The pages of history are marked by the blood stains of violent revolutions. Time and again, corrupt rulers throughout the centuries have been overthrown by their frustrated and discontented subjects. It’s a reality every autocrat fears. For the most part, a monarch’s power depends on the authority recognised by the people; once they withdraw that recognition, his rule can only be upheld through fear, intimidation, and force.

But fear is a poor basis for governance. It divides a kingdom, turns subjects against one another, and enforces compliance only at the edge of a blade. That is no monarch’s ideal method of rule. Every sane ruler prefers a loyal people—subjects who willingly uphold their moral and civic duty out of loyalty, not terror. For that to happen, he must govern in a way that binds his own well-being to theirs. Not through force, but through mutual benefit and protection. The better the king, the more loyalty the people have to their ruler; and the more loyalty there is to leadership, the fewer laws are needed to govern. As such, good kingship ought to produce loyalty that results in increasing freedom for his subjects.

Yet history shows that wicked kings often grow arrogant and forgetful. They overlook the fact that a kingdom is only as strong as the people are loyal to their king. The lesson from King David’s grandson, Rehoboam, stands as a timeless reminder to all leaders: harsh rule and disregard for the people’s well-being fractures a kingdom and foments revolution (1 Kings 12:8). Loyalty cannot be demanded or enforced—it must be earned. It is earned when the people understand that the king does not regard them as a resource to exploit, but as a wider family to protect and serve.

This was a recurring problem for many godless monarchs. Without the loyalty of the people, their rule would often deteriorate into tyranny. Public compliance was no longer the product of love and loyalty, but the result of threats and fear. Eventually, when pushed far enough, the people resist. It was thus argued that a new political system was necessary to safeguard against despotism: democracy—government by the people, for the people—or at least, that’s how it was packaged.

The Enlightenment, entrenched in anti-Christian thought, formed much of the modern rationale for opposing monarchy by replacing the biblical foundations of kingship with arbitrary, secular, human-centred ideals. Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire argued that legitimate political authority arises not from divine right but from the consent of the mob. Monarchy, they maintained, was an outdated and illegitimate form of oppression. That characterisation of kingship has stuck to this day.

Contrary to the Scriptures, Rousseau’s concept of the “general will” and Locke’s theory of the social contract both implied that rulers derive their authority not from God, but from the majority. This intellectual shift laid the groundwork for bloody revolutions, particularly the French Revolution, which explicitly dethroned divine right and enthroned “human reason” in its place. Thus, for many, the Enlightenment provided both the philosophical and imagined moral justification for dismantling traditional monarchies in favour of republican or democratic forms of government.

While this alternative system of governance may seem reasonable in theory, it often fails to deliver what it offers in practice. At its core, democracy functions as the periodic appointment of short-term kings, a system that breeds unintended and often overlooked consequences: it rewards partisan manipulation, undermines historical and moral foundations, elevates popular passions above principled order, and leaves national identity and governance vulnerable to the shifting tides of public opinion rather than grounded in enduring truth or virtue.

What’s more, democracy incentivises short-term thinking and resource exploitation. Kings, as long-term stewards of their realm, have an interest in preserving it. Elected officials, by contrast, have temporary power and must use it to secure their reelection. Bread and circuses, as Juvenal lamented, become the currency of politics. The people are offered amusements and short-term gains in exchange for votes.

Politicians promise taxpayer money to favoured causes and constituencies in hopes of electoral success. As a result, power is allocated not by justice but by political utility. This leads to bloated bureaucracies, rising debt, and the erosion of individual freedoms. Constant pressure to appease voters encourages unsustainable spending. Once in power, many politicians feel compelled to preserve their position, sometimes resorting to importing dependent voters through mass immigration policies—offering state benefits in exchange for their political loyalty. As such, widespread corruption and quid pro quo arrangements have eroded public trust in many of these democratic systems. 

Although democracy was supposedly established to limit authoritarian power gone bad, it is no absolute safeguard against the abuse of power. Rather, it can function by disarming public vigilance by offering the illusion of participation. When elections become a facade, either through fraud or by providing no meaningful alternatives other than a uni-party system, and political elites remain entrenched regardless of the vote, democracy ceases to check tyranny. Instead, it disguises it as the people’s choice.

While not all democracies are the same, many function in a way that lulls the public into a false sense of power. The people are made to believe they are the king-makers, and that their rulers can be removed peacefully every few years. Poor leadership and destructive policies then become the fault of the people—not those they elected to power. Failed leaders deflect blame by appealing to the will of the people, and the people blame each other. No one is truly held accountable. Leadership failure becomes a shared, unpunishable mistake for which we all bear responsibility. After all, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We voted for it.

Democracy convinces people that they bear ultimate responsibility for the failures of the government, leading them to believe that revolution is forever unnecessary. If the government fails, it is their duty to vote for change. If they fail to secure the vote, the blame falls on them for not convincing the public accordingly. As such, any dissent is treated not as a civic concern but as a threat to the sacred democratic process. To maintain control over restless populations, governments often resort to surveillance, regulation, demonisation, and censorship—the very thing the system was supposed to safeguard against.

While democracy presents itself as the rule of the people, it rarely functions that way in practice. Citizens typically choose from a narrow slate of preselected candidates, and the elected representative is then expected to advocate on their behalf. But if politicians were truly committed to democratic ideals—if they genuinely valued the people’s voice—they could easily implement a digital system to regularly pose simple questions to the public, effectively enabling low-cost referendums. After all, most people already interact with digital government platforms. But they won’t do that, not because they can’t, but because they don’t actually care what the people want. They only feign as much in exchange for their vote.

As such, in the minds of many today, to be called a “politician” is less a compliment than a criticism. The term has become a byword for double-speak, self-interest, and moral compromise. By contrast, to call a man a “king” evokes a very different image—one of strength and mastery, self-discipline, competence, and natural leadership.

Unlike democracy, monarchy offers national stability and non-partisan leadership grounded in historical legitimacy and a sense of divine order. It resists ideological trends, restrains short-term political ambition, preserves national identity, and encourages long-term stewardship over populist self-interest. A monarch is less likely to divide his kingdom because doing so would harm his own inheritance and the inheritance of his progeny. The preservation of the king depends on the preservation of his realm.

Critics of monarchy often cite abuses of power. However, if a potential for corruption disqualifies monarchy, then why doesn’t a potential for corruption also disqualify democracy? Both can and have been abused, the main difference is that one is carried out in secret. The more relevant question is: which system is more likely to incentivise integrity and long-term responsibility? Both systems require men ruling over men, whether it is a royal family, an appointed prince, or the democratic mob rule of the majority.

But unlike the secular democratic process, which is supposedly based on the ever-changing, arbitrary whim of the majority, monarchy is not necessarily an unchecked autocracy. Key to the story of Israel’s appointment of a monarch was their wicked request to have a king “like the nations.” Their error was not in looking to appoint a king—God allowed as much in the Law (Deut. 17:15)—but rather, their error was in the kind of king they sought after—namely, “a king like the nations” (1 Sam. 8:5). 

Yet a king “like the nations” was not a king that God had authorised in the Law, for the Law stated that a king must not rule as an absolute monarch, or as a law unto himself, but rather, he must rule as a vassal king, a king under God’s Kingship. That is, a constitutional monarch. Hence, Christendom flourished under the leadership of Christian kings who recognised their rule was delegated and therefore limited by the loving laws of High King Jesus. As such, the Christian king, by definition, does not occupy the highest throne. Instead, he rules as a subject to that Throne.

Where the Christian king understood his role as divinely delegated and constrained by God’s law, nations flourished. Alfred the Great fostered law and learning. Charlemagne advanced education and ecclesiastical reform. Saint Louis IX of France ruled with justice and piety, earning the admiration of friend and enemy alike. In Hungary, Stephen I united his kingdom under the cross, laying the foundations of Christian governance. Even in the Byzantine East, Emperor Justinian codified Roman law under a Christian framework that influenced Christendom for centuries. These were not perfect regimes, but they showed what was possible under rulers who feared God and loved their people.

Kingship, rightly ordered, was instituted by God as a divine foreshadowing of His ultimate reign. Throughout Scripture, God reveals Himself as King—first over creation, then over Israel, and ultimately in Christ, who reigns over all things. An earthly monarchy was intended to train the human heart in submission to the true Sovereign. Is it any wonder, then, that our Christ-hating world has long laboured to abolish kingship, to characterise it as inherently evil, and to replace “Thy will be done” with “My will be done”?

Under any system, corruption is possible. But the question is not whether we can prevent all corruption. That is an impossibility on this side of eternity. The better question is: which system is more likely to do the least damage to the fewest people while securing the greatest good? Perhaps it is time to revisit the wisdom of the ancients—and of Scripture. If kingship, rightly constrained, offers more stability, accountability, and generational foresight, then perhaps the wisdom of the ancients—and of Scripture—deserves a second hearing. And to be frank, it probably couldn’t get any worse.