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Monarchies in 2020....why?
- Thread starter CherryWoodFuton
- Start date
Nah, what I was getting at is that the UK has a monarchy with a likeable transcendent figurehead at the top. That doesn't stop partisan politics from making absolutely terrible decisions and I don't see those citizens having much pride over these massive changes because the Queen is on the tele.
There are many reasons that American democracy is lunatic; neglecting to have unelected, money-burning, divinely-appointed, inbred shitbirds squatting atop the thing is not among them.
My point isn't to feel pride over the choices made by the politicians. Why would you think I was saying that? I'm genuinely confused here.
I've said this before, but preventing a slide into authoritarianism is less a defence of a monarchy (especially when an appointed head of state can serve in a similar manner) and more an argument against an elected head of state.
Simply put, an elected head of state is by definition a partisan figure - and given the state of modern politics, it is exceedingly likely that whoever controls the legislature will also have one of their own as head of state. Hence, this weakens the separation of powers required to keep a democracy stable.
As an example, if say, there's a BLM protest and the Conservative Party wants to send tanks in the street, then the likely President Boris will sign off without a second thought regardless of how illegal such an action may be as he's part of said party - whereas the chances that this occurs with any non-partisan head of state is (whilst not zero) dramatically lower.
well it may be to hint at his PR team that his popularity is not where it should be. So it may be best for him to step aside for another ruler.
Disappointed this is the 5th reply lol
They are also able to take on a good chunk of the PR, foreign relations visits and other time wastes from politicians.
Whether those politicians actually use their time to do anything is another matter entirely lmao
Because you stated:
This doesn't translate to reality as even countries with monarchy have not avoided problems such a national populism nor instilled some sense of unity over the appreciation of a national genetic oddity. Scotland is set to breakaway from the UK specifically because of the shit policies of hits political leaders, no one is talking about remaining in the Union because the Queen is so nice.
If the Queen served the purpose of instilling a sense of national pride then Bexit wouldn't have occurred.
They project themselves in them. They want to be them. They want to rule. To have people serving them. They're egoistical scum. Just like the royals.
For sure, that sounds reasonable but the queen doesn't serve that function, so I'm not sure why it keeps getting brought up here. The queen is never going to say no to anything brought to her because she invalidates her tenuous position if she does.
We can have an non- elected head of state who isn't part of an outdated system of class rule.
How you choose that person, I'm not sure but I for certain feel like there is a better system.
In unprecedented times, it can stop that slide though. The Dutch queen Wilhelmina reportedly was the single barrier against a compromise with the German's in the second world war. All of the prime ministers during that period wanted to make a deal at one point.
The threat of a constitutional crisis was practically gone, and she had a lot of personal political capital that she could even excercise outside had she been removed as queen.
Being outside of the zeitgeist can be invaluable during a period of regression. A chosen president is still a product of his time and of the majority in parlement at that time. He also wouldn't have time to grow into a symbolic role per se.
In theory I'm a republican, but in practice I can see the value of having a mother or father figure during wars and natural disasters.
I don't totally disagree that they can be useful buffer but I also don't believe that there isn't a better system. The European Union is essentially a large scale project to reduce conflict.
I really think the continued presence of the UK royal family is one of inertia. If Britain is proving anything the last few years, it is is that is in love with a totally fictional recent past when Britain was great, no one questioned anything and everything stayed the same.
I suppose my issue is that relying on a Monarch to stop us sliding into authoritarianism is incredibly regressive. There have to be better systems in place that don't include providing unimaginable riches to one extended family. Especially when our the disparity between rich and poor is growing ever wider.
The UK royals aren't impartial. They're just good at playing impartial on TV. They can and have intervened on policy before, particularly with regard to their finances. They meet regularly with the PM to discuss the operations of the government, a luxury afforded to no regular UK citizen. It seems naïve to think those meetings have never had an impact on UK government policy.
With trust in democracy eroding around much of the world, who's to say a populace would side with their government over their monarch if a monarch overstepped? What if the monarch takes the morally correct stance and the government takes the immoral stance? (Not too hard to envision with someone like Johnson leading the UK.) Would the populace be justified in siding with the monarch at the expense of democracy? It's kind of a frightening scenario when you game it out a bit.
The UK monarch is de facto powerless but de jure powerful. Relying on precedent is dangerous. Charles is considerably more opinionated than his mother, and people in the UK should have some concern that he could push boundaries when he assumes the crown from her.
Sure, no one is actually impartial, that's true. From a Canadian perspective, if there was a constitutional crisis in Canada, say a military coup, then the British monarchy while not impartial is at least detached from the situation and could potentially be used to enforce that any legal shenanigans that would-be coup-ers used to legitimize their actions, were never actually signed in to law.
Yeah, I can't even begin to understand why the monarchy still exists in Canada, Australia, and NZ.
I recall seeing a statistic that Canadians actually pay more per capita than the British to support the monarchy.
I mean there are still tribal chiefs in 2020. History is not an upward trajectory culminating in democratic utopia.
It's like legacy code in software. Then you have new systems that rely on the old code and updating the old code means updating the new code and so on and on. Monarchism is just a holdover we haven't bothered changing because updating the code base feels like more trouble than it's worth.
// TODO: Remove the Monarchy
// TODO: Remove the Monarchy
In individual cases, these people might be alright, but at the end of the day, they are part of multinational criminal clan families who terrorized Europe for millenia.
I find it pretty weird the way we normalized 1000 years of crime, exploitation, murder, and oppression.
Zero remorse, zero self-awareness.
And media romanticizes the monarchy so you have people growing up with an attachment to "the royals", who then go on to vote to sustain "the royals". Ironically, revolutionary democracy overthrew the monarchy, but modern day democracy is now keeping it on life support.
The deference is taxpayers paying for the royal family to live a ridiculous lifestyle for no other reason then they were born to a certain family. The fact that the United States are fools about their own president really is neither here nor there.
plays on words aside....
Had the French Revolution happened before the American Revolution (which is sort of ... impossible given the connection between the two, but let's pretend), then the US likely would have the metric system today. Americans in the colonies broke off from the European yolk about 20-30 years too early. The metric system is so obviously a more logical system of weights and measures, but its proliferation around the world has as much to do with 19th century European colonialism as it does the pure logic of the system.
Is that really true, though? You trade your right to express your political opinion (not the right to practice it; and not all monarchs even bind themselves to this limitation to begin with), but you also gain a greater access to housing, healthcare, nutrition, education, security and safety. Among other services I don't really care to name, because you get the point. Even if all people are entitled to these same rights, not all people have equal access to them. A monarch gains far greater access to rights than they lose. So I would say that statement is misleading, at best.
There's a difference between luxury and freedom. Yes, monarchs get access to all kinds of anemities, but at the same time it's not just their ability to express political opinions they agree to give up, it's also the right to... kind of live their life without every single misstep resulting in a thousand tabloid stories. You essentially live with the knowledge that you're under a gigantic microscope for the biggest part of your life and it's not just you they'll be judging but the institution of monarchy as a whole. That constriction's something our current king's probably lived with ever since his teens. It's quite a burden and it's not for everyone. Michelle Obama hated it and Barrack Obama joked that if the constitution didn't prevent him from seeking additional terms, it'd be the threat of her divorcing him.
Who quickly replaced himself with a gorram military dictatorship. So much of the UK's parliamentary system arose from desperate situations that I think the beast is quite rightly sceptical about changing stuff for the sake of it. I'm not a monarchist, but cannot think of a worse replacement than a partisan head of state.
Not quite fair to Cromwell imo. There was a four year period between the execution of Charles I and Cromwell being installed as Lord Protector. Even after the Rump Parliament was dissolved the Barebones Parliament was called by Cromwell (on what constitutional authority? Just shrug and go with it) to try to figure out a new system of government. It was only after Barebones failed that John Lambert pulled out the Instrument of Government and installed Cromwell as Lord Protector. Of course then things went downhill, but I do think Cromwell wanted to avoid a military dictatorship in the first place.
Wat? Did you forget the /s?
*pleure en Québécois*
Fuck la reine, sti.
I used the phrase "access to (rights)", because that is the literal definition applied in law. Depending on your country of residence, human rights are also divided into different tiers or sections. You don't necessarily have the right to a house, but you have the right to buy a house or to be protected from eviction. The average Joe is not, however, protected from eviction in all cases. Even though the average Joe has the right to (access) health, the average Joe does not necessarily have healthcare to begin with, and, if he does, his healthcare is not necessarily comparable to the healthcare enjoyed by monarchs.
These are basic human rights, not luxuries. Freedom is also a right according to the UN. But, once again, there is unequal access to this same right (by the way, equality is also a human right, but one that is clearly being enforced... unequally). So, to begin with, let's name a few rights that fall under your right to freedom:
- Right not to be deprived of freedom
- Freedom of expression
- Freedom from violence (freedom from crime)
- Freedom of trade
- Freedom of movement
- Freedom from human exploitation
- Freedom of assembly
- Right to privacy
- Freedom of religion
- Freedom of association
By comparison, how many freedoms (and rights in general) is the average Joe deprived of? Not to be deprived of freedom arbitrarily (unjust police action)? Violence (not all people have the wealth necessary to access equal security)? Trade (hard to have the right to access any profession of your choosing when you can't afford it to begin with)? Human exploitation (monarchs have greater access to protection).
Monarchs trade in a few rights (limitations to rights, not the rights outright) for superior access to other rights. At the same time, the average Joe is deprived, involuntary, of his rights, either directly (in comparison to monarchs who enjoy greater protection against these direct deprivations of rights) or indirectly (by way of access). On the whole, monarchs gain far more than they lose. On the whole, the average Joe struggles to attain the rights they are entitled to far more than your average monarch might.
I don't deny that being a monarch comes with a burden. But let's not fool ourselves and believe that this burden is greater than that of starvation. Or assault. Or homelessness. Or uncleanliness. Or preventable sicknesses.
Our society has a problem of glorifying the pauper's condition. "You might be poor but you still have your health/family". Rather than try to pin down "freedom", I think it is simpler to illustrate that more "freedom" doesn't always make you happier, or is "better".
Would you rather be poor and free or rich and burdened with the affairs of state? I think most people, at all times in history, would choose to be a monarch, we fought a lot of wars over this. COVID has also shown that in tough environmental conditions, stability and restriction is typically preferable to instability and no restrictions.
I dislike the monarchy for mostly cultural reasons. They infect with and solidify among notions of class hierarchy in the populace.
Would you rather be poor and free or rich and burdened with the affairs of state? I think most people, at all times in history, would choose to be a monarch, we fought a lot of wars over this. COVID has also shown that in tough environmental conditions, stability and restriction is typically preferable to instability and no restrictions.
I dislike the monarchy for mostly cultural reasons. They infect with and solidify among notions of class hierarchy in the populace.
Considering the state of the UK, I don't think that the difference is worth all that much, tbh.
it might have changed now, but ex PMs didn't used to have any security really. I used to fairly regularly bump into John Major in the supermarket when I worked in the area he lived in. He never seemed to have any security with him.
There's actually an interesting story about that. There was a government agency created to transition to the metric system, but it had no real power and as a result of years of no progress was shut down by the Regan administration. Their only notable success was a single highway sign on the border of Mexico and Arizona that's in metric. We do technically use metric in a lot of official capacity, but it's not really common for the average person who doesn't work for the government, military, or a scientific field.
I'm still waiting on someone to explain their logic behind these statements. Cuz so far constitutional monarchies sound no better than a modern democracy.
The UK Royals ain't got nothing on Hans Adam of Liechtenstein - he actually has the power to appoint judges, dismiss ministers or government, veto laws, or call referendums. And he's the richest monarch in all of Europe.
But he also lives in a country where they charge 20 Euros for a basic salmon roll, so I guess it's got its downsides. lol
Kinda glad Prince Charles didn't get those sorts of powers, especially after watching the Crown.
But he also lives in a country where they charge 20 Euros for a basic salmon roll, so I guess it's got its downsides. lol
Kinda glad Prince Charles didn't get those sorts of powers, especially after watching the Crown.
I just gave a reason and let's see a source on your "fact"