"Principlesofgovernaaance"Gene Wolfe's Politics

James Wynn · 02 Apr 2009, 18:01 · from 2009-April.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 13:01:15 -0500
Subject: (urth) "Principlesofgovernaaance"Gene Wolfe's Politics
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> ok, is the last one meant to be a joke about our current situation?
> Abstraction, largely ideal.

Essentially it means that the attachment is to the representative system 
divorced from the representatives themselves.

> On one hand, I don't understand how "Attachment to" is governance.
>Are the people attached, or is the governance attached?

I believe "attachment to" equals "the authority upon which the governing 
body governs the governed."

> Let me rephrase?  This seems like a sort of religious right position
>(maybe I'm totally wrong)

You're wrong so far as I know.

>So, would anyone toss away democracy
>in favor of a monarch? How can this notion not be "largely ideal"
>when it hinges upon the character of a single person?

Well, Severian doesn't call this Divine Right but Divine Right king would be 
a subset of this.

The Athenians did it with regularity. The Romans did it with Augustus (and 
made him a god). The Germans did it in the 30s.  The Russians allowed their 
short-lived democracy to be overthrown by the Bolsheviks and soon devoted 
themselves to a personality cult centered around Stalin. It happens all the 
time when the stakes become high enough and a democracy lacks (or fails to 
tolerate) genuine leaders the people trust to make hard choices untainted by 
personal aggrandizement/enrichment.  It's something to think about in the US 
right now with public approval of congress steadily closing in on 10% for 
the last 4 years or so.

> I'm not sure if I'm making this clear. I'm trying to understand how this 
> can be considered the highest state of governance in a practical, 
> non-ideal world.

Well, Severian doesn't say Divine Right is the highest. He says it is the 
first after Anarchy. Perhaps that explains how Democracy moves to Divine 
Right.

J.

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