The Worst Form Save for All Others
Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
— Winston Churchill, Hansard 11 November 1947
Do not look to various schemes and systems of government, democracy, republicanism, monarchy and so on, to ameliorate the ills that spring from the evil in the hearts of men. Those ills are endemic to mankind. If the spirit of the age is filled with vice, wise laws and institutions will not make them virtuous.
Consider the several systems of government attempted in the West. Each was erected to cure a particular lapse or lawlessness that threatened the age, particularly the abuses of unlimited government, and the lack of peaceful means to transfer power when a leader grew too old or too unpopular to continue.
Sickened of the abuses of tyrants, the Athenian Democracy granted power to the people. But this democracy was feverish and unsteady, voting to slay the Melosians one day and voting to rescind the order the next; then appointing Alcibiades general of their militia one day, exiling him under death sentence, and then voting to appoint him again as general; voting to kill Socrates for the crime of Hate Speech. There was no separation of powers. There was no individual right the voters, urged on by a demagogue, were required to hold sacrosanct.
Voting in the Roman Republic was more limited, and the Senate voted from a different constituency than the popular Tribunal Assembly. After the Punic Wars, Roman Republic was torn between Optimates, who favored the senatorial families, and Populists, who demanded land reform. Civil Wars between successful families was commonplace toward the end.
Civil Wars were curtailed when the Praetorian Guard simply selected an Imperator, an Emperor, into whose hands the Senate supinely gave all magisterial authority. He selected a co-ruler, an Agustus, who would take office after him, upon the consent of the Praetorian. This system lasted in the West for nigh five hundred years, and in the East for nigh fifteen hundred.
In the East, Emperors habitually appointed their eldest son as Augustus, in effect, establishing a dynasty, and passing the power along hereditarily.
But the East was subject to intrigue, tumult, and civil war in any year where the dynasty was weak due to the fact that the Praetorians could literally elect anyone to the purple, including camel drivers ( Emperor Phillip) or barbarians (Emperor Maximin).
The Monarchies of the Middle Ages in Western Europe operating in the midst of an economic collapse, where serfs, vassals, and barons rendered services to lords and overlords rather than paid in coin. Barons and bishops formed parliaments to elect kings, or else the kingship passed like private property to his eldest heir.
Modern Americans recoil in disgust at the idea of monarchy while forgetting the point of the institution: hereditary monarchy oversees the transfer of power more peacefully than the disorders which accompany electing a leader by the army. The pool of candidates is limited to the royal family, and this limitation banishes the ambitions of officers and barons.
But, likewise, the modern Americans forget the point of Democracy. Universal suffrage is an anarchic disease of democracy: both in Athens and Rome in the scattered walled towns of the Dark Ages, the voted was limited to men bearing arms. Lance and sword would be brought to the assembly hall, and no thrall, no dependent, no landless sojourner was given a voice or a vote.
The leader elected by public acclamation could rest assured that the majority supported him. The minority faction was wise not to take up arms and fly into revolt at the election of a rival candidate, because they saw they were outnumbered. The votes count the number of men willing to fight a civil war to enforce the outcome of the ballot. But there was a unspoken but ironclad rule, without which democracy cannot long endure, that the majority will abide by the outcome when and if it is the minority.
In this decade, the Democrat Party has violated this unspoken rule blatantly and openly, defrauding the vote to win office, and organizing riots and tumults when offices are lost, or having local governors and mayors send terrorists disguised as protestors to disrupt law enforcement, and bring anarchy and arson to the streets.
My nation is in the midst of a ‘cold’ civil war. As yet, the GOP has not taken up arms, nor even enforced laws against voter fraud and insurrection. A peaceful resolution is not possible unless the Democrat Leadership is purged of radicals, and their voters suffer a strange change of heart, and begin to love the nation again.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
