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".
Constitutional Monarchy
- Thread starter Clete
- Start date
Please describe for what Cyan is, but do so without evoking the concept of "blueness".
Idolater
Popetard
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
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?
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.
Yes, I most certainly can. The reason I can't bring myself to read it any longer is because you stopped saying anything new months ago and your repitition of the same responses don't answer the arguments any better now than they did 6 years ago when I started this discussion.
Your argument boils down to the only ones allowed to remove a king are his subjects through open rebellion against a rogue king. That takes us all the way back to my point about there sure seems like there ought to be a better solution to a rogue king that civil war. It's all just the same arguments over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.....................
Idolater
Popetard
There is. And it's in Enyart's proposal—though implicitly (according to my understanding of JR's description).
It's that, all that rogue king's subjects disobey and otherwise ignore him, when he orders them to sin/commit a crime.
That's it. No civil war needed. Just patience. He's got to die sometime.
Not honestly.
If you refuse to read the answers, then you do not get to claim the answers were not given or are insufficient.
That is about the same time you stopped answering my arguments at all.
And this is circular. You say you will not read the replies because nothing new is being said, and then you conclude nothing new is being said because you will not read the replies.
Do you not see the problem?
No, it does not.
My argument is not that the subjects have legal authority to “remove” the king through open rebellion.
My argument is that wicked commands do not bind. Subjects, officers, soldiers, judges, and everyone else beneath the king must obey God rather than man. That means they must refuse criminal commands, refuse cooperation with wickedness, and refuse to treat evil as lawful simply because the king commanded it.
That is not the same thing as a standing domestic removal process.
You keep translating refusal into civil war.
That is not my position.
If you do not want to read my words, then read Idolater’s:
A wicked king cannot turn his wickedness into law by speaking. He needs cooperation. If the people beneath him refuse wicked commands, he is not “legally tolerated” in any meaningful sense. He is disobeyed, resisted, rebuked, ignored where appropriate, and left to answer to God.
Your position keeps assuming that if there is no domestic office authorized to depose him, then the only alternative is national suicide or civil war.
That is the false dilemma that I'm calling you out on.
Now please answer my question:
What happens when the system you propose becomes captured by sinful men with evil intentions for the nation?
What happens when the removers are rogue?
I've read the answers, JR. We've been discussing this for 6 years!
You're right, it doesn't! What it does is say that just have to live with it or else refuse to obey and pray that the king doesn't murder them for it, which, of course, he would.
It isn't translating, it's just the logical progression. There are two and only two outcomes when a sufficiently tyrannical king decides to ignore the law. Either people refuse to obey and he kills them for it until the populous is sufficiently subdued, or the people refuse to obey and the king ends up getting killed himself while trying to kill them for it. That sound an awful lot like civil war to me.
It depends on the nature of that system and the nature of the "capture" of it. At worst such a situation would require a conspiracy of several individuals for it to even get off the ground. That is, it would be far more complex and difficult to pull of than for a solitary king to become corrupt.
Indeed, the way I envision it, I don't even see how it could be "captured". I'm not proposing any sort of bureaucracy but merely that the king can be prosecuted for severe crimes and seditious behavior; that his own actions would trigger a legal process that would proceed along clearly defined lines, where no one involved has any way of gaining political power.
Since you keep saying this is all repetition, let me summarize the actual defeaters of your position and the questions your position still has not answered, so that if you make an argument that falls under one of these defeaters, I can simply refer you back here.
1. You have not shown that “under law” means “removable by a lower domestic office.”
That is the main equivocation.
I agree that the king is under law. I deny that this requires lesser domestic officers to have jurisdiction to remove him.
A man can be guilty under law without every lower earthly office having jurisdiction to punish him. “Not removable by a lower domestic office” does not mean “above the law,” “authorized to sin,” or “legally permitted to do whatever he wants.”
You keep asserting that equivalence. You have not proven it.
2. You have not answered the final-earthly-authority problem.
Every civil system terminates authority somewhere.
If final earthly civil authority does not terminate in the king, then it terminates in the men who can remove the king.
So the question remains:
Who has the final earthly word?
If the answer is “the men who can prosecute, judge, and remove the king,” then final earthly authority terminates in them, not in the king.
3. You have not answered “who removes the removers?”
You keep pointing to the danger of a rogue king.
Fine. I agree that a rogue king is dangerous.
But your system creates another danger at the level of final authority: rogue removers.
You have now suggested that capture of your removal process would require several conspirators, and that this would be harder than one king becoming corrupt.
But that does not answer the objection.
It only admits that your system can be corrupted while claiming corruption would be more difficult.
Fine. Then the question remains:
What happens when it occurs?
What happens when the removal authority is corrupt? What happens when the judges are ambitious? What happens when the charges are fabricated? What happens when powerful men use the lawful process to remove a righteous king who stands in their way?
Do the removers have an authority above them?
If yes, who is it ultimately? Not “what,” but who? “The law” is not the answer, because we both agree that both the king and the removers are under law. The question is: who does the law authorize to remove anyone who goes rogue inside the removal process?
If the answer is another court, council, judge, or process, then the same question applies again: who removes them?
If the answer is “no one,” then your removers occupy the very position you say the king cannot occupy. They become the final earthly authority who cannot be removed by a higher domestic office.
So your system does not eliminate the problem. It only relocates it.
4. You have not shown where Scripture authorizes lesser domestic officers to remove the chief civil ruler.
This is not a minor detail. This is the central question.
You are not merely saying wicked kings are guilty before God. I agree with that.
You are saying lesser domestic officers may prosecute, judge, and remove the king. That requires authority. Where is that authority given?
5. You have not answered the guilt/jurisdiction distinction.
Guilt exists when the act is committed. Court judgment establishes guilt for purposes of earthly punishment.
That is why a suspect is presumed innocent during trial. It does not mean he is actually innocent until the court declares him guilty. It means guilt must be proved before the proper authority before punishment may be imposed.
So there are three distinct questions:
Did he violate the law?
Has that guilt been established by the proper process?
Who has jurisdiction to punish him?
You keep moving from the first question to the third as though the answer automatically follows.
It does not.
If there is no earthly court above a criminal king, then he is still guilty before God and guilty under the law, but no lesser domestic court has jurisdiction to punish or remove him for that crime.
That may bother you, but it is not a contradiction. It is the difference between guilt and jurisdiction.
6. You have not answered the selection/removal distinction.
The procedure that identifies or seats a king does not automatically retain authority to remove him.
Selection authority is not removal authority.
Recognition is not jurisdiction.
Installation is not ongoing superiority.
If officers administer succession, that does not make them superior to the throne afterward.
7. You have not answered the “law does not enforce itself” problem.
Saying “the law removes him” does not answer anything.
Law does not act. Men act.
Men accuse.
Men investigate.
Men judge.
Men enforce.
Men remove.
So the real question is always: which men?
And once those men have authority to remove the king, they are above him in the decisive case.
8. You have not answered the “king’s own actions trigger the process” problem.
You say the king’s own actions would trigger the legal process.
No. Men would.
The king’s action does not interpret itself, accuse itself, investigate itself, prosecute itself, judge itself, or enforce judgment against itself.
Men decide whether the action qualifies. Men decide whether charges should be brought. Men decide whether the evidence is sufficient. Men decide whether the process has been satisfied. Men decide whether the king is guilty. Men decide whether he is removed.
So again, the issue is not paper procedure. The issue is which men have final jurisdiction.
9. You have not answered the worst-case/best-case comparison problem.
You keep testing Bob’s system by its worst possible king, then testing your system by ideal righteous removers.
That is not an honest comparison.
If Bob’s system has to account for a wicked king, your system has to account for wicked removers.
If the king might abuse his office, so might the judges.
If the king might endanger the nation, so might the men empowered to remove him.
Saying it would take several conspirators does not answer this. It only changes the form of the danger from one wicked ruler to a coalition of wicked removers.
10. You have not answered the “no one gains political power” problem.
You say your process would be structured so that no one involved has any way of gaining political power.
But the power to prosecute, judge, and remove the king is political power.
Even if the removers do not personally become king afterward, they still have decisive authority over who may continue to occupy the throne. That is enormous civil power.
A man does not have to wear the crown in order to rule the crown.
11. You have not answered the civil-disobedience point without turning it into civil war.
My position is not that subjects have legal authority to remove the king through open rebellion.
My position is that wicked commands do not bind.
A tyrant king can command his subordinates to start killing people, but he cannot compel them to obey. Officers, soldiers, judges, recorders, and subjects must obey God rather than man. They must refuse criminal commands, refuse cooperation with wickedness, and refuse to treat evil as lawful simply because the king commanded it.
If they refuse, then the king’s wickedness is checked by non-cooperation.
If they obey, then the nation has a deeper problem than one rogue king. It has a morally corrupt people, corrupt officers, corrupt soldiers, and corrupt judges willing to carry out wickedness.
And that problem will not be solved by merely removing the king.
If the people beneath the king are corrupt enough to obey monstrous commands, they are also corrupt enough to corrupt, capture, or weaponize your removal process.
So again, the problem is sinful men with power, not merely one sinful man with a crown.
Refusal is not the same thing as a standing domestic removal process.
Non-cooperation is not the same thing as civil war.
12. You have not shown that your system preserves Bob’s structure.
Your cyan analogy conceded the structural 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 may be possible as a different structure. It may be possible as a divided constitutional government. It may be possible as a monarchy with a superior domestic removal authority over the king.
But it is not a system where final earthly civil authority terminates in the king.
So the unresolved issue is not whether a removal process can be written on paper. Of course it can.
The unresolved issue is whether such a process preserves the structure Bob proposed, whether Scripture authorizes it, and whether it actually solves the problem of sinful men in power rather than merely relocating that problem to the men who remove the king.
Those are the defeaters and the questions still unanswered.
The age of the discussion does not mean that the defeaters have been answered.
If the specific objections I summarized above have been answered, then please refresh my memory, or point to where they were answered. Otherwise, I’ll refer you back to the summary rather than repeat all of it here.
“Of course, he would” is not an argument. It is your worst-case scenario stated as inevitable.
A king can command murder. He could even commit murder personally. But he cannot personally murder the whole nation by himself. He needs officers, soldiers, judges, and subjects willing to obey wicked commands.
If they refuse, his wickedness is checked by non-cooperation.
If they obey, then the nation has a deeper problem than one rogue king, and that problem will not be solved by merely removing him.
See point 11 in the summary post.
That is a false dilemma.
See point 11.
Civil war follows only if enough men either obey wicked commands or resort to violence.
And again, if the nation is already that corrupt, your removal process does not solve the problem. The same corrupt men can corrupt, capture, or weaponize it.
This is answered by points 3 and 9.
Saying corruption would require several conspirators does not solve the problem. It only changes the failure mode from one wicked ruler to a coalition of wicked removers.
Conspiracies among powerful men are not historically rare.
This is answered by points 7, 8, and 10.
His actions would not trigger the process apart from men deciding that they do.
And the power to prosecute, judge, and remove the king is political power. Even if the removers do not become king afterward, they still have decisive authority over whether the king may remain king.
A man does not have to wear the crown in order to rule the crown.
Your proposal may avoid creating a parliament or bureaucracy, but it still creates a superior domestic removal authority over the king. That is the structural point.
If those men can prosecute, judge, and remove the king, then final earthly authority terminates in them, not in the king.
Something to help illustrate my point: