The Menace of the Herd, or Procrustes at Large

I MONARCHY

“The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes a Titus or Marc Aurelius; the people is often Nero, but never Marc Aurelius.” — Rivarol.

As soon as society valued expediency, justice, and reason more than the momentary whims of mere majorities, a crystallization of leadership probably came about. This later form was probably a compromise between majority rule and the monarchical idea. The lack of an efficient executive still made the consent of the large bulk of the people a necessity and a council often acted as an intermediary; frequently the council was the primary organ and the “leader” (chieftain, ruler) only emerged as a primus inter pares of the oligarchic council. The only practical and workable form of “democracy” today has most of these features. The deputies form a vague sort of aristocracy or oligarchy, and the presidents and prime ministers are often nothing else but kinglets with a time limit. There has been practically no major attempt to return to direct democracy in large states; only a few cranks would like to restore this archaic order with the help of modern, technical devices. They dream of an endless chain of plebiscites; the questions would be put to the citizens by radio and the answer would be given by pushing a white button for “ayes” and a black one for “no” a couple of hours after the questioning. Adding machines in the capital would then give a clear picture of the general will at a certain moment. Some people consider Dr. Gallup’s Institute for Public Opinion to be such a forerunner of tomorrow’s Integral Direct Democracy, yet there is little likelihood that there will ever come such a reductio ad absurdum of democracy. The political development goes clearly in the opposite direction.

  1. All human beings are equal.

  2. One human being can err, the majority of a group never.

  3. Everybody is able to judge every political question.

  4. The representatives in the Parliament are necessarily the best heads.      

  5. All intelligent and honest men are popular.

  6. The functional value of the ignorant and the learned are the same.

  7. Both sexes have the same abilities and functions.

  8. Masses have an unerring instinct.

  9. Majorities have an inate sense of justice.

10. No human being is indispensable.

11. Majorities are the better part of the whole.

12. Truth can stand by itself. The lie never prevails.

13. More progress means more happiness.

14. A majority suppressing a minority is a lesser evil than a minority dominating a majority.1

15. More ochlocracy means more liberty.

16. The masses value liberty more than everything else.

17. Liberty, progress, “democracy,” peace, and social justice are thoroughly interconnected.

One could go on with this list endlessly. Today some of these points are viewed with skeptical despair by many “democrats” but they nevertheless cling to their faith with bitter tenacity, although they have given up its basic tenets — a situation remindful of Roman-Greek paganism in the third century. The façade still stands but the interiors are moth eaten and decayed and the very foundations are crumbling underneath. It is only the lack of hurricanes, thunderstorms, and earthquakes which still prevents the final disaster.

It is also remarkable that ochlocracy never had brilliant advocates like monarchy, aristocracy, or socialism. There is nobody in the “democratic” camp who can be compared for brilliancy — I do not say orthodoxy in each case — to de Tocqueville, Marx, Maurras, de Reynold, Trotzky, Spengler, Proudhon, Plato, Bainville, Aristotle, Ortega, and St. Thomas. Democracy never had, and probably never will have, an appeal for the man of original genius.2

In Europe monarchy usually sprang from some sort of “democracy” through open consent or through tyranny which became consolidated and gained a certain amount of popularity. The first monarchs, the founders of the European dynasties, were all outstanding people who excelled either through their wisdom, virtue, bravery, sanctity, or at least through their shrewdness, diplomacy, brutality, or daredevil courage. None of them was insignificant. The families of these rulers constantly intermarried; even back in the early Middle Ages the tendency was clearly one of intermarriage between the royal and imperial houses with the result that we find at the end of this epoch in the Christian Occident one large family of rulers with many different branches, united by the common faith as well as by the ties of common ancestors, of common tombs, of common blood.

There is little wonder that the constant crossbreeding of the progeny of “excellent” people created a superior strain. The steady intermarriage of children begotten and born by parents engaged in administration, rule, jurisdiction, and military affairs created a class of men and women with a special capacity for this task. The study of heredity and practical biology teaches us that there is definitely such a thing as inheritance of certain intellectual capacities and trends; we have only to observe the small gypsy boys with their violins, or six- and seven-year-old children of watchmakers in the Swiss Jura whose ancestors have made clocks and watches for generations; their dexterity in handling watches would astound every outsider.

These mercenary armies had many advantages over the modern system. On the whole they fought without hatred. It was true that the discipline was inadequate, measured by our standards, but no brutality could keep the liberty-loving men of the sixteenth century in bounds. The mercenary also liked fighting for its own sake; he had volunteered for this job and he needed no propaganda to instill him with hatred for his enemy. The loss of his life on the battlefield was certainly not an irreparable one; from a social point of view it meant just one dissolute element less in the state, while his final suffering was often an expiation for a wild, cruel, and disorderly life. Prison camps were rare. Captured officers often gave their word of honor not to fight in the present war any more and were allowed to retire to their estates, while soldiers, made prisoners of war, often enlisted in the “enemy” armies. Ministries of propaganda and information who might stir up the feelings of the population did not exist, nor was any need felt for such an institution. The decent burgher stayed at home, far from the scene of war, and rarely did he see anything of the fighting or the fighting forces except when an army happened to pass his town. The rape of Magdeburg, or even the Sacco di Roma, was hardly as thorough as the destruction of Ypres in 1914–1918 or of Warsaw and Rotterdam in the present war. Neither was it easy to take a well-fortified town; the burghers had a good chance to defend themselves behind the walls until relief came; the menace of a passing army was far greater to the open village. A heavier war taxation only came into use when the patriarchal monarchy switched over to more absolutistic forms after Protestant political theories had penetrated all European countries. Before the advent of absolutism, monarchs were often in dire financial straits which could only be alleviated by borrowing and not by taxation. Taxes were more or less voluntary contributions by cities and estates.8

As for the peace treaties, they were concluded after shorter or longer negotiations, conducted usually by noblemen or ecclesiastics. Social events brought the delegates nearer to each other personally and the very last peace congress dealing with “Pan-European” affairs — the Congress of Vienna — was one of the greatest social events in Europe. (The Congress of Berlin in 1878 falls into a similar category.) Nobody was more lionized than Prince de Talleyrand, representative of the defeated power which had menaced the rest of Europe for decades. Popular sentiment happily played no role in these negotiations.

Yet Talleyrand carried great strength in Vienna because he was the representative of a legitimate monarch and not of a makeshift revolutionary power without European responsibilities. A dynasty belonged and belongs, so to say, to the “natural features” of a country, like the mountains, the rivers, the flora, and the historical monuments. The continuation of a dynasty was procured by the “sweet process of nature” (to use the words of Bossuet) and the heir to the throne was the product of the conjugal love between the monarch and the (foreign) queen who had not only espoused a man but also a country. (This international character of monarchy finds its expression in the fact that the death of a Christian ruler resulted and still results in an official mourning of all European courts.) A king could be forced to abdicate or persuaded to lay down his crown, but the dynasties who were parts of the countries (almost in the geographical sense) as well as states (in the political sense) were everybody’s property, i.e., res publica. The royal cross consisted largely in the fact that the royal families had no personal and private lives in the sense the other classes enjoyed it. A royal marriage was not less res publica than a royal pregnancy (officially announced) or a royal birth.

Patriarchal monarchy unfortunately gave sway at a later period to absolute monarchy, which became entangled in nationalist etatistic movements, a process which finally led to a suicide of the monarchical form of government, which saw its Golden Age after the decline of feudalism and before the rise of absolutism.10

During the Middle Ages nationalism was extremely weak.11 It did not exist in the modern, linguistic sense of the nineteenth or in the racial sense of the twentieth century. Nationalism, as far as we are justified to use this term in relation to the centuries preceding the discovery of the Western Hemisphere, was merely an exaggerated loyalty to the people considered to be one’s conationals, people of the same language and custom. “Statism” was a slightly greater danger and the idea of the sovereignty of the state was alive in different forms centuries before Hugo Grotius. It was only too natural that statism, however inarticulate it was, had to collide with the Church. Marsilius (Marsiglio) of Padua, who preached the priority of the state over the Church, exalted at the same time the monarchical prerogatives. His Defensor Minor expressed a view on the relationship between state and Church which had similarities with ideas professed on the same subject by Louis XIV, Joseph II, Napoleon, Hitler, and Peter the Great.

There is little doubt that the works of Marsilius were well known to John Wycliffe, the first and probably most original of the “reformers.” In his book De Eucharistia he denies transubstantiation and thus deprives the priest of his supernatural power. In De officio regis he declares the king to be second only to God. All Popes after Sylvester, who had received the Patrimonium Petri from Constantine, were, according to Wycliffe, representatives of antichrist, because they had yielded to the materialistic temptation of temporal power. His “poor preachers” soon infested the country and his idea of a Church devoid of all earthly possessions and without any visible organization first attracted the nobility who hoped to enjoy the spoils from the liquidation of the Catholic Church in England. Yet Wycliffe’s insistence on the supremacy of royal power displeased them and the rise of Lollhardy after his death gave them no further encouragement to support his heresy.

If nation A has the religion X and the the nation B follows the religion Y, the already existing national-cultural-linguistic abyss will be widened by religious antagonism. The members of the nation A are now thoroughly insistent that their religion X is the right and true faith and that other nations are therefore not only different but also basically wrong in their beliefs. This causes a fatal increase in national pride which now assumes a religious aspect. The A’s persist in considering themselves (solely endowed with the true religion) as chosen by God, not only chosen to understand truth and be rewarded with eternal bliss but also chosen to “save” the world. (This “salvation” is best achieved by rule.)

This present-day national messianism is not only typical of the Jews, but also of the British, North Germans, Russians, and North Americans. Catholic nations never have it, neither is it typical of the oriental religions like supranational Mohammedanism and Buddhism. The strongly insular Japanese Shintō and Hinduism are the exceptions. Nationalism within the framework of Mohammedanism is merely due to European influence. The basically Christian attitude of Mohammedans toward other anthropological races puts many followers of Christ to shame. Yet the local heresies of Europe and America possess this national messianism to an astounding degree; British Israelitism, the Ku Klux Klaners, the National Socialists and their numerous forerunners and last but not least the Russian Messianists of both denominations— the consciously messianistic Schismatics not less than the subconsciously messianistic Bolsheviks — illustrate this truism rather well. The heresies, on account of their intrinsic lack of Catholicity, always were the protagonists of a suicidal parochialism in time and space. Their rise means the decline of Europe.

The phenomenon of absolute monarchy based on Protestant governmental theories was thus only a comparatively short-lived straw fire which lit the way for a new and even more dangerous movement — the rule of the masses. Luther, who taught that human beings morally are utterly wretched and hopelessly corrupted through original sin, invoked the establishment of a severe, efficient, and vindicative authority (Obrigkeit). Thus the decline of Europe started with heresy which begot personal absolutism, absolutism begot the reaction of the masses, finally the masses sought their personification in an absolutist “leader.”

Yet even in the urban life a truly inhuman equality can be achieved only by sheer force and the more logical a people will be by nature, the more brutally will this equality be realized. A comparison between America, England, France, Germany, Russia, and Spain demonstrate to us the various methods of handling the problem of equality. French egalitarianism was comparatively mild — yet it was far more ferocious than for instance American egalitarianism. But for modern ochlocracies at least fictional equality is essential; as a tendency it is basic for the creation of mere masses. Masses or mobs consist necessarily of identical or similar atoms in order to function as great irresistible units which, confident in their homogeneity and quantity, are not only able to smother all obstacles but also to transmit in the shortest time emotional and “electric” shocks to the remotest parts of the whole. The French philosophers had prepared the advent of the “individual” and the French Revolution completed their work. “The philosophy of the French Revolution,” quotes Stapleton in his Life of Canning, “reduced the nation to individuals so as to, later on, congregate them into mobs.” And these mobs on account of their strong inferiority complex shouted loudly for equality and demanded the elimination of everybody who dared to be different. The proposition of the elders of Strasbourg was actually carried out with human beings who defied the iron law of similarity and identity; they were shortened — beheaded by the progressive medical machinery of Docteur Guillotin.

Yet ochlocracy itself was and is not a sufficient basis for militarism. The identitarian façade of identical military clothes — “uniforms” — which had come into fashion a few decades ago, was not enough. Within the borders of an ochlocratic country the stressing of equality between the different classes and groups gratified the herdist instincts; in contact with the enemy another collective sameness had to be emphasized in opposition to the mass identity of the enemy. Nationalism, already nourished by the reformers reached a new height of intensity; the French republicans not only were ochlocrats but also “patriots” (yet in reality nationalists). This “patriotism,” which had nothing to do with the natural love for the soil, culture, tradition, and habits of the country, first became a parochial movement of cleverly disguised anti-Europeanism and later on a violent herdist sentiment, attacking in and outside the country all those who dared to belong to a “different” culture and linguistic unit, until it finally degenerated into racialism, demanding identity even in the color of hair and eyes, index of the skull, pigmentation of the skin and structure of the bones.

The nationalistic “patriots” were necessarily antimonarchical, because monarchy in Europe is (as we have pointed out before) a basically international institution. The wrath of the nationalists in the French Revolution was mainly directed against the foreign-born queen, and her trial, a worthy forerunner of the staged trials of the Bolsheviks,14 goes down as one of the greatest villainies of all times.

It is characteristic that it is practically always the queen or empress who has to bear the whole brunt of revolutionary hatred. This is largely due to the strict marriage laws of most continental dynasties which force the princes to marry into foreign ruling families. The alien origin of the ruler’s wife acts upon the nationalistic herdist like a red fabric on a bull. We see the same attitude of the masses toward the last empress of Russia, toward Empress Zita of Austria, Marie Antoinette, Queen Elena of Spain, Queen Henrietta Maria, and others.

Plato in his Republic (Books 7–8–9) explains painstakingly the way in which democracies inevitably evolve into tyrannies. Tyrannies or dictatorships had in antiquity the tendency to become well-established monarchies, and thus the circle of governmental evolutions was closed. The transition from tyranny to monarchy is today extremely rare. After a millennium of settled monarchical tradition we have a dynasty on the throne or in exile for each country, and the coronation of a successful politician or party leader would only tend to make him ridiculous in the eyes of his followers and enemies alike. One must add that the idea of a Christian monarchy is quite distinct from the monarchical idea of antiquity, not only on account of the concept of legitimacy but also due to certain qualities which are intrinsic characteristics of a Christian monarchy.

Napoleon, in spite of his imperial title, lacked the most vital characteristics of a European monarch; he neither possessed a great dynastic name, nor was he a relative of any of the other ruling dynasties. His father was an Italian lawyer of doubtful nobility in Ajaccio,18 the capital of the most disrespectable island in the Mediterranean, famous for its bandits, cutthroats, and the practice of the vendetta. Napoleon could not “relax” as a Habsburg, a Bourbon, or even a Medici. He had to engrave his name in the great book of history and this dictatorial pastime of engraving is usually only accomplished with blood and tears. Neither respected nor respectable on account of his revolutionary background, he was forced to impress his fellow rulers and neighboring nations with triumphal successes; if they couldn’t respect him at least they learned to fear him.

He had to wage the total war of Jacobine tradition based on the levée-en-masse. Not being related to the large family of European monarchs, he also continued the practices of the First French Republic by annexing neighboring countries en bloc and incorporating them into his empire or degrading them to vassal states and filling their vacant thrones with obedient relatives. These wholesale annexations as well as the continuation of total warfare — war in earnest — indicated that he was not willing to play the game. The European rulers soon were in utter confusion because such a breach of rules and usages had not happened since the days of Genghis-Khan and Tamerlane. Dictated peace treaties were a novelty and we have mentioned the fact before that between A.D. 900 and the advent of Napoleon no European monarchy had been wiped off the map, no European dynasty had become homeless on account of a foreign invasion.

There is still the case of Poland. Poland vanished owing to successive armed interventions and due to the fact that this country had committed the folly of becoming an aristocratic republic whose king was elected by the Diet. Thus the Polish kings had frequently no connections with the other ruling families of Europe and this is also the reason why the neighboring countries — Prussia, Austria, Russia — did not have the slightest hesitation to carve up this unfortunate country which had always prided itself to be a Rzeczpospolita, a “republic.”19 The history of the decline of Poland begins soon after the moment when this country had left the path of hereditary monarchy. We see a short-lived renaissance under Jan III Sobieski, but the introduction of the liberum “veto” marks the end of Polish glory and independence.20

This does not imply that republican tendencies and downright republicanism are necessarily degenerate forms of government. It is nevertheless true that no country ever became a republic because it was too wealthy, too healthy, too happy, or too strong. All European republics originated either as a result of a movement for national independence and the acceptance of a republican form of government was then due to the lack of a pretender, or, the fall of monarchy was due to despair, hunger, bankruptcy, military defeat, corruption, invasion. Europe’s rise is written in the terms of Christianity and Monarchy, Europe’s decay in the terms of Republicanism, “Progressivism,” and Godlessness.

The European monarchs, who never loved nor liked the Corsican usurper, decided finally, in order to save their skins, that Napoleon had to be “appeased.” The presence of a crowned tyrant in Europe put an almost intolerable strain on every country, a strain not only material but also moral on account of the necessary imitation of French revolutionary methods. Every totalitarian regime since has forced most if not all the European countries to take countermeasures which led to a disastrous multiplication of totalitarian counterideas. If one part of the European body is diseased all the rest will suffer; and sometimes it may be the antitoxin which is more fatal than the poison itself.21

The only way out was to transform the tyrant into a real king, i.e., to make him a relative of his royal colleagues. And this is exactly what happened. The daughter of the Austrian Emperor (a few years ago still Holy Roman Emperor) was married to the usurper. But the monarchs soon became aware of the fact that they had become the victims of miscalculation. Napoleon did not reform. He carried the war as far as the Sarmatian plains, destroyed myriads of human lives and so still yielded to his insatiable ambitions. It was evident by now that he would never become a genuine monarch. A new coalition between the Continental rulers and the British moneyed aristocracy first deprived him of his Empire. After a renewed attempt on his part to behave like an irresponsible politician and general, the powers of the coalition stopped treating him as a monarch and interned him on an African island. Thus ended one of the most sanguinary episodes in European history.

The Napoleonic wars were concluded by the Congress of Vienna. The French delegates were treated as friends, colleagues, and gentlemen. All thrones were restored to their former owners (with the exception of the temporal powers of the German Archbishops) and France was given new borders which left her slightly larger than before the beginning of the outbreak of the Revolution.22 The blame for the terrific bloodshed fell neither on the French people nor on the legitimate dynasty; the twenty-three years of terrible wars were looked upon as a series of acts of folly, as deplorable aberrations which one had better forget and forgive. This was the same spirit as expressed in the preamble of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) which concluded the Thirty Years’ War and runs as follows:

“The hostilities that have taken place from the beginning of the late disturbances in any place of whatsoever kind, by one side or the other, shall be forgotten and forgiven, so that neither party shall cherish enmity or hatred against, nor molest or injure the other for any cause whatsoever.”

Obviously the progressive twentieth century was still some way off.

But the spirit of nationalism and ochlocracy, of militarism and uniformism unfortunately survived. The French levée-en-masse was answered by a Prussian levée-en-masse and the government of Berlin showed little inclination to get rid of that evil institution. The Conservatives (like Metternich) persecuted the nationalist movement bitterly, but without success. The bourgeoisie on the Continent had not yet reached the full victory. It was not yet a dominating class and therefore nobody dreamed of considering nationalism as a movement of the “Right.” There was the closest cooperation in the common fight of “democratic” nationalists and nationalistic “democrats” against the supranational Church and the institution of international monarchy.

On the surface there was a strong monarchical, rightist, and “medievalist” reaction to be felt all over Europe; Châteaubriand, de Maistre, de Bonald, Schlegel, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Zacharias Werner, Clemens Brentano, the brothers Stolberg and Manzoni wrote their great works within this movement. Romanticism east of the Rhine was truly diversitarian and romantic. A wave of conversions swept over the Continent and the Tractarian movement in England was not far off. The Church seemed to regain her old influence. Yet, under the surface, the nationalists of the herdist pattern would render all efforts of the spiritual-intellectual élite illusory. The vast masses of Slav inhabitants of the East European plains began to raise their voices in favor of a union. And from the northwestern plains and islands another monster raised its head, another phenomenon bound to change the face of the earth — the Industrial Revolution. While Kaspar David Friedrich and Kriehuber painted mountain scenes and Schwind and Ludwig Richter dwelt on the subtle lore of small German towns, tall chimneys and great machines, heralding the advent of another scourge, made their appearance; while poets, painters, and princes spoke in glowing terms of the coming New Middle Ages a German of Jewish descent, horrified and bewildered by the spectacle of British industrialism, first conceived the ideas which a few years later led to the publication of the “Communist Manifesto.” The inexorable march of events could not be stopped by a few bien pensants; it took another one hundred years to teach mankind the appreciation of the proverb that God’s mills grind slowly but with firmness and precision. The reductio ad absurdum alone could bring about the showdown of the ideas of the Great Revolt of the herdists.

We have gone “out of our way” in order to defend monarchy merely because we think that this form of government had either been unnecessarily abused in America or often been linked to its very opposite: plebiscitarian dictatorship. We are convinced that christian, monarchical forms of government belong, like the republic, to the good forms of government. Monarchies may not only survive the present cataclysm but may even increase in number and it is therefore necessary that Americans have an inner understanding for that political system (which does certainly not imply that they should copy it). European, Catholic monarchists profess this political conviction for very similar reasons as American Catholics voice their preference for the Republic; both Catholic camps see in these systems a (relative) guarantee for personal liberty, for the security of the Church, for legitimacy and justice (juridical and social), for international understanding.

It is naturally, also equally necessary that Europeans in general and European Catholics in particular arrive at a greater and better understanding of the principles and foundations of the American Republic. As long as many Americans view monarchy from the angle of S. Oglow’s humorous “Little King” and Europeans have a vision of the United States as “another Soviet-Union” with a stock exchange instead of a Kremlin, no real mutual understanding and affection is possible. And “affection,” not just interest mixed with curiosity, is an iron necessity for every peace. Pax est amor.

 

________________

23A Christian will consider a tyrannical person bossing a city brutally a lesser evil than a whole city lynching one man. In the first case there is one sinner and thousands of sufferers, in the latter case thousands of sinners and one sufferer. The materialist will look at the problem the other way round. He is never interested in sin, but as a humanitarian only in suffering. His final logical conclusion is euthanasia and the sacrifice of individuals to the whim of the masses.

24It would be difficult to classify a man like Jacques Maritain. He exalts a “democratic” concept which is not a living reality and attacks existing democracy (Rousseau’s democracy, as he calls it) violently. Henri Bergson also seemed to approve vaguely of “democratic” principles. (See: Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion.) Maritain’s sympathies seem to be on the whole with a representative government, with many checks and balances. (Cf. also J. P. Mayer, Political Thought, London, 1939, p. 273.)

25Cf. the mémoires by Bruce Lockhart and the fine monograph by J. Daniel Chamier.

26Cf. The biography by Dr. Viktor Eisenmenger, Kristóffy’s “Magyarország kálváriája. Az összeomlás útján.” Also “Apis und Este” by Bruno Brehm, and the biography by Theodor von Sosnosky.

27Cf. the excellent biography by Hans Roger Madol.

28It is also true that future monarchs ordinarily had the advantage over president or prime ministers in having been educated for their task from earliest childhood on.

29Inventors of poison gas, tanks, pursuit planes, bombers, floating mines, etc., might have run the usually decried risk of getting into trouble with the ecclesiastic authorities. They might have been possibly accused of being in league with the devil—an accusation probably not without foundation.

30Japanese militarism is largely ascribed by Ernst O. Hauser, in his brilliant articles and books, to the pseudo-aristocratic “emancipation” of the middle classes since the end of the shogunate. The Japanese monarchy varies totally from the European monarchy in its lack of international blood ties and of Christian tradition, but the aggressive element in Nippon is nevertheless a military caste, with a bourgeois background, and not the crown or the nobility. (Cf. also the articles of Joseph Newman in the New York Herald-Tribune, Dec. 28, 1941, and Hugh Byas’s Government by Assassination, New York, 1942.)

31St. Thomas recommended a mixed form of government in his Summa, I–II, 105, I in C.

32See Donoso Cortès, Oeuvres, Paris, 1858, Vol. II, pp. 256–257.

33We have clearly to distinguish between statism (étatisme), which is an enthusiasm directed toward the state as a legal and bureaucratic unit, nationalism, a herdist feeling of identity toward the ethnic people (Volk) with the same language and habit (inside and outside the state), racialism, a morbid frenzy for human beings of the same biological stock, patriotism, an enthusiasm for the natural features of the fatherland, and imperialism which seeks territorial expansion of the country (frequently under nationalistic or racialistic pretexts). Citizenship—a legal status; nationality—a cultural status; and race, as a biological status and condition, underlies the first three “isms.” It is deplorable that common usages not less than newspapers and even dictionaries have helped to create a total chaos in these technical terms; nationalism is most frequently confounded with either imperialism or statism and the concepts of race and nation are used as synonymous. (The “German race,” “French nationalism in the seventeenth century,” “Patriots rally against foreign language newspaper” are just a few contributions to the general confusion.)

34See the description of “facticism” in Erik and Christiane von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s, Moscow, 1979, New York, 1940.

35Small European states outraged only too often the sense of proportion of American tourists. They may be monstrosities from a commercial point of view, but liberty and personality demand sacrifices in blood . . . and cash.

36Stage trials are a helpful prerequisite for influencing public opinion and therefore a current phenomenon in totalitarian ochlocracies.

37The reader will understand that we do not believe that monarchy is everywhere and anywhere superior to representative republics. But we believe that on account of Europe’s diversity this supranational form of government has a greater raison d’être than the more “national” representative republic, which in its turn harmonizes more with the American tradition and American needs.

38The revival of the old Provinces by Maréchal Pétain, whatever his other merits or demerits are, was certainly a step in the right direction.

39It very frequently happens in Central and Eastern Europe that “class” means to all practical purposes “national character” just as it may mean “racial character” in the American South where the upper classes are white and the lower classes predominantly colored (apart from the “poor white trash”). The antagonism between a Hungarian burgher and a Slovakian peasant in northern Hungary or that of a Polish squire and a Ukranian servant could now not only be exploited by the socialist agitator but also by the nationalistic malcontent.

40See Chateaubriand’s Mémoirs d’Outretombe, who is very much convinced of Napoleon’s aristocratic background.

41Rather typical is the Polish proverb: “Cudzych królów gromić, a grozić swojemu”—“Subjugate foreign kings and defy your own!” It breathes a thoroughly “whiggish” spirit.

42Frederick II of Prussia refers to Poland in his Political Testament (1768) as a République.

43The years 1917, 1922, 1923 mark the last stages of this drama.

44Guglielmo Ferrero in his The Reconstruction of Europe, New York, 1941, makes a very strong point of this fact.

• 1* See the letter of Mr. William S. Bennet, prominently displayed in the New York Times, Apr. 5, 1942.
• 2* Apart from the fact that we rather borrow our terminology from the Fathers of the Constitution than from radio commentators or the speakers at women’s clubs.
• 8* Cf. Stringfellow Barr’s article “Ourselves Again” in Tomorrow, Oct., 1942. Condensed reprint in the Catholic Digest, Nov., 1942. This essay of the president of St. John’s, Annapolis, not only evaluates democracy correctly, but also gives an outline of Hitler’s democratic background.
• 10* About the problem of “democracy” in relation to the popular representation in the United States. See pp. 247–248.
• 11* While man living in the old, traditional form of culture is a dreamer, modern, ochlocratic man is frequently the victim of illusions.
• 14** This idea has been well developed in Josef Leo Seifert’s brilliant work Die Weltrevolutionäre (Von Bogumil über Hus zu Lenin), Vienna, 1930. This work is based on P. Wilhelm Schmidt’s and Gräbner’s Kulturkreislehre. It is also symptomatic that the leaders of the republican movements of Italy, Hungary, and Austria are all titled; Count Sforza, Count Ferdinand Czernin and Count Michael Károlyi. A scion of the princely family Löwenstein represents German republicanism in the United States. (The reader is warned that the terms “First Estate” and “Second Estate” for the Nobility and Clergy are interchangeable as they are not really historical. Only the term “Third Estate” is unequivocal.)
• 18*See Chateaubriand’s Mémoirs d’Outretombe, who is very much convinced of Napoleon’s aristocratic background.
• 19*Rather typical is the Polish proverb: “Cudzych królów gromić, a grozić swojemu”—“Subjugate foreign kings and defy your own!” It breathes a thoroughly “whiggish” spirit.
• 20**Frederick II of Prussia refers to Poland in his Political Testament (1768) as a République.
• 21***The years 1917, 1922, 1923 mark the last stages of this drama.
• 22*Guglielmo Ferrero in his The Reconstruction of Europe, New York, 1941, makes a very strong point of this fact.
• 23TO PUT in its right light and scientific context the technical word democracy is naturally our first task. Representative government as established in the United States is not synonymous with democracy. The Founding Fathers established a republic (res publica, politéia), not a democracy. And many of the Founders of the Constitution of this country have repeatedly emphasized this fact in so many words. Some of the best American minds have again and again called attention to this important fact and have protested loudly against the use of the term democracy for the fundamental laws of their country, which they respect and by which they abide.*
• 24We see, then, from the plurality of present-day connotations of democracy that it would be thoroughly unjustified to use the term “democracy” in any other sense than in the classical and universal one.* We may well agree that the mischief started by uneducated popularizers has already reached such proportions that a Hercules is needed to clean this Augian stable of popular misconceptions, false labels, and mispresented ideologies. Even some of the more intelligent writers have become a prey to popular pressure, and as modern intellectuals do not lead the masses any more, but follow them and subordinate their ideas and language to the demands of the market, the confusion has now reached its climax.
• 25Today democracy is confused with liberalism,* freedom, and prosperity alike.
• 26“Democracy” as an ideal of the Founding Fathers is equally denied by W. H. Hamilton and D. Adair in The Power to Govern (New York, 1937, p. 158). It must also be borne in mind that the protest against calling the Constitution democratic comes from historians of all groups, yet while Rightists praise lack of “democracy” in the Constitution, “Leftists” like Charles Beard* and H. Rugg are prone to condemn it outright.
• 27We have said before that it is difficult to find the exact reasons for the growing popularity of the word democracy and democratic taken from a dead language which is thoroughly nonunderstandable to 999 out of 1000 Americans. The decline of classical education in favor of progressive “self-realization” has favored the increased use of wrong labels. It is deplorable that even Catholics have become victims of this chaos in verbiage. They have naturally “their” democracy, the Leftists have “another one,”* and even Conservatives indulge in the worship of a thing called “democracy” with a thoroughly different content. The only way out would be to discard the label completely, restore it brutally to its pristine meaning, and to call the things hitherto covered by the label with their proper names.
• 28In order to denote the classical interpretation of democracy as well as its cultural concomitant we have chosen to use the word ochlocracy and — as its adjective — ochlocratic.* The Greeks used this expression strictly in the sense of mob rule, regardless whether these mobs created majorities or minorities. The selection is not a very happy one, and the reader is reminded that we understand under “mob” not the “lower classes,” but just the vast masses of inferior people which can be found everywhere; these products of a soulless culture and civilization who in their terrifying mediocrity are neither fish nor flesh, have neither face nor expression, neither wisdom nor knowledge, piety nor enthusiasm, faith nor charity, hatred nor love, those who go neither with the angels nor the devils and because of their lukewarmness will be spat out by our Lord on the day of reckoning.
• 29It is almost in the strictly classical sense of the Greek word ochlocracy, to which reference has just been made, that the United States Army Military Manual* defines democracy in Section IX, Lesson 9, on “Representative Government.” Having first described autocracy as resulting in “arbitrariness, tyranny, and oppression,” it goes on to what it considers the opposite extreme:
• 30While many may consider the government established by the Founding Fathers as a constitutional democracy, it is clear that no such idea entered into the mind of those from whom Americans derive their form of government, nor did these men give coloring to such an interpretation by their own actions.*
• 31We must furthermore always bear in mind that equality presupposes the perpetual application of force; equality after all is an unnatural condition — it is just as unnatural as a completely straight line, a geometrical plain, a perfect circle, distilled water, etc. It needs the intervention of human agencies who have to curtail and to stem the natural growth and development sometimes in the most brutal and cynical way. Docteur Guillotin, Procrustes, the mythological Hellenic bandit, and the magistrate of Strasbourg who decided during the French Revolution to demolish the tower of the medieval cathedral because it was higher than the surrounding houses, belong all to the same category. Dostoyevski, in his Possessed, has predicted accurately how an egalitarian superdemocracy would function. The Soviets have fulfilled this prophecy to the letter.
• 32The confusion about the alleged harmony between modern ochlocracy and Catholicism is largely due to a great deal of wishful thinking, misunderstood patriotism, and the ambiguous elasticity of certain technical terms. Let us take, for instance, the word equality. How frequently do we hear responsible Catholics talking glibly about the equality of human beings! Maritain has warned all about the indiscriminate use of this term and he proposed to use the expression Unité du genre humain. Gustave Thibon has not only taken egalitarianism severely to task but he has also pointed out that the efforts to create equality have engendered at the same time the most violent inequalities. All those who by their free will or their disposition are unable to conform to the prescribed standards of equality — and there will always be such a minority — will after the efforts of leveling stand out more distinctly than in a nonuniform society. These are then usually the “traitors” who do not “play the game” and must be executed, exiled, or weeded out like the aristos under Robespierre, the burzhuys under Lenin, or the Jews under Adolf Hitler.
• 33The confusion about the alleged harmony between modern ochlocracy and Catholicism is largely due to a great deal of wishful thinking, misunderstood patriotism, and the ambiguous elasticity of certain technical terms. Let us take, for instance, the word equality. How frequently do we hear responsible Catholics talking glibly about the equality of human beings! Maritain has warned all about the indiscriminate use of this term and he proposed to use the expression Unité du genre humain. Gustave Thibon has not only taken egalitarianism severely to task but he has also pointed out that the efforts to create equality have engendered at the same time the most violent inequalities. All those who by their free will or their disposition are unable to conform to the prescribed standards of equality — and there will always be such a minority — will after the efforts of leveling stand out more distinctly than in a nonuniform society. These are then usually the “traitors” who do not “play the game” and must be executed, exiled, or weeded out like the aristos under Robespierre, the burzhuys under Lenin, or the Jews under Adolf Hitler.
• 34It must furthermore be borne in mind that equality stands for monotony and not for harmony. A harmonious melody can only be established by different unidentical musical tones. These tones must be assembled and have to follow in a certain sequence; otherwise they will result in chaos and not in melody. Human society presupposes such an inequality and unity. Thibon has seen very clearly this issue which can only be solved in the sign of love.
• 35“It consists in purifying and organizing the inequalities from the point of view of a deeper equality, or, to put it more precisely, in making inequality serve unity. But this unity, what else is it but love and what is love without God.”
• 36This clarification is quite necessary because many a good Christian — and that holds true for most of those living in the Western Hemisphere — has an unclear notion about human equality. The American Declaration of Independence mentions the fact that the human beings are “created equal.”* This is true in the theological sense, and in the theological sense only. Two newly born babes are equal before God whether their parents are white or colored, American or foreign, registered in the Virginia Blue Book or in the rogues gallery. This theological equality continues until the time comes when they commit morally responsible acts. Judas Iscariot and St. John the Evangelist were equally conceived in original sin and free from personal sin, but how different their end! Heaven and hell are not identical. It is actually the privilege of our environmental determinists to discard the terms “saint” and “sinner” and to supplant them by pragmatic expressions like “social-unsocial” or “adapted-unadapted.” Dostoyevski prophesied this moral relativism in his chapter on the Grand Inquisitor (Brothers Karamazov), where he sees humanity declaring through the mouth of its science that there are no trespasses and no sinners but only “hungry people.”
• 37Apparently a great deal of misinterpretation is floating about concerning the interpretation of the American Declaration of Independence. The signers would certainly have been the worst hypocrites had they given to their document the same interpretation that so many give to it today. We can understand their attitude only if we remember the fact that the basis of the American Republic is an aristocratic whiggish one, which largely lacked that deeper “democratic” element in social relations as we find it in southern and eastern Europe, and perhaps in South America.
• 38Needless to say that every successful attack against the concept of free will results in an almost total degradation of human dignity.’ It puts us beyond good and evil and fosters a fantastic quietism or an even more fantastic irresponsibility. It is nevertheless amusing to see determinists of all heretical denominations — Calvinists, Marxists, Behaviorists — flocking to clubs and leagues defending civil liberties. Liberties to be enjoyed without free will! One sees how far the prostitution of logic has led many of us. This great confusion is also apparent in the standing phrase that “democracy stands for equality before the law,” whereas the law is largely interested in iniquities and inequalities. There is, of course, one great excuse for these confused minds and that is that they all have continued in the bottom of their hearts to believe in free will. Determinism is too inhuman and suicidal to be generally and sincerely accepted and the charge which remains is largely that of hypocrisy.
• 39Needless to say that every successful attack against the concept of free will results in an almost total degradation of human dignity.’ It puts us beyond good and evil and fosters a fantastic quietism or an even more fantastic irresponsibility. It is nevertheless amusing to see determinists of all heretical denominations — Calvinists, Marxists, Behaviorists — flocking to clubs and leagues defending civil liberties. Liberties to be enjoyed without free will! One sees how far the prostitution of logic has led many of us. This great confusion is also apparent in the standing phrase that “democracy stands for equality before the law,” whereas the law is largely interested in iniquities and inequalities. There is, of course, one great excuse for these confused minds and that is that they all have continued in the bottom of their hearts to believe in free will. Determinism is too inhuman and suicidal to be generally and sincerely accepted and the charge which remains is largely that of hypocrisy.
• 40The second attack against integral Christendom, gaining momentum right now, comes from the nonuniversal herdists. They put the human beings into watertight hierarchic categories frequently of a racial nature. This new racial determinism, creating racial aristocracies, responsible to a collective “race” but not to a personal God, and racial proletariats with no hope of an earthly salvation, is not less a danger than the classic panherdism. The desire for racial purity in order to achieve the perfectly uniform herd leads to brutal persecution and finally to the strictest imaginable uniformism. The Germanies without the Jews will be an even more monotonous place than the Germanies with persecuted Jews. We will experience in Central Europe the integral boredom which Myerezhkovski considers to be the fatal characteristic of the Realm of the Antichrist.
• 41We should always bear in mind that the Church and ochlocracy cooperated badly in Europe, that the forces inimical to the Church always fostered ochlocratic tendencies. One cannot dismiss the latter fact as purely accidental. Of course there is no incompatibility on dogmatic grounds. The question moves on a plain where in dubiis libertas is written in flaming letters: “In doubtful matters, liberty.” Yet the atmosphere, the parfum of the Church and that of “democracy,” when blended in the political and cultural sphere, emits a bad stench. A parallel reading of the works of our authoritative “democratic” essayists, poets, and other creative writers (from the Leaves of Grass to the City of Man) with the encyclicals of Gregory XVI and Pius IX would give a mortal shock to many “progressive” Catholics who think that the Church ought to come to terms with the spirit of our time . . . (which may, overnight, become the spirit of yesterday). These encyclicals at least express the spirit and policy of the Church in unmistakable directness and clearness.
• 42If there were nothing else than the final and inevitable development of political ochlocracy into the modern party dictatorships it ought to be enough to make the Catholics more skeptical toward this governmental tendency and its ultimate consequences. (We refer here also to the demand of “more democracy!”) It is not a good counterargument to state that everything is evil in a state of exaggeration. Herdism is essentially a “low” sentiment. As nucleus and carrying power of a philosophy of earthly existence it becomes definitely an evil. A real good on the other hand can never be exaggerated enough. There can never be, in human society, enough of the acceptance of the Cross and of charity, never enough loving differentiation and hierarchy, never enough of the spirit of Maundy Thursday when our Lord, the pope, the emperors, kings, and bishops knelt down to wash the feet of twelve Apostles or of twelve beggars. Nor is the custom discontinued in our day. This is hierarchy and charity, order and love.
• 43Yet the great impulse for our modern ochlocracy and democratism comes from France. The French Revolutionaries have tried to copy antique forerunners, but they were not very lucky in their efforts. There is a certain Swiss influence connected with this revolution, yet this element has nothing to do with the democratic peasant spirit of the Original Cantons. It emanates from the eighteenth-century enlightenment which has a strong Swiss, or rather Genevan background. This French town, acquired by the Swiss at a later period of their existence, had already produced its famous two Johns: Jehan Cauvin (from Noyon) and Jean Jacques Rousseau. M. Dunan’s humanitarian Red Cross, the assassination of Empress Elizabeth, the League of Nations, and the socialism of M. Nicole were scheduled to follow.
• 44This pagan geocentrism has changed the very content of our culture. The “happy end” of the cheap, popular novels and the films is nothing but the outcome of the supposition that the human drama finds its ultimate conclusion here on earth. The Calvinists in their materialism took a similar attitude. The more subtle Atheist, of greater experience, has contempt for the “happy end” and substitutes for it a stubborn heroical pessimism which comes pretty near to integral despair. The modern Catholic French writers like Mauriac and Bernanos avoid the happy end in relation to this life. Paul Claudel, in L’Ôtage, expresses his disbelief in earthly justice by punishing the people of good will and rewarding the villains in the last scene of this play. For the Christian the earth is essentially a “vale of tears.”