Another One Bites the Dust

Until this morning, if Kendra Okonski had asked me to marry her, I would have had to decline her otherwise fully understandable offer. Why? I hear you ask. Because until this morning I had been carrying a rather large torch for Sabine Hérold, who, purely on account of her policies you understand, is perhaps one of the most attractive and certainly one of the best known classical liberals in the world.

So what's the problem Jack, my old son? Why have you spurned this Maid d'Orleans, this barricade temptress, this stormer of the statist Bastille?

Well, it would appear that Mlle. Hérold has fallen directly into the same self-aggrandizing trap that seduced the otherwise brilliant classical liberals of the American Revolution; she wants to enter into constitutional democratic politics to help liberalize la France.

Somebody? Anybody! Please rush Mlle. Hérold a copy of Democracy: The God That Failed, toute de suite, before it's too late; though I fear the Ring of Power may already have sucked her in. Creating freedom through democracy is almost as oxymoronic as Military Intelligence. To give Sabine her due, democracy is a candle of fools' gold that has sucked in plenty of other sensible moths, such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and even Ludwig von Mises. But I had held out greater hopes for Mlle. Hérold; I had thought she would be able to overcome its almost irresistible allure and prove to remain a modern-day Galadriel. Alas, my fool's hope would appear to be dashed on the rocks of misguided personal ambition.

The ruling classes have long recognised the truth that if they are to survive, they must keep open some comfortable berths for the most articulate of their opponents in the ruled class. Some historians even date the beginnings of the end of the Roman Empire to the start of the rule of the Emperor Trajan. His immediate predecessor, the Emperor Nerva (96-98 AD), was the last imperator to use the Tribal assemblies to help pass laws. From Trajan onwards, the rule of law was provided by imperial ordinance alone. This closed an important upward trapdoor. To catapult themselves upward into the equestrian Patrician class, ambitious and powerful Proletarians, unhappy with their lot, had always used the Tribal assemblies to become Tribunes first, and then Patricians afterward. With this route to power shut down in 98 AD, it was only a matter of time before these these trapped ambitious men would use mob rule to bring the core of Patrician Rome down to its knees, leaving it easy prey to the tax-hating Germanic tribes of the north. The same thing, of course, happened to the French Royal Court in the French Revolution.

It would seem the French Establishment, who I suspect still see themselves as the Carolingian and Napoleonic bearers of the western imperial mantle of Rome, have learned their lesson. If you see any member of the mob getting stroppy, for God's sake, let them into the club to shut them up. Give them a fat tax-fed salary, give them first class air travel, and then give them something really important to do, such as counting paperclips in a government bureau. If that fails to work, you'll have to kick them upstairs and make them President, but once they're in the club they'll come round. They'll see the benefits of chauffeur-driven travel, the benefits of important international conferences in Hawaii, and the benefits of Five-star hotel rooms in Dubai. But for God's sake, whatever you do, get them away from the Proles before they infect them with any more anti-ruling class nonsense!

Sacre Bleue, Sabine, what have you done?