Traditionalist conservatives and classical liberals need Charles Darwin. They need him because a Darwinian science of human nature supports Burkean conservatives and Lockean liberals in their realist view of human imperfectibility, and in their commitment to ordered liberty as rooted in natural desires, cultural traditions, and prudential judgments. Arnhart's email address is larnhart1@niu.edu.
Curtis Yarvin praises Sir Robert Filmer as "the baddest-ass reactionary who ever lived," and he identifies Filmer's Patriarcha as the best defense of absolutism and divine-right monarchy. Although Filmer died in 1653, Patriarcha was not published until 1680, when it was recognized as a defense of the Stuart restored monarchy against its Whig critics. John Locke's Two Treatises of Government were published in 1689 as a theoretical justification of the overthrow of King James II and the Stuart monarchy in the Revolution of 1688. Locke's First Treatise was a fervent critique of Filmer's Patriarcha. His Second Treatise laid out the political thought of Whig liberalism.
Yarvin sees 1688 as the critical turning point in history--the turn from feudal monarchy to modern liberalism. If you want to be a true reactionary, Yarvin insists, you need to be a Jacobite arguing for the restoration of the Stuart monarchy.
That's exactly what Yarvin proposes. Today, the legitimate heir to the Stuart throne of England is the 27-year-old Prince Joseph Wenzel of the Royal House of Liechtenstein. The solution to England's problems would be to put King Joseph I on the throne and allow him to rule with the absolute power once held by the Stuart monarchs. There are two ways to do this. Either persuade a majority of the English people that this is what needs to be done. Or persuade the British Army to stage a military coup to bring this about.
Yarvin indicates that the persuasive argument for doing this is simple. It's a choice between order and disorder: absolutist monarchy promotes order, while liberal democracy promotes disorder. In Great Britain, the only way to restore order is to restore the Stuart monarchy.
But to make this persuasive, wouldn't we have to offer some empirical evidence to back it up--evidence that while absolutist monarchies have generally secured social order, liberal democracies have generally inclined to social disorder? Yarvin almost never considers the empirical evidence.
The one possible exception is that at least twice in his writings, Yarvin refers briefly to some data about the crime rate in Great Britain. Obviously, one measure of order or disorder in society is the rate of crime, particularly violent crime. If Yarvin is correct, we would predict that feudal illiberal societies have low rates of violent crime, while modern liberal societies have high rates.
Here's the one short passage where Yarvin claims the empirical evidence is on his side:
"According to official statistics, between 1900 and 1992 the crime rate in Great Britain, indictable offenses per capita known to the police, increased by a favor of 46. That's not 46%. Oh, no. That's 4,600%. Many of the offenders having been imported specially, to make England brighter and more colorful. This isn't a government. It's a crime syndicate."
Unfortunately, Yarvin's internet link to his source is broken, so I can't see exactly what he's citing, but it's some kind of British government website with crime statistics.
His selection of data is a bit odd. Why does he start in 1900 and stop in 1992? It is widely known that crime rates in Western Europe and North America rose dramatically from the 1960s to the early 1990s. But then, in the mid-1990s, crime rates dropped dramatically and reached historically low levels around 2010.
Did Yarvin stop in 1992 so that he could ignore the drop in crime rates over the past three decades?
And if he wants to find data for low crime rates under the rule of premodern absolutist monarchies, shouldn't he be looking at the historical data long before 1900?
I suspect that Yarvin doesn't do this because he doesn't want his readers to see the quantitative evidence presented by many scholars (Eisner 2003, 2014; Muchembled 2012; Pinker 2011; Sharpe 2016) that from high rates of violence and homicide in the Middle Ages, there has been a long decline in modern liberal societies, which shows that liberalism promotes moral self-command, and that people in pre-modern illiberal societies suffered from a lack of self-control.
Some of this historical evidence is neatly presented in a graph by Max Rosser. As you can see, the homicide rate was about 23 per 100,000 population in 1300 (King Edward I), 4.0 in 1675 (the restored Stuart monarchy), 2.0 in 1725 (the Hanoverian monarchy with Parliamentary supremacy), and 0.5 in 2015. So the homicide rate under the Stuarts was 8 times as great as the rate today. Does this mean that the Stuart monarchy was not a government but a crime syndicate?
I have written about this evidence here, here, and here.
Manuel Eisner (2003, 2014) is a criminologist who has assembled the History of Homicide Database, which is the most comprehensive collection of quantitative estimates of homicidal levels from 1200 to the present. His data show that the average estimates of homicide rates across Europe from 1200 to about 1450 converge at a rate of about 27 per 100,000 inhabitants. This average rate then begins to decline: 20.1 (1500-1549), 12.0 (1600-1649), 5.5 (1700-1749), 3.5 (1800-1825), 2.0 (1900-1924), and 1.0 (2000-2012). Over a period of 500 years, the peacetime criminal homicide rate in Europe fell by half every century.
Eisner's data also show that most of this decline in homicide rates was due to a fall in lethal male-to-male fighting of about 99%!
Eisner provides evidence that the best explanation for this dramatic drop in homicidal violence in Europe over the past 500 years is that there was what Norbert Elias called a "civilizing process" (Elias 2000; Linklater and Mennell 2010). European societies went through a change by which average levels of self-control, standards of decency, and disgust for open displays of cruelty tended to increase, which arose from the move away from the incivility of the Middle Ages to the civility of European modernity. Locke spoke about his in his book on the education of children when he advised parents to use the "law of reputation" to teach the virtues of "civility."
So why is Yarvin silent about all of this empirical evidence that premodern illiberal societies tended to promote violent disorder? Is it because this kind of evidence would work against persuading the British people or the British Army to restore the Stuart monarchy?
REFERENCES
Eisner, Manuel. 2003. "Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime." Crime and Justice 30:83-142.
Eisner, Manuel. 2014. "From Swords to Words: Does Macro-Level Change in Self-Control Predict Long-Term Variation in Levels of Homicide?" Crime and Justice 43:65-134.
Linklater, Andrew, and Stephen Mennell. 2010. "Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations--An Overview and Assessment." History and Theory 49 (October): 384-411.
Muchembled, Robert. 2012. A History of Violence: From the End of the Middle Ages to the Present. Cambridge, MA: Polity.
Pinker, Steven. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Viking.
Sharpe, James. 2016. A Fiery and Furious People: A History of Violence in England. London: Random House Books.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.
Why did Donald Trump place these tech CEOs--some of the richest human beings in the world--in the front row immediately behind him at his inauguration, while the most prominent elected Republican leaders were forced to sit in the back row, hidden from view?
One possible answer is that this shows the influence of the MAGA intellectual Curtis Yarvin, who argues that the only escape from the obvious failures of liberal democracy is to establish an American feudal autocracy ruled by tech CEOs. A few days ago, the New York Times published an interview of Yarvin where he briefly stated some of his ideas. What he says here is vague and incoherent, but he is clear about his hope that tech CEOs will take over monarchic control of America under Trump's Caesaristic leadership.
A better exposition of Yarvin's thinking comes in his extensive internet writing over the past twenty years, which I have analyzed in a series of posts a few years ago. Here I will briefly summarize some of my main points.
I had never heard of Curtis Yarvin until I saw that the Claremont Institute was publishing some of his writing. Once I began looking at his work, I knew that something strange was happening at the Claremont Institute.
Yarvin ridicules the Declaration of Independence, scorns the American Revolution as "thuggery, treason, and hypocrisy," and takes the side of the Loyalists in their defense of King George III's monarchic rule over America. He also praises the Confederacy for fighting a war of secession to defend slavery, which he regards as "a natural human relationship." The only mistake the Confederates made, Yarvin believes, is that they did not see themselves as reactionary Cavaliers trying to restore the Stuart monarchy. Yarvin says that he likes to "flirt" with "Confederate racist fascism."
I think I know what Harry Jaffa would have said about this. Is this what the Claremont Institute now stands for?
I have said that Yarvin is intellectually stimulating because he is one of the few--maybe the only one--of the Anglo-American Far Right thinkers today willing to be truly reactionary by rooting far-right thinking in the Tory ideology of divine-right monarchy and Robert Filmer's Patriarcha in opposition to the Whig Lockean ideology of natural rights to equal liberty and government by the consent of the governed.
But still there are two big problems in his remarkably weak arguments. First, his favorite form of argumentation is begging the question: he finds a writer who agrees with him, he paraphrases or quotes from that writer, and he then he concludes: ah, you see, I must be right because this writer agrees with me! I have seen the same kind of sophistical rhetoric in the work of other critics of liberalism, such as Patrick Deneen and Rod Dreher.
The second problem with Yarvin's rhetorical style of arguing is that he does not survey the relevant empirical evidence for deciding the historical disputes that he enters. So if he wants to prove that modern liberal democracy inevitably leads to disorder, while archaic autocratic authoritarianism leads to order, he needs to present the empirical evidence for that, which he rarely does.
An example of the first problem is Yarvin's attack on the Declaration of Independence. He calls as his "first witness"--Thomas Hutchinson, a leading Loyalist. He allows Hutchinson to speak through his 1776 pamphlet Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia--a Loyalist attack on the Declaration of Independence. He calls other witnesses, but they are all Loyalists. He does this even though he says that "there is no such thing as a neutral primary source," which leads us to expect that he will introduce primary sources on both sides of the debate, but he never does.
Even in his exposition of Hutchinson's Strictures, Yarvin does not tell his readers that a dozen or more scholars studying the Declaration of Independence have critically responded to Hutchinson's pamphlet. For example, Hans Eicholz has done this in his book Harmonizing Sentiments: The Declaration of Independence and the Jeffersonian Idea of Self-Government (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), which includes a reprint of Hutchinson's whole pamphlet.
An example of the second problem with Yarvin's rhetoric--failing to survey the relevant empirical evidence--is his prediction that feudal illiberal societies will have low rates of violent crime, while modern liberal societies will have high rates. In making this argument, he is silent about the quantitative historical evidence that from high rates of violence and homicide in the Middle Ages, there has been a long decline in modern liberal societies, which shows that liberalism promotes moral self-command, and that peop0le in pre-modern illiberal societies suffered from a lack of self-control.
Another example is his claim that "slavery is a natural human relationship." He says that most slave masters have been benevolent in their treatment of their slaves. He dismisses the depiction of the brutality of slavery in Harriot Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as "propaganda." But he is silent about the factual evidence for the brutality of slavery that Stowe presented to show that her novel was not just "propaganda." She published a book--A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin: Original Facts and Documents--in which she provided extensive documentation to confirm her claim that the fictional story of her novel was an accurate depiction of what American slavery was like. Now, maybe Yarvin would want to say that her evidence is not persuasive, but he would have to argue for that, which he has not done, because he never wants the burden of responding to possible criticisms of what he says.
I draw two conclusions from all of this. Yarvin is not a serious thinker. And if Trump and his people decide to embrace his "Confederate racist fascism" ruled by tech CEO billionaires, they will destroy the liberal pluralist coalition that voted for Trump in November.
I had never heard of Curtis Yarvin until I saw that the Claremont Institute was publishing some of his writing. Once I began looking at his work, I knew that something strange was happening at the Claremont Institute.
Yarvin ridicules the Declaration of Independence, scorns the American Revolution as "thuggery, treason, and hypocrisy," and takes the side of the Loyalists in their defense of King George III's monarchic rule over America. He also praises the Confederacy for fighting a war of secession to defend slavery, which he regards as "a natural human relationship." The only mistake the Confederates made, Yarvin believes, is that they did not see themselves as reactionary Cavaliers trying to restore the Stuart monarchy.
I think I know what Harry Jaffa would have said about this. Is this what the Claremont Institute now stands for?
For many years, Yarvin was known as "Mencius Moldbug," writing for his blog "Unqualified Reservations." Although he no longer writes for that blog, it is still available online, and it is still the best place to go for his extensive writing. I will be writing a series of posts on Yarvin with references to that blog indicated by the dates of the posts.
Although his writing is often hard to understand, I find that Yarvin is the most intellectually stimulating of all the far-right commentators that I have studied, even though I am not persuaded by what he says.
What I mean by "intellectually stimulating" is that Yarvin is one of the few--maybe the only one--of the Anglo-American Far Right thinkers today willing to be truly reactionary by rooting far-right thinking in the Tory ideology of divine-right monarchy and Robert Filmer's Patriarcha in opposition to the Whig Lockean ideology of natural rights to equal liberty and government by the consent of the governed.
I see three general theories in Yarvin's work. First, there's a theory of Anglo-American political history over the past 400 years. Second, there's a theory of American political history from 1933 to the present. Third, there's a theory of what a neoreactionary political future might look like.
According to the first theory, Anglo-American political history has moved consistently for four centuries away from the healthy order of archaic feudal autocracy to the unhealthy disorder of modern liberal democracy--moving from the extreme far right to the extreme far left. This historical movement has been driven by a struggle between moderns of the left and archaics of the right, manifested in a series of wars in which the modern left has always defeated the archaic right: the English Civil War (1642-1649), the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution (1774-1782), the American Civil War (1860-1865), the First German War (1914-1918), and the Second German War (1939-1945) (see Yarvin's post for 3/5/09.)
According to the second theory, since the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, the United States has been ruled by an "Orwellian mind-control state" that Yarvin calls the "Cathedral." The purpose of the Cathedral is to "manufacture consent." In a democracy, the ultimate source of legitimacy is the consent of the people expressed as public opinion. But public opinion does not come from people thinking for themselves. The people have to be told what to think, and that's the job of the Cathedral. Unlike other mind-control states like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Communist China, the Cathedral operates as a self-organizing and synchronized system without any central coordinating executive authority--there is no Goebbels or Gestapo to run things--which makes it harder to identify and attack it.
The most powerful people in the Cathedral are the professors in the most highly ranked universities--Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, and so on. The people in the "Brain Trust" who advised FDR came from these universities. These professors are the ones who create all the new ideas about politics, economics, culture, and religion; and they pass these new ideas on to journalists at the most prestigious newspapers (such as the New York Times and the Washington Post). These new ideas are then passed on to government bureaucrats, politicians, and public educators. Over time--perhaps a generation--these new ideas seep down into the minds of the voters who then vote for those politicians who agree with these new ideas. This then becomes public policy. All of these new ideas are ever more extreme in their leftward movement. And thus over time, public opinion and public policy move from right-wing thinking to ever more left-wing thinking (1/8/09).
As an example of how this works, Yarvin points to the remarkable change in public opinion in California from 1963 to 2008. In 1963, a nearly two-thirds majority of California voters passed a referendum called Proposition 14, which amended the state constitution to add the following:
"Neither the State nor any subdivision or agency thereof shall deny, limit or abridge, directly or indirectly, the right of any person, who is willing or desires to sell, lease, or rent any part or all of his real property, to decline to sell, lease or rent such property to such person or persons as he, in his absolute discretion, chooses."
If you don't want to live with persons of color, the government cannot compel you to.
But then, 45 years later, in 2008, the voters of California by a nearly two-thirds margin voted for Barack Obama for president. What explains this remarkable change in public opinion in California about race relations? Yarvin's answer is that the left-wing idea of abolishing racial segregation and discrimination originated in the university and then was passed through the Cathedral until it become part of public opinion. One way to see this, Yarvin suggests, is to notice that the public opinion of California in 2008 was very similar to the public opinion of Stanford in 1963. That's how the Cathedral moves public opinion in a democracy to the left.
But moving ever leftward means moving away from archaic order to modern disorder, which means that eventually all modern democratic states will have to decay and dissolve. Then what? Well, Yarvin assumes, the world will have to move to the right--to the sort of authoritarian governance that can enforce order. How could that happen?
Yarvin's answer is his third theory--a theory of how a new feudal authoritarian governance could emerge in the future. This will not be a simple return to the feudal monarchy of the past. This will be something new. But it will resemble the feudal monarchy in some ways.
Yarvin speculates that the most likely possibility is the emergence of hundreds or even thousands of sovereign joint-stock corporations, which each one claiming ownership of a small patch of land--a city or a small region of territory--each sovereign and independent (11/13/08).
The corporation would be owned and controlled by its shareholders, who would select a chief executive officer with monarchic power to make all decisions final, although perhaps consulting with a board of directors.
This joint-stock corporation would want to maximize corporate efficiency and profitability. The residents of the territory would sign customer service contracts specifying the services the corporation would provide, primarily security. If they become unsatisfied, the residents can leave and look for a more attractive sovereign corporation somewhere else.
This proposal might explain why the high-tech multibillionaire Peter Thiel has been a close friend and supporter of Yarvin. Would Thiel like to become CEO of one of these sovereign corporations?
I want to write some more posts on Yarvin. And I will concentrate on what I see as the two biggest problems with his arguments. The first problem is confirmation bias. Yarvin supports his theories of history by going to "primary sources"--material written by people who lived during the historical period Yarvin is studying--and then drawing out conclusions from these sources. His selection and reading of these sources is biased, however, in that he tends to pick sources that he agrees with, and largely ignores sources that he disagrees with. If it is true, as he admits, that no primary source about a historically contested issue can be neutral, then he needs to bring opposing sources into debate and then show how one side of the debate really is stronger than the other. He almost never does that.
The second problem with Yarvin's rhetorical style of arguing is that he does not survey the relevant empirical evidence for deciding the historical disputes that he enters. So if he wants to prove that modern liberal democracy inevitably leads to disorder, while archaic autocratic authoritarianism leads to order, he needs to present the empirical evidence for that, which he rarely does.
I expect to concentrate on the debates over the Declaration of Independence, slavery, the American Civil War, and the disputes over divine right monarchy in 17th century England.
Curtis Yarvin's deceptive history of the American Civil War is part of his neoreactionary history of what he calls the Three Modern Wars. As an illustration of his deception, I will concentrate on his explanation of the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter, which initiated the Civil War.
Yarvin identifies the Three Modern Wars as the War of Secession (the American Civil War), the First German War (World War I), and the Second German War (World War II).
Yarvin claims that these three wars share five common features.
"Feature A: In each Modern War, we see an archaic side (anti-democratic, right-wing, reactionary, etc.) and a modern side (democratic, left-wing, revolutionary, etc.). It is easy to see which is which: the Confederacy, Wilhelmine Germany, and Nazi Germany are archaic."
"Feature B: In each Modern War, the archaic side initiated military activity by attacking the modern forces. The Confederates shelled Fort Sumter, the Kaiser invaded Belgium, Hitler invaded Poland, and the Japanese bombed Hawaii, etc. This might of course be a mere military coincidence, but I don't think it is."
"Feature C: In each Modern War, the archaic side was substantially weaker on paper than the modern. The Union was substantially more populous and industrially productive than the Confederacy, the Triple Entente than the Triple Alliance, the Allies than the Axis."
"Feature D: In each Modern War, the modern side defeated the archaic, and imposed its own terms of surrender without negotiation. The defeated political structures were thoroughly liquidated, and replaced by new structures of the victor's design."
"The conjunction of B, C, and D is especially intriguing. If the archaics always look like they will lose the war, and indeed always do lose the war, why do they always start the war?"
"The obvious theory is that they're so evil, they just can't help it. Perhaps this works for you, and perhaps it always will. But we will suggest another solution to this mystery."
"Feature E: For at least most of the duration of the Modern Wars, the modern side is the plaintiff, and the archaic side is the defendant."
"E.g.: the North is trying to subdue the South; the South is trying not to be subdued by the North. Victory for the Confederacy means the survival of the Confederacy. Victory for the Union means the non-survival of the Confederacy. The German Wars are slightly more complex, but through most of both wars, it was the Germans who made peace proposals, their enemies who rejected them."
"The combination of features E and C suggests the possibility that predation is the best metaphor with which to explain the Modern Wars. At least, if we did not find E and C, we could exclude predation. We do see E and C; so we must still consider predation."
But how is it possible to see the North in the Civil War as the predator, and the South as the prey? Wasn't it the Confederates who fired the first shots on April 12, 1861, when they shelled Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina?
No, Yarvin responds, the North provoked the South into attacking Fort Sumter, and so what we see here is camouflaged predation. Abraham Lincoln wanted war with the Confederacy in the spring of 1861, but he wanted to cleverly provoke the Confederates into firing the first shots, so that they would appear to be the aggressors, and the North would appear to be fighting in self-defense.
In support of this conclusion, Yarvin quotes a long passage from George Lunt's bookThe Origin of the Late War (Boston, 1865). Lunt tells the story of how John Campbell of Alabama, a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, mediated negotiations between three commissioners representing the Confederacy and Union officials over terms that would avoid war. Campbell said that in meetings with Secretary of State William Seward, Seward promised that the garrison of soldiers at Fort Sumter would be evacuated. Campbell was shocked, therefore, when a fleet of Union ships appeared off the Charleston harbor on April 12. The Confederates in Charleston sent a message to Montgomery, Alabama, asking for orders from Jefferson Davis. The order was to demand the surrender of the fort, and then if the demand was refused, they should start bombardment. When the commander at the fort--Major Robert Anderson--refused to surrender, the Confederates launched the attack.
Lunt suggests that Union leaders dispatched the ships to Charleston in order to provoke the Confederates into firing on the fort, so that they would appear to be the aggressors, and the Union would appear to be acting in self-defense. Lunt observes: "It was generally thought at the North that the attack on Fort Sumter was a desperate, if not a treacherous deed; but it was considered at the South as the repulse of a threatened assault upon Charleston, involving an ostensible breach of faith by a responsible officer and agent of the administration."
Yarvin says that he began reading Lunt's book when he noticed that Carlyle mentioned him in a footnote. Yarvin says: "Origin of the Late War is simply a wonderful book; it has both judgment and immediacy, detail and passion. I recommend it highly. If you only read one primary source on the War of Secession, this should probably be the one."
Yarvin says that this book supports "the conclusion that Lincoln, despite his speeches at the time, wanted a war and was happy to get one." "The approach is one of camouflaged predation. Perhaps it can be summarized as: 'kick the dog until he bites, then shoot him.' Press your target, using blows that hurt but do not draw blood, until he finally snaps and bites back. Then it's time for the Glock. The resulting execution appears to the casual observer, who misses the kicks or can be persuaded not to see them, as a simple case of justified self-defense--putting down a biting dog."
Remarably, Yarvin draws this bold conclusion only from his reading of Lunt's book. He does not refer his readers to any other historical sources. And his story of what led to the firing on Fort Sumter is a highly simplified narrative of what in fact was a very complex story. In his history of the Civil War, James McPherson says that Abraham Lincoln's decision about Fort Sumter is "one of the most thoroughly studied questions in American history" (Battle Cry of Freedom, 267).
It is surprising, therefore, that Yarvin does not convey to his readers the complexity of that scholarly debate over that historical question. Either Yarvin is ignorant of that scholarship. Or he knows about it, but he doesn't want his readers to ponder it, for fear that this would weaken his case for the "camouflaged predation" of the North.
Fort Sumter was on an island four miles from downtown Charleston at the entrance to the bay. At the fort, Major Robert Anderson commanded a garrison of Union soldiers. Having seceded from the Union, the Carolinians assumed that they would soon take all of the United States property in Charleston, including the fort. They had hundreds of militiamen in Charleston ready to forcibly take the fort if it was not voluntarily surrendered. The fate of Fort Sumter was a big news story across the country. Everyone knew that if the Confederates attacked the fort, that would launch the war.
On March 5, Lincoln was told by Anderson that the garrison at Fort Sumter was running out of supplies, and that within six weeks, Anderson's men would begin starving to death. So Lincoln had six weeks to decide between three possible courses of action. He could send ships with supplies and reinforcements that would shoot their way into the bay, but then he would be accused of starting the war, and this would divide the North and unite the South, while pushing the Upper South (including Virginia) into joining the secession. Another possibility was that he could withdraw the garrison and surrender the fort. This would keep the peace and probably keep the Upper South in the Union. But this would divide the North, weaken the Republican Party, and be seen by foreign powers (such as Great Britain) as recognition of the Confederacy's independence, so that foreign governments would give diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy. A third alternative was to stall for time, hoping that within six weeks some peaceful way could be found to keep the fort in Union hands.
Lincoln received conflicting advice from people inside and outside his administration. Secretary of State Seward advised him to surrender Sumter, because this could keep the Upper South in the Union and strengthen the unionists in the Confederate states, who were working to bring the South back into the Union. Seward was an ambitious rival of Lincoln's who was conniving to take the leadership of the administration away from Lincoln. Without Lincoln's knowledge, Seward told the Confederate commissioners that Fort Sumter would be surrendered, and he leaked this news to the press. Notice that Yarvin says nothing about this--that Seward was acting on his own without Lincoln's approval, and therefore Lincoln had never promised the Confederates that Fort Sumter would be surrendered.
On April 4, Lincoln gave the orders for a plan that no one had suggested to him. He had come up with his own solution to the crisis--a fourth possibility--that some historians have identified as a stroke of genius. Lincoln drafted a letter for the Secretary of War Simon Cameron to send to Major Anderson, which you can find in the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 4, 321-22, available online. He told Anderson that an expedition to relieve his garrison was on its way, and that it should arrive by the 11th or the 12th: "the expedition will go forward; and, finding your flag flying, will attempt to provision you, and, in case the effort is resisted, will endeavor also to reinforce you." Notice what this means: the garrison will be provisioned, but it will not be reinforced militarily unless the Confederates attack the fort to prevent the provisioning.
Lincoln also drafted a letter to Robert Chew signed by Cameron that was sent on April 6. Chew was a clerk in the State Department. This letter is in the Collected Works, vol. 4, 323-24, also available online. Chew was instructed to meet Governor Francis Pickens in Charleston and deliver to him the following message: "I am directed by the President of the United States to notify you to expect an attempt will be made to supply Fort-Sumpter with provisions only; and that, if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition, will be made, without further notice, or in case of attack upon the Fort."
So the Governor knew that the provisioning of the fort would be purely peaceful, unless the Confederates attacked the fort and forced the Union soldiers to fight back. The Governor passed this message to Jefferson Davis in Montgomery and asked for instructions. Davis called a cabinet meeting for April 9, which endorsed an order to General Pierre Beauregard, commander of the Confederate military in Charleston, instructing him to attack the fort before the relief ships arrived, if possible. After Anderson refused Beauregard's order to surrender, Beauregard ordered the attack to begin at 4:30 a.m. on April 12. After thirty-three hours of bombardment, during which the Union relief ships did not intervene, Anderson was forced to surrender the fort on April 14. On April 15, Lincoln called 75,000 militiamen into national service. The war had begun.
Notice that Yarvin says nothing about any of this. He does not mention the letters to Anderson and Chew. Why? Presumably, because this would weaken his argument that Lincoln wanted to start a war by forcing the Confederates to shoot first.
From the beginning of the Civil War to the present, people have debated Lincoln's motives for his attempt to resupply Fort Sumter. People have taken three positions. The first is that Lincoln wanted war, and he manipulated the circumstances to force the Confederacy into firing the first shot, so that the Union would appear to be fighting in self-defense. This is what the southerners and their apologists have said. This is Yarvin's position. But Yarvin is careful to remain silent about the two alternative positions that have been adopted by most historians.
One alternative is to say that Lincoln wanted to preserve the peace, but he feared that surrendering the fort would demoralize the Union and strengthen the Confederacy, particularly by persuading Great Britain to recognize the Confederacy. So Lincoln devised his resupply plan so that the Confederates would be free to decide between peace and war.
Another only slightly different alternative is to say that Lincoln hoped the Confederates would choose peace, but he expected that they probably would choose war. To me, this seems the most plausible explanation.
By refusing to lay out all the relevant evidence and reasoning in the historical debate over this question, Yarvin shows again that he has no interest in serious intellectual debate, because he is only a propagandist for his reactionary authoritarianism.
Yarvin defends the Confederacy because it came close to his model of the best regime as based on black slavery and authoritarian despotism. But still he criticizes the Confederacy for not going far enough towards this authoritarian best regime. He says that the Confederates were conservative, but not truly reactionary. They should have been reactionaries in restoring something like Stuart monarchy and embracing Robert Filmer's argument for patriarchal order.
We should not be surprised when Yarvin tells us that he likes to "flirt" with "Confederate racist fascism."
Proponents of the Red Caesar Plan (such as Curtis Yarvin and Michael Anton) has said that their ultimate goal is to move America away from John Locke's classical liberalism and towards Robert Filmer's reactionary authoritarianism. They will achieve that goal when Trump rules America as the Red Caesar with the arbitrary power of an absolute monarch like that defended by Filmer: this Caesaristic Trump cannot be limited by the rule of law because he is the absolute sovereign, and whatever the sovereign wills is the law, and only what the sovereign wills is law. Trump will rule as a tyrant, and, as Filmer argued, the people will be obligated not to resist his rule but to show passive obedience to him.
Locke challenged Filmer's teaching by arguing in his Two Treatises of Government for what today we would call classical liberalism. In seventeenth-century England, Filmer was on the side of the Tories, while Locke was on the side of the Whigs.
Locke's position can be summarized in five principles. First, every person possesses the natural rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness--rights that first arose in the state of nature where human nature was formed. Second, these natural rights are rooted in each person's self-ownership--his right over himself and his labor. Third, the only just function of government is to protect those natural rights. Fourth, government derives its limited authority from the consent of the governed. Fifth, political rulers who become tyrants who infringe upon or fail to protect those natural rights may rightly be resisted and replaced.
If we agree with Filmer, then our proper response to Trump as the Red Caesar will be passive obedience. If we agree with Locke, then our proper response will be active resistance. Or is there perhaps some moderate middle ground between these two extremes?
One way of thinking through this debate is to consider one of the best critiques of Locke's teaching--by David Hume in his Essays (Liberty Fund, 1985).
Hume saw the conflict between the Tories as the party of authority and obedience to rulers and the Whigs as the party of liberty and resistance to tyranny as a political battle in which the partisans of each faction refused to see the partial truth in each side: good government requires a tense balance between authority and liberty, so that each side moderates the other. Extreme authoritarianism creates tyranny. Extreme libertarianism creates anarchy. The task of a philosopher is not to become a partisan but to mediate between the two extremes and promote compromise and accommodation. Hume saw himself as a true philosopher, while identifying Locke as a partisan rather than a true philosopher (27-31, 40-41, 69-72, 465-66, 469-70, 486-87).
But if one reads Locke carefully in the light of Hume's critique, one can see that Locke is indeed a philosopher rather than a narrow partisan, and he agrees with Hume that good government requires a balance between authority and liberty. And while Hume attacks Locke's doctrine of consent, Hume ends up closer to Locke's position that he realizes.
Remarkably, Hume accepts Locke's claim that in the original state of nature among hunter-gatherers, every adult was equally free from being ruled by anyone else; and therefore, nothing but their own consent could bring them together into a society and subject them to any authority. "If this, then, be meant by the original contract, it cannot be denied," Hume observed, "that all government is, at first, founded on a contract, and that the most ancient rude combinations of mankind were formed chiefly by that principle" (468).
But even if government in its earliest and most primitive forms arose from "consent or rather the voluntary acquiescence of the people," it is not true, as Locke claims, that later fully developed governments as we see them today rest on no other foundation than the consent of the people.
Hume insists that "history and experience" should teach us that governments are not founded on popular consent:
I maintain, that human affairs will never admit of this consent; seldom of the appearance of it. But that conquest or usurpation, that is, in plain terms, force, by dissolving the ancient governments, is the origin of almost all the new ones, which were ever established in the world. And that in the few cases, where consent may seem to have taken place, it was commonly so irregular, so confined, or so much intermixed either with fraud or violence, that it cannot have any great authority (473-74).
When a new government is established by force through conquest by a foreign power or by usurpation when someone takes power in a society unlawfully, the people are commonly dissatisfied with it, but they obey from fear rather than feeling any moral obligation to obey. If the new rulers are careful to guard against insurrection, then over time, the people become accustomed to regard the new rulers as the lawful government, even though originally they were usurpers or foreign conquerors.
The original establishment was formed by violence, and submitted to from necessity. The subsequent administration is also supported by power, and acquiesced in by the people, not as a matter of choice, but of obligation. They imagine not, that their consent gives their prince a title: But they willingly consent, because they think, that, from long possession, he has acquired a title, independent of their choice or inclination.
Should it be said, that, by living under the dominion of a prince, which one might leave, every individual has given a tacit consent to his authority, and promised him obedience; it may be answered, that such an implied consent can only have place, whee a man imagines, tht the matter depends on his choice. But where he thinks (as all mankind do who are born under established governments) that by his birth he owes allegiance to a certain prince or certain form of government; it would be absurd to infer a consent or choice, which he expressly, in this case, renounces and disclaims.
Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artizan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives from day to day, by the small wages which he acquires? We may as well assert, that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean, and perish, the moment he leaves her (475).
Anyone who has read Locke's Second Treatise will know that Locke actually agrees with almost everything Hume says here. The one clear point of disagreement is that while Hume cannot take seriously "that a poor peasant or artizan has a free choice to leave his country," Locke argued for an open borders immigration policy for England to attract peasant and artisan migration from other European countries that were less free than England. For example, Locke had seen in 1685, when King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had granted some toleration of Calvinist Protestants in Catholic France in 1598, that this created an exodus of French Protestants, also called Huguenots, who were forced to migrate to England and elsewhere. As I have argued, this continues today as people want to leave the less free countries and migrate to the freest countries (as measured by the Human Freedom Index). People vote with their feet for freedom, and that's Lockean consent, or the principle of "love it or leave it."
Locke agrees with Hume's claim that most governments today originally arose from conquest or usurpation. In his chapter "Of Conquest" (chapter 16), Locke recognizes that "in the noise of War, which makes so great a part of the History of Mankind, this Consent is little taken notice of: And therefore many have mistaken the force of Arms, for the consent of the People; and reckon Conquest as one of the Originals of Government" (ST, 175). But a conquering power can never erect a new government without the consent of the people, because without their consent, the people will look for an opportunity to overthrow the conqueror, which they can do by an "appeal to Heaven"--that is, war (ST, 176). Similarly, in his chapter on usurpation, Locke argues that the power of the usurper will not be secure until the people have consented to the lawfulness of his rule.
Now, it is true, as Hume says, that over time the people can become so accustomed or habituated to the rule of conquerors or usurpers that eventually, even though the people have not chosen the conquering or usurping ruler, "they willingly consent, because they think, that, from long possession, he has acquired a title." Locke agrees with this because he recognizes that many times, maybe most of the time, the people consent to a ruler not by originally choosing him but by their customary acquiescence to his rule: "People are not so easily got out of their old Forms, as some are apt to suggest. They are hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledged Faults, in the Frame they have been accustomed to" (ST, 223). The Declaration of Independence expresses the same Lockean thought about the power of customary acceptance of government: "all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
Hume's fundamental agreement with Locke is most clearly manifested in two ways. What he says about government being founded on opinion coincides with what Locke says about government being founded on consent. And Hume agrees with Locke in saying that the only remedy for tyranny is resistance.
At the beginning of his essay "Of the First Principles of Government," Hume observes:
Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as FORCE is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. The soldan of EGYPT, or the emperor of ROME, might drive his harmless subjects, like brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclination: But he must, at least, have led his mamalukes, or praetorian bands, like men, by their opinion (32-33).
He then distinguishes two kinds of opinion. The "opinion of INTEREST" is the sense of the government's general advantage. "When this opinion prevails among the generality of a state, or among those who have the force in their hands, it gives great security to any government."
The "opinion of RIGHT" is either the "right to POWER" or the "right to PROPERTY." The opinion that the government has a right to power is most commonly rooted in the attachment that a nation has to its ancient government because antiquity begets the opinion of right. The opinion of the right to property is the sense that the governmental power of those with property is justified by their right to property.
What I see here is what some social scientists today call the theory of the minimum winning coalition. No ruler can rule alone. Even an absolute dictator needs a small coalition of powerful people who are loyal to him, and to win and maintain that loyalty, the dictator must buy them off with money and status. Once a dictator is abandoned by his loyalists, he loses his power. Strictly speaking, therefore, "one-man rule" is impossible. But as long as he has the support of that small winning coalition, he can rule successfully even when he oppresses the great majority of the people under his rule. The private interest of his small coalition of supporters is advanced at the expense of the public interest of the people at large.
A democratic leader differs from a dictatorial leader in that the democratic leader depends on a larger coalition of supporters. Because of the large size of a winning democratic coalition, democratic leaders must persuade a large number of supporters that he will advance public policies that serve the general welfare of this big coalition. But still this large democratic coalition is less than the whole community, and it does not have to be a majority of the citizens. So, for example, the minimum winning coalition for a president of the United States is a majority in the Electoral College and at least one third of the Senate voting against impeachment.
To say that every government depends on the opinion of a minimum winning coalition supporting the rulers is to say that every government depends on consent, but that consenting coalition can be small in a dictatorship or large in a democracy. However, as Machiavelli saw, even when the prince depends on a small coalition among the "great"--the ambitious few--he must avoid becoming hated by the many, because when the prince is hated by the multitude of the people this creates opportunities for conspiratorial plots to overthrow or kill him. This is what Hume and Locke call "resistance" to the government.
Once Hume has attacked Locke's Whig doctrine of government by consent of the governed in his essay "Of the Original Contract," it is surprising that in the next essay "Of Passive Obedience," Hume endorses the Whig doctrine of resistance and criticizes the Tory doctrine of passive obedience. While Hume agrees that "obedience is our duty in the common course of things," resistance is the only remedy "in extraordinary emergencies . . . when the public is in the highest danger, from violence and tyranny" (490).
Hume does not recognize that if resistance to a tyrannical government is withdrawal of consent because the people have never consented to government becoming tyrannical, that implies that government depends on the consent of the governed, just as Locke claimed (ST, 199-210).
As I have argued, the evolution of Lockean natural punishment of despots from foraging societies to the present show two kinds of resistance to despotic rule--violent and nonviolent. And if Hume had studied carefully the history of the American colonies during his lifetime, he would have seen both kinds of resistance. From 1761 to 1774, there was a "revolution in the minds of the people," as John Adams described it when the Americans engaged in nonviolent resistance to British rule over them, long before the violent resistance began at Lexington and Concord in 1774, which was formally declared in the Declaration of Independence a few months before Hume's death in 1776. This was the American "Appeal to Heaven"--the appeal to the God of Battles.
We have to hope that Americans today will not have to resort to violent resistance to overthrow Trump's tyranny as the Red Caesar.
But in any case, we should be clear that in the first few months of his new term, Trump is showing all the traits of a tyrannical Red Caesar as described by Michael Anton. Trump has chosen one of the two routes to Caesarism--being elected to office legally and then refusing to leave the office. He has already said that he will suspend the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution that limits a president to two terms. And Trump is clearly following the plan for the Red Caesar laid out by Anton, who explained: "Caesarism is a particular form of one-man rule: halfway, as it were, between monarchy and tyranny. It is monarchical in that a single person rules. It is tyrannical in that there is no appeal; Caesar's word replaces constitutionalism and even, in the final analysis, law." Caesarism, therefore, can be defined as "authoritarian one-man rule partially legitimized by necessity," where that necessity is the breakdown of the republican, constitutional order caused by the people becoming so corrupt that they lack the republican virtues required for liberty.
Trump's Caesarism clearly satisfies Locke's classic definition of tyranny. "Tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right." Because the tyrant "makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion" (ST, 199).
A nonviolent resistance movement against Trump's tyranny will have to break up his minimum winning coalition. The crucial issue for Trump voters last November was high inflation attributed to "Bidenomics." Now Trump's economic policies--particularly, higher tariffs--are going to drive prices up and create an economic recession. So, while the "opinion of interest"--the belief of many Trump voters that Trump's election was in their economic self-interest--favored Trump in November, it is now becoming clear that the grandiose narcissism of Trump's tyrannical drive to economic ruin for America and even the whole world is not serving the self-interest of those voters.
According to Michael Anton, one of the benefits of Caesarism is that it can preserve and even enhance the economic achievements of a great civilization. But Trump's Caesarism is driving America to economic disaster.
Similarly, those Trump voters are discovering that Elon Musk's chaotic disruption of the "administrative state" is not in the self-interest of Americans who depend upon the services provided by federal administrative employees.
But ultimately the key to the success of a nonviolent resistance movement against Trump will probably be the "opinion of right": Will most Americans decide that Trump does not have the moral or legal right to tyrannically violate their natural and constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property? So, for example, will Americans agree that it is right that Trump suspend the individual right of due process of law in violation of court orders?
Anton has admitted that the great cost of Caesarism is the loss of liberty. But he insists that when Caesarism comes to America, it's because liberty has already been lost, and the American people will show passive obedience to the Red Caesar because of the many benefits of his tyranny that outweigh the loss of liberty.
Is that true? Or will the American people show active resistance to Trump's Caesarism because it neither serves their interests nor secures their rights?
Moreover, we should remember that when Anton explains Caesarism as a tyrant's defense of the people against the ruling class, he admits that in Trump's America, the people are divided between Blue America and Red America. So while Red America loves Trump. Blue America hates him.
Another problem with Anton's analysis is that it's not clear that Trump is defending Red America against the ruling class. At Trump's inauguration, in the prominent front row audience immediately behind Trump, the seats were filled by a half dozen tech CEO billionaires who are the richest human beings on the Earth. And of course, one of them--Elon Musk--has been given tyrannical rule over the whole federal government. If these are to become the new oligarchic rulers of America, then it seems that Trump's Caesarism is on the side of the ruling class. And surely this is not what Red America voted for.
It's possible that we will soon see not only Blue America but also much of Red America united in active resistance to Trump's Red Caesar tyranny.
The St. Edward's Crown of the British monarch was made for the coronation of Charles II in 1661, after the previous crown was melted down in 1649, following the execution of Charles I. It is made of solid gold and set with precious stones. It is surmounted with the Cross of Jesus.
The coronation of Charles III and his wife, Camilla, as king and queen of the United Kingdom will take place Saturday, May 6, at Westminster Abbey. It will begin at 11:00 am London time and 6:00 am Eastern time in the U.S. This will be the 40th royal coronation at Westminster Abbey since that of William the Conqueror in 1066.
That Charles has chosen the name Charles III evokes the unsettled history of the monarchy under Charles I, who was beheaded by English revolutionaries, and Charles II, who restored the monarchy in 1660, after the interregnum (1649-1660), and tried to restore a Filmerian divine right absolute monarchy. This name might also suggest that King Charles III will correct the mistakes made by Charles I and Charles II by moving away from the absolutist Christian monarchy of the Stuart dynasty to the classical liberal Christian monarchy of the House of Windsor. That will be made clear by the coronation designed by Charles, which combines traditional symbols of the coronation that go back as far as the Coronation Rite of King Edgar in 973 with the new symbolism of monarchy in a liberal social order.
The best source of information about the coronation is the official website. The "Authorised Coronation Liturgy with Commentary" is particularly helpful, and I will be citing that document.
Ian Bradley has an essay on the religious significance of the coronation. Bradley is the author of the newly published book God Save the King: The Sacred Nature of Monarchy.
I have written about the evolutionary rise and fall of monarchy by symbolic cultural group selection, and about the silly arguments from Alt-Right theorists like Curtis Yarvin for restoring a Filmerian absolute monarchy as the best regime. I have also argued that the New Testament teaches Lockean classical liberalism. Now we will see in this coronation the ritual symbolism of a New Testament Christian monarchy.
The most striking feature of the coronation ceremony is how it manifests the sacred nature of monarchic authority as invested with the sanctity of Biblical religion. But there's an inherent tension in this appeal to Biblical religion for political authority, because the Old Testament and the New Testament offer contradictory teachings about the divine authority of political rule. The Old Testament in its account of how God chose the rulers of the people of Israel to enforce obedience to the Mosaic law favors theocracy, in which religious authorities coercively enforce Judaism and punish those outside the Jewish faith. This has allowed many Christians to invoke the Old Testament as supporting a Christian theocracy, in which Christian kings rule by divine right to coercively enforce the Christian faith and punish heretics, infidels, and atheists. By contrast, the New Testament suggests a separation of church and state, so that those in the church cannot coercively enforce their faith, and there is no legal establishment of religion. This has allowed some Christians to invoke the New Testament as supporting religious liberty and toleration, so that churches become voluntary associations that cannot use legal coercion to enforce their faith.
In the debate over the divine right of kings in 17th century England, Christians like Robert Filmer embraced the theocratic tradition of the Old Testament to justify the absolute power of the Stuart monarchs as the "defenders of the faith"--that is, the faith of the Church of England--against those who did not share that faith. On the other side of the debate, Christians like Roger Williams and John Locke interpreted the New Testament as denying this theocratic denial of religious liberty. That's what I mean when I say that the New Testament teaches Lockean liberalism.
Now, in the Coronation Liturgy for King Charles III--as designed by Charles himself--we can see a subtle interweaving of Old Testament and New Testament traditions that reconciles the conflicts between them by favoring the Lockean liberalism of the New Testament.
Let's start at the beginning of the planned coronation. At the head of the coronation procession into Westminster Abbey will be "faith leaders and representatives from the Jewish, Sunni and Shia Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Bahai and Zoroastrian communities" (2). They will be followed by the procession of ecumenical leaders of the Christian faith, which will include not just the Anglican Church, but also the Greek Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church, and other Christian churches in Great Britain. This has never happened in any previous coronation of the British monarch.
A crucial part of every coronation has been identifying the monarch as the "Defender of the Faith," which means defender of the Church of England as opposed to all other faiths, whether Christian or non-Christian. In the 16th century, "Defender of the Faith" was the title given by Pope Leo X to King Henry VIII for his defense of Catholicism. But then when Henry broke with Rome to form his own English Church, he held onto the title with the idea that he would be defending the Anglicanism of the Church of England against Catholics and Christian dissenters.
Charles has had a life-long fascination with all faiths. And in 1994, he said that as heir to the throne, he saw himself as less "defender of the faith" and more as "defender of faith"--of all the religious faiths. He said, "People have fought to the death over these things, which seems to me a peculiar waste of people's energy, when we're all actually aiming for the same ultimate goal." Although Charles' mother--Elizabeth II--was a devout Anglican Christian, she agreed with him about this. She once said, "The concept of our established Church is occasionally misunderstood and, I believe, commonly underappreciated. Its role is not to defend Anglicanism to the exclusion of other religions. Instead, the Church has a duty to protect the free practice of all faiths in this country." She also said that "gently and assuredly, the Church of England hs created an environment for other faith communities and indeed people of no faith to live freely" (7). In a reception at Buckingham Palace days after his mother's funeral, Charles said that his mother was right about this, and that his Anglican faith committed him to "the common good of freedom." That's what I mean by the Lockean liberalism of his New Testament Christian monarchy. Actually, Charles has gone beyond Locke in arguing for defending the freedom of Catholics and atheists.
Early in the coronation as planned by Charles, he will be presented with the Bible as the guide for his rule (6). Then, the Archbishop of Canterbury will administer the Coronation Oath by declaring: "Your Majesty, the Church established by law, whose settlement you will swear to maintain, is committed to the true profession of the Gospel, and, in so doing, will seek to foster an environment in which people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely. The Coronation Oath has stood for centuries and is enshrined in law" (7). (Here "beliefs" seem to include atheism.)
Notice that he invokes the Gospel of the New Testament and interprets it as ensuring that "people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely," which departs from the Mosaic theocracy of the Old Testament.
After taking the Oath, Charles will recite a private prayer, which concludes: "Grant that I may be a blessing to all they children, of every faith and conviction, that together we may discover the ways of gentleness and be led into the paths of peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen" (9). To keep religious peace, Charles will secure freedom for "every faith and conviction." (Here "conviction"--as distinguished from "faith"--suggests atheism.)
Not long after this, the Prime Minister--Rishi Sunak--will read from the New Testament book of Colossians (11). This is remarkable because Sunak is Hindu, and yet he can be comfortable reading a New Testament passage.
Later in the coronation, there will be a thanksgiving for the Holy Coronation Oil and then the anointing of Charles with that oil. Here we can see the Archbishop of Canterbury invoking a subtle combination of Old Testament and New Testament ideas in the anointing of the king with oil: "Blessed art thou, Sovereign God, upholding with thy grace all who are called to thy service. Thy prophets of old anointed priests and kings to serve in thy name, and in the fullness of time thine only Son was anointed by the Holy Spirit to be the Christ, the Savior and Servant of all. By the power of the same Spirit, bless and sanctify this oil" (15).
The Archbishop's prayer recalls how the kings of Israel (like Saul and Solomon) were anointed with consecrated olive oil in the Old Testament (1 Kings 1:32, 38-40; 1 Samuel 2:10, 10:1). But then he immediately reminds us that Jesus in the New Testament was anointed by the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:38). In Greek, the word Christ means "anointed," and the Hebrew word for this is "Messiah."
As John Locke pointed out in his Letter Concerning Toleration, while the kings of Israel were anointed to rule over an "absolute theocracy," Jesus was anointed to rule over his followers by the persuasiveness of his preaching, and he never attempted to establish a Christian theocracy. Moreover, the New Testament makes clear that the first Christian churches were voluntary associations that exercised no theocratic rule. Locke explained:
"The Commonwealth of the Jews, different in that from all others, was an absolute Theocracy; nor was there, or could there be, any difference between that Commonwealth and the Church. . . . But there is absolutely no such thing, under the Gospel, as a Christian Commonwealth. There are, indeed, many Cities and Kingdoms thaqt have embraced the Faith of Christ; but they have retained their ancient Form of Government; with which the Law of Christ hath not at all meddled. He, indeed, hath taught men how, by Faith and good Works, they may attain Eternal Life. But he instituted no Commonwealth. He prescribed unto his Followers no new and peculiar Form of Government; Nor put he the Sword into any Magistrate's Hand, with Commission to make use of it in forcing men to forsake their former Religion, and receive his" (Hackett edition, 44-45; Liberty Fund edition, 42).
The coronation of Charles will indicate how his kingship will follow the model of Christ's persuasive kingship rather than the theocratic kingship of ancient Israel. At the beginning of the coronation, Charles will be greeted by a Chapel Royal chorister: "Your Majesty, as children of the Kingdom of God, we welcome you in the name of the King of Kings." Charles will respond: "In his name, and after his example, I come not to be served but to serve" (3).
Here Charles will echo the words of Jesus when he warned his followers not to strive for authoritative rule over others: "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave--just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:25-28).
It seems that Charles will be intimating here that he is a king who has no coercive authority over his people, particularly in matters of religious belief. At most, he can only exercise the sort of persuasive authority that comes through Christian preaching, and for that he needs the persuasive symbolism of being anointed with Coronation Holy Oil.
Rendering that oil holy required a special preparation (15). It was from olives from groves on the Mount of Olives at the Russian Orthodox Monastery of Mary Magdalene, which is the burial place of Charles' paternal grandmother, Princess Alice of Greece, who was a Greek Orthodox believer. The Mount of Olives, outside Jerusalem, is a holy place for Jews, Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and Protestants. The olives were pressed just outside Bethlehem. The oil was then perfumed with essential oils--sesame, rose, jasmine, cinnamon, neroli, benzoin, amber, and orange blossom. The oil was then consecrated by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, His Beatitude Patriarch Theophilos III, and the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, the Most Reverend Dr. Hosam Naoum. Thus, this oil has an ecumenical holiness that comes from symbolic links to all the major Biblical religious traditions.
The actual anointing of Charles will be the only part of the coronation that will be hidden from both the audience in Westminster Abbey and the television cameras. An Anointing Screen, specially designed and woven for this purpose will be arranged around the Coronation Chair. Behind the screen, the Archbishop of Canterbury will anoint the King's hands, breast, and head (16). Hiding this from view gives an air of mystery to this most sacred moment of the coronation.
As the King is being anointed, the Choir of Westminister Abbey will sing Georg Frederick Handel's "Zadok the Priest" anthem. The text of this anthem has always been part of the English Coronation Rite. But it was made famous when Handel set it to music for the coronation of George II in 1727. Here's the text, which is based on the anointing of King Solomon in 1 Kings 1:32-35:
"Zadok the priest
"and Nathan the prophet
"anointed Solomon king.
"And all the people rejoiced and said:
"God save the King!
"Long live the King!
"May the King live forever!
"Alleluia! Amen!"
Handel's "Zadok the Priest"
I have written about how Handel used his Biblical music (like the Messiah) to refute Deism and defend religious orthodoxy. Does this anthem serve the same purpose by using the power of his music to support the Biblical teaching about the divine authority of rulers?
The anointing of King Charles is followed by the presentation of the regalia--the Spurs, the Sword, the Bracelets, the Robe Royal, the Stole Royal, the Orb, the Ring, the Glove, the Sceptre, and the Rod--each of which has some distinctive symbolic meaning.
Finally, the King will be crowned with the Crown of St. Edward, and all in the Abbey will shout "God save the King!" There will be a musical fanfare, a Gun Salute, and the Abbey bells will ring for two minutes (25).
Then, for the first time in the history of coronations, the Blessing of the King will come not just from the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, but also from a Catholic archbishop, a Greek Orthodox archbishop, and from representatives of other Christian churches in Great Britain. Such an ecumenical affirmation would have been impossible in previous coronations, even as late as the 1953 coronation of Elizabeth (26).
After the King has been enthroned, there will be oaths of allegiance. The first will be from the "Homage of the Church of England" expressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The second will be the "Homage of Royal Blood" coming from William, the Prince of Wales: "I, William, Prince of Wales, pledge my loyalty to you and faith and truth I will bear unto you, as your liege man of life and limb. So help me God." This will be the most painful moment for Prince Harry--a reminder that he is far down the line of succession, and that William is most likely to be the next King.
Remarkably, this will be followed by "The Homage of the People," which is another novel move that has never been done in a coronation:
"Archbishop of Canterbury:
"I call upon all persons of goodwill of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of the other Realms and the Territories to make their homage, in heart and voice, to their undoubted King, defender of all."
"All who so desire, in the Abbey, and elsewhere, say together:
"All:
"I swear that I will pay true allegiance to Your Majesty, and to your heirs and successors acording to law. So help me God.
"A fanfare is played (28)."
In all previous coronations, the Homage has been pledged by the hereditary peerage in order of degree. But now the Homage of Peers has been replaced by the Homage of the People. Notice that this is voluntary--"all who so desire." So, here the King explicitly recognizes that whatever persuasive authority he has over the people must come from their voluntary consent. And to win that consent, he must convince them that he really is God's Anointed One.
Next, the King's wife--Camilla--will be crowned as the Queen Consort, and she will be anointed by the Archbishop, but without a screen, suggesting that the anointing of a consort is not as sacred as the anointing of the King (29).
Following this, there will be other ceremonies, songs, and prayers.
After the singing of the national anthem ("God Save the King"), the King will march in procession out of the Abbey. At the end of the procession, he will be greeted by representatives of five non-Christian faith communities: Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, and Buddhist. They will deliver their greeting in unison: "Your Majesty, as neighbors in faith, we acknowledge the value of public service. We unite with people of all faiths and beliefs in thanksgiving, and in service with you for the common good" (41).
As with so much else in this coronation, this has never been done in any previous coronation. This ending matches the beginning with the procession of faith leaders and representatives of faith communities (2).
Finally, the King goes to the Gold State Coach, which will take him back to Buckingham Palace.
The Gold State Coach
Will it work?
When the people are asked for their homage, will millions of people across Great Britain and the Commonwealth swear their allegiance "in heart and voice" to the King? Will they willingly accept a monarchy that claims only a persuasive authority and not a coercive theocratic authority, and therefore a monarchy that poses no threat to the personal, political, or religious liberty of the people? Or will they laugh or smirk as they think about how foolish Charles is to think all this religious mumbo-jumbo will persuade them that Charles is their divinely anointed King?
Great Britain is one of the most secularized societies in the world. Some surveys report that most people identify themselves as having no religious belief. Only a small minority of the people participate at least once a week in some kind of religious worship service. So, we have to wonder whether the King truly believes that his appeal to the sacred character of the British monarchy will work.
On February 19, 2025, this picture was posted on the official White House "X" account. Trump had posted: "CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!"
My wife and I participated in the "No Kings" protest in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This was one of over 2,000 protest gatherings across the United States attracting millions of participants. We were surprised by the size of the crowd. There appeared to be something over 20,000 people, which is about ten percent of the population of the city of Grand Rapids. The first rally was in the park on the Grand River in front of the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum. When we arrived, the park was so packed with people that it was impossible for us to get in, which was also true for thousands of other people milling around the area.
We were also surprised that there were no police anywhere, as if the Grand Rapids police had decided that there was no reason to expect any disruptions from the protest crowds. Moreover, there were no "Proud Boys" or "Michigan militia" types carrying guns who might have caused trouble. Later in the afternoon, we heard about the political assassination in Minnesota that reportedly caused some of the "No Kings" protests in Minnesota to be cancelled.
These protests were scheduled for June 14 to counter Trump's military parade in Washington to celebrate his birthday and the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. I watched the parade on CSPAN. The CSPAN cameras showed remarkably small crowds in the bleachers and on the grass. Of course, the White House claimed that over 250,000 people attended. But if that were true, the Mall would have been completely covered with people, which was not the case.
To me, Trump's military parade was really dull and lifeless. Many of the spectators at the parade showed the same reaction. Here's a picture of some of them:
The "No Kings" protests raise at least two kinds of questions. First, what motivates millions of people to turn out for these mass protests? What do they expect to achieve? And how likely are they to succeed?
Secondly, what's wrong with monarchy? Why do most Americans--and perhaps most people around the world today--assume that monarchy is bad? Should we take seriously the argument of some intellectuals supporting Trump (such as Curtis Yarvin) that monarchy is a better form of government than democracy, and therefore Americans should be happy to have Donald Trump as their king?
NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE AS LOCKEAN NATURAL PUNISHMENT OF DICTATORS
The people participating in these mass protests can be identified as "popular Lockeans." I have written about that term as used by historian T. H. Breen to describe the ordinary Americans who supported the American Revolution in acting according to the principles of John Locke even though most of them had never read Locke. In the state of nature, Locke thought, everyone has the "executive power of the law of nature," which is the natural right to punish those who violate the law of nature; and this can be expressed in both violent and nonviolent resistance to tyranny. The American Revolution began with American nonviolent resistance from 1761 to 1775, followed by the violent resistance in the Revolutionary War from 1775 to 1783. June 14, 1775 was the day that George Washington was formally appointed Commander of the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress. In July of that year, the "Appeal to Heaven" Flag was adopted as a battle flag for the American Army, which explicitly invoked Locke's term for revolutionary violence.
Erica Chenoweth and her colleagues see the "No Kings" protests as part of the growing nonviolent resistance to Trump. As indicated in some previous posts, Chenoweth has compiled an impressive data set (from 1900 to the present) for violent and nonviolent resistance movements that shows that every campaign of nonviolent protest that achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population was successful. As indicated on the "No Kings" website, the organizers are inspired by the "3.5 principle"--believing that mobilizing only a small proportion of the people in mass protests can overturn a dictatorial ruler.
Over the past 40 years, scholars like Chenoweth and Gene Sharp have developed practical rules for organizing successful nonviolent resistance movements. One of the most important features of this is avoiding violence by having well-trained "marshals" at every protest whose job is to manage the crowd to suppress any disturbance that might become violent. We saw those marshals at work at the Grand Rapids protest.
The political theory of nonviolent resistance is Lockean in being founded on the fundamental principle that all governmental authority depends on the consent of the governed, and therefore governments fall when the people withdraw their consent through nonviolent or violent resistance.
As Chenoweth has indicated, protest movements succeed when they gain momentum. And momentum can be measured through a simple law of physics: momentum equals mass times velocity (p = mv). The momentum of dissent is a product of participation (mass) and the number of protest events in a week (velocity). So as the number of participants in the "No Kings" movement increases, and as the number of protests per week increase, the movement gains momentum, and thus becomes more successful.
The test will come when law enforcement and military people are ordered to shoot the protestors. Will they obey their orders? If they disobey, then the protestors have won. Even if they obey, this will provoke a moral revulsion in the country that will draw more people into the protests.
Another test will come in the mid-term elections in November of 2026. If opponents of Trump take control of the two Houses of Congress, then the Congress can impeach him. If Trump's Republicans cancel the elections, then the popular movement to overturn Trump's rule becomes stronger.
THE RISE AND DECLINE OF MONARCHY
But why "No Kings"? Why are so many Americans not persuaded by Yarvin's argument that Robert Filmer's defense of divine-right monarchy was superior to Locke's theory of government by popular consent?
As I have indicated in previous posts, monarchy was the most common form of government for over 5,000 years, but then around 1900, the number of nonmonarchies began to surpass the number of monarchies. There are two possible reasons for this. First, monarchy has always depended on perceiving society as a rigid hierarchy in the chain of command, in which everyone knew his place. At the top was a ruling elite--the monarch and one or two percent of the people who were nobles and priests. At the bottom, about 80-90% of the population were peasants. One possible answer as to why this premodern conception of natural and divine hierarchy has been undermined in modern culture is that modernity has adopted the Lockean evolutionary symbolic niche construction of the bourgeois culture of equal liberty. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."
Consequently, as I have written previously, the few monarchic governments that survive today--like the British monarchy of King Charles III--are not real monarchies because the king is only a ceremonial head of state without any absolute power.
A second reason for the decline of monarchy is that the development of mass communications has made monarchy unnecessary. In the past, democratic or republican forms of government were possible only in small societies where the people or their representatives could meet all together at one public assembly--Athenian democracy or the Roman Republic, for example. Larger societies were so disconnected that they needed monarchy as a focal point to which everyone could look as the central authority. But then with the growth of communications technology--the printing press, newspapers, national postal systems, the telegraph, radio, television, and finally the internet--large societies have become so highly mobilized and interconnected that there is less need for a monarch as a focal point for authority.
The internet has made it easy for popular mass movements like the "No Kings" protests to form across large societies and even around the globe. And that's why it's so hard to preserve autocratic rule in the modern world without shutting down or at least censoring the internet.
