A Case for American Monarchy
When Americans envision a monarchy, they usually think of Queen Elizabeth II or King George III. Many of us may associate this form of power with Western European dynasties, golden crowns and palaces.
Today, King Charles III of England has both a crown and a palace; however, he is far from the source of the nation's power. He and his family's assets are, above all else, the leading attraction of a nation whose economy relies heavily on tourism. Charles is a monarch only in name; he is far from the executive decision-maker. This has been the case in England for centuries; the Windsors are Kardashians with crowns who have no power over the nation's policy. If crowns and palaces do not make a monarch, what does? Power.
Forms of Power
Aristotle’s 4th-century BC work Politia or Politics features a timeless discussion on the three forms of power: monarchy, the rule of one; oligarchy, the rule of few; and democracy, the rule of the many. Each of these forms of government can be ideal or perverted depending on the character of those in power. Spoiler alert: Aristotle believes the ideal is a moral and accountable monarchy.
The United States is a republic, which Aristotle would have known as a constitutional democracy or more accurately a polity; he considers this to be the runner-up to accountable monarchy. Democracy in its purest form, however, is practically impossible; this is why we have a republic. It is impossible because 330 million Americans cannot reasonably be relied on to vote in a referendum for every single policy decision. Half of voters do not even vote for their representatives in either chamber of Congress, it is likely then that daily referendums would be skipped at the same rate as polls on Instagram stories. A flawed republic is the best alternative to impossible democracy.
Political philosopher Robert Michels presents a concept called the ‘iron law of oligarchy’ in his work Political Parties. The idea asserts that all political organizations, especially democratic ones, will eventually become oligarchies. This is because of the concentration of power in the representative class (ruling class), who accumulate enough influence to shape the state to their will, rather than that of the populace they are intended to represent. Through this process, power is hijacked, and democracy withers, being replaced by oligarchy.
This transition to oligarchy has happened in the United States. Many Americans feel like the political system does not truly represent the people, that is because it doesn't. It has come to represent the elite special interests of the parties, lobbyists, political donors, and the ruling class itself. George Washington, the namesake of the nation’s capital, seemed to have an intuitive and prescient understanding of Michels iron law of oligarchy. On the function of political parties, he said, “they are likely[..]to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterward the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” Michels suggests in his work, albeit with careful hesitation, that the most effective bulwark against the intrusive nature of oligarchies is an effective monarchy.
Modern Monarchies
Monarchy is all around you, but you have never been made to notice. Americans are both familiar with and accepting of a form of accountable monarchy: the corporate structure. A Chief Executive Officer is an individual who is personally charged with overseeing a firm's function and increasing the value of its assets. They are beholden to and answer to shareholders. CEOs are accountable monarchs; many even command the assets of firms more valuable than entire nation-states. From the historical point of view, monarchies are more than just a concentration of power; they are a national identity wrapped up into one individual who is empowered by a spiritual imperative to lead. This article is, however, solely focused on the structural effectiveness of monarchies. Moreover, a spiritual rebirth in the US is as likely as a rebirth of the horse-drawn carriage.
All successful and effective organizations are monarchies. The screen you are reading this on, the building you are in, and your car, are all made by monarchies. Why is this? Because it works. These corporate monarchies are obviously not hereditary. They do not rely on the mandate of heaven to maintain their grip on power. They rely solely on the outcome of their performance. If a CEO increases the value of his or her firm by 20% in a quarter, it is almost certain they will retain their position. The opposite is true for the decisions–or lack thereof– that are responsible for devaluing the firm; the board of directors will simply fire them and hire a new CEO.
American Monarchs
According to the Constitution, the US government is intended to have its own Chief Executive, the President. Three Presidents have possessed near absolute control of the executive branch. They were all closer to a modern CEO than a modern President: Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. These three Presidents are widely revered and ranked among the greatest to fill the office. Each of these leaders leveraged unitary executive power to increase the value of the nation’s land and citizens.
Washington
Firstly, the team of co-CEOs resembled a Silicon Valley startup; Washington was the organizational CEO, and Hamilton the technical CEO. These two men led the nation after a ruling class coup replaced the ineffective Articles of Confederation with our current Constitution. Washington was the hero of the Revolutionary War and popular with all factions of the political elite, giving him a unique command over the nation’s politics. Hamilton, a much more divisive figure than Washington, yet extremely intelligent and driven, oversaw the creation of the first Bank of the United States. This allowed for greater federal centralization via the absorption of all the states' war debts. This made the state legislatures subservient to a more capable federal government. The actions taken by these men saved the United States from self-destruction and economic ruin, instead setting it on the path of prosperity.
Lincoln
Fast forward eighty years to President Lincoln’s administration, assisted by his own Hamilton in William Henry Seward. Lincoln was facing a Southern secession which began before he was even inaugurated. The secession of these states meant that they sought to repossess all federal military installations on the newly sovereign soil; this did not go smoothly, to say the least, and resulted in the Civil War. For all intents and purposes, this was the end of the Constitution of 1789. Lincoln used executive power to declare war on the self-proclaimed sovereign states, suspend habeas corpus (which Congress legally had to consent to yet only did so after the fact), and issue the emancipation proclamation. Lincoln determined all of these technically unconstitutional actions to be necessary steps in preserving the Union and building a moral state, and so he did so without fail. Lincoln rebuilt America (again) through his executive power, and most would agree for the better, regardless of its constitutionality.
FDR
FDR, once elected, was president for life. He was elected four times. In 1933, the United States was in dire straits; it was the peak of the Great Depression. The nation's economy crashed on Black Monday in 1929, which caused a societal collapse not just in the US but across the globe. A quarter of the American workforce was unemployed, and describing food and housing as unaffordable is an understatement. The roaring twenties had bled into an American dark age. But FDR took all the power he had access to–and more–to do something about it. Rather than seeming intuitive fiscal conservatism, FDR’s administration, headed by himself and his technical director Howe, increased government spending massively: public works projects, infrastructure, relief programs, etc. This was known as the New Deal.
In this process, he created 69 government agencies and, for the first time, filled offices with Ivy League academics rather than corrupt career politicians. These agencies are known as the alphabet soup, dozens of autonomous entities that were given the power to carry out specialized tasks: FBI, FCC, SEC, FDIC, etc. They are all unelected bureaucracies.
In this way, FDR built much of what we know as our current federal government. He circumvented the corrupt, gridlocked political scene in DC by assuming executive powers and creating autonomous bureaucracies wherever he saw fit. He even successfully threatened the Supreme Court by trying to pack it with judges. He led the nation in World War II and oversaw its rise to global hegemony.
The Modern Establishment
FDR’s rewiring of the American political system worked because he had real, nearly unrestricted power. However, any of those wires that delivered power from the top down were cut upon his death. Of course, the alphabet soup and the newly academic federal government cooperated with him in his objectives, as he was Prometheus to them. Despite this informal allegiance, they were ultimately autonomous and felt no such allegiance to FDR’s successors. The academics became corrupted by power in the same way as the career politicians had been, only more effective. The Iron Law of Oligarchy proved true upon the death of the last American monarch.
Truman fought them and lost, Eisenhower warned about the danger of their power growing from the shadows in his farewell address; JFK certainly had issues with them; maybe so much so that a faction of it took fatal action against him in Dallas. In fact, every President since FDR has had to fight this leftover circuit of unaccountable and immovable power. Some call it bureaucracy. Some call it the “deep state”. The fact of the matter is no president, Republican or Democrat, has been able to rewire this system. It was once functional under its original executive, but it never truly needed one to operate. President Biden is a perfect example of this; he shows innumerable signs of senility and severe cognitive decline, yet the government runs smoothly, and all the responsibilities of the executive branch are carried out without fail. This is because the White House is sliding toward irrelevance comparable to Buckingham Palace.
An Impossible Solution
Washington, Lincoln, and FDR were all elected by the people. The board of directors elects CEOs, and thereby, shareholders are empowered. The US can be considered a firm, and its citizens are shareholders in it. Every four years, they elect a CEO based on performance. This is, of course, the ideal and not the reality because we have no way of gauging their actual performance. We cannot gauge it currently because Presidents do not have real power, and have not since FDR. They do not draft New Deals or amendments to the Constitution anymore. They are relegated to decisions labeled A, B, and C as if they are taking the SAT. They are only even given those decisions on the rare occasion that the autonomous and unaccountable bureaucracy cannot agree on one. Otherwise, they go to photoshoots, fundraisers, and press conferences to answer for policies that they themselves did not conceive. Their performance is entirely reliant on the way they interface with the remnants of FDR’s liberal administration.
Contrary to what many Americans seem to think, they do not vote for a CEO who oversees the increase in value of the nation's assets, i.e. its land and its citizens. They vote for the poor schmuck who has to do battle with the alphabet soup and the leftover bureaucracy of FDR’s administration. The more powerful the person you are able to elect, the more powerful you are.
The post-FDR restriction of the elected executive by career bureaucrats and lifelong congressional oligarchs is an obvious subversion of democracy, one that has rarely, if ever, yielded positive results. Just as nothing would have changed in 1789, 1860, or 1933 without another American monarch, nothing will change today.
Works Cited
Aristotle“Politics”, historyofeconomicthought.mcmaster.ca/aristotle/Politics.pdf. Accessed 15 May 2024.
“George Washington’s Farewell Address.” George Washington’s Mount Vernon, www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/george-washington-s-farewell-address/. Accessed 15 May 2024.
Robert Michels“Political Parties.” tile.loc.gov/storage-services/public/gdcmassbookdig/politicalparties00mich/politicalparties00mich.pdf. Accessed 15 May 2024.
Yarvin, Curtis. “Gray Mirror: Curtis Yarvin.” Substack, graymirror.substack.com/. Accessed 15 May 2024.
