THE MAGIC CIRCLE – ON MONARCHIES

Having spent almost half a human life within the ranks of the Deep Right (or whatever), I often forget how what is absolutely obvious to me, still needs to be explained to others, and indeed sometimes it may even shock them.

For instance – don’t we all know the reality of high black criminality? However, mentioning simple FBI statistics within a polite society of normies is sure to generate giggles of embarrassment, complete astonishment, or even rage.

“Would you send your son to a school in a black neighborhood?”

“No! But mentioning black violence is racism and white privilege! Waaa!”

Also, I often forget that people still care about racism. In my circles of almost Victorian intellectual mores, we are post-racist in the same way that we are post-arithmetic. It’s just so obvious it’s become boring.

“Wow, 5+2 equals 7!”

So I am always taken by surprise at the vehemence of opposition to my bringing up, when I am really tired and have no energy for anything beyond the trivial, the differences in cognitive aptitude among mankind’s various communities. Sure. I guess people still care about “racism.” You do you.

Another such thing, so obvious to me yet somehow shocking to others, has come up recently. The monarchy thing.

For reasons beyond my control, my naturally romantic nature and so forth, I am a proud royalist. I like my gryphons, my conjurers, and my kings. I also like ordinary people and have always seen the monarchy as a shield for the common man, the “good yeoman whose limbs were made in England,” against the predations of barons old and new.

But I am not naive enough to expect others, especially in my home country of America, to share in my medieval, even fantastical, longings for maidens, knights, honesty, and duty.

I am though very surprised that the OBVIOUS function of a monarchy, even a relatively powerless one as the contemporary British monarchy, is eluding so many. You don’t have to like it, but at least understand what it’s about!

With the parting of Queen Elizabeth II, old debates that I thought had been settled long ago, now make a comeback.

“The Queen has no power!”

“She’s an expensive symbol! Who needs her!”

And even defenders of the monarchy would say vapid things like “Yes, she is a symbol, but we believe in our symbols!”

Can nobody truly see the ACTUAL function of this august institution? Has everybody forgotten their Burke?

Since time immemorial, since the establishment of what we may refer to as the state, societies have been attempting to sanctify that unique and necessary form of human cooperation. What is the state? The state (which can indeed be usurped, neglected, mismanaged, etc.) is the manifestation of our common interest. It is our mechanism for pulling together resources on the largest possible scale and using them for the benefit of ourselves and our posterity. This was obvious to the Founding Fathers.

It is a trust passed down to us through the generations, for our safekeeping, and for passing it down to our own posterity. Surely, this is what Hegel meant when he called the state “God’s march on Earth.”

O God our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come!

Our shelter from the stormy blast

And our eternal home!

So that is the function of the state. Through the state’s monuments, institutions, traditions, and continuous focus on ourselves and our posterity, we live forever.

But states, like the atmosphere of Mars, can erode and decay, and be ejected into the void. They need what poor Mars lacks – a magnetic field. Magic!

The state has to be sanctified to preserve its dignity and its eternity. It needs magic to prevent it from becoming an open-air shopping mall, an afterthought for exploitation, or a usurping tyranny. It has to anchor itself as the people’s destiny and common interest.

The pious Romans of the Republic did this through their solemn and serene established religion. No session of the Senate would open without the proper sacrifices and ancient prayers; no war would be declared without rites and spells that had transcended the timeless eons.

It’s not nonsense voodoo. These are the charms required to keep people aligned and together, to allow them to collaborate both in peace and emergency. If my language sounds too magical, just think about it in game-theory terms. The state is a “localized game of coordination.” The game only happens under certain conditions where trust and a sense of common interest exist. This is what sanctification does.

And so, at this point, it should follow naturally that a monarchy is one of the best ways to sanctify the state. The hereditary monarchy is the personification of the state passing down through the generations. Indeed, marching on Earth. A dignified monarchy, and especially an ancient one, becomes the essence of the cultural and existential continuity that is the state, it is the magic allowing human societies to collaborate and have a sense of trust.

America, unfortunately, is like Mars. We never quite had a magnetosphere and the dignity of our state is eroding quickly. We have libertarians who wish to see us as a borderless marketplace that is home to nobody, and leftist hordes who wish to undo the legacy of our home and replace its serene marble with the muddy likeness of George Floyd.

Notice that Britain, despite fast approaching our own level of decadence, still has a great magnetic shield, namely the monarchy. Whereas our hordes are happy to urinate on the flag, burn it, deface our national monuments, or simply display “memes” of our leaders with severed heads – these are lines that average Britons would not cross (beyond an occasional frenzy). Debasement is always on the horizon, but contemporary Britons will NEVER burn effigies of their monarchs or urinate angrily on their images. The abusive way we treat our own national dignity is rather alien there.

So that is the function of a monarchy. And of an established Church. They are “symbolic” in the same way that magic runes are “symbolic.” Yes, they use symbols but they emanate real magic. The magic circle binding human societies together.

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