Should the U.S. have a monarchy?

The just-completed celebrations of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee in the U.K. have prompted a question in some quarters of the U.S.: Should America have a monarchy?

In particular, the notion of absolute rather than symbolic or constitutional monarchy is finding some new adherents on the right.

The engineer and entrepreneur Curtis Yarvin, who also has written under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, has called for a new American monarchy, more like Elizabeth I than Elizabeth II. The usual instant American reaction, of course, is to dismiss absolute monarchy as unjust, old-fashioned and unworkable. And in fact that remains the correct reaction — yet it’s worth thinking through what the desire for monarchy says about the current state of America’s intellectual right.