Republics are short term systems of rapid decay. The decay is always moral. Inward moral decay always leads to outward evil of every kind and the eventual breakdown of society. That the evil experienced today is tyrannical in nature is only the result of all the evils and moral decays of the past. Given the current trajectory of the state of affairs, more evil is to be expected. It is for the fight against evil that governments are formed, as only the sword can fend off the wicked ones. A republic, however, is poorly equipped to deal with evil.

Republics are by nature secular forms of government. The concept of the separation of church and state works very well with a fundamentally secular government. A republic finds its moral authority in the heart of the people, thus basing policy on the whim of changeable man. No higher law may be appealed to than that which the legislators pen. That man is a poor instrument of perfect governance shows in the fact that he has written millions of laws—more laws are current today than anyone could ever learn—and yet cannot seem to govern evil, but instead evil to flourishes.

In a secular republic, since the morals of that republic are based in the individual’s ideology, the system is constantly in peril. This is because, for example, on the one hand you have an atheist who wants to kill babies, and on the other you have a Muslim who want to fundamentally destroy western civilization, and these people MUST be given equal right to participate in government. Not only is this a harrowing truth regarding the current and future morality of the nation, but all any one of these groups has to do is out produce the other groups (i.e., have more babies or converts) and the electorate will inevitably swing to the destructive policies of the radical group.

There are at least four major flaws in republics. The first is that they are fundamentally secular, of course, but the second is that the primary unit of society, the basic atom or nucleus, is the individual voter. This basic separation of persons leads to enormous difficulties. In a Traditionist system the family is the nucleus of society. The family is what government is built on. The family unit is the tiny, powerful building block that gives society a firm foundation. This concept translates all the way up to the top of government—as all First Principles must—in that the family is also the foundation of government in a monarch and his family. When, instead, the individual is the prime building block of society, a husband and a wife may disagree, and immediately there is foundational division between them. Then this divided family suddenly finds that their own children disagree with them and vote entirely against them both! The family all votes for different ends and in so doing pull the nation apart with their divisions. The very foundation of society crumbles. Families must be united for a state to flourish. That this concept has to be remembered at all shows just how far our current society has degraded.

When the individual is primal, the state does not need to support the family, and the family does not need to be unified to support the state. The state will pull and nurture the individuals most in line with the needs of the state and will ostracize the individuals out of line against it. This ostracization takes on many forms, from simple advertising to try and sell them on a point of view that the state recognizes as best, to banishing disagreeable individuals from being able to work without compliance, as we see now with vaccine mandates and accompanying passports. Every state will ostracize in the way it will in accordance with the times, and not all will look the same, but the splitting apart of individuals continues. Additionally, when the individual is primal, you see significant increases in stress and pain. When the world seems to fall all around you and you have no one to help you, you feel hopeless and alone. This pain will cause you to seek safety in the state.

When the family is primal you will see significantly less separation in society. In our individualized world it may be hard to even recognize a strong, healthy family, but these ought to be the normal way of the world. You ought to be close to your cousins and aunts and uncles. Families that are united are significantly stronger and more resilient to outside stress. When your world crashes down around you and you lose everything, you have people around you to rely on. These people can help you through difficult times, and the result is a strong, resilient people who do not need the state very much because they have each other.

Every single person on the planet desires a family, and this need for familial love as a foundation of life and society is part of a First Principle. However, in a world where the individual is the primal unit, and families are divided as a principle, you will seek out like minded individuals to create a faux family. These friend groups are the only salvation for stressed out, lost individuals. As soon as an individual in the group is found to have different ideals than the rest of the group, the ostracization begins. This is not to say that all friend groups are so shallow, but this is the general trend throughout all time. Essentially, this individualized society in one of constant breakdowns of relationships, and indeed, endless war within society.

Perhaps the greatest issue with an individualized society, is that it drives the concept that the individual is the arbiter of morality. This is the concept that whatever I feel is in fact true and right. From this concept comes moral outrage at everyone who disagrees with me, since they are fundamentally not me, therefore I may fundamentally be opposed to them. In a situation where the family is whole, they are a part of me, and I am a part of them. our existence is tied to each other. This makes the moral situation one where families must work together, and the head of the household must establish precedent. Otherwise, all you need to do is get enough people on your side, and you have the power to fundamentally transform the morals of the nation. While you may individually believe in a higher power that gives you laws, the republic is secular and recognizes no authority other than that of the people. This results in a system where the fickle emotions and ever-changing ideals of transient men govern the lives of millions. This means that a republic has no inherent check on immorality.

The only republics that last for long periods of time are very, very small, and thus, homogeneous. They are like one big family, they see eye to eye, since everyone basically has the same struggles and circumstances. Once a republic incorporates another group with varied ideologies or even merely local environments, immediately divisions begin again.

Another major flaw in republics is that they are constitution based. In The Statesman, a brilliant work of philosophy by Plato, the grand old dialectic master lays out one of the greatest, timeless arguments against a constitutionally based form of government. The argument goes like this: Imagine a ship captain, and especially a captain of the greatest form. This man is truly a master of the sea. His every movement more perfectly governs his ship than the last. He is a master of the navigational arts, a perfectly stentorian rhetorician to his men, and grand arbiter of even the bitterest feuds between his sailors. He is a perfect judge of seamanship in potential recruits and a great haggler for deals at the ports. He is truly a great captain. We can easily imagine that his ship will never falter for no storm nor pirate. Conditions under our captain are ideal, the men are happy, the cargo is always delivered on time, and peace reigns. We will call this ship “State,” and we will call this captain “The Statesman.”

Now imagine that The Statesman leaves the ship of State, whether to retire or for any reason, but before he goes, he pens a great system of laws whereby the State must be governed. In this system he pours all his grand genius. The laws are clear, well written and as comprehensive as possible. We will call this system of laws “Constitution.” Now, with The Statesman’s absence a system of republican government is established. In this system any crew member, from the lowest gallery scullion to the first mate himself may seek the position of captain. He raises support and runs in election against other contenders. The winner may be perfectly anyone, regardless of inherent capability. The winner may even be a villainous scoundrel, intent on ripping the crew off in its share of the voyage’s profits. The winner may be a very good person, but completely unfamiliar with the art of navigation, or the winner may be the first mate himself, the natural heir. It must be emphasized, however, that the winner may be anyone at all.

Now imagine that this new captain will be watched by the ship’s company, he will be measured at the end of his term by how well he governs the State in accordance with the ship’s company’s interpretation of the Constitution. He will be punished in accordance with how the people feel he has done. He may be rewarded if the people think he did well, or he may be brutally expelled from grace. Knowing the fickle nature of the people, who will want this role? Who will want to be captain if he knows he serves at the whim of the people? Even another Statesman will hesitate to step up to the chopping block, because it is not even the Constitution that rules, it is the people. The people may not even read the Constitution, they certainly do not know how to pilot a ship. Some among them will, of course, but the majority have other jobs. How dangerous to allow them to be the judge of a thing wholly unfamiliar!

But more importantly, what will happen when this random citizen of the State now elected captain for a few years encounters a storm? Or pirates! He may have a truly excellent Constitution, but what of his constitution? How brave will he be found to be? Will he have the gifts to rule? It is not hard to suddenly realize that no constitution, no matter how grand, is capable of making people into Statesmen. On top of this difficulty, it is only when the weather is rough that you begin to see what your captain is made of. The ship will mostly run itself in smooth waters and with favorable conditions—but put a bit of a rough patch into the waters and you will quickly find the character of your captain. When faced with trials the ship will founder, it will be plundered, it will eventually be broken up on the rocks. Why? Because it has no true captain, it has only he who was daring or foolish enough to risk to rule the State for his own ends. He knows he will have a limited time to ensure his future not be completely destroyed by his actions in office, he must be careful, he must have broad appeal, or else to risk the proverbial head. He must be good at getting elected, but he need not have any gifts of statesmanship.

The answer the founders and other proponents of Republican ideals gave to the huge difficulty of the fact that literally anybody could be voted into captainship was to limit who can rule. They gave the country first an aristocratic form of republic, as defined by the Greeks. It was a meritocracy, and it led straight to the American Civil War. A meritocracy does indeed slow down the inevitable spiral into the wrecking of the ship of State, but it cannot halt it.

Two outcomes always follow the attempt to set up a meritocratic government. The first is one in which the government transitions to a democratic government (nearly always a bloody affair), or it transitions to an oligarchical form—and then to a democratic. In America we transitioned from meritocracy to oligarchy, and then to full democracy. Because the disenfranchised members of society, those who are not allowed to vote, become disillusioned with the fact that they may not participate in government, they typically rise up against their betters and demand equal participation in government. In the American Aristocratic republic, as given by the founders, many restrictions were placed on participation in government (only landowning males can vote, etc.), and these restrictions were slowly pushed back against by the disenfranchised, but more on this subject will have to be found in the cycle of nations.

All this being said, it is not for an ungoverned land with no law that a Traditionist works. As Plato later elaborated in the aforementioned work, we must have laws, if only for the weakness of men. But what laws do we want? As to this, I will write more in depth at a later time but suffice it to say now that they must be laws of First Principle, accessible to all men in all time, and they must be as short as possible, since what we really need for good governance are Statesmen.

How you get statesmen is another important piece of discussion that here we do not have time to discuss but suffice it to say for now that you get them in a variety of natural ways, the first being through fire and blood, and the second through royal birth.

The fourth major flaw in a republic is that it is an unnatural system. People do not naturally set up systems of voting and representative government. The fact that it exists at all is testament to Humanity’s incredible intellect, capable of so many great marvels, ingenuities, and evils. A Traditionist government is ruled hierarchically. A system of either democracy or aristocracy, or of course, oligarchy, all of which require some form of republic to function (though less so democracy in the ancient world, though it too needs a constitutional government), attempts to break out of the traditional hierarchy, and as such is fundamentally opposed to Traditionist values.

A traditional hierarchy is set up with God at the head, and his chosen human leadership under him. While this form of government is no longer very popular, it is nevertheless, the most ancient form of government, and modern man would do well to remember that he displays no greater arrogance than when he professes to believe that he is more evolved than his predecessors.

God actually takes great pains to set up the human form of governance in nearly all ancient traditions. It is not to be much of a surprise then, that in these ancient systems monarchs ruled the earth. In a world where men still believed in a god of some kind or another, monarchs were understood to be the chosen representative of God—or gods—on earth. They were chosen to rule by God, and typically under God.

Now, it must be said, though not in great detail here, that kings who deviate from this path of being set up in authority under God or gods, usually cease to be in fact monarchs. This is a violation of a First Principle. When a king is made into a god, for example, he typically ceases to be a king, but becomes either an emperor or a tyrant. The different forms of government will be more thoroughly explored in the cycle of nations.

In the Judeo-Christian worldview, God actually promises a king to the people many times over throughout all the Bible. Not only is Jesus the promised king (John 18:37 “Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this purpose I have been born, and for this I have come into the world: to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.”), thus fulfilling the archetypal need for a perfect statesman in perfect governance, but He actually promises an earthly king (Deuteronomy 17:15 “You may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.”). The obvious necessity of this form of hierarchical rulership is found in the weak rule the ancient people of Israel endured (Judges 21:25 “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”) which was costing them their societal unity.

The Judeo-Christian worldview is hardly unique in the acknowledgement of heavenly right to rule. The Chinese “Mandate of Heaven” was the Asian equivalent of the “Right of Kings” in Europe, and indeed far preceded that ideology timeline-wise. Virtually every ancient people had a religious pantheon of gods under whose rule the kings operated. In the cases where kings were elevated to some form of godhood, this was usually an attempt to recognize the archetypal need for a divine mandate of rulership. As long as the king was a lesser god, under some higher power, there is the possibility, though slim, that the ruler can maintain monarchical status, such as an Egyptian Pharaoh who was considered merely the son of God. More often ancient cultures were like the Persian kings who followed Zoroastrianism in which even the kings were subject to divine authority. Because the need for a king is an Archetype, all through the long ages mankind has followed this traditional system, and Traditions are what a Traditionist looks for to determine value.

A healthy state is a hierarchical state, and a hierarchical state does not vote. In Plutarch’s writings on Lycurgus a particular Spartan was asked why Sparta did not have a democracy, to which the Spartan wittingly replied that they will introduce a democratic system as soon as the questioner sets up a democracy in their own family. The idea of a democratically run household is absurd. Imagine a house where all decisions are ruled by majority, where not yet developed children vote in representative government to kick the parent’s rules out. Freedom would truly reign then, and intelligent, logical rule of law would be eliminated. Someone always has to have the ultimate authority in a family to keep chaos from reigning, and in a family that role belongs to the parents. A healthy family will give even the weak minority a chance to get their wishes. In a democratically ruled society, the minority gets nothing. In a republican form of government minorities are often courted to gain votes, but reality shows they get either nothing or very little for giving away their endorsements in the end, and the majorities are often angered by capitulation to the minorities. It’s a lose-lose situation. A healthy state ought to be as a large, extended family. Families are by nature hierarchical, and so too should be the state.

As voting is unnatural in the lowest unit of society, so too does voting not apply in natural order to the highest forms of government. The highest offices ought not decide the fate of the people via votes, since domestic policy is too critical to be decided via an unnatural system. Voting has clouded our perception of the importance of issues being decided. The governing bodies ought to discuss issues, and if reasonable and moral they will agree, and no voting is necessary, but if one or more party is extreme or evil, a vote cannot solve that! Only fire and blood can rectify such horror. Evil must be vanquished, not voted down, history as proven this again and again. Georgian President Zviad K. Gamsakhurdia was freely elected and was brutal enough that his own people tore him down. Hitler was, of course, freely elected, and so has been the African president of Chad, Idriss Deby. Countless times wicked men prevail in court of vote, and thereby gain dubious legitimacy. Again, secular governments do not recognize good and evil, they only recognize the expedient path for today. That there are evil people in this world is impossible to deny, and that they must be stopped is a fact that no one but the most purblind admit. However, to take the concept further, there are evil ideas that men will attempt to cast into law, and these ideas may win a vote—they often do—but the carrying out of these policies is evil. No one can deny that evil ideas being passed into law via the correct path of legislation is a regular occurrence, and unfortunately a vote is an immoral method of dealing with evil.

The last, and perhaps most significant issue with voting, is that God does not vote within Himself. In a Trinitarian view of God there are three persons, one at least of which who does not know the full intention of another (Matthew 24:36), and yet there is perfect amicability between the three. In fact, there is perfect unity of will between them, meaning that they all work in harmony with each other in all their actions. This is possible because no evil can occur in God. Additionally, in no other major system of heavenly pantheon in the ancient pagan religions is there any occurrence of voting occurring between the godly figures. Such a thing is absurd to contemplate and would fundamentally disrupt the natures and intention of godhood. It is no surprise that the more secular a people becomes, the more that they desire the vote. The vote displays the desire within secular persons to elevate their individual opinion to the level of godhood.