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PeonForHer -> RE: ROYAL WEDDING!!! (11/18/2010 9:22:14 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: allthatjaz
Believe it or not, I used to think that the monarchy was a total waste of money but I have come to realize that in our political system, its good to have a referee.
The monarch has no power whatsoever as a referee. A UK king or queen cannot interfere in the political processes in that way. What it can do is head up a system of aristocracy that has had privileges for centuries simply as a result of birth. It shores up a force of anti-democracy in our country and, thereby, slows down change.
quote:
ORIGINAL: allthatjaz
I have listened to too many ‘against’ arguments based on envy and spite and not enough good political argument as to why we would be better off.
Envy and spite? Oh hell, where to begin . . . .
Firstly, envy. Yes, a lot of the anti-monarchist cause is based on envy. People are envious of vast, unearned wealth that comes as a result purely of birth (or marriage). I don't blame those who are envious of these things and I'll cop to it myself.
Now, onto spite. Well, this is again understandable. People are brought up in the UK to accept, without question, the virtues of our monarchy. I had it shoved down my throat from primary school onwards. Rulers have known for centuries that by far the most effective way to get people to accept an unreasonable idea is to grab them before their sense of reason has had a chance to develop - as young kids. By the time they're adults, they're now perfectly conditioned to assume that the package of irrationality that rulers have sewn into their heads is 'natural', 'normal' and the 'only way things can possibly be'.
When some of us, the anti-monarchists, finally realise just how much we've been fed by our parents, teachers, the media - etc, etc - for so many years - yes, we might well get bitter about it. Since we don't have the deference we once had for royalty, our bitterness is going to be called 'spite' by those who still do have that deference. Royals, despite what their supporters relentlessly insist we accept, are not above politics. They are potential targets just like MPs and prime ministers. All the people we pay for are potential targets.
At the same time, we start to see spite in different places. It's spiteful, for instance, to demand that everyone feel the same way about the royals. Hence the beatings-up of people who let it be overheard that they were untouched either by Diana's life or her death. It's also spiteful to keep a few people in positions of massive wealth while the rest of us have to suffer the results of an economy that's turned into misery.
And it's spiteful of those who have gained their privileges by poncing off those who are going through the hardest time imaginable to treat those people with contempt. Thus, it was spiteful of Edward and Wallace Simpson to chummy up to Hitler's regime while the people who were loyal to them, and had paid for their unbelievably lavish lifestyles, were clearly soon to be bombed. It was also spiteful - beyond any degree imaginable - that Edward passed strategic military information to the Nazis and told an ambassador that we Brits 'would learn a thing or two' if the Germans were to bomb us. Edward was, arguably, the worst traitor this country has ever seen.
So there you go. That's my idea of spite. Another form of spite is to keep all such non-fawning, non-grovelling, non-obsequious stuff quiet - to lie, in other words. Fair enough, to have heard about Edward's treachery during WW2 could have destroyed our morale, which is one reason why the BBC refused to air his pro-Nazi-appeasement speech. But to continue, as did most of the media, to preserve the 'ain't she loverly!' image of the Queen Mother after the war and right till her death - despite her own Nazi sympathies, her racism, her utter contempt for people of 'low birth' - that's the wide-scale, systematic spite of those who are disdainful of us enough to believe that we're better off living with lies.
You ask 'with what would we replace the monarchy?'. Who knows. Lots of possibilities. Me, I'd replace it with a long-term, elected leader who has shown a truly impressive record for many years for wisdom, altruism and love for his/her country's people. Not love for some totem that's meant to 'symbolise' the people (like 'the Flag' or 'the Crown', but which eventually gets distorted such that the few end up being represented against the many) but the people themselves. Would the country 'fall apart', as monarchists so often claim? Only as much as France or the USA, or any other of the republics, has fallen apart.
As I've said elsewhere, I really don't mind monarchists enjoying their thing. But I don't want systematically to be lied to about them and I don't want to have it demanded of me that I show deference towards a small bunch of people that I cannot feel to be my 'superiors' in any way at all. And I don't want to pay for them. Monarchists can pay for their buzz in the same way that football supporters can pay to watch their team.
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