I am working on a follow-up essay to my royalist essay of yesterday, an essay which will explore the differences between authority and power.  After that an essay in defense of church establishment and against the left-liberal "wall of separation" is next on the docket, assuming some other topic doesn't come up to distract me.   It may be a few weeks before I get either of these written and posted however.  In the meantime, I will be posting older essays that I had previously circulated privately among my friends.   The first of these, which I will add after this post today, is my personal favorite "On Being a Tory in the Age of Whigs".  In older essays I will include the "original date".  This indicates the date the essay was first posted to my Facebook profile.  In most, if not all cases, that is the same as the date the essay was completed.

Some may have noticed that while the title of the last essay posted spoke of "the divine right of kings", the essay itself was a defense of the "natural authority of kings".  I find that there are many truths that can be approached from both a theological and a philosophical perspective.  Regal authority is one of those.  The nature of man is another.   The empirical observation that there is a fatal flaw in human nature which prevents human beings from ever establishing a true paradise on earth, and the theological doctrine of "Original Sin", are simply two different approaches to the same subject.  I am frequently reminded of that part of C. S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where they run across the star Ramandu, living in retirement on an island.  The progressively educated Eustace says "In our world, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas" to which Ramandu replies "Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of".  In the centuries of darkness the Western world has known since the eclipse which was the "Enlightenment" we have elevated the one aspect of reality over the other, to the point where for many it is all there is left.  This is a loss most tragic.

The liberal notion that authority is something that the people give to their government, holding the right to take it back in reserve, is unworkable nonsense as theory, and a recipe for revolution and chaos in practice.  Parents are not given their authority by their children.  God is not given His authority by His creation.  Neither is any intermediate authority a gift from the governed to the governor.  We who cherish our traditional liberties and rights, need to look elsewhere than to the revolutionary doctrines of the Left, for their foundation.