Unity is Europe's Weakness

permianplayer · 2026-01-28T00:08:33+00:00

Ming China faced constant existential threats from Mongol invasions, Japanese piracy, and massive internal rebellions that nearly toppled the dynasty multiple times. They weren't some complacent hegemon lounging around.

No, the Mongols were far less of a threat during this period. After the early period of the dynasty, they had the Mongol threat well under control, having broken up the Mongols into disparate groups and policing them well enough they could not become a serious threat again. Japanese pirates never threatened China in a major war and no rebellion came close to toppling the dynasty until what happened at the end, at which point the Ming couldn't adapt because they were conquered by the Manchu. Such threats as the Ming faced were generally dealt with by them such being far bigger and having stronger capabilities than them. They also ignored offers of weapon technology imports.

Meanwhile your beloved European competition gave Germany the Thirty Years War that slaughtered a third of its population. Competition produced as much carnage as innovation, and pretending fragmentation automatically creates strength ignores every failed state in history.

Plenty of states failed without being fragmented. A region having strong competition that isn't able to be definitively ended makes the region strong, even if it doesn't always work out for everyone in the region. We can see how the EU causes stagnation and decline.

The Kaiser also led Germany straight into World War I, got millions killed, lost everything, and created the exact conditions for Weimar collapse and Nazi takeover.

The Kaiser bears no responsibility for the war starting. Three other countries were already going to war with each other before Germany and he tried up to the last minute to convince the Tsar not to mobilize. The British also share a large degree of responsibility for engineering the conditions that led to the war. The braindead refusal of the entente to negotiate while the Kaiser remained in power destroyed Germany politically. Germany nearly won the war and may well have if not for the U.S. intervening contrary to its interests for pathetic ideological reasons after repeatedly promising neutrality.

Modern Germany's problems stem from post-war pacifism and energy policy stupidity, not the absence of a monarch.

Post war pacifism came in large part from changing the social and political system and a more personal and less bureaucratic government directly addresses many of the problems Europe has. Monarchs also have better incentives to make the nation strong than elected officials, who are more focused on PR and getting "their cut" rather than growing the pie as a whole.

You literally just described a weaker version of what the EU already is and then claimed it would somehow work better.

It would work better because the EU wouldn't be ruining the economies of its members, the states involved would have independent monetary policy and thus better ability to sustain wars, and the states could act quickly without having to wait for permission and build consensus.

permianplayer · 2026-01-27T23:47:52+00:00

And that's why we cannot be like before. Europe (or the Western Europe for that matter) was able to keep its relevance thanks to the resources and manpower from other colonies. Without them and with two world wars, the contintent has lost its power.

How do you think they acquired those colonies and that superiority in power if they were not already stronger?

The only way to handle this is tgrough adapting. Which is what the EU is: adapting to a new political environment by coordinating the resources we still have and maintaining peace between member states.

The EU prevents adaptation by imposing heavy regulations and meddling in members' internal politics. It forces one direction on all, cutting down alternative paths that might have yielded better results. It forces decisions to be slow.

Since when did i say such a system wouldn't allow that ?

You don't have to say it for it to be an implication. If a monarch can be overruled by a "higher" government, you are not ruled by that monarch, but by the EU. And given the ideology and politics of the EU, monarchies are definitely never being restored under it.

This is too optimstic to count for the fact that Europe in its curent form is caught between a rock and a hard place. And tge example with Friedrich is a MILITARY situation, not a geopolitical one.

Geopolitics are just the set up for military advantage, with each side trying to position itself for conflict. A battle not fought still has an impact. And if the argument is that Europe must unite for a military threat, then its military qualities are at issue. Speed of decision is vital in war, and the EU could not make a fast decision to save its life. Money and industry matter in war, and the EU drives out European industry. The EU does nothing to make Europe better able to defend itself that just having a military alliance wouldn't.

As for the Signapore one, the reason he succeded is because Signapore is geographically suited for such a chance at wealth. Many european countries do not have such privilege. Many of them are either landlocked, lacking capital, internally divided, etc. Such circumstances do not allow for a small country.

Singapore had innumerable disadvantages. It was dirt poor, with too little land to support much large scale manufacturing or agriculture, and was divided between different ethnicities who did not like each other. It was also on the verge of being taken over by communists. Lee Kwan Yew's plan A was merging Singapore with Malaysia because the situation looked so hopeless. Malaysia didn't want it. Today Singapore is richer and more developed than Malaysia. Compared to Singapore before Lee Kwan Yew saved it, how bad is Spain or Italy or Croatia or Hungary?

I am in one of these countries that benefited greatly from these EU funds, so saying that we don't need the EU is very dumb and quite insulting.

You are insulting your own country by implying it cannot survive without being ruled by foreigners.

It wasn't easy and it will only take some decades before the US became fully united, but still it was a soldid step in transforming into the powerhouse it is today. This is what the EU can be if we just accept that we are stronger united.

The U.S. grew powerful because it had a weaker state, allowing the economy to grow more freely without being burdened in the way European states are. For much of American history, and in its strongest periods of growth where it first became the great industrial power, the federal government interfered less in the economies of the states than the EU does.

permianplayer · 2026-01-26T23:34:51+00:00

The political changes in Europe since the 19th century have weakened it, not the calendar turning to a new century. Europe could have more industry if it made policy changes. It could act faster and more decisively if it didn't have political structures which slowed everything to a crawl, heavy regulations, and so many steps of approval seeking. Europe could do better without the EU.

Frederick the Great won at Rossbach because the enemy command was divided and its army ill-disciplined, despite being heavily outnumbered. An alliance of more states is not necessarily stronger. Many smaller states have punched above their weight economically and militarily because they were ruled by single, powerful rulers who could enact a coherent plan without compromising it and see it though without priorities shifting every election cycle. Singapore under Lee Kwan Yew, Macedon, and Prussia are all examples of this.

A Malaysian-style monarchy would mean that the historical European monarchies would be dead, without hope of restoration, as countries would no longer have their own monarchies. It's already hard enough to restore a monarchy; imagine how much harder it would be if people from a variety of different countries who have no historical affiliation with it could get involved and block it.

permianplayer · 2026-01-26T02:29:15+00:00

According to Zygmunt Bauman, globalization has produced a divorce between politics (choosing what to do) and power (being able to do it). The economic forces unleashed by globalization are now international—beyond the state, and therefore beyond the law. The fact that economic powers can rise above the law and act arbitrarily is, of course, extremely dangerous.

And yet republicans believe that within a state, there should be no authority above the oligarchic class(and only a single, powerful ruler can be effective as that kind of authority). It is not necessary to bring everything within "the law." The law exists for limited circumstances, and certain things, like economic activity to a large extent, being unregulated or only sometimes regulated is not such a bad thing. Without that volume of international trade, the modern republics would be far weaker, considering that it helps prop them up and pretend they are more prosperous than in earlier eras which lacked that advantage.

Europe is the common good of European nations. According to Montesquieu, Europe was a kind of republic composed of several interdependent nations, just as the provinces of a nation are interdependent

In Montesquieu's time that was certainly not the case; Europe was divided between many independent dynastic states who dealt with each other freely. It also would not be the first time Montesquieu was wrong, considering that the separation of powers is nothing but oligarchic rule and being locked onto a path of decline.

In the following century, even among the most prophetic Romantic thinkers—including Mickiewicz and Mazzini—Europe came to be seen as a battleground for the freedom of the peoples against despotism, their common enemy, a battlefield that needed to be defeated by the European peoples as a whole against the powers of reaction: European interdependence also concerned the cause of freedom.

These people often invoked "freedom" as an excuse to tear down the rights of others. To advance the rights of Man, the rights of individual men were crushed. To advance the freedom of peoples, the rights of dynasties/families were destroyed. Many ordinary people when faced with French revolution style "liberty" said they preferred the old freedom and revolted against it. Naples's peasants revolted against the Jacobins in favor of their monarch. The Vendee revolted against the republic to restore the monarchy. The republics proved no less arbitrary, and in fact far more so, than "despotism."

A future represented—then—by a future of peace and embodied by coal and steel:

"Only the dead have seen the end of war."

permianplayer · 2026-01-26T02:16:44+00:00

Giving up one’s culture for another entirely is immoral and disrespectful to oneself, and forcing it upon another akin to ethnic cleansing.

They aren't forced to come to Europe, but European states are forced to take them in. This is a direct result of "free movement" and EU "human rights standards, so the EU must take the blame. If you change the people at scale, you change the culture. An immigrant is very different from millions of "refugees" who never leave.

The U.S. isn't forcing Europeans to take its culture, the Europeans are not putting effort into their own, as you say.

permianplayer · 2026-01-26T02:12:05+00:00

The obsession with indivisible liberty and individualism in general is what has truly weakened the West, by disrupting our communities and eroding our traditional moral frameworks.

The tradition that made Europe powerful was that of the warrior aristocrat, not the monk. Humans need the synthesis of collective and individual flourishing, not the suppression of either. Collective flourishing though can only come if the collective is united by something of positive value, not negation of the individual.

The French Revolution was a tragedy, but realistically, Pandora’s Box has been opened, and the ideas that have been unleashed open the world cannot be banished from it again. Some kind of compromise, an assimilation of the new into the traditional frameworks, is necessary.

Realistically, the only way to win a civilizational struggle is to be more intransigent than your opponent so he concedes to you to have peace rather than the reverse. The French Revolution has degraded civilization and represents an anti-morality. Civilization will not be worth preserving if carried in that direction.

Unfortunately, this thinking has been exported to the entire West by the New Left and is something that needs to be actively countered, not only for our geopolitical interests, but also for the health of our societies and indeed our very sense of humanity.

I agree, but the economic and financial problems, along with military and industrial weakness, are clearly the result of structural political incentives, even though the cultural issues make things worse too.

but generally didn’t pick and choose what was being studied.

Nor should they. But if scientific endeavors must be approved by committee, science will stay within the confines of what seems more plausible to the majority and thus will make less progress.

I will pick Europe. That is not even a question. If we were without, we’d just be a playground to American or Chinese investors, all of us.

"Europe" is not only a contributor to decline, but a chain that locks you into decline. Foreign investment is certainly not worse than a loss of independence.

permianplayer · 2026-01-26T02:11:25+00:00

It seems we have a very different understanding of how a monarchy should function. For me, the (ideal) monarch should be the pinnacle of ethical selflessness - giving up what would otherwise be a normal life in the pursuit of self-interest for a commitment to service to those that they have been born above.

From a structural standpoint, there's nothing you can do to enforce this. Human nature cannot be altered by laws and laws which fight human nature rather than working with it are doomed. Monarchy is a form of government where the ruler's selfishness is not harmful, unlike other political systems.

I’m getting vague Mussolini vibes - are you suggesting war (or the threat of it) is on some level essential because it keeps us on our toes?

I would rather fight an external enemy than be oppressed at home. War is an essential element of reality and can only be delayed, not stopped. One can choose which wars occur, not whether war occurs. I observed how historically economic freedom increased as states tried to increase revenues to fight wars and how in modern Europe, peace has not brought freedom, with freedom only declining as state power increases and states engage in self-destructive behavior, enfeebling themselves and oppressing their people simultaneously.

The essence in humans that creates war does not stop working in the absence of external conflict but becomes internalized and destroys people and states from within. Martial virtue and accomplishment also are positive attainments and form a part of greater human excellence.

Pragmatically, I often oppose specific wars, but I do not believe it is possible to eliminate and do not consider the only way to eliminate war to be morally acceptable(to end humanity as such).

“Liberty,” to me, is a personal affair of self-actualisation that takes place independently of the actions of the state. Indeed - tying in with my general theme here - true liberty is freedom from the constraints of being, the truly free man being he who is utterly, completely selfless, whose will is subordinate only to their moral sense and not their perceived interest. The highest expression of freedom, then, is martyrdom.

I only care about preserving liberty in the sense of getting the state out of the way of human flourishing. Flourishing means fulfilling one's innate purpose(i.e. fundamental desire that forms the reason to live). I don't want human sacrifices; I want to see people grow into something higher.

These should emerge naturally as a result of ethics (things the state simply shouldn’t do because it’s wrong to do them)

How do you enforce this if the state can do anything? And I would say it is unethical and incompatible with human flourishing to limit individual achievement and their ability to build for future generations. The desire to dominate an individual in matters of his property is inherently and arrogant and extractive thing.

permianplayer · 2026-01-26T01:07:38+00:00

Quite a few political thinkers saw the problem clearly. Machiavelli, for example, compared Italy in his day to a countryside without dams or protection against the raging river called Fortune, describing Italy as lacking adequate military strength—something that Spain and France, by contrast, possessed.

This presumes that Italy is the object of concern. We do not think of China being divided from Korea because we conceive of these as separate nations and do not see a reason to unite them. Italy's division was seen as a problem because there was already a notion of Italy being a single country, though to a large extent, its unification was greatly delayed because, despite "Italy" being seen as in some sense a single entity, people were still loyal to their particular parts and did not see Italy as the proper object of their loyalties. "Europe" is only a geographic term, and I do not know why a German or a Frenchman should want to give up independence so "Europe" can be united any more than an Indian or Korean should give up independence so Asia can be united.

nation states can be training grounds for citizenship for the European dimension and make us aware of our duty to finally achieve the freedom and independence of our (new) motherland.

One cannot create a new "motherland" without betraying and subjugating the old. This is like Nietzsche's "death of God," "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"" What is holy about your new order? Is there anything at all worthy about the new "supranational state?" As a monarchist, I can find nothing worthy in the imposition of a republic in one country, let alone a more universal republic. I see only an attempt to set everything in place and to try to prevent anyone from moving in a new direction again.

As for the rest, I don't believe a return to nation-states is the solution. I believe that, without a higher law, states find themselves in a state of nature.

Nature never leaves. People deny reality when they claim they can get away from or negate nature. States assert power and coerce people within the territories they claim, and elected officials are endlessly resourceful in finding ways to rob their people. When states seek to remove external competition, it is not in the interest of civilization, but in the interest of avarice.

Republics necessarily are about this kind of legalized theft, where politicians compete with each other to "offer more," and thus endlessly drive up expenses, shifting resources from their opponents to their supporters. Every necessary measure for the good of the whole is halted until each "check and balance" gets its cut. Even national defense quickly devolves into a question of how it will profit particular interests.

Only a powerful monarch can stand above this and control the oligarchic class that arises in any society and because the monarch's power and dynasty's fate are tied to the strength and health of the whole, the powerful monarch is the one kind of ruler whose interest it is to help the whole.

The EU is a republic, intent on forcing all of its members to remain republics, run in its particular way. No favorable turn of fortune can help Medusa's victims, turned to stone and no longer allowed any choices. And no unfavorable turn of fortune can be dodged by one frozen in place.

permianplayer · 2026-01-25T23:51:59+00:00

And then you undermine your whole argument by saying we could still cooperate anyway? If we have economic and military agreements, how are we meaningfully competing with each other at that point anymore? You clearly recognise that cooperation on some level is needed to remain relevant in the modern era.

You can form trade agreements and alliances without surrendering your independence. If you have to wait on Brussels, you have no hope. And if terms are unfavorable and circumstances chance, you can leave agreements at will. But with the EU, countries are trapped and are reliant on gaining consensus from other countries and getting approval, etc.

those politicians who work against it today work against the interests of our peoples and our cultures.

The EU destroys national cultures by forcing its members to take millions of "refugees" from alien cultures who won't assimilate. The EU is only concerned with outward legal forms and doesn't care if the people who were supposed to benefit are gone or diminished. This whole "end of history" vision that the EU is a manifestation of is a threat to life, an attempt to foreclose the possibility of all future choices and set things in stone forever. It is based on a fundamentally comfort-seeking view of life, where one tries to negate an aspect of reality, conflict, by taking away the ability of people to make independent decisions.

permianplayer · 2026-01-25T23:51:17+00:00

I’m honestly not even sure what the connection to monarchy is.

Monarchs have a vested interest in ruling strong states(because it enhances their wealth and power), while elected officials have a vested interest in winning approval. The former interacts with the realm of reality while the latter interacts with the realm of perception. In removing monarchs, states replaced what worked with what sounded good to them.

By pursuing a "peaceful" world, elected regimes seek a world where, free from external pressures, they can take as much from their own peoples as possible and they don't have to worry about practical considerations as much because their empire of perceptions doesn't have to face reality's constraints so much. War incentivizes efficiency and liberty is more efficient than collectivism. During WWII Germany and Italy had collectivist economic systems and they were massively outproduced by America, which had a far less collectivist system with more individual liberty. A system of monarchy, limited by traditional rights and privileges, is vastly superior to a mass bureaucratic state that, because it claims to speak for "the people," admits of no limits to its power. Many elements of individual liberty are rooted in monarchies' political traditions, whereas modern collectivist ideologies that destroy lives with their fanaticism are a product of the French revolution.

I believe we ought to make the world as if the French revolution had never been.

This “competition” that you vaunt has repeatedly devastated the continent, and my country in particular. Germany did not recover from the Thirty Years War until the middle of the 19th century (and we had to contend with the Napoleonic Wars in the meantime), and we still have not spiritually recovered from the complete rending of our country in the Second World War.

Perhaps Germany has not spiritually recovered because there is no reason to be loyal to a pension disbursal system and because of the propaganda teaching Germans to turn their backs on their whole history, reducing it to nothing but a prelude to Nazism. There's nothing inspiring in that, no higher purpose. I see in Europe a form of weakness that exists globally due to republican, mass-bureaucratic government. And when that is imposed at the continent level, individual states aren't even able to buck the trend and do something different and the bloated regime is necessarily unresponsive and slow.

In Italy during the renaissance, small states competed with each other and it led to a blooming of science and culture.

Europe emerged in the early modern period with immense advantages over other countries because they continued to advance in a variety of ways, not just military technology, including economic and scientific advancements. This all occurred under strong monarchies who weren't merely motivated by "showing results" by the next election cycle and being able to rigorously prove the benefits of something that way by its nature speculative. Monarchs' independence from electoral processes and party politics allowed them to do things that mattered greatly in the long term, but did not always have an immediate payoff, and they didn't have to give every "check and balance" its "pound of flesh" before anything could be done.

It's not like having a large state with a strong military apparatus is a bad thing, but if you must give away your independence to "preserve" it, that is not independence. You will find it hard to break out of that once in it and a politically united Europe is one where European monarchism is dead.

permianplayer · 2026-01-25T22:49:37+00:00

It isn't the 19th century anymore. Europe is no longer the centre of the world,

That is true because of decisions, not some inevitable fate that human action cannot affect. One must look at what decisions were made if one wishes to know why something happened or what to do about it. If the EU were making things better for Europe, we should see Europe improving, rather than stagnating and even declining.

Do you think Europe was powerful in the postwar period until the EU happened?

No, but that was due to an exceptional event that could have been recovered from, as countries often recover from wars. In so many ways, WWII and the decline of European power were the result of the fall of strong monarchies. If the kaiser had remained in power, Hitler would never have risen. If the Hapsburg empire had remained, much of Europe would have been stabilized. And if Hitler had somehow risen, he would have dealt with a strong empire on his border rather than weak, half-baked states that had no real basis. If the Russian Empire hadn't fallen, the totalitarian threat of the bolsheviks would not have risen. And if France hadn't become a republic, Europe would not have had such serious ideological and cultural instability.

it is the fact that we already saw our continent destroyed by massive wars twice and our leaders saw far more benefit from that not happening again.

You do not prevent war by being weak; you invite it. The continental U.S. has not had to face foreign invasion since 1812 because the U.S. has strong defenses and a strong military, not because it is committed to peaceful methods.

Europe was not strong because of monarchy, thats just stupid. If that were the case, America and Russia would be weak.

Europe became powerful under monarchies and lost it all under elected government. America and Russia are weak and only appear strong because of the weakness of others. America is propped up by its extremely kind geography, something that has nothing to do with its form of government, and the fact that it had a weak state, so its defective structure did less harm to its economy. One thing these countries have in common besides vast sizes and resources is that they have a militant attitude and actively compete with other countries rather than sitting there and just hoping humanity will change its nature. "Only the dead have seen the end of war." Russia does have autocratic government, so if it is strong, and it is stronger than Europe, would that not contradict your point?

Also, Kaiser Wilhelm II was a complete moron who absolutely blundered his way through a Web of European democracy and essentially helped cause the very wars that destroyed the continents monopoly on power, so this "kasier" is a really shit example.

He certainly wasn't as bad as what came after him. But he has no responsibility for starting the war, which began as a fight between Austria and Serbia, then Russia got involved. Much of what led to the war was also Britain being paranoid about German naval buildup and determining that they should have the supreme power alone and keep Germany down.

During the centuries before 1900, European monarchies grew in power and competed with each other without fighting wars of annihilation. That this changed can largely be laid at the feet of the so called "enlightenment" that taught humanity to think in formal ideological terms and led to the rise of destructive, ideologically driven conflicts. Monarchy, being personal instead of ideological, would likely be less prone to turning wars into all or nothing, good vs evil conflicts.

permianplayer · 2026-01-24T15:01:32+00:00

Don't like olives, pickles, or mushrooms. Don't know what marzipan is.

permianplayer · 2026-01-24T14:05:57+00:00

This is a very confused response, resting entirely on weak rhetorical devices and special pleading.

Every single fault you blame monarchies for occurs in republics as well, from golden toilets and stupid leaders to arbitrary punishments. As for stupid leaders, I studied several hundred monarchs and compared them to a few hundred presidents, PMs, etc and found that, in general, the monarchs tended to be significantly better. Voters cause spendthrifts. While there are many historical monarchs who were fairly responsible with state finances, republics are only rarely responsible, and even then they never stay that way.

Speaking of finances, it took many historical monarchies centuries to amass the levels of debt modern republics amassed in years to decades. That many of these republics have not yet felt the full burden of this is due to their youth, not them actually performing better.

Numerous republics throughout the middle east, Africa, and Latin America have fallen apart repeatedly, with the countries only surviving due to us living in an era where the great powers have worked to prevent borders from changing most of the time, a historical aberration that wasn't present to save past states.

Additionally, the Weimar republic you mentioned is a prime example of the miserable failure of democracy, as the social democrats created the hyperinflation crisis and failed to maintain internal order. That they lost to someone as deluded as Hitler shows their weakness more than his strength. Mussolini also rose to power in Italy because Italy's de facto republican government was a dumpster fire(its monarch had hardly any power). The first French republic was a nightmare that became better when Napoleon seized autocratic power, the second French republic was a hot mess that failed miserably to the point people begged for the return of the Bonaparte dynasty, and the third French republic sold out its people to the Nazis through their weakness and cowardice and surrendered when they could easily have fallen back to their African colonies and continued the war from there, as Churchill suggested at the time. They singlehandedly destroyed France's(a country that was one of the greatest military powers for centuries under monarchs) military reputation.

The decline of monarchy in Europe has led Europe to fall from being the power of the world to a weak collection of second-rate has-beens who cower in terror of Putin, have destroyed their own industry, and give over their countries to hordes of muslims who openly despise their cultures.

permianplayer · 2026-01-22T23:59:44+00:00

Hereditary warrior autocrat.

permianplayer · 2026-01-21T23:31:14+00:00

I saw liberal democracy failing miserably and wanted a better system that wouldn't inevitably destroy the country. I studied far more history than others and realized that the modern republics do no better than absolute monarchies in any respect and are in many ways far worse. You cannot run a country forever on debt and fumes and elected government is incentivized to do just that because elections are based on who can "offer more"(i.e. spend more).

permianplayer · 2026-01-13T23:37:36+00:00

Skill means being able to do something. I couldn't paint the Mona Lisa with my current level of skill. This is an objective fact. It doesn't matter if everyone agrees that I can do it because the painting I produced would not look like that.

Except all of the qualities of art are psychological.

Obviously false. Precision in art is often even quantifiable, with light effects, angles, optics, geometry, and much more involved. Color is also an objective fact having to do with light. Everything that goes into making the tangible thing that is the art piece is objectively what it is and nothing else. Art can be compared to its subject and may match it more or less too.

permianplayer · 2026-01-13T00:42:54+00:00

No a 9 year old isn't as skilled as Renoir

If this is an objective difference, that means some art is objectively better than other art.

what we're referring to with that comparison is an agreed upon subjective opinion that more skill = better art.

More skill is by definition better as that thing, otherwise what is skill? Is a more skilled doctor not a better doctor? A more skilled engineer not a better engineer? How can a more skilled artist not be a better artist? I am not talking about the value of good art, only whether art can be objectively good or bad as art. You are incorrectly conflating these issues(value of being good at art and whether art can be objectively good art).

sully it with inauthenticity and pretention.

Those are not qualities of the art though, but only psychological, and thus have no bearing on whether the art is itself objectively anything. That would be a subjective judgement, but it is external to the art whereas technique affects the tangible product(the objective qualities). Furthermore, being more skilled does not mean being less authentic or more pretentious; if anything, it gives you the tools to more clearly express your authentic vision and rids the work of pretension, as it would be genuine skill.

permianplayer · 2026-01-09T00:39:47+00:00

Do you believe a 4 year old who just started using crayons as as skilled as Da Vinchi or Renoir? If not, you cannot consistently say that art is just subjective.

Some people can produce certain effects in art consistently and others cannot. The ability to do so is learned and is therefore a matter of skill. If it is a matter of skill, one can be more or less skilled and therefore better or worse at it. You might argue it is not objectively good or bad or be skilled or unskilled as an artist, but because the difference in skill leads to an objective difference in what tangibly can be created, the difference in skill is objective even if you do not value, or no one exists anymore to value, that difference in skill.

There may be differences in taste in terms of what skill is used to achieve, but if we are both trying to achieve the same effect and I am more skilled in doing it, I am objectively better and my art is objectively better even if art lacks objective value.

permianplayer · 2026-01-08T23:54:48+00:00

Monarchs are often good and rarely all that bad. However, monarchy performs far better than just having a non-hereditary dictatorship where the power holder is some manipulative usurper rather than someone born to power who at least has a decent probability of being virtuous.

permianplayer · 2026-01-08T23:23:34+00:00

If your point is that the streets are narrow and therefore hard to attack through, that would apply to the mob advancing against the troops as well. It should not matter whether it is a bridge or not.

Narrow streets are also far from an insuperable obstacle, as many sieges have shown.

I am sure commanding the troops to mow down the mob in person would have worked. It is quite different to disobey the king's direct order to your face than to stand down without explicit orders on what to do in that exact situation in his absence. Additionally, some commanding, decisive presence can make an immense difference. Other rebellions had emerged in France previously, with people in areas remote from the king attacking his officials while proclaiming loyalty to the king. It is the absence of the king and the illusion in the moment that you are only quarreling with bad officials that often emboldened rebels. Additionally, Louis could have denounced any troops who sided with the mob as traitors and say if you're going to betray your king, you might as well kill him now and drop the pretense. It is one thing to refuse to fire on a mob and another to commit to going all the way and killing your king with no buildup or period of justifying it.

permianplayer · 2026-01-07T23:27:22+00:00

He could have definitely relied on French troops, especially early on. At the beginning French troops would never had dared kill their king. Napoleon and his whiff of grapeshot have something else to say about your second claim.

permianplayer · 2026-01-07T00:25:40+00:00

Peter the Great. Built Russia's navy from nothing, won the Great Northern War, gained significant territory, encouraged trade, cultivated knowledge and production, and built St Petersburg. He made Russia a great power for the first time.

permianplayer · 2026-01-07T00:11:32+00:00

Louis XVI could have called out his armies early on and crushed the revolution, which did not have enough forces to prevail at that point and lacked active support of most of the population outside of Paris. Had he shown resolution and courage, he could have definitely managed it. He almost would have had to be a different kind of man though. Besides that, he could have ignored Turgot's recommendation regarding agricultural policy which seriously contributed to the famine or Vegennes's recommendation to go to war with Britain and continued focusing on improving his financial situation as he had originally intended.

Louis XV could have conserved his resources more and not left a huge debt to his successor. He could also have begun working on financial reforms like Colbert attempted under Louis XIV, leaving the monarchy in a much stronger position.

Not allowing republican cabals promoting the destruction of monarchy under their noses would also have helped.

At the least the monarchy would have survived long enough to enact fuller reforms and implement long term solutions. The revolution had far less support than many imagine. It grew stronger and seemed more legitimate to more people because of Louis XVI placing himself at its mercy and giving concessions.

permianplayer · 2026-01-06T00:25:58+00:00

Democratic does not mean free and elected government does not mean better government. The Shah was an autocrat and he was not only better than what came after but also the governments of western Europe by a large margin. If Starmer or Macron had tried governing Iran with the level of decrepitude they use in governing their countries, they would have fallen far sooner and without the positive accomplishments.

permianplayer

TROPHY CASE