Resistance is Feudal

Hat tip Billy

Guest Post by 

It’s apparent to all discerning observers that the present state of affairs in the United States, as well as other Western nations, will not be able to continue for much longer.  As our “leaders” continue to grow more and more out of touch and disconnected from increasingly large majorities within their respective citizenries, the prospect of collapse, or at least some pretty severe dislocations, in Western societies grows increasingly likely.  Honestly, if the American and other Western governments stay on the path they are currently on, I don’t see how they can avoid facing severe fourth generation warfare (4GW) challenges from their own people, much less from the various foreign elements which they are busy importing.  Western governments are busy delegitimizing themselves in the eyes of the core elements which make up the backbones of their nations, and they won’t be able to stand a full-on loss of legitimacy for very long.

The question which naturally arises is, “What will replace these governments once they fall?”

Many observers fear that the current “democratic” governments (which are essentially transitional in nature) will be replaced by heavy handed totalitarian regimes.  This may be a defensible notion for many of the Western European nations which have largely been successful in disarming their own citizens.  For the United States, I find this less likely to be the case, though the last grasping elements of the current politico-financial cabal may attempt to go that route.  However, and in spite all of the various federal police forces and any help from UN “peacekeepers”, it is doubtful that FedGov would have the personnel resources to sustain the sort of attrition it would face for very long.  This is doubly so considering that it is not altogether assured that the remaining non-homosexualized, non-transgenderified, non-mercenaried portion of the US military would go along with FedGov attempts to establish a totalitarian state, especially if it means suppressing their fathers, brothers, and cousins back home in flyover country.  Besides, forcing grown men to parade around in ruby red high heels so as to satisfy the revenge fantasies of fat lesbian desk generals is not the best way to assure their loyalty to you when you find yourself in the lurch.

So it’s not likely that a breakdown of federal legitimacy and power in the US will lead to a successful imposition of the total state by force.

However, we should also understand that those folks out there who think that such a collapse would inevitably lead to a “reset” back to the constitutional republic of Ted Cruz’s fantasies are labouring under a strong delusion.  Collapse and dislocation won’t lead to a restoration of the pure constitutional republic of yore as founded in 1789.  It’s increasingly apparent that it shouldn’t either.

While embodying many good ideas and serving as a worthwhile effort at self-government, the fact is that the Constitution suffers from some severe ideological defects that made its eventual negation practically inevitable.  Though designed as an instrument for dividing power and restraining government, its “Enlightenment” origins meant that it would rest on a foundation which was inimical to these goals.  The philosophical background from which the Constitution arose was one that assumed two essentially unproven and unprovable hypotheses: the inherent goodness of man and the primacy of reason in man’s intuitions.  These fundamental bases always placed pure devotion to the Constitution in a somewhat precarious state vis-á-vis the concurrent claims to the Christian origins and foundation of the United States.  These two currents – the Christian element arising from the Puritan foundation of New England followed by the spreading of evangelical, “enthusiastic” Christianity throughout the eastern seaboard by the Great Awakenings on one hand, and the Enlightenment, essentially rationalistic and deistic ideas underlying many of the assumptions made in the Constitution on the other hand – have always stood apart, even though many Americans have refused to recognize this and have tried to tie the two together intimately.

The problem with the Constitution, from a purely organizational standpoint, is that it lends itself far too easily to democratization.  This democratization is a function of the inherent assumption that the people, from whom all power derives, according to Enlightenment theory, will act both nobly and reasonably.  Yet, as American history has shown time and time again, neither of these have ever truly been substantiated.  Indeed, American constitutional history since 1865 has been a tale of the steady march of democracy, with the attendant ability of the people to vote themselves largesse from the public treasury despite the detrimental financial, moral, and social effects this will always have.

Democracy is an inherently unworkable system of government.  Many historians and political scientists make a fetish out of democracy, and laud the original Athenian democracy as an undiluted good in world history.  This ignores, however, the serious issues which the Athenians’ contemporaries had with the democratic system of that polis and others like it; dissent which cannot merely be chalked up to envy or a lust for tyranny on the part of Athens’ enemies.  Indeed, democracy’s classical critics tended to oppose that system of government specifically because it was dangerous and prone to abuse, instability, and unpredictable swings in behavior caused by the momentary passions of the ochloi, the masses.  Let us not forget that it was the vaunted Athenian democracy which waged wars of aggression against its neighbors (including other democratic states like Syracuse), which murdered and enslaved nearly the entire population of Melos for refusing to pay a relatively small sum in tribute, and who eventually put to death Socrates, the father of classical-era philosophy, in a fit of childish pique from the masses.

Classical writers both Greek and Roman tended to divide the various types of government into three overall types of systems: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.  Depending on the particular writer, these types could be further subdivided in variants and mixed-mode systems.  The intervening centuries have brought little substantial innovation to this system of classification, so it is the one I will use going forward.

Back to our question at hand – what is likely to happen should the United States collapse – we can see that democracy will most likely cease to be a going concern.  Indeed, democracy is largely what created the problems that have led us to the point that we’re at.  So the choice will be between one of the two other forms – monarchy or aristocracy.

The important thing to keep in mind is that you can’t have strong forms of both of these existing in a polity at the same time.  It has long been noted that the enemy of monarchy is a strong aristocracy.  After all, the king cannot exercise plenary authority when a bunch of little kings are running around dispensing justice and maintaining private armies within their own domains.  Either aristocrats are strong and the monarchy is weak (perhaps an elective or constitutionally limited form), or the monarch is strong and aristocrats are reduced to being courtiers, to ornaments at the king’s court.  The most typical examples of this would be the gradual reduction of aristocratic independence in European states such as France and Spain which was necessary before absolute monarchies could exist.

It necessarily follows from this that aristocracy is what we can consider to be the “traditional” form of government, while strong, centralised monarchy is the innovation.

Even in ancient Greece, one of the first things that tyrants did when they usurped control over a polis was to drive out or otherwise destroy the prominent aristocratic families in the city.  There is always the example of Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, who sent his servant to Miletus to find out the formula for success from that city’s tyrant, Thrasybulos.  As Thrasybulos and the servant walked through a field of wheat, the tyrant said nothing, but would reach out and snap off the heads of wheat which stood out above the rest of the plants.  The servant soon got the point – to be a successful monarchical ruler, you needed to cut down anybody else who stood out above the masses of the common people.

Now, many neoreactionaries support a return to a monarchy.  I would tend to disagree with them, instead favoring a return to some form of oligarchic republicanism, which I believe provides the best mix of a rule of law system and the division of power among several competing members who balance out each other’s ambitions.  What I would have in mind would be a division of power similar to the old pre-reform Roman republic, or perhaps what was seen in the Dutch or Venetian republics – a small group of oligarchs whose interests are bound up with the success of the nation and the common people as a whole (unlike today’s “aristocracy” in the West, whose interests are largely inimical to the people constituting the nations in which they exist).  In such a system, these oligarchs guide the ship of state in such a way that the nation prospers, which necessarily placates the common people, without hazarding the nation to the vicissitudes of democracy.  The state is subject neither to the whims of one unaccountable man, nor to the whims of millions of morons who are just smart enough to figure out which circle to push the pin through so as to vote themselves more welfare and other largesse.

All of this is important because whenever an empire (such as, say, the United States of America) falls apart, it almost always devolves into a patchwork of statelets which originated because of the efforts of local notables to restore order and to regain a measure of the legitimacy formerly enjoyed by the now-defunct empire.  This pretty much means that an aristocratic system will arise.

History records numerous cases of this, only a few of which follow:

  • The collapse of major Egyptian dynasties would often lead to the restoration of independence to the various nomes up and down the Nile, which would have to then be reconquered before a new strong dynasty could be established.
  • The fall of various Mesopotamian empires would result in a new city becoming the centre of power, while the peripheral areas would fall away and regain independence, again requiring reconquest if a new empire was to be built.
  • When Alexander died, not only were large parts of his empire divided among the Diadochi, but many portions regained independence under native rulers or as free city-states with their own aristocratic rulers.
  • The fall of the Western Roman Empire saw statelets formed by various Germanic chieftains who occupied formerly Roman land, some of which eventually became the states of early medieval Western Europe.  Notably, many native Roman notables also seized the opportunity to establish their own domains, especially in Brittany and wherever the Bagaudae were strong.
  • The fall of major Chinese dynasties would result in the rise of smaller, petty warring states vying for supremacy.  Confucius lived in one such time, during the fall of the decrepit Zhou dynasty and the reassertion of the various Chinese dukedoms.

So how does this apply to our current situation once America (and perhaps the rest of the West) collapses?

The first thing we need to understand is that, within the successor states to the United States, we will not likely see monarchy arise.  Instead, we’ll see the country break up into component regions of various size and stability (some perhaps comprising multiples of the current states), under local aristocratic control.  In Red areas, some pre-collapse legitimacy will remain because these states and localities were more successfully and legitimately governed.  However, in most Blue areas, the trend toward their becoming complete basket cases – already quite evident – will continue and will contribute to their complete collapse and reorganisation, barring any outside interference.

Culture is enduring and America’s culture is and always has been republican. As a result, it is likely that following an initial bout of local strongmanship in the less successful areas which will be put down by the better organised successors, the aristocracies that arise will not take the form of quasi-kings exercising absolute rule over smallish statelets.  Rather, the aristocracies that arise will likely be highly-restrictive republican oligarchies, with the franchise being restricted to white males who meet some sort of stringent property qualification.  Our culture will not allow for absolute rulers to exist for long; hopefully it will also not allow for the foolishness of democracy to replant itself either.

While there will be many who want to restore the old constitutional forms, in the event of a collapse, it will likely be very apparent to most of the survivors that the US Constitution of 1789 cannot be reinstated, at least not without heavy redaction.  For instance, unlimited religious liberty, with its penchant for being used to defend those who abuse its protections so as to destroy us, will be one of the first things on the block.  In its place, we’ll see Christianity –  probably without preference for a specific denomination – become the de facto state religion, with tolerance being extended to minority religions who don’t actively seek to kill us.  The judicial branch – long the font of injustice and arbitrary political gamesmanship at the behest of the SJWs and other left-wing groups – will likely also find itself so thoroughly reformed that it would no longer be recognisable as the Article III institution of the old Constitution.

Obviously, I am not claiming to be a prophet, to see the future before it happens.  What I’ve written here are merely speculations, ones which I readily admit are tinctured with my own personal preferences of what I think ought to be (but which, as a result, I do think would be the most likely).  One thing that I do think is pretty clear is that the current course of the West cannot hold forever, and that when it does fall apart, the product will not be the neoliberal “end of history,” it will not be more democracy and secularism and equalitarianism and all the rest.  Rather, the future will be less democratic and more authoritarian.  And this will perhaps correct many of the errors into which the West allowed itself to be led these recent decades.

 

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cynic
cynic

A good article. Thank you. Years ago I saw a similar article by someone who had worked out that if the USA had retained it’s original franchise, limited to tax paying, property owning white men in good moral standing in their communities, the Democrats would only dominate a couple of small states.

bb

The problem is the constitution was written by Anglo Saxons Protestants for Anglo Saxons. It was written for a moral and religious people. It was Not written for Africans , Muslims , Mexicans ,Homosexuals or Leftists progressive ideologues like Hillary Clinton.
It was written for people of European heritage. No one else. Period.

Gay Veteran
Gay Veteran

“…It was Not written for…Homosexuals….”

it wasn’t written for morons like you

Billy
Billy

Thought I recognized you from somewhere…

Remember this?

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And this?

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Now, if you will excuse me. I have some important business to take care of.

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I feel better now…

Anyone got some water? And a breath mint? Maybe some eye bleach?

Filomeno Reyes
Filomeno Reyes

There is a book still available that is titled something like – what the Indians of the Americas gave the world. I was intrigued by a veritable plethora of new foodstuffs you take for granted now, that were not known in the old world before 1492.

The native Americans themselves inspired a romantic view of individual freedom in the old world.

It is said that the native American confederacy of the Iroquois inspired large portions of the constitution you tout as entirely white; written by whites for whites and only whites.

The US constitution became a blueprint for subsequent democratic movements in countries around the world. To paraphrase Walt Disney – to think it all started with an Indian.

There are at least 16 nationalist morons who are being led by the light of a very dim bulb.

Gryffyn
Gryffyn

F R, I think the book you mention is titled “Indian Givers” by Jack Weatherford.

cynic
cynic

Regarding your title, it may be remembered that feudal law strongly emphasised reciprocal obligations and loyalty between higher and lower. That has been lost. Maybe in the postulated future there might be some sort of nominal but respected higher authority, functioning more as an Emperor than a monarch, to award fiefs, adjudicate disputes amongst the local elites, and act as a focus of loyalty reaching beyond the small scale local domain.

JIMSKI
JIMSKI

If you focus just on representative republics and not dynasty/monarchy you will find that the breakup is always replaced with a strong dictator.

Always.
We will not be different.

Unreligious
Unreligious

In the post-apocalypse there will be government one way or another. The author of this essay has a big brain and I admire the well thought out approach, including the appeals to history regarding the fracturing of kingdoms. I would actually agree with the author, if (and only if) our current 4th Turning was happening in a technological void. Unfortunately, we live during the Age of the Technocrats.

Plato claimed good government occurred only when leaders had wisdom and virtue but any absence of these qualities welcomes hell on earth. The philosopher John Locke claimed human reason and wisdom arrives only via Biblical Distributions from God in the form of fundamental human rights and Law. Furthermore, Locke claimed mankind has the right to acquire property and this allows him to survive. Therefore, this requires Law and without it there can be no Freedom. Thomas Hobbes, in part, somewhat agreed with both Plato and Locke except he seemed to favor a benevolent monarchy in lieu of a tyrannical empire.

The conservative thinker Russell Kirk once claimed the dividing lines are not right or left, per se, but rather as follows:

“No, on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal.”

And therein lies the rub.

During the post apocalypse there will be no age of enlightenment. The main concerns will be survival and temporal affairs. It will be no different for leaders of any tribe. What will separate this 4th Turning from those in history, I believe, will be a sort of “technological continuity” that will remain in place even as sovereign governments disintegrate.

There will be law and it will be enforced in brutal ways through the use of technology. The iron fist will rule from afar with eyes that see with extraordinary surveillance capabilities and will dispatch drones to dispel any notions of defiance. The new rules will also apply to any tribal chieftains aspiring to a career in middle management.

So, there may be an aristocracy after all? Even some crazy Christians believe there will be ten kings, and ten kingdoms, eventually. And, in that day, both rich and poor may have to kneel before some lunatic with a credit card reader in his back pocket.

I guess we’ll just have to see about that.

Billy
Billy

I bird-dogged this for Jim.

I agree with most – if not all – of what the author posits.

But, my personal feelings on the matter are that all of humanity can be summed up thus: Humanity is made up of two groups. The first group just wants to be left the hell alone to earn a living, provide for their families, etc. The second group is made up of court hangers-on who spend their time trying to figure out ways into the Treasury. Because stealing is easier than working.

Eventually, the first group gets sick of the second group’s shit, and there is a reckoning – the severity dependent upon how desperate the second group is to hang onto their cushy jobs of being better than everyone else (and their heads as well).

Things shake out and for a time, things aren’t so bad… but a new second group will take over, sooner or later…

Lather, rinse, repeat…

Same as it ever was.

Homer
Homer

Wow! some great comments.

People believe so strongly in government that to conceive of a life without it is unthinkable. Just look at the blog and the comments.

Is it inconceivable to think that the future holds an entirely different concept? Perhaps, governments will become so destructive to human life that man will choose it no more. One wouldn’t be amiss to say that this age is truly the age of governments and that governments have been more abusive of the people they control than anytime in history. Perhaps, there won’t be that many people who will survive megalithic governments warring against each other. We may just get to the 500,000 inhabitant that are the goal of the elites.

Then again, there have been periods in history where a new idea blossoms and becomes contagious and changes the belief structures of the population with new growth and new possibilities. It happens in spurts and it is called a paradigm change, think Renaissance. I think this is where we are going and as Elmer Gantry said, “When we are no longer a child, we put away childish things.” I think we are going to grow up, however, painfully that will be.

And what Christopher Columbus said, “I don’t know what on the other side of the horizon, but we’re going there.” Let’s hope that it not a flat world.

mark
mark

Im thinking a mass Non Complience movement that deprives the state the revenue it needs. Coupled with mass peace protests until the entire government steps down and term limits imposed.

A reset of all types of social benefits and taxes.

Iv said it before Democrats wont like it if too many people become Democrats. The math will be unbearable to them just as any parasite needs its hoast.

Rise Up

I don’t know what form of post-apocalypse government would arise, but a union with Canada for the northern portion of America, and the southwest plus CA joining with Mexico isn’t unthinkable. Not sure about the southeast–“New Africa?”. Or perhaps the long rumored North American Union would be born (Canada-America-Mexico).

Llpoh
Llpoh

I have said frequently that a revolution without a viable alternative system will result in a worse mess than already exists. Please see the Arab Spring for recent example of this.

Homer
Homer

Llpoh–You’re right! You can tell your wife that someone thinks you’re right for once. hahahaha

Yes, there has to be a vision. That’s what’s going to bring people to a new paradigm.

I know it’s not going to be the NWO as envisioned by Bush 1 or Soros. They’re part of the old system of top down control. Not even God does top down control, it call free will. Despite the Evangelical beliefs that we’re all going to hell and in a handbasket no less. Not the way I see things.

Visionary leaders will come forth as the need arises. Llpoh you may not realize it, but you are being a leader by commenting on this blog. So you should feel pretty good about that.

KaD
KaD
Llpoh
Llpoh

Homer – thanks. Me, a leader? I am too cranky to lead, and too stubborn to follow. I don’t know where I am going most the time. And when I do, it is usually for a beer. Hmmm. Maybe I should start a beer cult.

Homer
Homer

Leading with ideas is the place to start. I think we would be startled to realize how much we impact others and influence others by our actions.

We are all connected at a Super Conscious level. We seek from others what we need to grow and we give to others as others have given to us.

You do not decide to be a leader. You are called to be a leader. It’s a great responsibility.

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