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This is why Curtis Yarvin irritates me so much. He's an unapologetic monarchist, but the definition of monarchy he uses doesn't describe any actual monarchy in history. In one of his articles he lists ten principles he wants, the implication being that they cannot be achieved by democracy which is why monarchy is necessary:
The health of the citizens is the supreme law
Every citizen is equally protected under the law
The law does not notice trivia
Every citizen has freedom of association
Collective grievances are socially unacceptable
Every citizen gets the same information
The government makes all its own decisions
The government is liable for crime
The government is financially simple
The government curates labor demand
I could go by these blow by blow, but one would be hard-pressed to find historical examples of monarchs who subscribed to any of these principles, let alone all of them. In the introduction to the article, he tries to differentiate monarchy from dictatorship by describing the latter as merely physically competent while the former is also spiritually competent, which brings to mind images of Platonic virtue and philosopher kings. Well, what actually kings could be described that way? Henry VIII? Louis XIV? Nero? Mohammed bin Salman? Once you have absolutist rule you have absolutist rule, period. The minute you put restrictions on a monarch's power (especially the kind of restrictions advocated for here), congratulations, you're a liberal.
Two immediately come to mind coming very, very, close if they didn't actually achieve it - Marcus Aurelius, and Pedro II of Brazil. I'm less familiar with non-Western history, but I imagine some others would qualify, perhaps Harun Al-Rashid, Ashoka (after conversion) and others.
Also, this engaging in a bit of a nirvana fallacy. A hypothetical just monarchy doesn't have to be perfect, just reasonably and practically just. Our own liberal democracies aren't perfect either (as was and is commonly proclaimed in communist propaganda)
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Does liberalism follow the "one drop rule", but monarchism doesn't? Because to preserve symmetry, one would have to be called a monarchist the moment one puts limits on the power of the masses (supreme courts, human rights, abolishment of lynching).
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