For The Feast Of Christ The King

     [Today is the Feast of Christ The King, which falls on the last Sunday before Advent. It’s a unique holy day for several reasons, and one that I find particularly personally significant. It first appeared at Eternity Road on January 6, 2008. I find that I cannot improve upon it, for which reason I've made a habit of reviving it each year on this special day. -- FWP]

    

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     Let's talk about...Zoroastrianism!

    

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     The ancient creed called Zoroastrianism predated the birth of Christ by about a millennium. Its founder, Zoroaster, laid down a small set of doctrines:

• There is one universal and transcendental God, Ahura Mazda, the one uncreated creator and to whom all worship is ultimately directed.
• Ahura Mazda's creation — evident as asha, truth and order — is the antithesis of chaos, evident as druj, falsehood and disorder. The resulting conflict involves the entire universe, including humanity, which has an active role to play in the conflict.
• Active participation in life through good thoughts, good words and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep the chaos at bay. This active participation is a central element in Zoroaster's concept of free will, and Zoroastrianism rejects all forms of monasticism.
• Ahura Mazda will ultimately prevail, at which point the universe will undergo a cosmic renovation and time will end. In the final renovation, all of creation — even the souls of the dead that were initially banished to "darkness" — will be reunited in Ahura Mazda.
• In Zoroastrian tradition, the malevolent is represented by Angra Mainyu, the "Destructive Principle", while the benevolent is represented through Ahura Mazda's Spenta Mainyu, the instrument or "Bounteous Principle" of the act of creation. It is through Spenta Mainyu that Ahura Mazda is immanent in humankind, and through which the Creator interacts with the world. According to Zoroastrian cosmology, in articulating the Ahuna Vairya formula, Ahura Mazda made His ultimate triumph evident to Angra Mainyu.
• As expressions and aspects of Creation, Ahura Mazda emanated seven "sparks", the Amesha Spentas, "Bounteous Immortals" that are each the hypostasis and representative of one aspect of that Creation. These Amesha Spenta are in turn assisted by a league of lesser principles, the Yazatas, each "Worthy of Worship" and each again a hypostasis of a moral or physical aspect of creation.

     I find nothing objectionable in the above, except that only God, by whatever name He might be known, is worthy of worship; the most a lesser being is entitled to is veneration. But the word "worship" has had many meanings and subtleties over the years, so I'm inclined to let it pass. More important than Zoroastrianism's harmless mythos is its ethos, which Zoroaster himself encapsulated in a unique and memorable command:

    

Speak truth and shoot the arrow straight.

     Unlike the overwhelming majority of other pre-Christian creeds, Zoroastrianism was -- and is -- rational, humane, and life-loving rather than life-denying. It emphasized human free will, moral choice, and the need to defend truth and order against lies and chaos. These attributes made it the dominant religion of classical Persia and environs, though Zoroastrians' numbers are far reduced today.

     (No, I haven't converted to Zoroastrianism. You can all relax.)

     In the Western world, the Zoroastrians were the first practitioners of the pseudo-science we call astrology. They reposed a fair amount of confidence in it, for the creed had had its own prophets, beginning with Zoroaster himself, and among the prophecies were several tied to events foretold to happen in the night sky. The Zoroastrians therefore took great interest in the stars, and made careful records of occurrences therein, for comparison to the utterances of their prophets.

     One of those prophecies involved the birth of God in mortal flesh.

     The Magi of the Incarnation story were three esteemed nobles of Persia, wealthy in gold, wisdom, and the admiration of their societies. In contrast to the pattern prevalent among the nobilities of later times, these three, whose names have come down to us as Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, were deeply religious men whose involvement in the investigation of the Zoroastrian prophecies was sincere. When they spied the famous "star in the east" -- quite possibly a nova in Draco now known to have occurred at about that time -- they resolved to follow its trail, to find the divine infant and pay him homage.

     I shan't retell the whole of the story. It's accessible to anyone reading this site, in both secular and liturgical versions. The most salient aspect of the story is that these three exalted nobles -- kings, in the most common accounts -- of a faraway land came to pay homage and present tokens of vassalage to a newborn infant.

     Of course! What else would be appropriate, before a King of Kings?

    

***

     I will pause here to draw an important distinction: "King of Kings" is not the same as "Emperor." "Emperor" is a title appropriate only to a conqueror; that's more or less what it means. Atop that, an emperor is not necessarily concerned with justice, whereas a king, of whatever altitude, is obliged to make it the center of his life:

     The saber gleamed in the muted light. I'd spent a lot of time and effort sharpening and polishing it.

     It was a plain weapon, not one you'd expect to see in the hand of a king. There was only the barest tracing on the faintly curved blade. The guard bell was a plain steel basket, without ornamentation. The hilt was a seven inch length of oak, darkened with age but firm to the touch. There was only a hint of a pommel, a slight swell of the hilt at its very end.

     "What is this?"

     "A sword. Your sword."

     A hint of alarm compressed his eyes. "What do you expect me to do with it?"

     I shrugged. "Whatever you think appropriate. But a king should have a sword. By the way," I said, "it was first worn by Louis the Ninth of France when he was the Dauphin, though he set it aside for a useless jeweled monstrosity when he ascended the throne."

     Time braked to a stop as confusion spun his thoughts.

     "I don't know how to use it," he murmured.

     "Easily fixed. I do."

     "But why, Malcolm?"

     I stepped back, turned a little away from those pleading eyes.

     "Like it or not, you're a king. You don't know what that means yet. You haven't a sense for the scope of it. But you must learn. Your life, and the lives of many others, will turn on how well you learn it." I paused and gathered my forces. "What is a king, Louis?"

     He stood there with the sword dangling from his hand. "A ruler. A leader. A warlord."

     "More. All of that, but more. The sword is an ancient symbol for justice. Back when the function of nobility was better understood, a king never sat his throne without his sword to hand. If he was to treat with the envoy of another king, it would be at his side. If he was to dispense justice, it would be across his knees. Why do you suppose that was, Louis?"

     He stood silent for a few seconds.

     "Symbolic of the force at his command, I guess."

     I shook my head gently.

     "Not just symbolic. A true king, whose throne belonged to him by more than the right of inheritance, led his own troops and slew malefactors by his own hand. The sword was a reminder of the privilege of wielding force, but it was there to be used as well."

     His hands clenched and unclenched in time to his thoughts. I knew what they had to be.

     "The age of kings is far behind us, Malcolm."

     "It never ended. Men worthy of the role became too few to maintain the institution."

     "And I'm...worthy?"

     If he wasn't, then no worthy man had ever lived, but I couldn't tell him that.

     "There's a gulf running through the world, Louis. On one side are the commoners, the little men who bear tools, tend their gardens, and keep the world running. On the other are the nobles, who see far and dare much, and sometimes risk all they have, that the realm be preserved and the commoner continue undisturbed in his portion. There's no shortage of either, except for the highest of the nobles, the men of unbreakable will and moral vision, for whom justice is a commitment deeper than life itself."

     His face had begun to twitch. He'd heard all he could stand to hear, and perhaps more. I decided to cap the pressure.

     "Kings have refused their crowns many times, Louis. You might do as much, though it would sadden me to see it. But you could break that sword over your knee, change your name, and run ten thousand miles to hide where no one could know you, and it wouldn't lessen what you are and were born to be." I gestured at the sword. "Keep it near you."

     [From Chosen One.]

     Note further: a mortal king cannot and does not define justice; he dispenses justice, according to principles drawn from a higher authority. The King of Kings, from whom the privilege and obligation to mete justice flows, is the definer. In the matter of Law, all lesser kings are His vassals.

     The Magi conceded this explicitly with their gift of gold.

    

***

     The pre-Christian era knew few, if any, rulers who claimed their jurisdiction solely on basis of might. Nearly all were approved and anointed by a priesthood. In that anointment lay their claim to be dispensers of true justice, for God would not allow a mortal to mete justice that departs from His Law. Let's leave aside the divergence between theory and practice for the moment; it was the logical connection between Divine Law and human-modulated justice that mattered to the people of those times.

     But the King of Kings would need no clerical approval. Indeed, He would be the Priest of Priests: the Authority lesser priests would invoke in anointing lesser kings.

     The Magi conceded this explicitly with their gift of frankincense.

    

***

     We of the Twenty-First Century are largely unaware of the obligations which lay upon the kings of old. They were not, until the waning years of monarchy, sedentary creatures whose lives were a round of indulgences and propitiations. They were expected not merely to judge and pass sentence, but also to lead the armies of the realm when war was upon it. The king was expected to put himself at risk before any of his subjects. Among the reasons was this one: the loss of the king in battle was traditionally grounds for surrender, after which the enemy was forbidden by age-old custom to strike further blows.

     The king, in this conception, was both the leader of his legions and a sacrifice for the safety of his subjects, should the need arise. He was expected to embrace the role wholeheartedly, and to lead from the front in full recognition of the worst of the possibilities. Not to do so was an admission that he was unfit for his throne:

     "We have talked," he said, "about all the strategies known to man for dealing with an armed enemy. We have talked about every aspect of deadly conflict. Every moment of every discussion we've had to date has been backlit by the consciousness of objectives and costs: attaining the one and constraining the other. And one of the first things we talked about was the importance of insuring that you don't overpay for what you seek."

     She kept silent and listened.

     "What if you can't, Christine? What if your objective can't be bought at an acceptable price?"

     She pressed her lips together, then said, "You abandon it."

     He smirked. "It's hard even to say it, I know. But reality is sometimes insensitive to a general's desires. On those occasions, you must learn how to walk away. And that, my dear, is an art form of its own."

     He straightened up. "Combat occurs within an envelope of conditions. A general doesn't control all those conditions. If he did, he'd never have to fight. Sometimes, those conditions are so stiff that he's compelled to fight whether he thinks it wise, or not."

     "What conditions can do that to you?"

     His mouth quirked. "Yes, what conditions indeed?"

     Oops. Here we go again. "Weather could do it."

     "How?"

     "By cutting off your lines of retreat in the face of an invasion."

     "Good. Another."

     "Economics. Once the economy of your country's been militarized, it runs at a net loss, so you might be forced to fight from an inferior position because you're running out of resources."

     "Excellent. One more."

     She thought hard. "Superior generalship on the other side?"

     He clucked in disapproval. "Does the opponent ever want you to fight?"

     "No, sorry. Let me think."

     He waited.

     Conditions. Conditions you can't control. Conditions that...control you.

     "Politics. The political leadership won't accept retreat or surrender until you've been so badly mangled that it's obvious even to an idiot."

     The man Louis Redmond had named the greatest warrior in history began to shudder. It took him some time to quell.

     "It's the general's worst nightmare," he whispered. "Kings used to lead their own armies. They used to lead the cavalry's charge. For a king to send an army to war and remain behind to warm his throne was simply not done. Those that tried it lost their thrones, and some lost their heads -- to their own people. It was a useful check on political and military rashness.

     "It hasn't been that way for a long time. Today armies go into the field exclusively at the orders of politicians who remain at home. And politicians are bred to believe that reality is entirely plastic to their wills."

     [From On Broken Wings.]

     But the King of Kings, intrinsically above all other authorities, would obviously be aware of this obligation. More, His sacrifice of Himself must perforce be for the salvation of the whole of the world -- indeed, the whole of the universe and every sentient creature in it. Nothing less could possibly justify it.

     The Magi conceded this explicitly with their gift of myrrh.

    

***

     On the first Sunday after the New Year, Christians celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, called the Theophany by some eastern Christian sects, when the Magi prostrated themselves before the Christ Child and made their gifts of vassalage to him. A vassal is a noble sworn to fealty to a higher authority: a higher-ranking noble or a king. The obligations of the vassal are to enforce justice as promulgated by the vassal's liege, and to support and defend the liege's realm by force of arms as required. To the King of Kings, God made flesh in the miracle of the Incarnation, every temporal authority is properly a vassal, obliged to mete justice in accordance with the natural law and to defend the Liege's realm -- men of good will, wherever they may be -- against all enemies, whenever the need might arise. To do less is to be unworthy of a temporal throne, palace, official office, or seat in a legislature...to be unworthy of Him.

     He took on the burdens of the flesh to confirm God's love for Man and to open the gates of salvation. He went to Calvary in testament to the authenticity of His Authority. The Magi knew, and in their pledge of fealty to Him, made plain that He had come not merely to succor Israel, but for the liberation of all Mankind.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Further Thoughts On The Bush III Candidacy

A republic in which executive and legislative authority are conferred by popular election has several characteristic weaknesses. Perhaps the worst of these is its susceptibility to glamor and its bastard cousin demagoguery.

We confronted a clear case of political glamor in 1960, when John F. Kennedy, despite strong evidence that Democrat machines in Illinois and Texas had stolen the election for him, was elevated to the presidency. The electorate, charmed by the boyish Kennedy and his beautiful wife, sat still for it. Richard Nixon, who by rights should have been elected, decided not to unleash a tumult by raising a row over it. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination and the ascent of the utterly unglamorous Lyndon Johnson seemed to put the matter beyond question.

The Kennedy glamor might have given us a second Kennedy presidency with the candidacy of younger brother Robert, were it not for his assassination in Los Angeles, just after his successful California primary campaign. Fortunately Edward Kennedy’s attempt to follow his brothers’ tracks was derailed by the Chappaquiddick incident, forever barring higher office than United States Senator to him. Yet Ted Kennedy acquired wildly disproportionate influence in national politics that lasted until the day he died. Indeed, when Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat thus vacated, it caused widespread consternation that “Kennedy’s seat” should be occupied by a Republican.

The Bush presidencies haven’t exhibited the glamor associated with the Kennedy family. Yet there’s an important similarity there: the promotion of a specific political family as a preferred source of persons fit for high office. That sort of dynastic succession is not unprecedented: it first occurred with John Adams and John Quincy Adams, early in the history of the nation. But never before have we had to ponder the possibility a father and two of his sons in the Oval Office. It’s causing frowns and misgivings even among those whom Jeb Bush’s articulated policy stances strike as perfectly congenial.

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“I smell a rat. It squints toward monarchy.” – Patrick Henry

Henry, the most impassioned, most gifted orator of the Founding Era, disliked the proposed Constitution specifically because of the office of president, which he believed would gradually absorb powers never intended for a single man’s hand. He saw in the Constitutional design a well-concealed plot to strip the sovereign states of their latitude, such that they would eventually become mere administrative subdivisions subservient to Washington’s policy dictates. The presidency, in his view, was the linchpin of that plot: the locus at which all power would eventually be concentrated.

Whether or not he was correct in positing a conspiracy to create an American monarchy, Patrick Henry accurately predicted the process that followed the ratification of the Constitution. He was more foresighted than any other scholar of his time – or afterward – proved to be.

In our time, the president has been demonstrated to wield de facto powers the Founders probably did not intend. The Constitution’s separation of powers appears to prevent such a concentration of power in the White House. Indeed, the powers allocated to the president are very few and stringently defined. They include none of the pseudo-authorities presidents have wielded since the Roosevelts.

The acceptance of usurped authority in the presidency and the creation of an immense, unaccountable bureaucracy that exercises executive, legislative, and judicial powers nowhere contemplated in the Constitution have nullified the Founders’ design. At this time, there is no longer an effective separation of the powers of the federal government. More, the immense glamor of the presidency combined with the powers exercised by federal bureaucrats has made it difficult at best for the state governments to resist violations of the Tenth Amendment: i.e., usurpations of powers reserved to the states. All effective power to direct those immense forces lies in the hands of one man: the current occupant of the Oval Office.

We cannot get any closer to an actual monarchy without explicitly declaring one.

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If you’re unaware of the Constantian Society, it’s worth your time to become acquainted with it. The Constantians are the world’s last promoters of monarchy as the most preferable form of government. Their arguments are not absurd. Indeed, in our time, when elected governments do more harm and villainy than any king ever managed in the history of Man, the Constantians have important points to make:

Modern experience shows that kings generally rule better, not worse, than do presidents, due to the practical circumstance that a king is born to his office, is trained all his life to be king. A president must spend half his time learning his job, the other half preparing for the next election in an attempt to keep that job. His loyalty is to many sometimes competing constituencies all of whom combine to help him get elected. The king is a genuine professional, an expert in state craft. His constituency is his whole nation, and he serves that constituency with polished professionalism. As Archduke Otto observes, in all walks of life the fully qualified, trained expert is rated more highly than the gifted amateur; knowledge and experience may often outweigh sheer ambition.

Monarchy provides the stability which is essential to the solution of major problems. In a republic, whoever is in office must achieve a positive success in the shortest possible time, for otherwise he will not be re-elected. This urgent need, the constant spectre of re-election, leads to short-term policies which cannot cope with problems of worldwide scope. A king faces no elections, and is able to make long-term plans and policies, for the duration of his reign, which is his lifetime, and for the hereditary succession. A monarch, too, through the vestiges of that misunderstood Divine Right and because of his symbolic paternal role, faces a higher responsibility than a professional politician; Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia told the Society in an interview, "The duty of a king or of a prince worthy of the name consists of remaining true, under all circumstances, to the noblest and most legitimate ideals of the nation to which he belongs."

The justification of the hereditary succession is not only in the professional upbringing of the future king, not only in the continuity of a line, although these are important factors, but in the fact that an hereditary ruler does not owe his position to any particular social or interest group, but rather to divine will alone. This is the meaning of "by the Grace of God" - the ruler is not an exceptional person, but rather a person with an exceptional burden, extraordinary obligations, a great task. The formula "by the Grace of God" is a constant reminder to the sovereign that an accident of birth, and not his own merits, was responsible for his position, and he "must prove his fitness by ceaseless efforts in the cause of justice," as Archduke Otto says. John Adams, one of the redoubtable Founding Fathers of the American republic, said that "Mankind have not yet discovered any remedy against irresistible corruption in elections to offices of great power and profit but making them hereditary."

A king is much freer than a president, in that he is not tied to any party, as a republican leader invariably is. The king does not owe his position to a body of voters or to the support of powerful groups; the office of a royal ruler is based on higher law, his power derives from a transcendental source, whereas a president is always under someone's very earthly debt. It is probably impossible to become the president of a republic without immense financial and organizational support of certain groups, and a president bears too heavy an obligation to those who really put him in office. A president is not truly president of all the people, regardless of what the electorate may think, for he is president first of all the groups which enabled him to attain office. There is a very real and constant danger that a republic will cease to safeguard the interests and rights of all citizens when the highest positions become the privileged domains of the groups which placed a president in office.

There’s some justice in that. Surely we have seen elections steadily converted from sober consideration of the characters, intellects, and convictions of candidates to outright slander-fests in which each contestant does his best to ruin his opponents’ images. Surely we have experienced enough deceit, corruption, graft, porkbarreling, unconcealed patronage, and general skullduggery by elected officials to have been shorn of our illusions that an election will reliably choose the best man for a post. Yet our Constitution and our traditions have foreclosed the monarchical alternative. Besides, there’s the characteristic vulnerability of monarchies to deal with:

The greatest danger of the monarchical system is that an incompetent might succeed to the throne. This danger, however, is not restricted to monarchies, for incompetents and worse (consider Warren Harding, Adolf Hitler, Ayatollah Khomeini, Fidel Castro, Idi Amin, Muammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein) have been popularly chosen or otherwise come to power in republics. During the Middle Ages, it was always possible to replace an unsuitable successor with a more suitable one, and the system has not entirely disappeared: King Saud of Saudi Arabia was essentially deposed by his family, and replaced by his eminently capable brother, Faisal. Any decision as to the suitability and competence of a successor by primogeniture should preferably be left to a dynastic tribunal, which would be empowered to change the order of succession, if necessary, or to require a regency.

Given that pithy observation, what American family would be qualified to assume royal status?

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“Do you favour a change of dynasty, Thomas? Do you think two Tudors are sufficient?” – Cardinal Wolsey, in Robert Bolt’s screenplay for A Man For All Seasons

It is a multiply confirmed historical fact that a group that acquires power will struggle with all its might to retain it. When it reaches a certain continuity in power, the only effective method for its removal is bloodshed. Whether the group is a political party, an oligarchy of unrelated individuals, or a family bound by blood relations is utterly irrelevant.

At this time, we have the unprecedented spectacle of a third member of a prominent American family presenting himself to the nation as a candidate for president. That’s not a bid for royal status for the Bush clan...that is, not quite...but it comes pretty close. But if we reflect upon the Bush I and Bush II presidencies, would we choose their clan for our American royalty?

Paterfamilias George Herbert Walker Bush (Bush I) proved unreliable in office. His most memorable default was reneging on his promise not to permit a tax increase. Yet there were several other defections from the Reaganite positions he had promised the electorate he would maintain.

George Walker Bush (Bush II) began well and ended poorly. Though the military campaigns he begin in Afghanistan and Iraq began brilliantly, both deteriorated under the pernicious influence of “nation building” ideas absolutely incompatible with Middle Eastern cultures. The handoff of those campaigns to Barack Hussein Obama has merely dramatized the extent to which we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, essentially by refusing to accept the victory we had won as the proper terminus to our armed expeditions. The rest of Bush II’s tenure was characterized by excessive deference to the Left under the guise of “compromise” and “working together.” Even his foreign policy toward the increasingly threatening regime of Vladimir Putin was far too trusting.

Beyond all question, Bushes I and II are fine people. There have hardly been any presidents personally more admirable than Bush II. But theirs is an outlook and a character best suited to wielding their individual and family resources only, not those of the nation. Let them start foundations, flack for noble causes, and exhort us to greater charity and reverence. They must not be permitted to become the founders of an American royal house.

The Constantian argument could well be correct; I admit to being torn over it. Yet only two nations – post-revolutionary France and post-Franco Spain have attempted the selection of a clan to act as their royalty. It’s a problem our republic has never faced...nor, given the attitudes and generally low character of our politicians, their families, and their hangers-on, would we want to face it any time soon.

The Bushes, though they might be the best of the available alternatives, are not suitable monarchs for these United States.

Just Say No...To Jeb.