![]() ![]() Admittedly, at a time when the Democratic Party and Joe Biden’s puppeteers are doing their best to exploit the weaknesses in the American system in an apparent effort to bring the whole edifice crashing down, anything else – up to and including Juche thought – can start looking pretty good.īut the plain fact is that for the British system to work the way it’s supposed to, you need somebody on the throne like Elizabeth II – a woman who was so fiercely disciplined, so devoted, heart and soul, to a life of service, that she apparently went through her public paces for over seventy years without a single misstep – smiling, waving, shaking all the oily hands, making all the insipid small talk with nary a grunt or grimace. Again and again, moreover, he’s contracted the British constitutional monarchy favorably with the American constitutional system. He’s discussed the royal family as embodying continuity over the centuries and as thereby playing a crucial role in the preservation and perpetuation of England’s – and, later, Britain’s – national myth. ![]() In his commentaries on GB News since the queen’s death, Starkey has elaborated on this premise in a way that has sometimes bordered on the mystical. In Britain, the sovereign is, or is supposed to be, above politics and therefore, according to the theory, can serve as a national symbol uniting Tories with Labourites, Brexiters with Remainers, Pepsi fans with imbibers of Coke. In the U.S., our head of government is also our head of state – that is, an elected politician, who by definition is likely to be disliked, if not despised, by roughly half of the population. Watching The Crown on Netflix during the past few years has helped me to appreciate the logic – although that’s not quite the mot juste – of monarchy, at least along the British model. The whole set-up wasn’t just inequitable and outrageously unfair to taxpayers – why should British citizens support a so-called “royal family” who live not just in one 775-room palace but in several of them, apparently for variety’s sake? – but also to the royals themselves, who are doomed by an accident of birth to live exceedingly unnatural lives combining privilege on an unimaginable scale with a degree of inhuman deprivation, on a number of fronts, that would be considered cruel and unusual punishment if imposed on death-row murderers. But except for a brief, weird flirtation, back when I lived in Amsterdam, with the Dutch queen Beatrix, who has since abdicated, I always had a proper republican allergy to the idea of ordinary people – “subjects”! – bowing down to their purported betters. Yes, I was fascinated by the history of the English monarchs – especially the Tudors, Starkey’s specialty. And for me the day’s events, which I viewed mostly on GB News, were greatly enhanced by the contributions of various historians and royal know-alls, above all the brilliant David Starkey.īorn and raised in America, I never had much truck with royalty. It made the opening and closing ceremonies of any given OIympics look like the grand opening of a carwash. Never in our lifetimes has there been such a remarkable ceremonial display. Yes, I watched the queen’s obsequies on Monday from start to finish – first the funeral at Westminster Abbey, then the committal service at Windsor, and in between the magnificent procession through the fabled streets of London. ![]()
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