Vladimir Putin has made no bones about his desire to restore the greatness of Russian Imperial history, the history of the Tsars, the royal courts, the influence, the elegance, and the reign.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has made similar claims. The Ottoman Empire was one of the world's most extensive, influential, and durable; and it was preceded by sultanates, parochial kingdoms, and Islamic fiefdoms. In the fourteenth century the Mongol-Turkic armies of Genghis Khan rode down from the high central Asian steppes and conquered the world from Europe to East Asia.
The Shah of Iran in exile, is impatiently waiting for the final deposition of the usurping ayatollahs and mullahs of the Islamic revolution of 1979. His father, Shah Reva Pahlavi ruled the kingdom of Persia just as his ancestors did. The glories of Persepolis were never forgotten, nor was the magnificence of the imperial courts. Once the Islamic regime has been routed, he will return to Tehran as the legitimate heir to Persian history and will reset the cultural compass to imperial rule.
President Xi of China looks to his country's dynastic past as he leads the nation to world power. He is but the latest in the line of emperors who ruled China with determination and thousands of years of cultural import. Although China is a modern, Communist-Capitalist hybrid, it hearkens back to its Confucian, dynastic, imperial roots. Its dominance today is a result of its profound moral rectitude, the conviction that China is indeed the center of the world, and its consistently patriotic ethos.
Arnold Parker was a royalist - an admirer of Louis XIV, the Sun King, the architect of Versailles, the most influential monarch of all of Europe, and the regent who expanded France's cultural influence to the ends of the known world. He was a devotee of the imperial Tsars of Russia who, building on a foundation of Orthodox Christianity, Slavic pride, and the might of royal military power, extended Russian influence from the borders of Europe to the Far East.
He was a student of Turkic history and was awed by the power and influence of a small tribe from Western China that came to conquer the world.
He was a student of Chinese dynasty, and while imperial China limited itself to influence within its traditional borders and was closed to outside influence until 1857, it was unmatched for courtly elegance, sophisticated learning, and profound religious, ethical, and moral values.
Japan under its emperors and shoguns had created a disciplined, martial, culturally secure, and powerful nation. While Hirohito overreached, and imperial Japan arrogated world authority to itself while the West had grown equally determined and influential, after the war it regained its confidence, respect for history, and imperial destiny.
Arnold understood popular uprisings - the beheadings of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the murders of the last Tsar, Alexander and his family, the revolutionary zeal of Mao Tse Tung, and the democratic reforms of Ataturk - but he still hewed to the principle of empire, inherited, aristocratic, regal, imperial rule.
Which is why he was appalled at the influx of African immigrants to Europe and the progressive diffusion of central Christian, European cultural values. These immigrants, more at home in a tribal, primitive rainforest than any civilized, cultural environment bring nothing to the continent. There was no positive cultural influence and assimilation as there was when the Frisians, Jutes and later Normans and Romans came to Britain. There has been nothing but an extension of tribal primitivism overlaid with Islamic redemptive cant.
The migrants were not becoming European - Europe was becoming African to the detriment and destruction of the cultural integrity of the continent from the British Isles to the east.
'An invasion of the most savage, incontinent, insular, and ignorant migrants in Europe's history', Arnold wrote in Foreign Affairs; a result of Europe's own glandular malfunction - some deformed notion of Christian kindness cynically accepted by immigrants who wanted nothing of European culture but all of its wealth.
'Have you ever been to Africa', asked an Afro-centric, credulous supporter of open immigration to which Arnold replied that of course he had. And there he had seen nothing but primitivism, tribalism, and ethnic divisions, all of which were co-opted by Big Men who turned post-colonial independent nations into corrupt, venal fiefdoms. The slums of Lagos alone - rotting, fetid, miserable excuses for community - should have been enough for Europeans to say 'Basta!' when a shipload of Nigerians landed in Cyprus or Sicily, but they welcomed them with open arms, credulous, ignorant, and historically vacant.
Needless to say royalism is not the theme of the day, and Arnold was arbitrarily cancelled as a racist and anti-democratic demagogue. Yet France was in flames, their inclusive, equitable policies of diversity gone bad - St. Germain des Pres in flames, shops in the Rue de Rivoli vandalized, cars in the 7th overturned and set on fire, the northern suburbs as inchoate, undisciplined, and riotous as any inner city ghetto in America.
American progressives have made clear their intention to place the black man on the pinnacle of human society where he belongs. A denizen of the forest, attuned to the vibrations of nature, living a sentient, proto-intelligent existence, he above all should be recognized as the next generation of human genius.
The reality of the African diaspora as well as the millions of Africans still living either in abject urban poverty or rural tribal backwardness belies this assumption.
Arnold's royalism has nothing to do with racism, Euro-centrism, or historical envy. It is only a recall of the foundational principles of cultural supremacy. Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, Plato, and Aristotle were not accidents, nor were Augustus, Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius. They were products of culture, of civilizations which honored intelligence, spirit, creativity, and moral rectitude.
Cato the Elder's triptychs - the foundational texts for the education of the next generation of Roman leaders - focused on governance, military strategy, and colonial rule; but they also included lessons on civility, honor, courage, patriotism, fidelity, respect, and compassion.
Such multiparous, comprehensive lessons are gone - not only from schoolrooms but from political and civic life.
'I am a Roman', said Arnold.
And so it was that Arnold was cancelled for anti-democratic, seditious, even treasonous sentiments; but he never demurred, never once wavered, never gave an inch to multiculturalism. Neither a Cassandra, a man of principle, or a voice crying out in the wilderness, he was simply a student of history, suspicious of received wisdom an the cant and true belief it allows.
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