What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

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Malcolm
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by Malcolm »

Danny wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:10 pm
Washington was offered a “crown” of sorts, no matter how a kings crown was broken into many parts.
Not in actuality.

Thankfully he rejected as you say, but to say there was no memory and fear of another lord protector, A tyrant is unreasonable.
We rejected the monarchy and its trappings. We still do. The conflict between the Federalists and the Republicans had to do with how slavery was going to be handled more than anything else.
Washington and his successor Adams were viewed as Federalists and with suspicion.
They were viewed with such suspicion in the South. In New England, the Federalists were the dominate party until they collapsed in 1816. And a majority of the founders were Federalists. They were absolutely opposed to any aristocracy. Nevertheless, they were pro-British in general. They lost their popularity largely as result of the War of 1812.
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

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Danny wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 5:40 pm The struggle was to not to appear to be the thing you just over turned,
Might you be British? And therefore, no doubt, a master of the English language?
Danny wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 5:40 pm but had no idea what’s happens next??
So, "What is happens" . . . ?
Danny wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 5:40 pm Yankees...
Nope, Southerner here. And posting sober.
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by KathyLauren »

I don't know much about George Washington, but The Donald wanted to be king, and was not happy about his reign being terminated democratically.

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PeterC
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by PeterC »

Monarchism is so completely at odds with the values of American society and the practices of the founding fathers that it’s really completely inconceivable. A quick read of the Federalist Papers makes this obvious. Trump didn’t want to be a king, he wanted (wants?) to be a dictator - a pile of medals on his chest for wars he never fought, a golden toilet, fifty concubines, kids in lucrative positions of power, etc. As usual, Trevor Noah nailed it long ago:



(It is notable that one of the best social commentators on modern america is a South African.)

What america does have, which is at the core of its society, is an aristocracy. Large parts of society are organized in such a way as to entrench it.

I personally detest the idea of both. The only monarchy that makes some kind of sense is the Nordic model, where it’s cheap, limited to ceremony only, and apart from two people the rest of the royal family works for a living like normal people. The UK form continues to be repellent, partly because it still holds way too much power and wealth, and partly because it produces such mediocre people. But I doubt it will survive the imminent death of Elizabeth Windsor in its current form.
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by Natan »

Malcolm wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 9:38 pm
Danny wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 9:20 pm Callender sided with the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican Party, which believed in a limited federal government that would allow states to determine their own future. Republicans, as they were known until 1828 when they would become the Democratic Party, believed Congress had principal power in national affairs, since it was closer to the states and the people. A too-powerful executive, supported by a large army, would encourage monarchism. Republican distaste for the monarchy inspired their support for the freedom-loving revolutionaries in France over Great Britain’s king.
There was never any danger that Washington was going to become a king.
To the contrary, the power of a president as a king was of paramount concern to the founders.
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

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Johnny Dangerous wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 9:13 pm It's all about the cool/sexy costumes, mostly.
More about desire to be uniquely destined for greatness
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by Kim O'Hara »

I know I'm coming late to the this thread but ...
PeterC wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 1:38 am ...What america does have, which is at the core of its society, is an aristocracy. Large parts of society are organized in such a way as to entrench it.
I was going to say something like that in response to an earlier post.

America has dynasties and dynastic succession - the Kennedys and their connections being only the most obvious of many, with the Bush family as runners-up. Australia, also nominally democratic and egalitarian, has them too, although not quite to the same extent.

And I think the root cause is pretty simple: privilege accumulates.

The proverb says "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" but it applies to far more than money. If you're the child of a family with power, you know others like yourself and can leverage that in all sorts of ways. If you're a lawyer, ditto. If your parents are even reasonably affluent you get to go to a rich kids' school - and there's your social network ten years later. If your parents can 'help you out' with a loan to buy your first house, you're in the housing market way before anyone else your age. Etc, etc, etc.

Some of it is intergenerational, some not, but the net result after five or ten generations - even if everyone started out nearly equal, which has rarely (never?) been the case - is the haves and have-nots, the aristos and the peasantry, the kings-in-all-but-name and the commoners.

And the only way I know of overturning that scenario is a good old-fashioned blood-in-the gutters revolution ... which is not nice, we know. (I suspect technology has made it impossible, anyway, since a few dozen people with high-tech gear could kill thousands of people without it.) In theory, wealth and inheritance taxation could keep the disparities under control but of course the foxes are in charge of the chicken-coop.

Sigh.

/rant
I personally detest the idea of both. The only monarchy that makes some kind of sense is the Nordic model, where it’s cheap, limited to ceremony only, and apart from two people the rest of the royal family works for a living like normal people. The UK form continues to be repellent, partly because it still holds way too much power and wealth, and partly because it produces such mediocre people. But I doubt it will survive the imminent death of Elizabeth Windsor in its current form.
Agreed.

:namaste:
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Malcolm
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by Malcolm »

PeterC wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 1:38 am
What america does have, which is at the core of its society, is an aristocracy. Large parts of society are organized in such a way as to entrench it.
There is no genuine form aristocracy in America. There is sort of a Hollywood glitter version of it, but no one takes it seriously.

There is a burgeoning billionaire class that has benefitted through a tax code that benefits them and against discriminates people who make far less than they do. Time to bust up some monopolies...

As to Kim's observation—the Kennedys were not and are not a dynasty. Neither are the Bushes. Neither family is competent enough to maintain power in a Democracy—and that's the point right?

The Hanover/Windsors are a dynasty. They've held the throne of England since the mid-18th century, through through six regents. But we Yankee Doodles kicked them out during the reign of the first king in their dynasty, George the III, the architect of the modern British identity, flag and all. And we sent the Tories who did not want participate in the US packing to Canada or back home to England. Australia became the new Georgia.
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by PeterC »

Malcolm wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 1:51 pm The Hanover/Windsors are a dynasty. They've held the throne of England since the mid-18th century, through through six regents.
They’d like you to think so, but really the roots of most “royal” families in Europe are extremely shallow, particularly the windsors. Victoria’s son, Edward, should have been styled prince of saxe-coburg und gotha, but they felt ‘Windsor’ sounded more British than a barely-relevant Germanic name. Philip Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg - whose grandfather was a king, albeit of a rather unimportant Kingdom, but whose father really wasn’t anything except a nazi collaborator - got his wife, liz Windsor, to promote him to Prince and had his family changed to Mountbatten, which again sounds reassuringly British.

It’s all a mirage. They repurpose discarded titles ennobled with the merest fragment of DNA and claim that they’ve been around forever. The key skill is the pretence.
Malcolm
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by Malcolm »

PeterC wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 2:49 pm
They’d like you to think so, but really the roots of most “royal” families in Europe are extremely shallow, particularly the windsors.
Depth of ancestry is obviously not a measure of the ability to take or be thrust into power. And yes, they are all cousins who all held all the thrones. When you read nineteenth century marxist and anarchist tracts excoriating elites, well, this is the people they were talking about.
Victoria’s son, Edward, should have been styled prince of saxe-coburg und gotha, but they felt ‘Windsor’ sounded more British than a barely-relevant Germanic name.
Indeed.
Philip Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg - whose grandfather was a king, albeit of a rather unimportant Kingdom, but whose father really wasn’t anything except a nazi collaborator - got his wife, liz Windsor, to promote him to Prince and had his family changed to Mountbatten, which again sounds reassuringly British.
Absolutely.
It’s all a mirage. They repurpose discarded titles ennobled with the merest fragment of DNA and claim that they’ve been around forever. The key skill is the pretence.
All kings are fools, as Aryadeva points out.
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by Bristollad »

PeterC wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 2:49 pm Philip Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg - whose grandfather was a king, albeit of a rather unimportant Kingdom, but whose father really wasn’t anything except a nazi collaborator - got his wife, liz Windsor, to promote him to Prince and had his family changed to Mountbatten, which again sounds reassuringly British.
Factually incorrect. Prince Philip had the title of prince from the day he was born due to his patrilineal descent from King George I of Greece and King Christian IX of Denmark. Prior to marrying the then Princess Elizabeth, he abandoned his Greek and Danish royal titles, adopted the surname Mountbatten used by his grandfather on his mother's side (though not by her), and became a naturalised British subject. The day before his marriage, King George VI bestowed the style, His Royal Highness on him and on his wedding day he was made the Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich of Greenwich in the County of London. It was nine and a bit years later that Queen Elizabeth granted her husband the style and title of a Prince of the United Kingdom.

He was a European - German family with Danish ties born in Greece who ended up living, working and raising a family in the UK.

Mountbatten as a family name dates back to the First World War when members of the Battenburg family in Britain changed it to Mountbatten (Prince Louis Battenburg was First Sea Lord at the time i.e. head of the British Royal Navy).

As elitist as having a constitutional monarchy seems, even as a socialist I'm just grateful our head of state isn't another bloody politician.
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by Kim O'Hara »

Malcolm wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 1:51 pm
PeterC wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 1:38 am
What america does have, which is at the core of its society, is an aristocracy. Large parts of society are organized in such a way as to entrench it.
There is no genuine form aristocracy in America. There is sort of a Hollywood glitter version of it, but no one takes it seriously.

There is a burgeoning billionaire class that has benefitted through a tax code that benefits them and against discriminates people who make far less than they do. Time to bust up some monopolies...

As to Kim's observation—the Kennedys were not and are not a dynasty. Neither are the Bushes. Neither family is competent enough to maintain power in a Democracy—and that's the point right? ...
Sorry, Malcolm, but we're clearly using slightly different meanings of the term.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081856/

I rest my case.

:smile:
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by PeterC »

Bristollad wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 9:58 pm
PeterC wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 2:49 pm Philip Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg - whose grandfather was a king, albeit of a rather unimportant Kingdom, but whose father really wasn’t anything except a nazi collaborator - got his wife, liz Windsor, to promote him to Prince and had his family changed to Mountbatten, which again sounds reassuringly British.
Factually incorrect. Prince Philip had the title of prince from the day he was born due to his patrilineal descent from King George I of Greece and King Christian IX of Denmark. Prior to marrying the then Princess Elizabeth, he abandoned his Greek and Danish royal titles, adopted the surname Mountbatten used by his grandfather on his mother's side (though not by her), and became a naturalised British subject. The day before his marriage, King George VI bestowed the style, His Royal Highness on him and on his wedding day he was made the Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich of Greenwich in the County of London. It was nine and a bit years later that Queen Elizabeth granted her husband the style and title of a Prince of the United Kingdom.

He was a European - German family with Danish ties born in Greece who ended up living, working and raising a family in the UK.

Mountbatten as a family name dates back to the First World War when members of the Battenburg family in Britain changed it to Mountbatten (Prince Louis Battenburg was First Sea Lord at the time i.e. head of the British Royal Navy).

As elitist as having a constitutional monarchy seems, even as a socialist I'm just grateful our head of state isn't another bloody politician.
Whether he has the right to those titles is highly debatable. No reigning monarch ever gave them to him, they were just asserted. If titles have any validity it is because some governmental authority has confirmed them, otherwise we could all just call ourselves whatever we felt like.

And have you followed the guardian’s reporting on how the queen regularly obstructs laws she doesn’t like - typically because they might have implications for her personal wealth? That seems no better than the worst elected politician.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ser ... ns-consent

I suspect that once Elizabeth Windsor dies there will be a major reconsideration of what standing these people have in government and society. They enjoy a number of privileges that are frankly inappropriate for today’s world.
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by Malcolm »

Crazywisdom wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 12:11 pm
Malcolm wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 9:38 pm
Danny wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 9:20 pm Callender sided with the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican Party, which believed in a limited federal government that would allow states to determine their own future. Republicans, as they were known until 1828 when they would become the Democratic Party, believed Congress had principal power in national affairs, since it was closer to the states and the people. A too-powerful executive, supported by a large army, would encourage monarchism. Republican distaste for the monarchy inspired their support for the freedom-loving revolutionaries in France over Great Britain’s king.
There was never any danger that Washington was going to become a king.
To the contrary, the power of a president as a king was of paramount concern to the founders.
Well,not exactly, that’s why they chose the term “president” rather than “king.” Of course they are concerned about hereditary leadership, but they nipped that in the bud, that’s why no one was worried about Washington becoming a king.
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by Malcolm »

Kim O'Hara wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 11:19 pm
Malcolm wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 1:51 pm
PeterC wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 1:38 am
What america does have, which is at the core of its society, is an aristocracy. Large parts of society are organized in such a way as to entrench it.
There is no genuine form aristocracy in America. There is sort of a Hollywood glitter version of it, but no one takes it seriously.

There is a burgeoning billionaire class that has benefitted through a tax code that benefits them and against discriminates people who make far less than they do. Time to bust up some monopolies...

As to Kim's observation—the Kennedys were not and are not a dynasty. Neither are the Bushes. Neither family is competent enough to maintain power in a Democracy—and that's the point right? ...
Sorry, Malcolm, but we're clearly using slightly different meanings of the term.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081856/

I rest my case.

:smile:
Kim
Ummm… what did I say about Hollywood glitter?
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by Malcolm »

Bristollad wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 9:58 pm As elitist as having a constitutional monarchy seems, even as a socialist I'm just grateful our head of state isn't another bloody politician.
Monarchism dies hard, even when monarchs don’t do shit but spend money on pomp and circumstance. Anyhow, the UK has not had a legitimate monarch since the Stuarts were usurped. :guns:
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by Kim O'Hara »

Malcolm wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 1:03 am
Kim O'Hara wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 11:19 pm
Malcolm wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 1:51 pm

There is no genuine form aristocracy in America. There is sort of a Hollywood glitter version of it, but no one takes it seriously.

There is a burgeoning billionaire class that has benefitted through a tax code that benefits them and against discriminates people who make far less than they do. Time to bust up some monopolies...

As to Kim's observation—the Kennedys were not and are not a dynasty. Neither are the Bushes. Neither family is competent enough to maintain power in a Democracy—and that's the point right? ...
Sorry, Malcolm, but we're clearly using slightly different meanings of the term.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081856/

I rest my case.

:smile:
Kim
Ummm… what did I say about Hollywood glitter?
Ahhh... I did say 'slightly' different.
:smile:

Getting right back to the OP - I'm going to suggest that the reason all the monarchism is fed to kids is that it's a dressed-up version of how the world really works.

:namaste:
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PeterC
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by PeterC »

Malcolm wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 1:06 am
Bristollad wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 9:58 pm As elitist as having a constitutional monarchy seems, even as a socialist I'm just grateful our head of state isn't another bloody politician.
Monarchism dies hard, even when monarchs don’t do shit but spend money on pomp and circumstance. Anyhow, the UK has not had a legitimate monarch since the Stuarts were usurped. :guns:
Not even. The country has been illegitimately occupied ever since the Normans killed Harold Godwinson in October 1066.
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by Malcolm »

PeterC wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 2:12 am
Malcolm wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 1:06 am
Bristollad wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 9:58 pm As elitist as having a constitutional monarchy seems, even as a socialist I'm just grateful our head of state isn't another bloody politician.
Monarchism dies hard, even when monarchs don’t do shit but spend money on pomp and circumstance. Anyhow, the UK has not had a legitimate monarch since the Stuarts were usurped. :guns:
Not even. The country has been illegitimately occupied ever since the Normans killed Harold Godwinson in October 1066.
Around the same time Chetsun Senge Wangchuk received the 17 tantras.
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Re: What's with all the monarchism being fed to kids?

Post by PeterC »

Malcolm wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 2:23 am
PeterC wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 2:12 am
Malcolm wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 1:06 am

Monarchism dies hard, even when monarchs don’t do shit but spend money on pomp and circumstance. Anyhow, the UK has not had a legitimate monarch since the Stuarts were usurped. :guns:
Not even. The country has been illegitimately occupied ever since the Normans killed Harold Godwinson in October 1066.
Around the same time Chetsun Senge Wangchuk received the 17 tantras.
Ah - so at least one important historical event happened in that year?
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