The Nation's Pulse / America's Royalist Underground
Jamieson, T. John
carefully nurtured antisexist sensibilities. Some laughed so hard they almost choked on their cookies. They were also watching a movie about their parents' generation, which no doubt added to...
...If America could redeem Eastern Europe from its Communist slavemasters through royal restoration, it would be an act of historical penance...
...Already translated into six languages, Tomorrow...
...We are told that Ayn Rand was an "old trout" whose works lacked artistic merit and who preyed on middleclass adolescents suffering from frayed self-esteem--' 'the impotent in search of omnipotence" and "hypochondriacs who blamed the outer world for internal inadequacies of their own making or imagining...
...The fact is that, while I do think Ayn Rand was a bit of a crank and a rather unappealing character as she grew more and more dictatorial in her world view, I also credited her in my piece with having made a number of valid points against liberal-collectivist altruism...
...Far worse things may be said of decadent democracies sinking under the combined weight of demagogy, bureaucracy, and judicial usurpation...
...The Whig Burke called the adherents of divine right "exploded fanatics of slavery...
...Christina Spencer Ottawa, Canada P.S...
...Granted, one cannot fool all the people all the time, but what is the consolation in that...
...A publication that would permit Mr...
...and American Express cards accepled Please add $1 75 lot shipping and handhng |o all orders J THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1982 27 chapter of the Monarchist League-the international organization, that is, founded by the Marquis of Bristol...
...In Greece the king is still talked of...
...The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, which has annually held a solemn memorial for Nicholas lI on the anniversary of his assassination at Ekaterinburg, has at last canonized him...
...A worthwhile project for the American monarchist is to raise the historical consciousness of American foreign policy to the level of recognizing foreign monarchies as a valid possibility...
...he or she is a sophisticated, complex intellectual being whose faculty of moral imagination is extraordinarily well developed and requires more room in which to play than democracy provides...
...Rand had faults, but she also made some critical contributions to the history of philosophizing about individual rights...
...M i l t o n Friedman The last 20 years have witnessed a stunning revolution in economic thought...
...even cynical leftists who, during Vietnam, refused to stand for the national anthem at high school assemblies will play Frisbee and light up a joint...
...When a national hero, a liberator, or a patriarch has the support to establish a dynasty, who are the Americans that they should stop him...
...With the rise of unrest in these captive nations where the memory of royal rule is still fresh, can American foreign policy refuse to address the potential for restoration...
...Any Roman Catholic infallibilist is on principle an adherent of an ecclesiastical monarchy...
...How, to a really objective objectivist, any of what I wrote could be characterized as a "tantrum" or "spitting, seething h a t r e d " is beyond me...
...He spurns the great unwashed and cultivates the valiantly unreconstructed-exiles and ~migr~s...
...Tomorrow...
...Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, who castigates America for ruining Europe with its postwar reconstruction plans based on the Divine Right of Majorities...
...the autocratic Wladimir has even graced its assemblies with his presence...
...Many more hidden pockets of American royalism exist than can here be exposed...
...Grand Duke Wladimir Romanov as Czar...
...But if we know what's good for us, we won't point that out...
...You will no doubt ask, how did the American monarchist get this way...
...Renewing the social contract is not optional: Let those skeptics who say that every tenet of belief must always be open to discussion retire to the philosophy classroom and impose on the world no longer...
...Thomasson, "I will not bore your readers by drawing the obvious conclusions...
...I suspect that the " p a t r i o t i c " societies harbor a few monarchists, for I have known several penitent sons of the Revolution...
...Meanwhile, the flame of hereditary legitimacy, the secular form of the apostolic succession, continues to burn, tended by patriots, priests, and professors, who privately confess their belief in the sacramental nature of power...
...Capitalism shows that if we are to SOlve the problems of poverty, unemployment, pollution, unclerproductivity, and crime we must work towards a true capitalism...
...In fact, we literally crowned the Communist regime in Hungary in 1978 by yielding the nine-hundred-year-old Crown of St...
...For them, July is the cruelest month: After Independence Day comes Bastille Day, and then the anniversary of the Czar's murder, to say nothing of the July monarchy...
...he attends the annual lectures of Dr...
...they continue to profess the royal principle...
...Its literature says that "monarchy is an intelligible and honest form of government, and it is our belief that it is better suited and able to serve the common good under future conditions than any other...
...A few men and women of intellect and imagination, though inwardly dissenting, will outwardly conform to custom in order not to give offense to relatives, or else they will cultivate their gardens alone...
...Tomorrow, Capitalism explains in layman's language how the economic trailblazers in the vanguard of this revolution--Gary Becker, Ronald Coase, Nobel laureates Milton Friedman and F.A...
...Bakshian's article to appear may be c o n s e r v a t i v e , but i t ' s not too informed...
...Many of these are proud aristocrats who have preserved their lofty pretensions against all odds...
...Our own form of elective monarchy exists in perpetual crisis: Its sovereign dies every four years without issue...
...Local demagogues will invoke the ghosts of Washington and Jefferson and modestly concede that, in their case at least, "democracy works...
...Among the various nationalities which have sought refuge on our shores while preserving the "unreconstructed" stance and looking toward eventual restoration and repatriation, the most organized and visible are the Russians...
...Andrew's University in Scotland became head of the local f Over 100,000 copies sold worldwide...
...Born of such influences and realizations is a conviction at once philosophical, religious, practical, and sentimental in nature...
...It may be that Levinson has pulled an Andy Warhol without fully realizing it...
...By systematically presenting Miss Rand's ideas out of context, your writer seeks to discredit one of the f i n e s t minds free enterprisers have ever had on their side...
...Anglican Catholics, those Non-Jurors of the present, who refuse to swear by the do-it-yourself liturgy and the bisexual priesthood of modern Episcopalianism, have a habit of naming their parishes after such royal saints as Charles and Edward the Confessor and Margaret of Scotland...
...Nevertheless, what can he do...
...Thomasson and some of the other respondents are typical of the acolytes Miss Rand has left behind, she may have more to answer for than I originally thought...
...If only h e ' d had the minimal decency to make his attacks on a victim who was still alive and could thus set the record straight...
...I once knew a prot~g~ of Russell Kirk, a fellow American, who while studying at St...
...An Italian-American friend of mine whose people have been gentlemen for the last eight centuries recently received the title of count from his personal fons honorum, the exiled King Umberto II...
...A literary education may be to blame...
...Rand's person, writing, ideas, and followers, was pointless, tasteless, and cowardly...
...Kirk, who has characterized himself as a Bohemian Tory, advocates the politics of prescription, and, like his mentor T.S...
...Its rightful owner, of course, is not Kadar, but rather Archduke Otto yon Hapsburg, who today is a representative for Bavaria in the new European Parliament...
...Leslie Graves Key Madison, IVisconsin Aram Bakshian's posthumous "tribu t e " to Ayn Rand (May 1982), a lengthy recital of invective and obloquy d i r e c t e d at the late Ms...
...But that is another reason why the pop nostalgic approach is so effective: Like pop art, it gives the appearance of satire without being awfully clear about what, in fact, it is satirizing...
...Such was the father of the late Shah of Iran...
...I t ' s hard not to feel at this stage that the whole thing is a put-on - - o f everyone, including Pauline Kael and Stanley Kauffmann...
...True patriots will roast hot dogs and risk dismemberment from the use of firecrackers...
...John...
...And when he leaves off such rantings long enough to mention any of Rand's ideas, he misrepresents those ideas, adding intellectual dishonesty to insult...
...but in a way, so is the idea that people who behave in such ways are so terrible...
...The Hoover Institution at Stanford is reputedly another Czarist center...
...Among these are Russell Kirk and Frederick WilhelmT. John Jamieson is a Paul Elmer More Scholar residing in Livonia, Michigan...
...In the full heat of his tantrum, Bakshian even likens Objectivism to Marxist Leninism and Scientology...
...256 pages...
...I found myself thoroughly propagandized recently, at an exhibition of 18th-century Neapolitan art, by an "Allegory of the Origin of the Arms of Bourbon," which showed an enormous azure cartouche borne among the clouds by an angelic host, with one seraph affixing three gold fleurs-de-lys thereto...
...Capitalism is an international best-seller...
...The Allies insisted on an election in Italy after World War II, which Umberto would have won if it had been conducted fairly...
...Truth Be Said t have sometimes heard it said that the Israelis are similar to the Nazis in their t r e a t m e n t of the Palestinian Arabs but I have been r e l u c t a n t to believe it...
...Sir Frederick Wilhelmsen continues to lead Carlists, both in Spain and Latin America, whose political aims have not yet been reached...
...Some have reconciled themselves to the Whig constitution of 1787, but give free rein to their fantasy outside the national border...
...and under every constitution sovereignty ultimately rests somewhere...
...It does occur to me, though, that if Mr...
...it had been kept since World War II in protective custody at Fort Knox, awaiting happier days for Hungary...
...Stephen to Kadar...
...Ross's (continued on page 37) The American Spectator welcomes correspondence from its readers...
...some, with varying degrees of seriousness, advocate an American throne and would unwrite 1776 altogether...
...Charles the Martyr which publicly deplored the regicide as the foundation of twentieth-century totalitarianism and issued buttons bearing the legend, "RESTORE THE MONARCHY...
...A capitalism where economic and social policies are decided in a free market unfettered by centralized and intrusive government...
...Bakshian's vicious smear job showed up only scant pages away from Thomas Sowell's excellent piece on "media s m e a r s . " Clearly, Bakshian is an expert at the art...
...The premier American royalist organization is the Constantian Society, whose name is derived from the Latin word for constancy, founded twelve years ago by Randall J. Dicks, a Pittsburgh attorney...
...The guys in the diner are lovable, and even the girls surprise us at the end when, at Eddie's wedding, the bouquet is thrown and they all reach up with delicate whitegloved hands: not to catch it, but to keep it airborne long enough to land on the table where our heroes are sitting...
...He reads Oliver IViswell and studies genealogical charts...
...No, the American monarchist is not Independence Day's Scrooge, yet to the democrats he repeats the ancient curse: "May you have an equal in your house...
...And there used to be a Reverend Wiebe in San Francisco, allegedly Episcopalian, who established a Monarchist League of America whose manifesto advocated the installation of a king in America by A.D...
...For the essence of pop art--and pop nostalgia--is not really satire, as many people think...
...The attitudes behind these pleasures are spoofed...
...2000, preferably a cadet of the House of Windsor...
...Jay Stribling of El Paso helped found while in college a Society of St...
...So long as the royal hand is able to intervene in moments of crisis, the specific machinery of administration is not all that important...
...Any attempt to dismiss the Czarism of the exiles must take into account the fact that, in Russia herself, discontent under the Communist tyranny is crystallizing as a powerful nostalgia for the nineteenth century in general, and for the Czar in particular...
...On a pragmatic basis, one might simply realize that the Reagan victory of 1980 cannot vindicate the democratic system if 51 percent of the electorate believe in flying saucers...
...and our own George Washington nearly had the crown thrust upon him...
...Daniel MacGregor of Chicago is the American correspondent of Monarchy Canada, the well-produced magazine of the Monarchist League of Canada...
...Her accomplishments as a writer and a thinker, and the clear impact she has had on thousands of people, deserve thoughtful analysis, not d i a t r i b e s full of unenlightening name-calling...
...MaslerCard...
...Most American royalists are Anglophile Jacobites...
...The American monarchist is not simply an eccentric...
...They were also watching a movie about their parents' generation, which no doubt added to their amusement...
...CAPITALISM The Economics of Economic Freedom by Henri I,epage A Conservative Book Club Selection $14.95 From your local bookseller or: Open Court Publishing Company Box 599 La Salle, IL 61301 Toll-Free Number: (800) 435-6850 VISA...
...Please limit your comments to 200 words, and include f u l l name, address, and telephone number...
...TOMORROW...
...David Thomasson Columbia, Missouri Aram Baksbian, Jr...
...Since there are bishops (and the Anglican Catholics breed them prodigiously), they infer, there must be a king somewhere...
...I know of an Austro-Franco-Bavarian baron of 64 quarters living in California who is a blanc des blancs of French Royalism...
...This man is also a Mayflower descendant...
...Peter Koltypin of Connecticut, hails H.I.H...
...I never thought her ideas, her writing, or her s e l f were intellectually or morally substantial enough to warrant a strong emotional reaction...
...By trying to make fun of both, it doesn't say a whole lot about either...
...He must work to establish three essential facts: First, all monarchies are constitutional monarchies...
...They live vicariously through the study of British and Canadian politics...
...I will not bore your r e a d e r s by drawing the obvious conclusion...
...Based on that article, I'd like you to cancel my subscription and refund the unexpired portion of it...
...Second, popular elections have no relevance to the issue of restoratton or continuation of monarchy, since elections divide people, and the most stable regimes are imposed from above or from outside...
...It seems to me that non-Liberals committed to economic and political freedom should expend their energies vindicating these beliefs instead of engaging in ad hominem, internecine attacks on one another...
...For the aesthetically inclined, the world's greatest period of artistic production, the Baroque, chiefly exalts the politics of throne and altar...
...It also happens that I don't think she was much of an artist and I proceeded to cite examples of her inadequacies as a novelist and critic (none of which the correspondents refute in their outpourings of wrath...
...J u s t as Miss Rand aroused little enthusiasm on my part, she aroused no hatred...
...The American monarchist finds no outlet for this conviction in the real world of affairs...
...I was looking to The American Spectator for informed conservative comment...
...The worst I ever felt about any of them was--and is--a mild distaste...
...The Order of Russian Imperial Union, whose president is Mr...
...and the aristocratic Cincinnati, composed of descendants of George Washington's officers, though they are devoutly anti-Hanoverian, have Louis XVI for their patron...
...Satire is quickly blunted by nostalgia and appreciation...
...Hayek, and members of the "Public Choice" School--have reshaped the science of economics into a comprehensive approach to the study of human problems...
...replies: I think the rabid tone of these l e t t e r s speaks far more eloquently than I could for the paranoid reaction of hard-core Randians to any sort of criticism...
...I have corresponded with a lady pol'itical science professor who is writing a book on the Kaiser and' describes herself as afrondeuse, and also with an attorney of Irish descent who is a knight of the Royal Yugoslavian Order of St...
...In New York City may be found the All-Russian Monarchist Front which engages in similar activity...
...for his pains, the American professor was dubbed by the old pretender in 1975 a Knight of the Grand Cross of the Proscribed Legitimacy...
...Gordon Haft of the Dartmouth Review recently came out of the regalia closet...
...but he would tell you that this sense of participatory void is only the democratic habit of mind, for democracy requires an unwholesome degree of politicization in its citizenry...
...Placing a soup can in an art gallery invites us to laugh at the soup can, but also at the art gallery...
...C 0 R R E S P 0 N D E N C E Friends of Ayn Rand Aram Bakshian, J r . ' s caricature (TAS, May 1982) of the " f r i g i d , " " f a d d i s h , " " o n e - dimen s i o n a l , - "dogmatic," " r i g i d , " " s h r i l l , " "pontificating," "drearily earnest," "tyrannical," "silly," "crankish," "limited," "seldom original," and "seldom right" person many of us know as Ayn Rand (but whom he identifies as " a long-winded messiah minus a god," " a grand inquisitor," and " a n old t r o u t ' ') d o e s n ' t really help us understand her impact or analyze the value of her ideas...
...lqx' Ir6efmt It.s~l l~i-,di~" / / . , a ~ The Economics of Economic Freedom by Henri Lepage " . . . a remarkable tour de f o r c e . . , comprehensive, accurate, and yet accessible to the general public...
...In fact, these comments are as useful in helping us understand Rand as comments by other writers in other journals about Thomas Sowell's "blackface sociology," "vituperative attacks," and alleged belief in the genetic inferiority of black people are in understanding Sowell (TAS, May 1982...
...These are Tories, adherents of the politics of throne and altar, feeling no less American and no less patriots for knowing what the civil war of 1775-81 was really about...
...But, by etymology, Tory originally meant an Irish papist...
...and elder literary statesman Austin Warren would like to be ruled by a native dynasty either of Jameses or Adamses...
...Eliot, believes that nations which have a king should continue to have one...
...Whatever may be said for the relevance of monarchy to universal human nature, the relevance of democracy to most national characters and historical contexts is very little...
...An intelligent survey of economic ideas that promises to improve the "wealth of nat~o0s," Tomorrow, Capitalism is about the very foundations of a free society...
...There is an emerging cult of the royal martyr...
...But that is the worst that can be said of monarchism...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1982 29...
...Mark S. Pulliam Los Angeles, California I was heartily disappointed by the article in your May issue on the recently deceased American philosopher Ayn Rand...
...To borrow a phrase from Mr...
...Aram Bakshian's "tribute" to Ayn Rand ("Ayn Rand, R . I . P . , " TAS, May 1982) was an uncontrolled torrent of venom that revealed far more about Bakshian than about Rand...
...It publishes the Constantian, has approximately 400 members, and takes for its mission the education of the public on monarchy...
...We'll just stand there and smile...
...As the Reagan Administration belabors the distinction between "authoritarian" and "totalitarian" regimes, and as commentators mull over the moral compromise in supporting Fascist dictatorships, the self-defeating futility of seeking to appease Marxist juntas, and the infeasibility of setting up democracies in backward nations, why is there no discussion of monarchy...
...Somewhere along the way they seem to have heard that James I once said, "No bishops, no king...
...yet by exposing the royal principle to discussion, the potential hold of the king over his government was thoroughly eroded...
...Czar Simeon II of the Bulgarians continues to press his claim, and .King Michael of Rumania has re28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1982 cently announced his readiness to return to the throne if he is called...
...The Order maintains a fund to finance anti-Communist propaganda in the USSR...
...Yet America confers legitimacy on the world's rulers in terms of its own civil religion in the same self-righteous manner as the Popes once crowned the royal majesties of Europe...
...women as the hunting preserve of men...
...Third, new monarchies can be fostered in the same way that the old once were...
...even the Tory Johnson conceded that "a high Tory makes government unintelligible--it is lost in the clouds...
...In their frustration with the current constitutional arrangement, which most of them regard as a necessary evil, these American royalists have created an international historical cult which embraces all forms of the lost cause of legitimism and which champions every dynasty...
...AMERICA'S ROYALIST UNDERGROUND by T. John Jamieson The principal feast of the American civil religion is upon us...
...and the Kennedys, their shabbiness notwithstanding, have filled the psychological vacuum that would otherwise be filled by a royal dynasty...
...Following the example of Spain, Portugal may be the next European nation to return to monarchy...
...It is ironic that Mr...
...But as irony would have it, an observation Rand made about the 1964 Republican National Convention also puts an embarrassingly cold light on Bakshian's spitting, seething hatred: When men feel that strongly about an issue, yet refuse to name it, when they fight savagely for some seemingly incoherent, unintelligible goal--one may be sure that their actual goal would not stand public identification...
...Diner presents an array of charming, basically sympathetic characters who engage in the forbidden pleasures of male bonding, sex jokes, and what Kauffmann calls "the deer-park mentality...
...Wilhelmsen, the great Thomist of the University of Dallas, actively involved himself in the movement for the Spanish restoration-except that his candidate was not Juan Carlos, but FranciscoJavier of Bourbon-Parma, the Carlist claimant...
...Then ! read Mitchell Ross's article on Professor Edward Said (TAS, May 1982...
...Plato, Cicero, and Shakespeare are very hard on democracy, and influenced the Founding Fathers against majoritarian rule as much as the mob politics of 17th- and 18thcentury England...
Vol. 15 • July 1982 • No. 7
