The Illusion of the Crown
Why FDR Was No Monarch—and Why Yarvin Is Wrong About Everything
By E. A. Mercer
Curtis Yarvin, writing under the moniker Mencius Moldbug, has built a peculiar kind of cult following by arguing that democracy is a farce and monarchy—preferably of the CEO-technocrat variety—is the superior form of government. At the heart of this contrarian worldview lies a revisionist admiration for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom Yarvin regards not only as a de facto monarch but as a blueprint for what governance ought to be. In his telling, FDR was America’s Augustus—a man who dismantled the rotting edifice of a failing republic and replaced it with a centralized, quasi-divine managerial state.
This theory is both historically shallow and philosophically corrosive. It misrepresents Roosevelt’s actions, misunderstands the Constitution, and elevates efficiency over liberty in ways that would have alarmed even Hamilton, let alone Madison. It is not merely wrong; it is dangerous.
I. FDR Was a Strong President, Not a Monarch
Yarvin’s argument begins with a semantic sleight of hand: he equates strong executive leadership with monarchy. That Roosevelt expanded the powers of the presidency is indisputable. But to call this monarchical is to evacuate the term of meaning. Monarchs do not face electoral defeat. They are not subject to congressional oversight. They do not have their signature programs struck down by courts or blocked by opposition within their own party.
FDR governed with enormous public support, yes—but through elections. He did not seize power. He campaigned for it. His New Deal legislation was passed through Congress, not imposed by fiat. When he attempted to enlarge the Supreme Court to ensure favorable rulings—a gesture that genuinely flirted with autocratic overreach—he failed. The plan was rejected by the very institutional mechanisms Yarvin claims were already dead. The system, battered and bent, held.
Even in wartime, Roosevelt submitted to constitutional norms. He did not suspend elections. He did not dissolve the legislature. He did not centralize all authority into his own hands. He appointed Republicans to key positions in his administration during the war, forming a coalition government that would be anathema to any real monarch. That his rhetoric was inspiring, his leadership galvanizing, and his presence commanding does not make him a king. It makes him a statesman.
II. Crisis Leadership Is Not License for Absolutism
Yarvin’s admiration for FDR is not rooted in Roosevelt’s moral vision, constitutional humility, or democratic sensibilities. It is rooted in his effectiveness. Yarvin regards liberal democracy as a failed operating system—too slow, too divided, too inefficient—and believes that the lesson of the 1930s is that only centralized, monarchical rule can save a nation from collapse.
This is the heart of Yarvin’s ideological mistake: he confuses efficacy with legitimacy. It is one thing to act decisively in crisis; it is another to make crisis permanent as a pretext for autocracy. Roosevelt himself understood the difference. His emergency powers were not a blank check. He sought and received congressional authorization for virtually all of his major programs. He communicated directly with the people through his fireside chats, not to bypass democracy, but to reinvigorate it.
Yarvin wants a monarch because he wants a shortcut. He is tired of what he calls the “Cathedral”—the complex, often contradictory ecosystem of media, academia, and bureaucracy that shapes American culture and policy. But this ecosystem, for all its flaws, reflects the very pluralism that makes liberty possible. The alternative—a unified will imposed from above—is not governance. It is domination.
III. Monarchy Is Not the Cure; It Is the Disease
The most revealing weakness in Yarvin’s case is that he never seriously grapples with the reality of monarchy. He romanticizes its elegance, its decisiveness, its immunity to mob rule. But monarchy is not elegant. It is capricious, dynastic, corrupt, and brittle. It depends on the virtue of one man—a formula that has failed in nearly every civilization that has attempted it.
History is strewn with the wreckage of monarchies: Louis XVI, Nicholas II, Charles I, and a dozen other cautionary tales. The American republic was founded not merely in opposition to monarchy as a political arrangement, but in philosophical repudiation of the idea that one man, however wise or efficient, ought to wield unchecked power.
Yarvin’s fantasy of a CEO-monarch presiding over a rationalized state sounds novel only because it has never worked. Benevolent dictatorship is the political equivalent of the perpetual motion machine: alluring, mathematically elegant, and physically impossible.
IV. FDR’s Greatness Lies in His Restraint
What makes Roosevelt’s legacy so enduring is not that he seized power—but that he used power in the service of the constitutional order. He expanded the welfare state without extinguishing free markets. He centralized executive functions without nullifying Congress. He won a world war without curtailing democratic elections. And when he died in office in 1945, the transition of power to Harry Truman was seamless. Monarchs do not die so quietly.
The very fact that FDR’s presidency triggered a constitutional amendment (the 22nd) limiting future presidents to two terms demonstrates the health of the republic, not its death. A real monarchy cannot be reformed so easily. The United States did not descend into tyranny after Roosevelt. It became, if anything, more institutionally robust.
Yarvin treats Roosevelt as a philosopher-king. But Roosevelt was something better: a democrat with power and humility in tension. He understood that in a republic, the ends do not justify the means. The means are the message. And he governed accordingly.
Conclusion: Against the Cult of Caesarism
Yarvin’s theory of government is not a political philosophy. It is an aesthetic preference masquerading as analysis. He wants control, unity, hierarchy—because messiness offends him. But the mess of democracy is the sound of liberty at work. The inefficiency Yarvin despises is the price we pay to be free.
FDR was no monarch. He was the last great steward of American republicanism in an age of totalitarian temptation. That he resisted the urge to crown himself is not a weakness. It is his greatest strength.
Let us remember him not as Yarvin does—as a Caesar—but as what he was: a president of a free people, who rose to greatness not by replacing the Constitution, but by fulfilling it.
Further Reading
Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic
Jill Lepore, These Truths: A History of the United States