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Hmm, speaking of twisted world views ... he may be more twisted than I thought! I mean, everything he's said can be easily put together to reconstruct a certain ideology the advocacy of which is forbidden on this forum. Before we begin, let it be said that having been on the receiving end of...

But ya see, that's not exciting enough. They should storm Buckingham Palace and kill the king, then hold a no-holds barred deathmatch among each other to see who gets to be the new king! Blood for the blood god, skulls for the throne of Khorne! /s

Lol. The ancients and medievals valued traditional systems of succession and despaired of civil wars precisely because they wanted peaceful transitions of power and political stability. No society in the world ever saw civil wars and succession crises as a good thing I(his is why regicide and...

I mean, given how you posted that screed about the purpose of human existence being to kill each other ... why should you view that as a bad thing by the lights of your deranged political philosophy? If the important thing is that the blood flows and the bodies stack up, that man exterminate...

Not to mention that he does have a utopia - only it consists of neobarb warbands aimlessly killing each other. Yes, he really does think this: is a picture of the ideal society. Demented. It really does show how certain people just take the Whig/progressive/leftist teleological interpretation...

It gets better/worse than I noted at first. Not only did Roman Emperors so lack legitimacy that they had to bribe the army not to revolt, they frequently had to bribe their own bodyguards not to murder them. Which goes to show the ultimate conclusion of basing all political power on brute force.

It had a critical flaw in its constitution though - a General was just a Senator on campaign, no distinction between civilian and military spheres of authority. Which was acceptable until they had the bright idea of raising armies against their rivals in the Senate ... The HRE was just a mess...

Not to mention the insanity of "since killing and war are impossible to get rid of, we should have as much as possible and think of the bellum omnium contra omnes as a good thing". Which is flatly delusional. And Tolkien has something to say to that: “War must be, while we defend our lives...

Yep. People remember Teutoburger Wald because it was pretty much the only time barbs won a battle against Romans in that period, they don't remember Germanicus less than a decade later because it was just more Romans whupping barbs left right and centre.

Problem was that in the West you had a Republican system and well-established tradition as you've noted but in the East it was a mix of republics and monarchies. For instance, Augustus controlled Egypt (and its strategically-important grain supply) because he was Pharaoh of Egypt as one of his...

Most of the time when civilised societies fight barbs, the barbs lose hard (this extends into the modern era). We just remember the barbarians who won because they stand out so much, and not the countless chieftains and warlords who failed before them. BTW, added some stuff about Rome to my...

The Principate is quite an interesting case. You see, the Empire's fatal flaw was that there was no system of succession to the Emperorship, so each incoming Emperor lacked legitimacy. In that sense Augustus didn't end the late Republic's problems so much as temporarily put a lid on them. And...

So Mad-Max social Darwinist warlordism is the ideal form of government according to you. Thanks for clarifying!

It's worse than that - giving people unlimited power makes them more stupid and evil than they would have otherwise been. When all the consequences of your mistakes happen to other people ...

So ... Mad-Maxian raider warlords are the epitome of governmental structure and everything else is just various steps in a process of degeneration? Because anything above that point, you need money to make the functions of government and the military work.

Hmm ... we can also see this in Tolkien's work, as Gandalf and Galadriel are wise enough to know that using the Ring to try and do good would turn them evil and reject it. Sauron's fall also comes about through wanting to use his power to order all things for their own good ... Looks like...

The situation is more like: A. The government is made up of people. B. People have tendencies towards doing evil things. C. Giving people unlimited power over other people in the form of giving the govt. unlimited power will not only lead to them abusing their power, but also to the people in...

I mean, we can clearly see that the Song dynasty had a much larger bureaucracy than its contemporary medieval European states despite having more or less the same tech level. So bureaucratisation can't be solely a factor of technology. Minoan Crete was also more bureaucratic and centralised than...

This is nonsense. Governmental strength directly causes the govt. to grow, since as it pushes its competences into more aspects of life it must by necessity increase the bureaucracy and hence the governmental workforce and funding. Or are you just indulging your fantasy that modern society is...

Tolkien's utopia (the Shire) has a monarch (the Thain) whose role boils down to ceremony and commanding the militia in times of war and an elected civic official (the Mayor) who runs the police/border patrol and the postal service (which constitute the entirety of the Shire's civilian...