Louis XIV: Apogee of Absolutism
According to Louis XIV, a king is superhuman, a man who is above all and sees all and is the only one working for the “public” good, wh
According to Louis XIV, a king is superhuman, a man who is above all and sees all and is the only one working for the “public” good, wh
Catholic political thought had come a long way from the Spanish scholastics.
From Theory and History Part Two, “Determination and Materialism”. Narrated by John Pruden.
What manner of man was this, then, this grand bureaucrat who scorned the interests of mere individuals and merchants as petty and narrow, who presu
On January 22, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the Soviet Union, decreed that all existing 50- and 100-ruble banknotes were no longer legal tender and that they could be exchanged for new notes for three days only and only in small quantities. This had the effect of instantly deleting large portions of the savings and accumulated capital of private citizens.
European democracy broke down because there were no democrats left in continental Europe. The place held in America by the Gettysburg Address was occupied in Europe by the Communist Manifesto. No further comment is necessary.
Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu (1585–1642), considered the mass of Frenchmen simply as animals to be prodded or coerced in ways that
While his major practical interest had not been domestic or economic affairs, he had helped build up the absolutism of the French state.
Conservatives have always believed that once a nation goes Communist it is irrevocably doomed — that collectivism, once adopted, is irreversible. Yugoslavia, and to some extent the remainder of Eastern Europe, have shown that this is not true, that the spirit of freedom can never be extinguished.
Obviously the word [mercantilism] can only be used within strict limitations, but, alien as the conception of a national economy still was to the governments of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, it is plain from their conduct that they desired to protect the industry and commerce of their subjects against foreign competition, and even, here and there, to introduce new forms of activity into their countries.