"Our system obliges us to elevate to office precisely those persons who have the ego-besotted effrontery to ask us to do so; it is rather like being compelled to cede the steering wheel to the drunkard in the back seat loudly proclaiming that he knows how to get us there in half the time ... One can at least sympathize, then, with Tolkien's view of monarchy. ... A king--a king without any real power, that is--is such an ennoblingly arbitrary, such a tender and organically human institution. It is easy to give our loyalty to someone whose only claim on it is an accident of heredity, because then it is a free gesture of spontaneous affection that requires no element of self-deception, and that does not involve the humiliation of having to ask to be ruled."

- David B. Hart at First Things, writing about J.R.R. Tolkien's attraction to both monarchy and anarchy

[Hat tip: E. D. Kain at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen]

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Heather Horn