First, happy Flag Day. Fly ‘em if you’ve got ‘em. Now, on to the main event.

     A long, long time ago – yeah, when I still smiled at the music — there was a brilliant commentator named Joseph Sobran. I was just acquiring some facility with words when I first encountered Sobran’s work. It impressed me, to put it mildly. I strove to learn from his prose style, even as I nourished myself on his insights.

     There’s a lot of controversy about Sobran’s stance on Israel and Zionism. He was not an anti-Semite, but he did criticize Israeli government policies, especially toward that nation’s “Palestinian” fraction. The uproar over those criticisms overshadowed his other positions, which were paleoconservative in the tenor of Sam Francis.

     Sobran could surprise you, and often did. He had a high opinion of economist and anarcho-capitalist expositor Murray Rothbard, upon whose death he wrote a beautiful eulogy. He and like-minded commentator Tom Bethell wrote a series of pieces on “The Hive,” in which they presented piercing explanations of the mechanisms by which the Left and its institutions operate, particularly with regard to the setting of “acceptable opinion.” His columns, no matter the subject, always made me pay close attention, and not merely for the grace of his prose. Among current opinion writers, only Mark Steyn approaches Sobran’s elegance fused with eloquence.

     But all that is prefatory. What I have in mind this morning is a toss-off comment Sobran made in one of his newsletters. Sadly, I’ve lost that letter, but his comment has stayed with me. He noted that if we compare the record of pre-Enlightenment European monarchs to that of contemporary governments, the freedom lover should unhesitatingly prefer the former. Monarchies intruded far less upon the private lives and enterprises of their subjects than our “democratic” governments. If you want to be free, he said, “Don’t write a constitution – get a King.”

     Let that be today’s starting point.

     Concerning the qualities a true king must possess, the most stirring passage I can cite is from… drum roll, please… C. S. Lewis:

     Pain came and went in his face: sudden jabs of sickening and burning pain. But as lightning goes through the darkness and the darkness closes up again and shows no trace, so the tranquility of his countenance swallowed up each shock of torture. How could she have thought him young? Or old either? It came over her, with a sensation of quick fear, that this face was of no age at all. She had (or so she had believed) disliked bearded faces except for old men with white hair. But that was because she had long since forgotten the imagined Arthur of her childhood—and the imagined Solomon too. Solomon—for the first time in many years the bright solar blend of king and lover and magician which hangs about that name stole back upon her mind. For the first time in all those years she tasted the word king itself with all linked associations of battle, marriage, priesthood, mercy and power. At that moment, as her eyes first rested on his face, Jane forgot who she was, and where, and her faint grudge against Grace Ironwood, and her more obscure grudge against Mark, and her childhood and her father’s house.

     Deeply buried in the human heart, there is a yearning for a king of that stature: not to be ruled by him, but to be led by him. For a king can only lead those who would willingly follow him. He is only one man; he lacks the power to compel. Others with leadership quality of a lesser degree may flock to his banner, but even they are too few to enforce their wills upon many others. They can only lead. Those who elect to follow them do so not out of fear, but out of conviction that it is necessary and just.

     A long time ago, I wrote:

     The saber gleamed in the muted light. I’d spent a lot of time and effort sharpening and polishing it.
     It was a plain weapon, not one you’d expect to see in the hand of a king. There was only the barest tracing on the faintly curved blade. The guard bell was a plain steel basket, without ornamentation. The hilt was a seven inch length of oak, darkened with age but firm to the touch. There was only a hint of a pommel, a slight swell of the hilt at its very end.
     “What is this?”
     “A sword. Your sword.”
     A hint of alarm compressed his eyes. “What do you expect me to do with it?”
     I shrugged. “Whatever you think appropriate. But a king should have a sword. By the way,” I said, “it was first worn by Louis the Ninth of France when he was the Dauphin, though he set it aside for a useless jeweled monstrosity when he ascended the throne.”
     Time braked to a stop as confusion spun his thoughts.
     “I don’t know how to use it,” he murmured.
     “Easily fixed. I do.”
     “But why, Malcolm?”
     I stepped back, turned a little away from those pleading eyes.
     “Like it or not, you’re a king. You don’t know what that means yet. You haven’t a sense for the scope of it. But you must learn. Your life, and the lives of many others, will turn on how well you learn it.” I paused and gathered my forces. “What is a king, Louis?”
     He stood there with the sword dangling from his hand. “A ruler. A leader. A warlord.”
     “More. All of that, but more. The sword is an ancient symbol for justice. Back when the function of nobility was better understood, a king never sat his throne without his sword to hand. If he was to treat with the envoy of another king, it would be at his side. If he was to dispense justice, it would be across his knees. Why do you suppose that was, Louis?”
     He stood silent for a few seconds.
     “Symbolic of the force at his command, I guess.”
     I shook my head gently.
     “Not just symbolic. A true king, whose throne belonged to him by more than the right of inheritance, led his own troops and slew malefactors by his own hand. The sword was a reminder of the privilege of wielding force, but it was there to be used as well.”
     His hands clenched and unclenched in time to his thoughts. I knew what they had to be.
     “The age of kings is far behind us, Malcolm.”
     “It never ended. Men worthy of the role became too few to maintain the institution.”
     “And I’m…worthy?”
     If he wasn’t, then no worthy man had ever lived, but I couldn’t tell him that.
     “There’s a gulf running through the world, Louis. On one side are the commoners, the little men who bear tools, tend their gardens, and keep the world running. On the other are the nobles, who see far and dare much, and sometimes risk all they have, that the realm be preserved and the commoner continue undisturbed in his portion. There’s no shortage of either, except for the highest of the nobles, the men of unbreakable will and moral vision, for whom justice is a commitment deeper than life itself.”
     His face had begun to twitch. He’d heard all he could stand to hear, and perhaps more. I decided to cap the pressure.
     “Kings have refused their crowns many times, Louis. You might do as much, though it would sadden me to see it. But you could break that sword over your knee, change your name, and run ten thousand miles to hide where no one could know you, and it wouldn’t lessen what you are and were born to be.” I gestured at the sword. “Keep it near you.”

     You’ve probably seen that passage here before. When I wrote it, I was intent upon developing and portraying a character of exceptional stature: Louis Redmond. I needed him to be a crown-of-creation sort of figure, for it was his fictional destiny to inspire other heroes to rise to their various roles, most notably Christine D’Alessandro, who makes her bow in this novel. What I didn’t realize at the outset was that I was developing a king, a man fully worthy to lead a nation.

     And in retrospect, I think I was unwittingly expressing that hidden yearning for such a man to lead us.

     A lot of foolish things have been said about the second Trump Administration. Perhaps the most absurd of them are the accusations that President Trump is acting like a dictator… or a king. The “No Kings” demonstrations organized for today are merely the icing on the cake.

     Perhaps the closest any American president came to wielding dictatorial power was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Congress was his tame animal. The Supreme Court, which fought him on several issues, came to heel after his Court Reorganization Bill. The American people largely stood behind him, even though he broke several important promises. And of course, he disdained to follow the two-terms-only tradition honored by every president before him.

     By contrast, President Trump has been unduly deferential to wild-man judges who exercise jurisdictions they don’t legally possess. Congress is uncooperative, despite the nominal Republican majorities in both houses. Neither has the Supreme Court been all that accommodating. The media, which fawned over FDR, is unremittingly hostile toward Trump.

     Dictator? King? Please. Trump has barely been able to exercise the legitimate Constitutional powers of the presidency. Nor do the prospects for the rest of his term look better.

     I wouldn’t want Donald Trump as a king. He doesn’t have the firmness of conviction a king requires. But I’d say we have nothing to worry about on that score. A freedom lover’s focus should be elsewhere.

     Even before consideration of the rioting afflicting Los Angeles and several other cities, America is in a bad way. We suffer haphazard justice, waves of irrational and self-destructive Causes, luxuriant laws, insane regulations, crushing taxes, millions of illegal aliens, a federal government ninety percent of whose decrees and operations are unconstitutional, corrupt state governments – some are completely corrupt – and local governments controlled by rapacious busybodies. As has often been said (and printed on some memorable T-shirts), the Founding Fathers would be stacking bodies like cordwood.

     By writing in the Declaration of Independence that:

     …all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed….

     … Thomas Jefferson demonstrated his awareness of the staying power of tyranny. He was unacquainted with the tactic we of today know as gradualism, for it is a tactic unsuited to the hand of a king. A king wouldn’t be able to get away with it!

     As I wrote the above paragraph, it occurred to me that that may be the most potent argument in favor of monarchy.

     Yet we continue to look to “our” governments to “give us freedom.”

     Quoth “John Galt:”

1. Do not look to an entity that can grow only through greater immorality as a source of morality.
2. Do not look to an entity that can grow only through greater violence and plunder as a source of protection.
3. Do not look to an entity that can grow only by destroying liberty as a source of freedom.

     It’s a fantasy and always has been.

     Forgive me, Gentle Reader. I know this has been a rant and a ramble. Perhaps you’ve been chafing for a solid conclusion at which you could say, “I suppose Porretto just had to get that out of his system.” But forty years’ involvement in political theory and thought finds me in a corner this rainy June morning.

     Where are we to go, we who cherish freedom and justice? Escape is impossible. All the avenues have been closed. Neither have we any hope of breeding a race of men fit to be kings like Tolkien’s Numenoreans.

     If there is an answer, it lies in the King of Kings: Jesus Christ. Temporal leaders and temporal arrangements will always disappoint us. Joe Sobran knew that, too.

     Have a nice day.