This is a first for us, a brief piece written by a friend of our movement. They wished to remain anonymous, but this article describes how and why he became a monarchist.
We are considering starting a new posting stream of articles just like this, written by our members, describing their own journeys, their ideas and beliefs about monarchy, why they are monarchists, the future of the USA, and the future of monarchism in America and around the world. If you would like to write one of your own for us to post here and on our website blog, send us an email with your draft article and we'll take it from there!
We hope you appreciate this, and would like to thank you all for sticking with us through all these years!
“It all began when I became more politically involved in 2017-2018. While I was outspoken on political issues in high school and changed my political views from being a Bernie Sanders supporting socialist, to a communist, to a laissez faire-style capitalist. By the time I graduated from high school, I had drifted towards the MAGA crowd and became a solid red Republican, which I had registered as the first day I could when I turned 18.
Upon being admitted to college, I hit the ground running with helping re-establish my campus's Young Republicans club, where I served primarily as the club's recruiter. During my time working with the YR, I became heavily involved with local politics, attending multiple political fundraising dinners and networking with everyone from local to federal officials. I became acquainted with my county commissioner, whom I volunteered for to help in his reelection campaign and invited to come speak with the YR on campus. I also did a job-shadow with a state representative, and even met former Sen. Pat Toomey. A year or two later, I went to campus's first chapter for Young Americans for Liberty, and I worked closely with a handful of other libertarians on campus to help build up the club's membership and presence. It was from being connected to this club that I was also briefly a co-founder for a free speech club.
Whilst all this was happening (back in 2018) I had come across an ad for on-campus Catholic masses being held by a local priest. While I had grown up an agnostic and eventually an atheist, I had gone through a change of heart and became interested in attending a service. Upon attending the first mass, I was intrigued, and continued attending them every Sunday night. After much soul searching and thought, I eventually became convinced, and I went to the priest and asked him about the process of conversion. Over the course of my conversion, which took a year, I had begun rethinking and reconsidering what exactly my politics were, and soon I went from being a ‘Republican who just happened to be Catholic’ to being a ‘Catholic who just happened to be Republican.’
The social teachings of the Church came to influence my politics tremendously, and after realizing that it was incompatible with libertarian values (as well as being close to graduation) I stepped down from my positions in the clubs I had helped to found. I then tried to find a new political home. I was inspired by the life and career of Bob Casey Sr., and so I briefly became a member of my campus's Young Democrats club. But I realized I had no home there either, as not only did its social values also contradict Catholic teachings, but club drama that eventually led to an impeachment trial within the group completely turned me off to it.
During my first year or two as a Catholic, I became acutely curious of the history of the Church, and by default, the greater history of Europe; its philosophies and politics. As I learned more about the greater role of the Church in Europe, and the timeline of Europe, from the twilight of Roman Hegemony to the Reformation and beyond, I became convinced that America itself was the product of the worst tendencies of the Reformation and Enlightenment Secularism. America was and is in many ways antithetical to the teachings of the Church. This opened my mind to new possibilities that there are alternatives outside the paradigm I grew up with and swallowed like a pill. It was at this stage that I began flirting with monarchism, as it was during the age of kings that the Church had thrived the most, and the faith had been more widely appealed to and given a place in public life.
While this intellectual evolution was occurring within me, I was still a registered Republican, but only barely holding onto the ideological precepts that define being part of the 'American right wing.' It was during this time that the 2020 election was happening, and when the night came that Biden won the election, I was personally not pleased. However, I still was holding onto the notion that the crowd that I had affiliated with for so long was still reasonable, I held out hope that they could dust themselves off and win back the country fair and square come 2024. However, I would be proven horribly wrong on this assumption come the beginning of 2021.
January 6, 2021 was the day my faith in democracy died. It was already on its way out, but after seeing a mob of people I once would have considered my ideological peers storm the capital of the nation, my democratic faith gave up the ghost.
Seeing these people, who I had heard for four years denounce the Democrats for ‘whining about stolen elections’ and ‘setting cities on fire and delighting in the destruction of property’, now doing the very thing they claimed the Left to be doing, completely filled me with contempt. I still remember the anger, even betrayal, that I felt upon looking at the news flash. I had genuinely believed I was on the side of the angels, and now these 'angels' had proven themselves to be wolves in sheep's clothing. It was that day I realized that both sides of the American political experiment were failures, and that fundamentally I, as a Catholic, could no longer abide by either.
Ever since then, I have delved into the world of monarchy and its proponents, as well as diving deeper into learning about the Faith and becoming more knowledgeable. Now, I have become as devout a monarchist as I am a Catholic, with my personal favorite being the House of Hapsburg and my specialty topic being the Holy Roman Empire.
My journey to becoming a monarchist has been complex to say the least, but now I am firmly happy to say that I have found my new home in Catholic Monarchism, and I am here to stay!”
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