Yes, it’s hard to remember now given the religious and royalist trappings, but absolutism was the progressivism of its day. Almost if not actually a revolutionary political philosophy. It even had things in common with the drives of modern ideologies:

centralize the state both geographically and with regard to the institutions at the top;
make the administration more efficient, professional, divorced from politics as represented by the courtiers and the territorial nobility;
make more efficient use of natural and economic resources for collective ends;
identify the population more closely with the government;
tame the rich [in this case the territorial nobility];
build a lot of infrastructure

And above all, do away with the old limits on policy.

Hobbes is in some ways just the radical, secularizing version of this, seeking his justification in collective ‘safety’ and a resulting social contract where more traditional absolutisms sought a more old fashioned paternalism and divine authority.

Some random thoughts on it:

-Surveying the ideologies of the 17th century and beyond, the contradictions of both sides sometimes amaze me. On one hand, one sees how, why, and a degree of possibility for kings wanting to bring nobles to heel- they had created the nobles, but also depended on them, and their creations were too strong and they wanted to broaden the political base of the throne. But the more they grind the nobles down, the more the practical and ideological pillars of the whole system fray. The same with those nobles in England or elsewhere who thought to do away with the crown. Sure, rich landed oligarchs have ruled republics before. And since. Still. If you’re lands and position are graced by titles, all given by some past king, getting rid of kings is not a good medium term strategy for your own stable rule. Sometimes it works if the kings are really foreign-looking or some such.

-Similarly with the later, somewhat derivative phenomenon of enlightened despotism. Sure, the church and monarchs were always in tension. Yes, monarchs wanted more centralized rule. Still, how can kings or emperors have seriously expected to do away with so much of their support system and still stick around themselves. I think here of Emperor Joseph II in Austria, who played with fire.

-John Derbyshire once characterized the Tudor model as “Italianate princely despotism” as compared to what the Stuarts tried to do, “French-style absolutism”. There is a lot of traditional habit in that characterization. But it has stuck with me for years as an eerily accurate way of showing similarities and differences between what Henry VIII did and what Charles I seemed to be attempting. They aren’t wholly separate, but not identical either.

-A documentary on Scottish history I once watched made the point that the Stuarts’ three ambitions- inherit the throne of England, united them into one kingdom, and impose absolutism, gelled when they first got a Tudor bride, nearly a century before fruition under James VI and I.

-In looking at the political evolution of just England, and considering the issues of state and nation-building, modernising legislation, secularizing legislation, distinction between English and supranational authorities, and development of a broader political community with increasingly representative institutions, it’s hard not to conclude that both the authoritarian aspirations of the Tudors [which made great use of and oddly empowered parliament] and the parliamentary resistance to encroachments were necessary. The Stuarts seem more of an aberration or overreach in many ways. But neither medieval monarchy nor the medieval parliamentary/oligarchic institutions were going to lead very far towards what developed in the 18th century.

Walpole is the classic figure, though he benefited from the circumstances of a monarch who was quasi-absentee and did not speak English.

If you look baack at Charles II, he explicitly and legally inherited the royal prerogatives of his father, under a legal regime that solved nothing and placed no new limits on him. he was just smart enough to recognize more pragmatic limits, and strong enough to resist and eject parliaments repeatedly in a climate in which no one had stomach for another round of war. But he pushed right to the edge. He was able to secure his brother’s succession, on the principle of unmodified hereditary right. His brother lacked subtlety. Or had too much religious conviction.

William III acceded [with wife] under the 1688 settlement which made Parliament more powerful, arguably only then codifying the results of the wars. But he expected to be and was the chief executive at least. Simon Schama once said that what the mostly Whig revolutionists needed for their new system was a chairman of the board, a role to which “Dutch William” was suited. Anne more or less carried on.

Under them, the Whig and Tory factions continued to gel. Interesting to speculate how things would have evolved if the Stuart succession from Anne continued, or if the Tory wing trying to bring back James III had succeeded at her death. Would the same system- strong parliament, landed factions, loose parties, executive king and sporadic strong ministers, have carried on? What would have been its fault lines?

As that is how the British constitution still officially worked in 1776, not for nothing that the institution of the US presidency has been compared to the monarchy as the Founders would have imagined it. Just made elective.

Walpole’s genius was to seize the moment of a new, foreign king, to de facto institutionalize the position of a chief minister, to rest its power on control of the Commons, and to do all this through effectively centralizing webs of patronage and finance ['corruption', if you like] that had been evolving for a century, under himself. And then keep it going for a generation until it was normative.

The sometimes underconsidered bit of his achievement was to notice that while the landed peers still controlled the wealth and the political system, and the House of Lords they filled was still institutionally powerful, those same lords were starting to really exercise power through the Commons, now more institutionally powerful but filled with Lords’ placemen and sons.

Anyway…

We don’t need Kings in any way, shape or form.

Things will probably get worse before they get better but I don’t believe that nothing can be done.

The Left have slowly but surely emplaced themselves in several choke points in various points in the society. From these points they funnel money and use judicial fiat proclamations to cause large changes in the society.

If we see what some of these are we can do the same ourselves and counter them. Here’s what I see as the three biggest,(in the USA).

1. Let’s not pretend that there’s NO alternative but full one Man, one vote Democracy.

We had a perfectly good system, Republican Democracy (a Republic), and it was destroyed by the courts. In fact this is a manufactured crisis. It used to be that most States had a Senate just like the Federal government that had regional representation. The Supreme Court ruled this illegal. Destroying this regional balance in the States is causing huge friction. Friction where now it’s a winner take all instead of a compromise. This can be changed by a better than 50% vote in the House and Senate to limit the Courts decision on this. The Legislature of the U.S. can TELL the Courts what they can decide on. They can not just decide on any laws what so ever if the Legislature tells them not to.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii

“…In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make…”

“…with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make…” The important part. The earlier part declares what powers they have but it ends with control of these functions by Congress. Congress could tell them to butt out of anything they wish too. All we need is a Congress with the balls to do so and we could turn the whole country around in months.

2.Another bad decision by the Courts was to declare that there could be no test for voting. This means no pole taxes or intelligence test. Think if we made you paying positive amount of taxes into the treasury a requisite for voting. We could turn the whole country around in months. Lots of major rioting and trouble but at some point this would calm down.

Of course the Republicans when they had the House, the Senate and the Presidency could have fixed both of these, stopped illegal and corrupt voting but did nothing. They could have reigned for a decade easy and pushed for laws in Whites interest.

3. The banking system is set up to loot the whole country. The best explanation for this is this post by Charles Hugh Smith. It’s worth reading because it’s short and makes it abundantly clear what the situation is.

http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-5-steps-to-world-domination.html

Change these three things and it would a massive ripple effect throughout the whole society. The first two could be done by pigheaded Conservative legislature that refused to compromise. The third could be affected by combination with the Left who hate the bankers as much as I do. It would probably be best to take on the bankers first as they are a large part of the pozz.

Some people, especially a certain subset of computer nerds, don’t seem to fully appreciate the profound historical novelty of, as you say, that Oriental import,

They said that Bin Laden bombed the Triplet Towers, and in response they invaded Afghanistan.

I don’t know who was behind the peanut farmer, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t powering himself.

Why did Clinton crush Libya?

Who was ISIS?

What happened in Russia?

Been over this ground before, but the fact that we were “blindsided” by the issues in the rear areas of Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly the IED campaign? Oh, sweet meteor of doom… Those friggin’ idjits were TOLD, by multiple people on multiple occasions in multiple ways, that such a thing was a likely outcome. Did they do anything, anything at all, to get off the “X”? F**k no.

By any objective test or standard, the vast majority of our “leadership”, civilian and military? They need to be taken out in back of the offices, shot in the head, and their blood kin sterilized so as to prevent the spread of their inferior genes in the population. Most of these people are only good at politics, kissing ass, and sucking up the perqs of their offices. Not a damn thing they’ve done over the last many generations has worked out to anyone’s benefit, but their own. They’re parasites, pure and simple.

How much better off would we be, had men like Jimmy Carter never attained high office? Just ask yourself that, and think on how many deaths that perverted bastard has on him. Hell, the number of dead Iranians alone has to be in the millions…

Look, I’m fully aware that the military has degenerated into a profoundly pathological institution, which is why I turned down a gold-plated opportunity to get on the flag-officer career track.

Why? Because I can extrapolate: you spend your youth sucking up, and then you spend your fifties sucked off, and then you retire and you think, fuck, that’s it?

Root problem here is that there isn’t anyone performing quality control or a cull of the “leaders”. We leave that to fate and circumstance. Which ain’t doing the job…

No leader is infallible. No leader is “good at everything”, yet we persist in making the war chief the guy who runs the exchequer in peacetime. Horses for courses, say I, and the fewer courses we run with them, the better.

I am suspicious of charisma, and the “natural leader”. I’ve seen that go south, way too many times, in the military. The guy who’s a natural at the job doesn’t stop to think about what he’s doing; it’s what he’s always done, all through his life. He’s been the one that whatever group coalesces around him looks to, instinctively. It’s a knack, and usually an innate and entirely unlearned skill that some people just have. They know the buttons to push, the levers to pull, and they do it. Some become conscious of their effect on others, and strive to use those things for the good of the group. Such men are rare; most take their charisma and use it to get laid and exert power over others.

You look at men like Alexander, and then you look at men like Xenophon or Cincinnatus. Which ones are remembered? The fact that Alexander’s name springs to mind, when he was the wrecker of ancient civilization is a thing we must look at and consider as a mark of our essential immaturity. We remember the charismatics like Alexander or Leonidas for their glory, while forgetting the mindless destruction or outright slavery they fought for–And, men like Epaminondas who fought the good fight against tyranny remain footnotes.

One of these days, we’ll grow up. And, in that growing up, we’ll leave this bullsh*t behind, becoming responsible actors in our own right, choosing leaders for their skills, and not deifying them as living gods. Which is a tendency we have today–You would not believe the BS that flag-rank officer under the US military system gets, in terms of sycophancy and kowtow. It’s no wonder they become egotistical freaks–The system is set up to make them that way.

That said, it’s profoundly unnatural and probably unprecedented to have a leadership class composed entirely of septuagenarians. I made the mistake of watching a few minutes of the Alphabet Media, and one of the bobble heads actually called Elizabeth Warren, 70, youthful!

The time has come to implement FROG: Forcefully Retire Old Grannies.

Doesn’t really matter about the means used to select them; it all ends in the same sh*thole. Leaders as we’ve conceived them are generally horrible at the jobs we set them. Look at Alexander, for an example: D’ya think that the Macedonians were really all that set on being spear-fodder across Central Asia? Do you think that the guys who weren’t his glorious generals felt a little screwed, when it was all over? What did your typical Macedonian trooper get out of all that? Was it worth having Alexander live in the Persian palaces, and putting a Greek general in charge from India to Egypt?

Final analysis comes, and for the average person in Macedonia, what the hell did all that accomplish? Same with all the rest of the “great leaders”: What real good did Napoleon do for the French? Aside from killing off an entire generation of French men, that is…

No, I think the entire construct of “leader” which we have is fundamentally flawed. Leaders are necessary things, but the flaw with our thinking is that we believe that a guy who is an excellent leader in some aspect of things is automatically a holder of an all-encompassing “leadership virtue” quality, and that is simply not the case. The static nature of how we arrange these things is, quite frankly, insanely inflexible. Say, Bob works his way up the ladder, and proves himself an able leader at some aspect of the mission. Generally, the way we arrange things, that means that Bob has a permanent place in the leadership chain, even though conditions may have changed. If Bob is a flexible and forward-thinking person, he may do well as conditions change for the organization–But, if he does not, the system does not recognize that fact or relieve him of his authority. Which keeps him there in the hierarchy as a permanent piece of gummed-up machinery.

The inflexibility and static nature of how we do these things is where the problems really lie. Historical examples abound, at the macro-level. How many of the “Great Captains” we think of, who crashed and burned, really should have been called on their BS and removed, making room for men who had a better idea of how to proceed? Rommel is a guy who I think of, who should have never been given the level of authority he was given at the end–He simply did not have the knack for it. Peter Principle, and all of that.

It’s not that the idea of a “leader” is a bad thing; it’s that the way we implement it is too damn all-encompassing. Nobody is good at everything, but we have this idea that a leader is necessarily going to be the right person to manage things in all situations. That simply isn’t so.

Heredity guarantees us inbred, sheltered morons on the throne. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a regency.

Bloodshed guarantees us tough and smart rulers who may or may not have our best interests at heart. It also guarantees us plenty of freshly minted widows and orphans.

I’m with Kirk: keep government small and we won’t have to worry so much about how to select our leaders, because our leaders won’t matter so much.