# Looking for Tolkien Quote Preferred Political System



## 1stvermont (May 8, 2022)

I have a vague memory of Tolkien stating he would prefer a gaul-like monarchy or perhaps HRE. He also stated he disliked pagan Rome. Does this ring a bell to anyone?


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## Hisoka Morrow (May 9, 2022)

I'm pretty sure the only source of JRRT himself was about anarchy as his most favored political system. Or unless your sources were from his son Christopher?


1stvermont said:


> Does this ring a bell to anyone?


Oh well...I've to say JRRT had no any political credits, thus I'm not sure he could ring the "bell of warning" or not, even though we might say he have good political theory, of course it's another matter that we all know our recent political situation. 😅


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## Tar-Elenion (May 9, 2022)

1stvermont said:


> I have a vague memory of Tolkien stating he would prefer a gaul-like monarchy or perhaps HRE. He also stated he disliked pagan Rome. Does this ring a bell to anyone?


52 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien 29 November 1943
[In the summer of 1943, Christopher, then aged eighteen, was called up into the Royal Air Force. When this letter was written, he was at a training camp in Manchester.]
My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) - or to 'unconstitutional' Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inanimate realm of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could get back to personal names, it would do a lot of good. Government is an abstract noun meaning the an and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people. If people were in the habit of referring to 'King George's council, Winston and his gang', it would go a long way to clearing thought, and reducing the frightful landslide into Theyocracy. Anyway the proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity. And at least it is done only to a small group of men who know who their master is. The mediævals were only too right in taking nolo efiscopari as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop. Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers. And so on down the line. But, of course, the fatal weakness of all that - after all only the fatal weakness of all good natural things in a bad corrupt unnatural world - is that it works and has worked only when all the world is messing along in the same good old inefficient human way. The quarrelsome, conceited Greeks managed to pull it off against Xerxes; but the abominable chemists and engineers have put such a power into Xerxes' hands, and all ant-communities, that decent folk don't seem to have a chance. We are all trying to do the Alexander-touch - and, as history teaches, that orientalized Alexander and all his generals. The poor boob fancied (or liked people to fancy) he was the son of Dionysus, and died of drink. The Greece that was worth saving from Persia perished anyway; and became a kind of Vichy-Hellas, or Fighting-Hellas (which did not fight), talking about Hellenic honour and culture and thriving on the sale of the early equivalent of dirty postcards. But the special horror of the present world is that the whole damned thing is in one bag. There is nowhere to fly to. Even the unlucky little Samoyedes, I suspect, have tinned food and the village loudspeaker telling Stalin's bed-time stories about Democracy and the wicked Fascists who eat babies and steal sledge-dogs. There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as 'patriotism', may remain a habit! But it won't do any good, if it is not universal.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (May 9, 2022)

I saw a documentary on Hayao Miyazaki the other night. This letter brought to mind something he said: "I want to stay grumpy".


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## Aldarion (May 9, 2022)

1stvermont said:


> I have a vague memory of Tolkien stating he would prefer a gaul-like monarchy or perhaps HRE. He also stated he disliked pagan Rome. Does this ring a bell to anyone?


I wrote about Tolkien's political ideals here:








Tolkien’s Ideal of Monarchy


JRR Tolkien’s love of monarchy is seen through his work. Last third of the Lord of the Rings has return of the King to Gondor, and restoration of the monarchy – and this is linked inexorably …




politicalreactionary.wordpress.com





But to sum it up, Tolkien was anarchomonarchist. Although I do not recall ever seeing the specific statements you had noted - the closest is the Letter 52, cited by @Tar-Elenion. Are you sure he made these statements, as opposed to somebody else extrapolating from his work?


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## 1stvermont (May 9, 2022)

Aldarion said:


> I wrote about Tolkien's political ideals here:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Thanks for the info. I have actually delved pretty deep into this subject. What I did in my own mind was mixed a few statements of Tolkiens in various letters into one. It appears letters 77 held the statement I was thinking of. 

_ However it's always been going on in different terms, and you and I belong to the everdefeated never altogether subdued side. I should have hated the Roman Empire in its day (as I do), and remained a patriotic Roman citizen, while preferring a free Gaul and seeing good in Carthaginians._


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## Rivendell_librarian (May 9, 2022)

I find it interesting that the system of government of The Shire is so different from what is typical of Middle Earth: a sort of local democracy with elected mayors etc. vs hereditary monarchies or tyrannies. The Shire feels more modern in some ways e.g. a local postal system. Is there a postman with a black and white cat?


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## Hisoka Morrow (May 10, 2022)

Rivendell_librarian said:


> ...government of The Shire is so different from what is typical of Middle Earth: a sort of local democracy with elected mayors etc. vs hereditary monarchies or tyrannies...


Don't forget Lake-Town, they're not a minor power of ME either, according to their population at least XD


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## Aldarion (May 15, 2022)

Rivendell_librarian said:


> I find it interesting that the system of government of The Shire is so different from what is typical of Middle Earth: a sort of local democracy with elected mayors etc. vs hereditary monarchies or tyrannies. The Shire feels more modern in some ways e.g. a local postal system. Is there a postman with a black and white cat?


Eh, it is not that weird. Remember that Shire is basically a largely agrarian community that used to exist as a part of Kingdom of Arnor. Such cases of _de facto _republics or other non-monarchist systems/states existing within a larger monarchic polity are dime a dozen during the Middle Ages: you have Republic of Poljica and Republic of Dubrovnik, both of whom were under Hungaro-Croatian crown (and technically a part of Kingdom of Croatia), Republic of Venice was _de iure _part of the Byzantine Empire (but _de facto _independent), and then you have Holy Roman Empire which within itself contained almost every single political system imaginable to man... and these are just the examples I could remember out of hand. If I actually went searching for examples, I could probably find many more.

And while Shire does feel more modern than most of Middle Earth, nothing within it is _technically _impossible by medieval standards... of course, the real reason is that Shire is basically Tolkien dropping his childhood memories of late 19th / early 20th century English countryside into a medieval world.


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## Rivendell_librarian (May 16, 2022)

"Interesting" and "weird" are not synonyms.


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## Olorgando (May 16, 2022)

Rivendell_librarian said:


> "Interesting" and "weird" are not synonyms.


Not technically; but in everyday sloppy language usage the overlap is large, is my impression ...


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## Rivendell_librarian (May 16, 2022)

Olorgando said:


> Not technically; but in everyday sloppy language usage the overlap is large, is my impression ...


Well it's news to me that their meaning can overlap. Do you have any well known examples?

Of course, something that is weird (e.g. rare) could be of interest: for instance a rare or weird cockroach by reason of its colour or size maybe. That would be interesting to someone who has an interest in cockroaches, but not for someone who has no interest in them: weird or not.


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## Aldarion (May 16, 2022)

Rivendell_librarian said:


> Well it's news to me that their meaning can overlap. Do you have any well known examples?
> 
> Of course, something that is weird (e.g. rare) could be of interest: for instance a rare or weird cockroach by reason of its colour or size maybe. That would be interesting to someone who has an interest in cockroaches, but not for someone who has no interest in them: weird or not.


As a general, if something is usual, it is not interesting. If something is interesting, it is unusual, and thus likely has to be explained.


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## Olorgando (May 16, 2022)

Rivendell_librarian said:


> Well it's news to me that their meaning can overlap. Do you have any well known examples?
> 
> Of course, something that is weird (e.g. rare) could be of interest: for instance a rare or weird cockroach by reason of its colour or size maybe. That would be interesting to someone who has an interest in cockroaches, but not for someone who has no interest in them: weird or not.


My impression is that the overlap results from the wide usage of the word "interesting" - by people trying to be polite? - when they often mean something more drastic, and not just "weird".

I don't know if this can count as a "well-known" example, and I don't know where I read it - it was decades ago, but:

If someone from the Chinese cultural sphere (to my limited knowledge this would mainly mean Confucianism - ol' Kǒng Fūzǐ or Kong Fu Tse gets blamed for most sayings, kind of like Mark Twain in the US, or Goethe in Germany) says to you "may you live in interesting times", they are *not* complementing you. "Interesting times"? Examples would be the Mongol invasions, the Taiping Rebellion in the 19th century, the Japanese invasion in the 20th ...


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## Rivendell_librarian (May 16, 2022)

Aldarion said:


> As a general, if something is usual, it is not interesting. If something is interesting, it is unusual, and thus likely has to be explained.


That was not my intended meaning when I used the word "interesting". I am curious as to why you changed the word to "weird": a word I did not use or intend. Something doesn't have to be unusual to be interesting. One may be interested in the outcome of a regular sporting event e.g. the FA Cup Final even though the outcome wasn't unusual i.e. the better side won.


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## Hisoka Morrow (Jul 8, 2022)

Olorgando said:


> "Interesting times"? Examples would be the Mongol invasions, the Taiping Rebellion in the 19th century, the Japanese invasion in the 20th ...


Ambitous warlords and statesmen would be interested by these "interesting time"  XD


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jul 8, 2022)

This discussion took an interesting turn.


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## Elbereth Vala Varda (Jul 8, 2022)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> This discussion took an interesting turn.


It CERTAINLY did!


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