.e. voting).

Nearly all traditional societies were Monarchies. Monarchy is the universal heritage of mankind, the indicated form of government, and the completely dominant form of societal organization up until the very recent revolutionary era around the time of the great war.

A thing with long history of tradition is thing that works well enough, otherwise it will have been usurped long ago. Of course, if this is thing you will believe, then you must admit that it is legitimate for a worse thing to become usurpted by a better thing. From my understanding, there is no direct evidence that black holes exist, because they are unable to be observed by definition. Only way we can imagine these things existing is how they will affect the areas around where they allegedly exist. I see tradition as being in similar situation. It is a thing that suggests the idea might be good, but it is not evidence for it per se.

The greatest power of man is to construct ideals and strive to meet them. This is how we are able to improve at all. Surely we must not disregard this power entirely by strict adherence to tradition. Of course, this do not mean that tradition or arbitrary or useless, just as a scaffold is not useless for the construction of a building.

Monarchy is the natural form of government that people spontaneously adopt in political vaccuums. It is an extension of simple familial principles into the political domain. Monarchy is pre-, and thus a-, -political.

In a way, I do not disagree with this one, though I think it is in different way than you intend. As you say, monarchy is how smallest segments of population will be operated. You take this to be family, some other men will take this to be the individual, but I think distinction is not relevant. I do not know of any man who governs himself as democracy. I know I will not do it. I make my decisions with absolute authority, though perhaps I will ask for advise from my council (i.e. my innermost social circles). The only restrictions to these decisions are natural law (i.e. the law of God).

In this sense, every man or household is its own kingdom. The ''government'' as word is commonly used today is really metagovernment laid atop of these kingdoms. A federation of these kingdoms. When framed in this way, I find many of your other points compelling. I.e. I would consider that monarchy is the ''true and good form of government'' for governing my own live and actions. To allow my own self or family to be subjugated by a foreign ruler is not a rational thing for me to do, I think. This is what would happen if I were to ''expand the kingdom'' to having a single kingdom cover many population units, as opposed to current system of one kingdom per unit.

A multitude of rulers is a bad thing, and an impossibility. A car does not benefit from having more than one driver (nor do they actually have more than one).

I am not sure how to interpret this one. If two men will decide on policy, and they will only sign off on policies that they both support completely, is this not a multitude of rulers? Will you suggest this is instead some abstract single ruler which is intersection of all participating rulers?

I am not sure about this analogy either. Although car does have single driver, not all vehicle does. E.g. ships and planes have multiple members of crew that will work together to operate the vehicle. Maybe you make some argument that only one man ever ''turns the wheel'' or some thing like this, but this seems like semantic argument. The fact remains that to operate these vehicles is complex job that one man cannot do alone. Perhaps operating affairs in area of land containing hundreds of millions of people is also complex job.

Monarchy is private government. Monarchs have ownership stakes in their countries, whereas democratic oligarchs are mere tenants of power, with correspondingly short horizons of interest.

Tragedy of the commons is real thing. Though, I have seen how some other men treat some things of which they do have private ownership. I do not like to include myself within this treatment. Interests of this man running the country have no guarantee to align with my own interests. Concept of ''good for the country'' is maybe not aligned with ''good for me and mine.'' Furthermore, this may imply some ownership relationship between citizens and king. Ownership of another man is illegitimate.

Democracy is the political form of capitalism. Since no such thing as "the will of the people" exists, the functioning principle of authority in democracies tends toward plutocracy, the rule of moneyed interests. Nowhere is this more evident in the United States.

This seem like legitimate criticism of democracy, though it do not imply that better system is monarchy.

Monarchy is in accord with the cosmic principle, reflecting in the social sphere the hierarchical organization of the divine.

I agree that hierarchy is all of desirable, natural, and inevitable. This do not imply that entities in hierarchy must have absolute power over lower entities. In fact, it would be impossible for this to be true. If a man has absolute power over another, then how must the ruled man behave if his ruler commands him to betray the laws of God? Surely, the ruled man must be beholden to God above other men. He will then act contrary to the will of his ruler, thereby establishing that this ruler does not have absolute power at all. This is why a man's ownership of another man is illegitimate -- it simply cannot be done.

If it is the case that these hierarchies do not imply ownership or absolute power over lower entities within the hierarchy, then I think all other government systems are also in accord with this cosmic principle. This would include democracy, which obviously will include some hierarchy (e.g. local, state, federal in United States America), just without absolute power.

Democracy -- in its modern, illuminist and masonic sense -- is founded on the principles of revolution and nihilism.

I am not sure these principles are intrinsic to democracy. Men can make good decisions for bad reasons and vice versa. To ignore this greatly increases risk of false positive and false negative when deciding what is good and true.

Additionally, I am not sure notion of revolution nor nihilism is intrinsically bad thing. Though, I will admit that the men who seem to champion these notions are generally not men I seek to emulate.

Under Monarchy, people recognize the distinction between themselves and the state. Democracy pretends that the distinction does not exist.

A failing of the men moreso than a failing of the system. In any system the ruler and ruled is a bit nebulous. Even in monarchy, the king can declare some man a noble or some peasant could somehow marry up into a noble or royal family given enough generations. Perhaps you can draw some comfort from knowing that of the men I will know and associate with, I think none are under illusion that there is no distinction between state and themselves.

There have been bad monarchs -- mankind is fallen, and prone to sin, and no form of government changes that

I think some can try to mitigate it. For the same reason that space rocket ship will have multiple redundant computer systems, it can be possible to mitigate these bad decisions by introducing more decision makers. Naturally, this has its own set of problems, which is this topic of discussion. I think to treat all forms of governing as having equal vulnerability to the fallibility of man is disingenuous.

-- but there have also been kings listed in the lives of the saints.
No democratic politician was ever a saint.

This statement has double meaning. Do you take saint to mean literal saint, or do you use word saint as proxy for ''good man?'' In either case, I think sainthood is not proper proxy for deciding goodness of a man. Who will decide who is a saint? Ultimately, it is man. Man is fallible.

[Potjeh]

The vast majority of saints are martyrs, i.e., people who have suffered and been persecuted for their Christianity. Persecution of Christianity is the historical norm, whether in pagan Rome, the Mohammedan world, or Bolshevik Russia, (John 15:18-25).

But the Bolsheviks (and later the communists during WW2) also suffered and were persecuted for their faith, persistence, and conviction. So they are saints too?

These people also died for their beliefs.

[2d0x]

The vast majority of saints are martyrs, i.e., people who have suffered and been persecuted for their Christianity. Persecution of Christianity is the historical norm, whether in pagan Rome, the Mohammedan world, or Bolshevik Russia, (John 15:18-25).

But the Bolsheviks (and later the communists during WW2) also suffered and were persecuted for their faith, persistence, and conviction. So they are saints too?

These people also died for their beliefs.

Or like this. Death is agonizing. Life... but we know little about the lives of the first Christians (quite possibly many of them deserved to die). And we know little about many canonized "saints". And what we know is not always beautiful. So "saintliness" is not an argument.

[Granger]

Saying that a dictatorship is better than a democracy makes me sick. Today in my country it's been 43 years since the last dictatorship where they actually kidnapped and murdered people just because they thought different than them. Democracy may not be perfect, just like any other political system, but it's way better than a dictatorship for sure.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE for the problems we have with what we call democracy.

[MagicManICT]

Nice vid, Granger. "congress as a skinner box".

[mvgulik]

I can't say I see the ratio of meaningless soapbox talk versus meaningful arguments raising itself above 1.0.
No surprise there.

... 0.7244 on Sagan's Kardashev scale (2012) seems also way to favourable to me by a long shot.

Lets see:

Democracy has many flavours. And using that term without being specific about the flavour ... is generally highly meaningless and ambiguous.

Without being specific you might as well be talking about the Tyranny of the majority variant. Which is a democratic flavour that still counts as a completely valid democracy (generally the last democratic flavour before turning into something else). (I'm sure you can come up with some counties that currently fit, or that are in the process of implementing, that particular flavour)

If you have something else in mind, like perhaps "Trias Politica".
Take note that that's not something indicative to a democracy. ... That its something that generally only can survive in a democracy, depending on the subject at hand of course, is otherwise kinda irrelevant.

Wondering why democracy, in general, is having such a hard time.
Well maybe The impossible trinity (also known as the trilemma) might have something to do with it.

Needles to say that the social and historical education level of the majority is probably also playing a big part.

But than again, who has now a days the time to actually spent on stuff like that. As there are way more important priorities in this world, like pursuing endless economical growth and personal gain (money/property/power/etc wise).

If you don't think you need to care about the rest(minorities) (for whatever reason == Personal Excuse), the rest(majorety) don't need to care about you either ... in which case, to be save, you better not stand out in the crowd. (Just to be clear, this applies to both local/personal and global/country levels.)


... Ever heard of The Great Filter. Well, if your young enough you 'might' experience one in the future. But heee, don't worry, the present if way more important ...
... ? Cause and Effect ? That just for Physics, not for real life ...


... Now lets see what that video is all about ...
(have fun)