was rebellion against her rightful monarch, obviously!
Owning slaves, by contrast, is not intrinsically immoral.
Most nations have sinful beginnings, truth be told, but these don’t cast the same “original” shadow over the future if they are repented, forgotten, or overlooked. Not the sin itself, but its rationalization is what killed the soul. America embraced its rebellion and now can never stop rebelling.
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Throne and Altar 
America has never had a rightful monarch, and I don’t understand why you would think it had. At the time of independence, the English monarchy was illegitimate several times over; pretenders were definitely installed in 1688, and arguments could be made that the legitimate monarchy had already ended in 1570, 1485, 1399, 1066, and so on. Unless you would like to propose that pretense to a throne has a sort of half-life and eventually decays into legitimate rule.
“What is England’s problem? What is the West’s problem? In my jaundiced, reactionary mind, the entire problem can be summed up in two words – chronic kinglessness. The old machine is missing a part. In fact, it’s a testament to the machine’s quality that it functioned so long, and so well, without that part.” – Mencius Moldbug
> Unless you would like to propose that pretense to a throne has a sort of half-life and eventually decays into legitimate rule.
It had better.
George III? Parliament?
America’s rightful monarch was King Powhatan.
“Owning slaves, by contrast, is not intrinsically immoral.”
Really? Would you mind explaining why you think this?
Powhatan was only the ruler of a confederacy of Indian tribes. The rebellion against Charles was probably more significant than the rebellion against George iii. I would argue that the New England colonies never really accepted the restoration and the Chesapeake colonies never accepted the glorious revolution and why should they have. In England, it was a matter of conquest no matter what anyone says, and the American colonies were never conquered by the Hanoverians nor were the new Englander s ever reconquered by the Stuart’s as is demonstrated by the Dominion of New England incident.
Good point.
It is (also) a distortion of modernity that what is documented and done in public view is almost-always perceived as having diminished authority and even reality.
For example, the sins of the National Socialists were (‘Germanically’) documented and discovered/ researched by the US/ British authorities (and misrepresented as ‘right wing) – whereas the greater sins of the Soviet Socialists were never recorded, and known only indirectly via human memories and accounts – hence have seldom seemed really-real to the modern mind, and are indeed now forgotten from public awareness.
https://infogalactic.com/info/Robert_Conquest#The_Great_Terror
https://infogalactic.com/info/USSR_anti-religious_campaign_(1921%E2%80%9328) etc
Consequently, the anti-Jewish Holocaust is not just known, but compulsory and relentlessly propagandized – whereas the larger scale and more sustained anti-Christian exterminations of the USSR are essentially as if they had never been.
Because the USA arose and crystallised in a fully-documented way in modern times, hence has a very different quality to the modern mind than the innumerable similar foundations of other older and more obscure nations.
Similarly US slavery compared with the larger scale and far longer-sustained (i.e. never-ended) slavery of South America and North and Sub-Saharan Africa. (As a generalisation) the US slaves were well-enough treated that they expanded rapidly in number over the generations by reproduction – whereas in North Africa they apparently ‘all’ died without reproducing, and in South America were mostly worked to death without reproducing (requiring a sustained slave trade)
“So far as history reveals, [outside of the USA] no other slave society, whether of antiquity or modern times, has so much as sustained, much less greatly multiplied, its slave population by relying on natural increase.”
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/the-biology-of-slavery/
In the modern world, those who keep secret their evil doings, or destroy the (human) evidence, are treated as if innocent.
Might makes right. If you mentioned “the King” to anyone in the 13 colonies in 1775, everyone would have known who you were talking about. If George Washington had made himself king, all would have been well. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who wears the crown. But no, the Founders wanted a republic. Now those with power do not officially rule–power without responsibility.
Re: slavery: https://bonald.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/owning-people-a-dialogue/
Bonald,
Do you think reactionaries and traditionalists should rhetorically weaponize the history of slavery against right liberals or does it come off as too try hard? I have something like Samuel Johnson’s quip in mind- “how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”
Also, the history of slavery is useful to show the inherent instability of economic liberalism as it always results in massive numbers of slaves/laborers being imported into a territory.
> Do you think reactionaries and traditionalists should rhetorically weaponize the history of slavery
No, because slavery was also practiced in Catholic countries with the approval of the Church. (And why not? There’s nothing wrong with it.) The conversation wouldn’t get very far before the right liberal would bring this up.
Spot on!
> Unless you would like to propose that pretense to a throne has a sort of half-life and eventually decays into legitimate rule.
… Doesn’t it?
I’ve always understood authority as something arising organically from the reality of power: since Henry has power (wealth, the backing of the army, public approval, whatever), he had better exercise it rightly and well, and thus had better be obeyed when he does so and only circumspectly disobeyed when he doesn’t. Richard, in exile, might have some residual power in the sense of the backing of certain classes of nobles, but if he fails to leverage that power to reclaim what he’s lost, his claim really does decay, and Henry’s strengthens in proportion. Maybe I’m nuts though.
I don’t much about it, but presumably marriage and family among the unfree were recognized wherever the Church had power. There was definitely plenty wrong with Lockeian chattel slavery. Think the Jesuit reductions as opposed to the marrano sugar plantations.
America has never had a rightful monarch, and I don’t understand why you would think it had.
This is very, very wrong. At a bare minimum, the British American colonies were legitimately ruled by James VI of Scotland and I of England who was the monarch that brought the British Isles into the American colonization business in the first place. He reigned over the original settlement of the South (Jamestown, Virginia) and New England (Mayflower Compact). His heirs (Charles I, Charles II, and James II and VII) who oversaw the development of these colonies were also legitimate, which means there have been at least four rightful monarchs under which the British American colonies were ruled.
But you forget that there is more to America than the original British colonies. King Louis XIV of France reigned over New France and Louisiana (which was and still is named after him). His heirs were also legitimate up to and including Louis XVI (without whose aid, lest we forget, our British colonial forefathers would have never won independence). Maurice, Prince of Orange, reigned over New York and New Jersey back when the land was originally settled as New Netherland. Queen Christina of Sweden (convert to the Catholic faith, buried at St. Peter’s in Rome) reigned over New Sweden – now Delaware and parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey – upon its founding. King Philip V of Spain ordered the colonization of Texas and was certainly that land’s legitimate ruler. His son, Charles III, would go on to found California, its Catholic missions, and the city of Los Angeles. Tsar Paul I reigned over present-day Alaska upon its founding, and King Kamehmeha I unified the Hawaiian islands in 1810 and the monarchy he established lasted until the US’s disreputable overthrow and annexation of the island in the 1890s.
In fact, American soil was legitimately ruled by a rightful monarch all the way up until just a century ago. Travel back to before the sale of the Danish West Indies to the US in 1917, and what we now call the US Virgin Islands was ruled by Christian X of Denmark.
I could go on and on. While I hardly agree with Bonald that “might makes right”, it is utterly ludicrous to assert that America has never had a rightful monarch. Quite the contrary.
@donnie, fascinating. Thus it goes the ‘representative’ demo/techno-cratic system has not the pedigree to go back even just 150 years or less even.
I thought America’s original sin was enslaving and slaughtering the natives, followed by stealing their land…
donnie,
You kind of prove the point by being right, though. ‘America’ never had a rightful monarch; her constituent parts had, altogether, (at least) five.
That said, we could, I believe, rectify the disconnect tomorrow by electing as monarch the Crown Prince of Liechtenstein. I haven’t strictly traced the bloodlines myself, but I believe that would work.
(Why yes, I have read Star-Spangled Crown, and yes, I do highly recommend it.)
The continuing sin of American is worshipping the pagan goddess enshrined in New York Harbour.
To the north, and south-east, are crown realms of “British America” still under the reign of a legitimate monarch.