Constitutional Monarchy

[Clete]

I almost missed this.



I already tried granting that for the sake of argument earlier.

Suppose your removal system could exist.
Suppose the constitution could establish it.
Suppose the procedure could be written down. The same structural questions still remain:

Who operates it?

Who judges whether they have acted lawfully?

Who removes the removers?

And if those men have final authority to remove the king, how is final earthly authority still terminating in the king rather than in them?

This is not really about waiting for me to concede that your system can exist “in principle.” I granted that hypothetically, and the same problem remained. You still refused to engage.

The issue is not whether words can be written on paper creating a removal process. Of course they can. The issue is whether such a process preserves the king as the final earthly civil authority, or whether it transfers final earthly authority to the men empowered to remove him.

That is the question you keep avoiding.

I'm not avoiding anything. You are asking me to do something and then setting the parameters such that doing so is impossible.

Please describe for what Cyan is, but do so without evoking the concept of "blueness".

 

[Idolater]

... Legally tolerating a rogue king is completely indefensible so far as I am concerned and no one has said a syllable that has brought a single inch away from the conviction.

Clete still has me on ignore so he doesn't mean me when he says, "no one has said a syllable that has brought a single inch away from the conviction".

Again this is all according to my understanding of what JR's been saying Enyart's proposal is.

Part of the precondition for Enyart's proposed constitution's operation is a polity which holds their individual freedom of conscience sacred.

Therefore it would almost make more sense to say that it is the subjects in such a realm who are vested with the supreme authority, because they each have an absolute veto, if they perceive the monarch's command under Enyart's proposed constitution is immoral and illegal/criminal.

The epitomes of rogue monarchs aren't found in Suetonius but the 20th century, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao. None of those situations would occur under Enyart's idea, so long as all the subjects in such a realm are themselves good. For Enyart's constitution to devolve into something like the Red Terror the monarch would need a lot of immoral and cowardly toadies, just like Lenin and Stalin had.

I can't even think of anything that ought to be more self-evidently true within the whole realm of government and political discourse. A society simply should not be compelled to commit suicide so as to preserve the chain of command. Tyrants destroy societies and societies that tolerate tyrants destroy themselves.

Ironically in Clete's imagination if Enyart's proposal did suffer a monstrous monarch such as the four examples from the 20th century, or the awful Roman Emperors, it would be societally preserving to destroy the constitution/monarchy, instead of the truth which is that extra-judicial, anarchistic vigilantism would do the destroying.

This again all assumes I'm understanding JR's account of Enyart's idea, and, further, that that idea hinges on a polity who is moral and above all protects their freedom/power to follow their own consciences.

 

[JudgeRightly]

I'm not retreating, I just can't make myself read 1950 words written in response to seven sentences.

Then you cannot complain that your points have not been answered. Those “seven sentences” contained multiple claims, accusations, and misrepresentations of my position. I answered them individually because that is what actually moves a discussion forward. If you will not read the answers, that is not a defect in my argument.

You claim I deny things that I open acknowledge, you somehow think that because the law doesn't affirmatively sanction tyranny, the fact that it doesn't punish it is somehow irrelevant

Straw man.

I am not saying punishment is irrelevant. I am saying punishment requires authorized jurisdiction.

You keep treating “not punishable by a lower domestic office” as though it means “legally tolerated.” That is the same equivocation I have been identifying from the start.

and you claim that I haven't made arguments that I've made so many times that I can't stand to do it any more.

The point is not that you have never made arguments. The point is that when those arguments are answered, you keep returning to the same assertion instead of addressing the answer.

I've run out of ways to tell you that nothing your are saying or have said has stuck me as any more compelling than the first defense of this position I heard from Bob's own mouth when I had visited Denver over a 4th of July weekend some twenty years ago.

It's kind of hard to know whether my arguments are compelling, and to then decry them as not, when you won't read them.

Legally tolerating a rogue king is completely indefensible so far as I am concerned and no one has said a syllable that has brought a single inch away from the conviction. I can't even think of anything that ought to be more self-evidently true within the whole realm of government and political discourse.

Then apply it to your own system, where a rogue final earthly authority is not the king, but the removal authority installed by the law!

A society simply should not be compelled to commit suicide so as to preserve the chain of command. Tyrants destroy societies and societies that tolerate tyrants destroy themselves.

No one is arguing that society must commit suicide, that wicked commands must be obeyed, or that tyranny is righteous.

The question is whether your proposed remedy is authorized and whether it actually solves the problem. My argument is that it does not, but rather gives sinful men a lawful mechanism to dominate, control, or remove the king under color of law.

You keep saying, “a rogue king is dangerous.”

Yes. I agree.

Now please answer the corresponding question:

What happens when the removers are rogue?

I'm not avoiding anything. You are asking me to do something and then setting the parameters such that doing so is impossible.

Please describe for what Cyan is, but do so without evoking the concept of "blueness".

That analogy proves my point.

If your removal mechanism cannot be described without placing some men over the king, then placing some men over the king is inherent to the mechanism.

That's exactly what I've been arguing.

Your system may be possible as a different structure: a divided constitutional government, or a monarchy with a superior domestic removal authority over the king.

But it isn't possible as a system where final earthly civil authority terminates in the king.

If another domestic authority can prosecute, judge, and remove him, then final earthly authority terminates in that authority, not in the king.

That consequence is what I have been asking you to address, namely, what happens when the system you propose becomes captured by sinful men with evil intentions for the nation?

 

[JudgeRightly]

Clete still has me on ignore so he doesn't mean me when he says, "no one has said a syllable that has brought a single inch away from the conviction".

Again this is all according to my understanding of what JR's been saying Enyart's proposal is.

Part of the precondition for Enyart's proposed constitution's operation is a polity which holds their individual freedom of conscience sacred.

Therefore it would almost make more sense to say that it is the subjects in such a realm who are vested with the supreme authority, because they each have an absolute veto, if they perceive the monarch's command under Enyart's proposed constitution is immoral and illegal/criminal.

The epitomes of rogue monarchs aren't found in Suetonius but the 20th century, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao. None of those situations would occur under Enyart's idea, so long as all the subjects in such a realm are themselves good. For Enyart's constitution to devolve into something like the Red Terror the monarch would need a lot of immoral and cowardly toadies, just like Lenin and Stalin had.



Ironically in Clete's imagination if Enyart's proposal did suffer a monstrous monarch such as the four examples from the 20th century, or the awful Roman Emperors, it would be societally preserving to destroy the constitution/monarchy, instead of the truth which is that extra-judicial, anarchistic vigilantism would do the destroying.

This again all assumes I'm understanding JR's account of Enyart's idea, and, further, that that idea hinges on a polity who is moral and above all protects their freedom/power to follow their own consciences.

Mostly agreed, with one important clarification.

Subjects do not have supreme civil authority over the king. They do not have jurisdiction to command him, prosecute him, judge him (in the judicial sense), or remove him.

What they do have is moral responsibility before God, which means they must refuse wicked commands.

That distinction matters.

A subject’s conscience is not a rival throne. It is not a court above the king. It is a moral boundary: “I must obey God rather than man.”

So yes, a wicked king cannot simply turn the nation into a Leninist, Stalinist, Hitlerian, or Maoist regime by snapping his fingers. He needs cooperation. He needs officers, soldiers, judges, recorders, and subjects willing to obey wicked commands.

That is why refusal matters.

The system does not depend on pretending the king can never be wicked. It depends on the moral duty of everyone beneath him to refuse evil when he is wicked.

That is also why Clete’s comparison keeps failing. He imagines a rogue king with "obedient toadies," but imagines his removal mechanism being run by righteous men. If the people are corrupt enough to obey a monstrous king, they are also corrupt enough to corrupt, capture, or weaponize a removal process.