BrothersJudd Blog: THE TRADITION CONTINUES ONLY IN THE MOST SUCCESSFUL COUNTRIES ON EARTH:

June 21, 2011

THE TRADITION CONTINUES ONLY IN THE MOST SUCCESSFUL COUNTRIES ON EARTH:

Romancing the Throne (Patrick Allitt, 6/21/11, National Interest)

The case against hereditary monarchy has proved widely persuasive over the last couple of centuries. [...]

Through it all, however, an intense, burning love of the monarchy has persisted across all social ranks in Britain and throughout the British Commonwealth. There is no significant constituency in Britain in favor of abolishing it. Americans say they love equality and democracy, but they love the British monarchy too and join in wholeheartedly at moments like this. There’s even a palpable sense of what might be called dynasty-envy in the United States, by which certain distinguished political families (the Kennedys, the Clintons and the Bushes) take on a pseudoroyal glamour of their own. You only have to compare the muted fanfare around the weddings of Jenna Bush in 2008 or Chelsea Clinton last year, however, to realize that the Americans still have a very, very long way to go.

American excitement over the wedding also suggests an oblique recognition of the benefits of monarchy, once shorn of its obvious ancient abuses. Monarchy separates ceremonial leadership from political leadership, functions which, in the United States, are combined in the president. Nearly half of all American voters, in any given election year, voted against the person who now represents the nation, and probably don’t like him, whereas no British person voted against the queen. She can embody the nation over and above its squabbling politicians and can present a more dignified idea of the country to its own citizens and to outsiders.

Royalty has also, in the twentieth century, been a brake on, or antidote to, dictatorship. The restoration of the Spanish monarchy ended the sordid and repressive Franco era, while the constitutional monarchies of Holland and Scandinavia are among the most moderate and politically stable entities in the world. The fact that accident of birth decides who will be king or queen might offend our sense of meritocracy, but it also protects us against the kind of unscrupulous personalities who often claw their way to the top in democracies.

There are two caveats, however. First, the monarch has to have a well-developed sense of duty and to behave with political impartiality, a point that Elizabeth II appears to have understood perfectly. Second, the existence of the monarchy must not offend the citizens’ essential idea of their own country.