Hints to a Catholic republican

Orestes Brownson

Jack Quirk – the editor of Christian Democracy blog at Patheos, who has graciously run a handful of my articles there which can also be found on this blog (here, here and here) – recently issued an interesting challenge to his ‘monarchist’ friends and countrymen. Now, I daren’t arrogate to myself the intimacy to Mr Quirk to call myself his ‘friend’: our interactions have been solely online, though we share many of the same values and core political beliefs. I also don’t know whether I sufficiently qualify anymore as a ‘monarchist’ to be able to respond effectively to Mr Quirk’s challenge. Nevertheless, I feel it may be worth giving a shot.

Firstly, a couple of qualifications – because, after all, I am a monarchist with qualifications, and I feel it’s only right and just to lay all my cards on the table in advance of my argument. My pro-monarchy sentiments and beliefs are – even among as eclectic and counter-cultural a bunch as monarchists tend to be generally – a bit odd, perhaps, because they proceed from three key sources.

1. My Tory loyalism. This loyalism is familial: my spear-side forebear Jacob Cooper was a Tory, and featured on a South Carolina rebel commander’s list of enemies. And distaff-side, the infamous Doan Gang feature prominently. However, this loyalism on both sides is bound up in a certain Pennsylvania Quaker cultural-metapolitical preference for order, stability and communal harmony over the upheavals of revolution. (I kept this preference as an Anglican and continue to keep it as an Orthodox Christian; in neither case do I believe it conflicts with my religious commitments.) In any event, ever since middle school I’ve instinctively taken the side of the loyalists. I continue to regard the motives of the ‘Founding Fathers’ with scepticism and distrust, and have stubbornly refused to countenance the ‘patriotic’ mythology of the American revolution.


2. My ‘Jennifer complex’. I shall explain the term and concept in a later blog post. Suffice it to say that the persistent Anglophilia which has informed my spelling habits and has lent itself to part of this blog’s title, seems to be rooted deep in my psyche. Surprisingly deep, as I discovered this past Lent. I suspect it may have Freudian roots, being bound up with latent but profound attractions to two of my schoolteachers early in my education. But my love of all things British has absolutely shaped my preference for constitutional monarchy as a system of government.


3. The welfare-state connexion. It’s been a paradoxical observation of mine, one that has proven correct as I’ve seen the data. All other things being equal, constitutional monarchies provide more equal outcomes for people on the bottom rungs of the ladder than republics do; the only exceptions I’m aware of are in the post-communist world. I’ve seen several explanations for this, and I’m somewhat agnostic on which one (or mixture) is correct. The traditional feudal power struggle often enlisted the king on the side of the ‘common folk’ against the nobility. The fear of revolution often led monarchies like Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, Japan and the Nordic countries to adopt progressively comprehensive welfare-state measures. And the idea that there is an established order with one acknowledged fellow at the ‘top’ can be said to prevent the bourgeoisie and gentry social climbers from becoming too heartless and ruthless in their pursuit of worldly gain. In any event, the correlation between a decently-egalitarian social order and the presence of a monarch exists, and it is strong.

I don’t list all of the above in order to weaken or second-guess my own argument; merely to establish what kind of (flawed, fallible, limited) person is making it. I do not claim to speak for all monarchists, and still less for monarchism as an ideology. I speak for myself alone, and for a certain position of broadly ‘left’-ish constitutional monarchism which I feel is best reflected in the robust social politics of Clement Attlee and, to a lesser extent, Harold Macmillan.

Enough navel-gazing for now? Onward, ho, then:

Mr Quirk begins in a similar spirit of self-deprecation, and assumes that his inability to compass the appeal of monarchism to people like myself is owing to some failure of his own imagination or intellect. I’m given to suspect a certain degree of false modesty here. Mr Quirk has proven able to conjure and array a number of substantial arguments in defence of Christian democracy – arguments which I have found convincing myself on occasion. Still, let’s do Mr Quirk the only reasonable and kind thing and credit his sincerity. He posits several models of monarchy, and enlists the help of several examples.

His first model, in answer to the sort of monarchist who appeals to the glories of a hazy European past, entails the historical basis of monarchy in its feudal political-œconomic moorings, with the first monarch in a succession being a successful warlord who rewards his generals with land and wealth and power. Quite understandably – and, in my opinion, rightly – he objects to living under a timocratic régime so dominated by militarism and lust for honours. However, as he himself acknowledges, most monarchists (myself included) are not satisfied by this objection, which is overly specific. The history of the United Kingdom itself has witnessed several changes in dynastic power – some peaceful and some less so – but it’s far from clear that monarchical changes are any bloodier or more militaristic than republican ones. Ask around Ireland, for example, to see how well Great Britain’s only republican ruler, Oliver Cromwell, is regarded. And for a counterexample: the Stuarts acceeded to the English monarchy twice, both times in a spirit of relative peace.

As to Mr Quirk’s next suggestion, that ‘monarchy’ and ‘socialism’ are both alike vague and relatively open terms – this I agree with, gleefully and without hesitation. Indeed, it is only under just such openness that I can be considered either a monarchist or a socialist, riven as my political views are with antinomy, paradox and irony. I’m indeed thankful that monarchism and socialism are both broad enough tents to admit someone like me, whose theopolitics are so recherché. It’s only when he proceeds to his following assumptions that I begin to dissent.

He charges monarchists, by implication, with being materialists and with being Pelagians. I confess to not being too fussed by the first charge, if only for the reason that I’ve made the same charge myself against certain of my fellow monarchists. This was a charge levelled both by Solovyov, and in a more indirect form by Tolkien himself – who took pains in his description of Gondor under the Stewards to attack those forms of ‘traditionalism’ which attach themselves to the dead husks of outward form. But Mr Quirk’s implied charge that monarchists are closet Pelagians is just… bizarre.

After all, it isn’t as though monarchists either historically or in the present day have made a point of denying original sin in its effects: that seems to be more a fabrication which Milton sought to attach to his monarchist opponents in his republican poetic symbolism. I think – and perhaps this may be wishful thinking in some cases – monarchists are clear-eyed enough to avoid the vulgar and stupid mistake of thinking human beings who happen to wear crowns to be morally infallible, or not in need of political constraint. Tradition itself may act as a brake on runaway princely ambitions in the form of an unwritten constitution. (In a modern political climate such as ours, it seems a trifle unreasonable to hope that symphonía can provide such a brake as it did for Emperor Saint Constantine and his successors. But that should be the hope and the model striven after.)

Now, the real question: does the form of the state matter when deciding on policy? Mr Quirk answers a definitive and emphatic ‘no’ from the standpoint of Catholic social teaching, but I confess I find myself somewhat sceptical. At the risk of sounding like a Herderian run amok: the state itself is all form, and all policies must have a formal aspect. To give one example: would a good Christian democrat see fit to advocate policy within the context of a fascist dictatorship? (Historical experience would say no.) There are certain totalitarian formal contexts within which Christian democratic policies and advocacy make no sense, and which a Christian democrat is obligated to oppose. I think and hope Mr Quirk recognises that constitutional monarchy of the sort we had as colonies of Britain, and which the British government still has, is not one of these totalitarian forms.

To press the point a bit further: what is it that makes the American Constitution so sacrosanct that changing it becomes unimaginable to a Catholic? The Constitution in its original form permitted and endorsed slavery. It is only with the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that slavery was formally done away with; a change that came far earlier and far easier, it should be noted, to the subjects of the British Crown. Are we to believe that good American Catholics in the mid-1800’s would not have been justified in advocating for abolition, on the grounds that it required a formal change to the constitution of the American state? Speaking as an Orthodox Christian with a heavy hereditary Quaker streak, such a distinction between constitutional ‘form’ and policy ‘substance’ seems artificial and ethically specious particularly in this case. Truly, no less great an American Catholic apologist than Orestes Brownson – himself no particular fan of monarchy – would sharply beg to differ with it.

With regard to the more pragmatic question Mr Quirk raises, of whether or not the Constitution of the United States actually should be changed, I do agree with his ultimate point – conditionally. It does precious little good to advocate for a monarchical change to the Constitution when the people and the culture themselves don’t favour it. In such a context, Mr Quirk is right to hint that such a constitutional proposal would ‘get in the way’ of advocating for more humane policies. On the other hand, rejecting as I do both the formal state-policy distinction and the essentialist assumption of cultural immutability, in an ultimate long-term sense I can’t help but entertain hope for the idea of a constitutional monarchy here. Particularly if constitutional monarchies are indeed better for the downtrodden than republics are.