Type 7: "Constitutionalist"

The Constitutionalist is incorruptible. That is because unlike the other six governing mindset types, he operates within a tradition, and does not try to exalt himself above it. He declares his allegiance to custom, convention and continuity, and pays deference to our institutions. He recognises the need for restraints upon power and passion, and therefore supports the balanced Constitution and the rule of law. He understands that energetic governments are by their nature oppressive, and that any increase in the power of government comes at the expense of liberty. That we long ago descended into the polite totalitarianism of the 'Servile State', tells us that the strict Constitutionalist is no more.

Mindset: Read The Radical Tory Manifesto. "Government which governs least governs best. Because the state has a monopoly on power and violence, the law and constitution must limit the amount of coercive fear a government can hold over its constituents. People should not be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people. When government fears the people we have civil democracy, when people fear the government we have statist tyranny. Good government demands no more than the defence of the Crown, Church, Constitution and Realm."

Resulting Government: Constitutional Monarchy/Republic

Manifestations: Westminsterism, traditionalism, patriotism, monarchism, loyalism, fushionism, (paleo)conservatism, classical federalism...

Intellectual: Polybius (The Histories), Montesquieu (The Spirit of the Laws), John Locke (Two Treatises on Government), Edmund Burke (Reflections on the French Revolution), Thomas Jefferson/James Madison/John Adams (U.S. Constitution), Walter Bagehot (The English Constitution), Samuel Griffith (Australian Constitution)...Eugene Forsey (The Royal Power of Dissolution of Parliament and How Canadians Govern Themselves)

Practitioners: Proud inheritors of the Magna Carta and 800 years of English/British common law; the Founding Fathers of the American, Canadian and Australian federations; constitutionalists in the Westminster responsible government tradition include Burke and Pitt, Mackenzie and Papineau, Disraeli and Gladstone, MacDonald and Cartier, Parkes and Deakin, Lord Salisbury...right up to the time of the Salisbury Group. Politicians who still maintain a traditional Westminster disposition in the spirit of a Salisbury or a Churchill are none to be found.

Contemporary: Her Majesty the Queen is the most obvious constitutionalist, since she actually believes in her Coronation Oath. Other than that, I really don't know of any remaining type 7. It is far more likely to come across the presidential premiership of a Tony Blair these days. The lone practitioner in the American tradition would appear to be presidential candidate Ron Paul who garnered no more than 5% of the Republican vote.

Summary: "We are flawed creatures, but we are not totally depraved. In our better moments we recognise our weakness and we create institutions in order to defend us from our worst failings. Institutions are above politics. You might say that we have institutions so that we don’t die of politics. But as we look around at our institutions today we see that like Sidonius’ Rome, they have all been undermined from the inside: the law, education, the established church, the monarchy. Our neglect, or worse our destruction, of our institutions reveals our self-contempt." - recent article in The Salisbury Review

Now that our little exercise has been completed, I'm obligated to reveal my source for this wonderful idea, and admit my outright theft of some choice passages from that rebellious traitor William Lyon Mackenzie whom nobody liked, but whom we can nevertheless thank for pushing the way towards responsible government in British North America during the late 1830s. It is furthermore interesting to point out that WLM was quite possibly the very first Anglospherist in advocating federal union between Britain, Canada, the United States, and Ireland in 1861 (see Wikipedia).

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Type 6: "Libertarian"

The United States has the most cultivated sense of liberty in the world. However, like all of the mindsets discussed so far, it too has a tendency towards perversion, especially when modernity is celebrated as some kind of welcome relief from the shackles of oppressive communalist tradition. I would prefer to be governed by a perverted "type 6" over a perverted "type 1" mindset without reservation, but in an ideal world an enlightened absolute monarch is naturally superior to an anarcho-capitalist system without roots.

Mindset: "I am an opponent of the central state, its wars and its socialism. I have suffered personal loss from government greed and corruption. I have been directly deprived of property and prosperity by the actions of large out of control government. The sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the individual citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression. Three groups spend other people's money: children, thieves, and politicians. All three need close supervision and accountability."

Resulting Government: A non-interventionist government that recognizes the sovereignty of the individual over the collective will of the people.

Intellectual/Manifestations: Classical liberalism is the fusion of many strands of economic/political/civil libertarian thought including John Locke (property rights), Voltaire (religious freedom), Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations), Thomas Paine (The Rights of Man), David Ricardo (comparative advantage), J.S. Mill (utilitarianism), Ludwig von Mises (Human Action), Friedrich Hayek (The Road to Serfdom/Constitution of Liberty), Murray Rothbard (anarcho-capitalism), Ayn Rand (Objectivism), Milton Friedman (monetarism)...

Practitioners: Barry Goldwater, Margaret Thatcher ("Thatcherism"), Ronald Reagan ("Reagonomics"), David Lange and Sir Roger Douglas ("Rogernomics") Nigel Farage (UKIP), Ron Paul (Libertarian Republican)...

Political Parties/Movements: United Kingdom Independence Party, Libertarian Party of the United States, British Libertarian Alliance.

Contemporary: Still very much on the political fringe, however large swaths of the Internet and Blogosphere contain a huge libertarian streak, as well as numerous Think Tanks.

Think Tanks/Schools: Adam Smith Institute, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Austrian School of Economics, Chicago School of Economics, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Independent Institute, Cato Institute, Prometheus Institute, John Randolph Club, Rockford Institute,...

Lew Rockwell Slogan: "Anti-State, Anti-War, Pro-Market". Read his principles of libertarianism in The General Line.

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Type 5: "Populist"

Every now and then a movement/leader bursts onto the scene determined to wake us from our slumber and shake us from the prevailing consensus. We feel momentarily enfranchized by the unsettling effect this has on the corrupt/complacent ruling party and status quo. Some of us become appalled by the demagoguery or mesmerized by the populist rhetoric in the name of "justice" or "freedom" for "the people" against "the elites" during this time of "hope" for "change". Most of us probably don't believe the blarney, but at least we are finally being offered the opportunity to dispose of the greedy incumbents.

Mindset: "I have always felt disempowered and want a say. If folks vote for big Gummint and Kleptocratic welfare statism, folks should get big Gummint and Kleptocratic welfare statism, so long as it’s ratified by the majority and we get to look over the cooked books once in a while."

Resulting Government: Tyranny of the Majority. Read The Menace of the Herd by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn.

Manifestations/Practitioners: The classic populism of Sparticus; the imperialist glory of Napoleon; the jingoism of Theodore Roosevelt; the 'Every Man a King' campaign of Huey Long; the 'New Deal' populism of F.D.R.; the Prairie populism of John Diefenbaker; the telegenic charisma of John Kennedy, John Edwards and Barack Obama; the Gaullism of Charles de Gaulle, the Peronism of Juan Perón, the Trudeaumania of Pierre Trudeau and Thatcherism of Margaret Thatcher; the Charlatanism of Tony Blair and Blarney of Brian Mulroney (biggest majority in Canadian history); John Howard's Aussie battlers ('Howard's battlers'); Jean Chretien, the 'Little Guy from Shawinigan'; the economic populism of New Zealand prime minister, Sir Robert Muldoon; the reformist populism of Ross Perot, Preston Manning and Newt Gingrich; the 'Common Sense Revolution' of Mike Harris in Ontario; the 'Quite Revolution' nationalism of René Lévesque/separatist demagoguery of Lucien Buchard in Quebec; the far right-wing/left-wing populism of David Duke/Hugo Chávez; the ultranationalism of Jean Marie Le Pen of France or Vladimir Zhirinovsky of Russia.

Recent Quote: "It is a paradox of democracy that sometimes leaders must make decisions that a majority of the electorate either disagrees with, or would disagree with if it had the chance to express an opinion. The public didn’t vote to reduce tariffs, float the dollar, or sell the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. If the public had been given a say on any of these policies they would have been rejected." - John Roskam of the Melbourne Institute of Public Affairs (The Perils of Populism by Roger Kerr)

Better Quote: "We are the change we've been waiting for." - Barack Obama.

Not Included: The fearmongering, hatemongering, demonization, intimidation, scapegoating and 'Big Lie' propaganda of Adolf Hitler probably fits more in the realm of mass hysteria than populism in my view.

Comments: Populism can be an opportunity or a threat. It is by definition impossible to arrive at an ideal result in government through populist appeal, where all of the democratic interests of the people must be taken into account. Given the diversity of interests and groups in a polyglot society, any movement that appeals to all of the "people's interest" will by definition be so general as to be useless or bequeath a government so large as to be burdensome. The key is to remove the people's interest in government altogether, which brings me to type 6...

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Type 4: "Progressive"

Democracy has passed into the abnoxious worldview of the politically correct modernist, where truth is routinely murdered and people are ridiculed for their beliefs. Politics has become so vastly compromised that all mainstream parties feel the need to self-censor and conform to the degenerate assumptions of the Progressive. The result is political brand loyalty hokum, partisan roll playing and spin doctoring bunk in which a de facto one party state hands off leaders in an election every four years.

Mindset: Government cannot be all things to all people, however I support all the existing unproductive government programs because I am a compassionate and tolerant person. And tolerance is the highest of high temple virtues.

Resulting Government: De facto one party state - Liberal Labour Tory, same old Big Government story. All levels of government all told take about half of our earnings to pay for whatever it is they do, plus about 17 cents each to run the monarchy.

Intellectual: The brilliant Aldous Huxley long ago predicted our dystopia in Brave New World, where (and I'm paraphrasing here) humanity is carefree, healthy and technologically advanced; where warfare and poverty have been eliminated in the West and everyone is permanently happy due to government-provided stimulation, which is achieved by social engineering and eliminating things once considered central to our identity — family, history, culture, art, literature, science, religion and philosophy. The hedonist nihilism of society beckons toward a painless, amusement-sodden, and stress-free consensus rendering a truly blissed-out and vacant servitude where no serious history is taught or remembered. Read Christopher Hitchens on why Americans are not taught history.

Manifestations: Religious secularism, postmodernism, materialism, utilitarianism, cosmopolitanism, transnational progressivism, moral relativism, multiculturalism, Gorish environmentalism, peacekeeping pacifism, nihilism, narcisism... socially, it's 'Cool Britannia', our poisonous mingled celeb culture and ageing rock stars like Sir John Elton, Sir Mick Jaegar and other esteemed nobles of the 'Aristorockracy'; it's globe-trotting 'starchitects' with their abnoxious designs; it's the institutionalization of the 'Bob and Doug MacKenzie' "I-Am-Canadian" beer commercials mentality, etc. where not taking anything too seriously represents the highest form of sophistication. It's politicians who embrace our proseltyzing gay culture in public by marching in parades/riding on floats to show how tolerant they are. Politicians who don't ride in gay floats or engage in ethnic pandering are considered to be ipso facto homophobic and racist.

Poll Question: Do you favour getting rid of the Queen? Response: "We have a Queen??? Yes, I support getting rid of the Queen." Anectodal: Staffers of former Prime Minister Paul Martin who were aware we have a Queen and a Queen's representative were reported to have shown up at the residence of the Governor-General in jeans and sneakers to meet with Her Excellency. I guess they didn't think much of the position.

Practitioners: Bill Clinton, Paul Keating, Tony Blair, Paul Martin, Jean Chretien, Kim Campbell, Joe Clark, Pierre Trudeau, ...you get the idea. It's the forever young Bono crowd (remember Trudeau meeting Lenon), the need to be modern, hip and cool. Barbara Streisand eat your heart out.

Contemporary: With few exceptions, this mindset is shared more or less by all modern day politicians, mainstream media and popular culture icons...Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Kevin Rudd, Helen Clark, Nicolas Sarkozy, Romano Prodi, Jack Layton, Gilles Duceppe, Dalton McGuinty...though there does seem to be a welcome retreating of late in regards to multiculturalism, 'human rights' and Sharia Law.

Not Included: Obviously the Teddy Roosevelt who pronounced himself a 'Progressive' a century ago is a very different thing to what we have today. Modern day exceptions to the 'type 4' mindset might be George Bush, John Howard, Stephen Harper and Jacques Chirac, though they all lead governments that result in marginal difference from the status quo.

Comments: This political mindset that lends itself to compassionate, tolerant, mediocre and decadent statism cannot be broken over night, only bent ever so slightly over time. What we have today is nothing more than Machiavellian partisan gangism/gangsterism organized for the selfish purpose of winning power and to take the reigns of the modern super state. No real principles here, mainly just power for power's sake.

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Type 3: "Socialist"

The socialist may be the clear preference over "type 1" and "type 2" dictators, but we are still a long way from the ideal governing mindset. Socialism lies on its own spectrum and extends from the deranged sociopath who shares his bed with the revolutionary, to the more traditional trade union types of old Labour and their modern reincarnations.

Mindset: "I am basically a sociopathic elitist and have resentment and contempt for most people, which is why I support a party/dogma that treats them all like the stupid greedy children they are. If I can avoid common donkeywork and feather my own nest by organising/engineering the lives of these hopeless cattle my philosophical goals are met. If I can portray my base instincts and anti-social agendas as moral superiority and be exalted as a commoner's demigod, my intellectual needs are met."

Resulting Government: Democratic Socialist to Social Democrat

Marxist Intellectuals: Lenin and Trotsky, Rosa Luxembourg, Che Guevara, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and other 'Left Bank' intellectuals...there are actually way too many to list. Hayek was aware of the enormous power of intellectuals to shape public opinion and warned us that “it is merely a question of time until the views held by the intellectuals become the governing force of politics”, which is as valid today as it was when he wrote it.

Practitioners: Industrial Revolution Luddites, 19th C. socialists like Jean Jaurès, William Morris, Keir Hardie, King O'Malley and Samuel Gompers; 20th C. you get Clement Attlee (National Health Service and nationalisation of major industries), Ben Chifley (failed attempt to nationalise Australian banks in 1947), Tommy Douglas (father of Canadian medicare), Pierre Trudeau (National Energy Program and father of multiculturalism, the very first in the world), Britain's Ernest Bevin, Harold Wilson and Neil Kinnock; Canada's Ed Broadbent (New Democratic Party), Paul Hellyer (Action Party) and Svend Robinson; Australia's Gough Whitlam...

Churchill Quote: "A socialist policy is abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom. Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the object worship of the state. It will prescribe for every one where they are to work, what they are to work at, where they may go and what they may say. Socialism is an attack on the right to breathe freely. No socialist system can be established without a political police. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance."

Manifestations: Statism, collectivism, paternalism, Fabianism, trade unionism, bossism, anti-capitalism, economic nationalism, trade protectionism, egalitarianism, class warfarism, student radicalism, feminism, aetheism, pacifism, anti-imperialism, anti-nuclearism, anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, anti-monarchism, anti-globalism, state and animal welfarism, cultural protectionism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, post-democratic Europeanism, bureaucratic supranationalism/internationalism, modern NGOism, radical humanrightism,...can I stop now? Let's just call it social activism and the reflexive need to regulate every conceivable human activity.

Contemporary: Brazil's Lula da Silva, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez (positively sociopathic), Bolivia's Evo Morales, Spain's Zapatero, Cuba's Raúl Castro, Britain's George Galloway, Claire Short and Tony Benn, Canada's Gilles Duceppe, Jack Layton and David Suzuki, America's Naom Chomsky, perhaps some notables in Australia which I'm unaware...lower down the totem pole, you still see modern day Trotskyites and Che Guevara worshippers, as well as deranged leftists who call our soldiers terrorists for fighting the Taliban, along with the odd nut who rails against the fact that God is mentioned in the Constitution.

Not Included: Red Tories, New Deal Democrats and modern New Labourites are not to be tarnished as classic socialists. To label Great Depression fighters like Ramsay MacDonald, F.D.R. and MacKenzie-King with the socialist tag rings false to me, even though they gave rise to the beginnings of the modern welfare state. Britain's New Labour has pretty much reinvented itself apart from hangers-on like George Galloway and Claire Short. Helen Clark of New Zealand Labour has also mellowed from her more feminist, anti-monarchist younger days. It would furthermore strain credibility to label Kevin Rudd of Australian Labor [sic] a socialist in any meaningful way. In my opinion, they have all advanced to type 4.

Comments: I was going to say that we have come a long way since the overall belief in the benefits of social engineering and of economic planning and, at the same time, the disbelief in free markets were at their heights. I was going to happily conclude that socialism has finally been so popularly discredited, we can celebrate and move on. But as I was jotting down the various manifestations and proliferating 'isms', it struck me just how adept it is to adapting and finding new substitutes for statist action. We should never underestimate the seductive power of "type 3" adherents to influence the debate, even if they have been forever banished from government across the Anglosphere. God forbid, "world government" might still be in our future.

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Type 2: "Revolutionary"

The second most perverted mindset across the psychological spectrum of politics and governance is that of the revolutionary. It is the mind of the revolutionary and his fanatical need to correct some perceived injustice, even if it means murder on a large scale to achieve his political ends, that yields the next most repressive form of government.

The storming of the Bastille, 14 July 1789 during the French Revolution
Mindset: "Personal trauma has caused an abnormal personality disorder in me. I spend most of my waking hours focusing my hatred and anger from this past event upon a perceived 'political' enemy and wrapping my uncivil criminal and violent agenda in a sanitising cloak of 'a people's political cause'. The immediate result of my revolution ranges from social deconstruction and balkanisation to anarchy and genocide. The governments I may form rely on fear, intimidation and tyranny to control dissent to my authority."

Model of Government: Totalitarian Dictatorship (One Party Rule) after a short period of Mob Rule and Provisional Government.

Intellectual: The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Rights (Jean-Jacques Rousseau), The Rights of Man (Thomas Paine) debunked by Edmund Burke following Reflections on the French Revolution, The Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels), State and Revolution (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin), Giovanni Gentile, etc. History has completely debunked these latter intellectuals, and much of this debunking was accomplished by the insight and intelligence of one man - George Orwell (1984).

Misguided Quote: "Man is naturally good, loving justice and order. There is absolutely no original perversity in the human heart, and the first movements of nature are always right". Rousseau apparently never believed in our great propensity towards sin.

Practitioners: The leaders of the French, Russian, German and Chinese Revolutions... Jacobin France, Soviet Communism, German Nazism, Red China, Viet Cong, Khmer Rouge, Sandinistan Nicaragua...Robespierre, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Nicolae Ceausescu, Che Guevara...revolutionary "leaders" and their puppets share the megalomania of "type 1" despots.

Manifestations: 18th C. Jacobinism, 19th C. Anarchism, 20th C. Marxism/Communism/National Socialism, all spawning a kind of atheistic despotism, now giving way to 21st C. Islamic Terrorism. This perverse extreme left wing mindset has many commonalities with classic imperialist thinking, but is usually distinguished by a popular political movement whose leaders generally do not share the malignant narcissim of bemedalled tinpots in dark shades. Thus you get modestly dressed peasants like Stalin or Mao or even Hitler, compared to the pomposity of classic imperialists. Hitler, it must be said, seems to straddle both mindsets, for here is a national socialist revolutionary out to conquer Europe and the world for Germany's racist/nationalist glory.

Notable Results: The Reign of Terror, The Great Purge, The Holocaust, The Great Leap Forward, The Killing Fields, Al Qaeda Sep 11th...

Contemporary: Dear Kim of North Korea, Cuba's Castro, Chavez's Venezuela, Zimbabwe's Mugabe, the Black Panther Party in the United States and other residual Marxists/terrorists. Obviously Osama Bin Laden carries the mindset of a revolutionary with an ancient grudge, holed up in the mountains with his people planning their next attack.

Not Included: The Right to Revolution and the Two Treatises of Government by John Locke, the mindsets that led to the 'Glorious Revolution' and George Washington to switch allegiance and lead the American Revolution, nor the rebel mindset of William Lyon MacKenize, who led the revolt against the Family Compact during the Canadians Rebellions, which in turn led to responsible government.

Comments: The rationalistic and revolutionary values spawned by the Enlightenment gave us - in the name of Progress - guillotines, gaols, gallows, gas chambers, gulags and a repertoire of genocides that continues to this day. We have wrongly been conditioned to think of medievalism as a kind of backwards morality, but compared to the fear, slaughter and tyranny since Jacobinism first took root, the Middle Ages were probably a living paradise. I know Robespierre kept ranting about virtue and probably saw himself as sea-green incorruptible, but I still can't help thinking that loyalty, chivalry, nobility and the ancient and natural values espoused by monarchist societies are still superior to the equality rights of man. The real question is this: what form of government offers its people the greatest measure of liberty? An ancient monarchy whereby people rarely came into contact with the state, or big modern expensive bureaucracies tasked with bringing ever greater 'equality', 'progress' and 'social justice' to the people as a result of those revolutionary ideas that were unleashed during the Enlightenment?

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Type 1: "Classic Imperialist"

Over the next few days, The Monarchist examines the worst and best forms of government, by revealing each of the prevailing mindset types (seven in all) that characterises the resulting Liberty vs Power governing arrangement. We begin today with the most repressive and end in the days to come with the most free.

Mindset: "I am chosen by birth right and divine destiny to rule over the soiled masses and have them do my bidding, till my fields, fight my wars of expansion and service the needs of the nobility class I create to uphold my arbitrary, absolute authority. My whim and will is not to be questioned as it is the extension of Divine Providence. The greed, avarice, corruption and profligacy of my ilk is above the law."

Model of Government: Absolute Despotism (One Man Rule), which could be a perverted form of absolutist empire/monarchy/republic. Note: I do not apply the term "despot" to those who acquire such position by regular constitutional means, such as a hereditary absolute monarch, except to denote personal abuse of power.

Intellectual Theories of One Man Rule: The Devine Right of Kings, Mandate of Heaven, The Natural Power of Kings (Robert Filmer), Leviathon (Thomas Hobbes), The Philosopher King in Plato's Republic (Socrates). Intellectually, Montesquieu pointed out that there were three main forms of one-man government, each supported by a social "principle": monarchies (free governments headed by a hereditary figure), which rely on the principle of honour; republics (free governments headed by a popularly elected leader), which rely on the principle of virtue; and despotisms (enslaved governments headed by dictators), which rely on the principle of fear.

Quotes: "L'État, c'est moi" (Louis XIV, falsely attributed); "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" (Lord Acton).

Practitioners: Egyptian Pharaohs, Imperial Rome/Medieval Europe/Tsarist Russia occasionally, Napoleonic France, South American Juntas, Central American/Middle Eastern/African Tin Pots...i.e., perhaps Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Caligula, Emperor Charlemagne and Ghengis Khan; certainly Attila the Hun, Tamerlane, Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon Bonaparte... shared this "type 1" megolomaniac mindset, just as Mussolini, Hitler, Francois Duvalier, Idi Amin, Bokassa, Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein did in modern times.

Manifestations: Absolutist, imperialist, theocratic, feudalist or fascist military dictatorship, at times bent on the sadistic desire or insane notion of World Domination (i.e., Hitler/Napoleon/Alexander).

Notable Results: At its worst, the conqueror/ruler brought slavery, subjection, tyranny, brutal exploitation and dehumanisation. In every instance, the pressure of an alien culture, with its different values and religious beliefs, and the imposition of new forms of social organisation meant the breakdown of traditional forms of life and the disruption of native civilisation.

Contemporary: Osama Bin Laden and other supreme mullahs preaching Islamic terrorism/expansionism, the corrupt House of Saud (harboured Idi Amin and other Islamic terrorists), Middle Eastern "Presidents for Life", the theocratically opressive Taliban in Afghanistan, also some elements of modern globalism, such as "Robber Baron" oligopolist/capitalist exploitation in Third World countries (i.e., sweat shops, child labour) with the willing acceptance of African warlords or other tin pot dictators eager to line their pockets.

Not Included: Benevolent absolute monarchs such as His Holiness the Pope, the Dalai Lama, and other king saints - obviously there is a difference between monarchies and despotisms, just as there is a difference between free subjects and oppressed slaves. Nor do we include the Holy Roman or British Empires, and to a lesser extent the French and Spanish Empires, which for the most part stood for culture and civilization, though they still disrupted native populations and were responsible for the odd massacre.

Comments: Disciples to this extreme right wing imperialist, fascist, or theocratic ideology have been with us throughout our entire history, and survive to this day. It is a personality disorder usually born of a malignant narcissism, such that you get the ridiculous spectacle of Napoleon crowning himself, or the psychotic hubris of Idi Amin awarding himself the VC and the rank and title of Field Marshal and "Conqueror of the British Empire", not to mention the heavy-weight boxing championship of Uganda. You get the semidivine voodoo power of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier of Haiti, who would routinely terrorize his country's population with "Bogeymen". We are entertained by the lunatic "Emperor Bokassa I" of the "Central African Empire", who spent his country's entire annual budget on his own coronation in the late 1970s. We are not entertained by the savagery of Tamerlane, the 13th C. Turkik Mongul, who had a macabre sense of architecture — building towers out of the skulls of his victims.

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"Immunity to the Fads of Society"

10 Downing Street, 28 February 2008.
Office of the Prime Minister: "We received a petition asking...

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to reinstate a House of Lords composed of hereditary peers."

"We believe that the purpose of the House of Lords is not only to keep a check on the elected House of Commons, but also to keep a check on the passing fads of the electorate. The only way this can be accomplished is for the House of Lords to be largely, if not entirely, made up of hereditary peers. The system of hereditary peerage allied with an elected House of Commons maintains a legitimate balance between representation of the electorate and immunity to the fads of society. A House of Lords made up of hereditary peers maintains the hope that a depraved society will not always be reflected in depraved government."

Read the Government's response here

"The Government's view is that in a modern democracy it is unacceptable that individuals should qualify for a seat in Parliament on the basis of their ancestry. The Government is committed to removing the remaining hereditary places in the House of Lords.

In July 2007, after the free votes in Parliament on the composition of the House of Lords, the Prime Minister confirmed the Government's commitment to bringing forward a comprehensive package to complete House of Lords reform. The Government will develop proposals for a substantially or wholly elected House of Lords. As part of this package, the Government is committed to removing the anomaly of the remaining hereditary peers."

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Yadda, yadda, yadda. Well, Mr. Brown, it is the people's view that in a modern democracy it is unacceptable that individuals should qualify for a seat in the House of Lords on the basis of how much they donate to the Labour Party. The people are committed to removing the Government's corrupt system of cash for peerages, and one way of doing that is to completely remove any influence your cronies have over appointments to the Lords.

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