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From my own reading, I've concluded that the quality of the citizens is far more important than the quality of their leaders, and they will get good leaders anyway if they are good citizens.
Patrick says
From my own reading, I've concluded that the quality of the citizens is far more important than the quality of their leaders, and they will get good leaders anyway if they are good citizens.
Yep, as honest folks would never elect an Adam Schiff.
As the Romans admitted more and more foreigners to citizenship, they lost their unity, integrity, and dedication. Everything continued to run for quite a while, but the old motivations were gone and the empire eventually collapsed.
From my own reading, I've concluded that the quality of the citizens is far more important than the quality of their leaders,
My read of history, including many broad surveys of entire kingdoms and Empires, be it Britain or Byzantium... is that most Kings/Emperors are selfish idiots, not Divinely Appointed. Of course Reax will say it's all colored by Whig History, it's my read of everything including Gibbon to de Maistre to Burke.
The Good ones are generally the ones who by personal Charisma and Merit overthrow the last Dynasty. If you're lucky the heir and his heir. There are entire dynasties that suck, for example the Stuarts.
A career path very much like the BEST leaders of all, popular despots like Caesar or Cromwell, but since they're rare and generally created by hardship or extreme political division
Reading a history of Napoleon that delved into the characteristics of all his foes, and from Frederick the Corporal, Archduke of Austria, and especially both the father King and son King of Spain, complete pompous twits with inbred IQ. Only Czar Alexander was worth a damn.
The ideal form of government is a Federated Constitutional Republic with the National Government having BARELY enough income and power to run a centralized military campaign to defend itself and the near abroad, facilitate some physical infrastructure, and to keep subunits from violating constitutional rights.I also think a per capita income for the Federal Government is superior, since it prevents the government from growing beyond a certain level.
By the way, that pompous Fettsack Hegel, father of all shitty ideology since the mid 19th, had a flaw with his dialectic of history - his dialectic of the rise of Constitutional Government excluded the United States in the "Process of History", though it preceeded the French Revolution, his exemplar of the Historical Dialectic at play. I'd also not my beloved curmudgeon Schoepenhauer thought he was a largely incomprehensible pompous dolt. Aristotle is vastly superior to Plato and all the forms of his 'ideal form'.