Debates
08 Sep 22
21 Sep 22
@shallow-blue saidYou are super paranoid. You know that, right?
You really don't read any of the replies to your posts, do you, you Russian asset? You just post stupid excrement for the sake of disagreeing with anyone and everyone.
For the last time, and you clearly won't even bother to read this so this really will be the last time: we don't need them despite them being powerless figureheads, we want them because th ...[text shortened]... illaging, power-grabbing, fraudulent mass-murderers as your two masters and owners, Trump and Putin.
22 Sep 22
@kmax87 saidI will say one thing in favor of Parliment vs. Congress: the British can get an idiot out of office much more efficiently than the Americans can.
Read up on Constitutional Monarchy. Read up on Privy Council. Then take a deep breath and work out why England and the UK and all the members of the British Commonwealth, will never descend into the chaos and insanity that America is currently running headlong into.
Instead of asking why, you should say, because we have a Constitutional Monarchy, there are certain common s ...[text shortened]... al essence eroded by a Supreme Court stacked by political appointees with ideological axes to grind.
23 Sep 22
@metal-brain saidOMG we’ve got a whole corporate class who are leaching of us just like you and they give nothing back at all. I’ll say it again
You want them to keep leaching off of you when they are not needed.
Nice tradition. You are even paying for her funeral. Can't they afford it?
A) they preclude they need for a more divisive alternative,
B) they are ( usually ) excellent ambassadors, they are the big guns in our soft power arsenal,
C) Tourism and the upkeep of historically important buildings and the maintenance of environmentally important areas like Dartmoor
B and C would still need to come out of the public purse if there were no royal family and I bet they are infinitely better value for money than the office of potus with its big houses, estates and private airliners, jets and helicopters, you can call it airforce one if you like but it’s still a private airliner.
23 Sep 22
@kevcvs57 saidNone of that makes any sense. You don't need them and they are leaching off of you just so they can smile to the camera and pretend they care about you.
OMG we’ve got a whole corporate class who are leaching of us just like you and they give nothing back at all. I’ll say it again
A) they preclude they need for a more divisive alternative,
B) they are ( usually ) excellent ambassadors, they are the big guns in our soft power arsenal,
C) Tourism and the upkeep of historically important buildings and the maintenance of en ...[text shortened]... s, jets and helicopters, you can call it airforce one if you like but it’s still a private airliner.
Divisive alternative to what? You don't need them. They don't do anything important unless they have more power than you think.
You already have ambassadors. You don't need them for that either.
They can attract tourists without leaching you of your money even though they are rich. It seems to me you just enjoy getting screwed by figureheads. You don't need them.
@shallow-blue saidHere's an eyecatching analysis from Ed West (a conservative British writer):
And look at the countries which are regularly voted happiest, best developed, most equal, most free - and then realise that that list always includes Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands. All of them constitutional monarchies. Where would you rather live: Belgium, Luxemburg, Uzbekistan or Liberia?
https://edwest.substack.com/p/the-rational-case-for-monarchy
Imagine being told that you could only live in one country for the rest of your life, prevented from emigration or even travel. You can’t choose the place itself, but all you can decide is whether it’s a monarchy or republic. What do you go for?
Obviously, there is no real choice here. There are worse places to spend the rest of your life than the United States or France, or half a dozen other European countries with similar constitutions. The upside risk on republicanism is pretty small, since among developed liberal democracies both forms of government can be found.
But the downside risk is gigantic. If you were to opt for a monarchy, you’d be unlucky to land in Saudi Arabia, for its repression, or Swaziland, for its poverty and ill heath. But there are far worse places to live than Saudi, for the depths of human depravity afforded by the absence of a monarch is essentially endless; just in that neighbourhood you could instead get Syria or Iran or Iraq, Libya or Yemen, and across the world everything from surveillance capitalism to anarcho-clannism to the eccentric last holdouts of Marx’s followers.
If you were to go back over the past couple of centuries, the vast majority of the most appalling regimes would be republics. Mussolini’s Italy might merit a place, and perhaps Tsarist Russia, which killed a fair few political opponents and jailed many more — but compared to their Soviet successors those were rookie numbers.
Such are the obvious advantages of monarchy that there was a point in 2015 when every single Arab republic had Foreign Office advice warning about travel, while every Arab monarchy was considered safe in its entirety.
@shallow-blue saidMore from the same article by Ed West:
And look at the countries which are regularly voted happiest, best developed, most equal, most free - and then realise that that list always includes Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands. All of them constitutional monarchies. Where would you rather live: Belgium, Luxemburg, Uzbekistan or Liberia?
There are very few instances in history where the removal of a monarchy has led to better national outcomes. To take the most famous example, everyone knows the line by the Chinese official that it was ‘too soon to tell’ whether the French Revolution was a good thing. In reality the downfall of the Bourbons led to a million deaths in political violence and wars; thousands died in the terror and tens of thousands in the Vendée genocide. France was never really a leading power again, and it has left the country’s politics permanently divided, even to this day; this was in part because its conservative movement emerged out of the bloodshed far more uncompromising than its British equivalent. They got de Maistre; we got Burke.
The fall of the Habsburgs was an unrelenting tragedy and disaster, leading to dangerous instability and eventual mass murder; the Hohenzollerns were unlovely but German history shows that there is always worse around the corner. Romanov Russia was the prison of peoples — yet the Bolsheviks were far more violent and oppressive, and because of Russia’s size and structure there was little chance that a moderate, democratic form of government would survive when the monarchy fell. Today, in the Arab world, monarchy is far more effective because there are otherwise not enough neutral institutions in societies with very powerful clans, and therefore low levels of wider trust. In the absence of a strong civil society, religious extremists sweep all before them — unless a monarch can stop them.
It is true that at a certain level of political development monarchy becomes less important to the functioning of states; the majority of the most developed (and egalitarian) countries are constitutional monarchies, but no more so than neighbours: Britain is not better off than the Irish Republic, nor is the Netherlands compared to Germany, or Sweden with Finland. It is just that republics tend to have had more troubled histories, either conquered by neighbours or subject to revolution or totalitarianism.
Yet even among rich democracies there is benefit to having a king or queen. A few years ago financial journalist Mike Bird collated many of the academic papers looking at the empirical evidence for the effect of monarchy. Among the findings was that social capital is higher in monarchies, that the existence of monarchs boost economic growth where a country has weak executive restraints, and that governments ruled by kings or queens tend to otherwise behave with more restraint, and act with greater accountability towards voters.
23 Sep 22
@teinosuke saidThat’s a very tenuous hypothetical we are talking about the constitutional monarchy of the type practiced in the UK. Isn’t Bolsanaros Brazil a republic?
Here's an eyecatching analysis from Ed West (a conservative British writer):
https://edwest.substack.com/p/the-rational-case-for-monarchy
Imagine being told that you could only live in one country for the rest of your life, prevented from emigration or even travel. You can’t choose the place itself, but all you can decide is whether it’s a monarchy or republic. Wha ...[text shortened]... fice advice warning about travel, while every Arab monarchy was considered safe in its entirety.
How many dystopian societies have witnessed headed by ‘El Presidenti’.
I’m not saying all republics are worse than all monarchies but I prefer a ceremonial constitutional monarchy to a presidential republic.
Parliaments should not be curtailed by anyone.
23 Sep 22
@kevcvs57 saidYou seem to have completely misread what Ed West is saying - he more or less agrees with you.
That’s a very tenuous hypothetical we are talking about the constitutional monarchy of the type practiced in the UK. Isn’t Bolsanaros Brazil a republic?
How many dystopian societies have witnessed headed by ‘El Presidenti’.
I’m not saying all republics are worse than all monarchies but I prefer a ceremonial constitutional monarchy to a presidential republic.
Parliaments should not be curtailed by anyone.
He's saying that the best monarchies and the best republics are about equal (i.e., it's just as good to live in Germany as in Holland, in Sweden as in Finland).
But he's saying the worst monarchies are very much better places to live than the worst republics. Who wouldn't rather be in Morocco than Algeria? - who wouldn't rather be in Jordan than in Syria? Even Saudi Arabia, horrid tyranny though it is, is much more prosperous than Yemen and arguably less repressive than Iran.
And I think he'd absolutely agree with you about Brazil. The country was stable and prosperous under its nineteenth century monarch, Pedro II.
23 Sep 22
@kevcvs57 saidEd West's argument is that on average a democratic constitutional monarchy is better than a democratic constitutional republic which is better than an autocratic monarchy which is better than an autocratic republic.
@kevcvs57
Having said that any democratic republic is better than any absolutist monarchy by a country mile.
North Korea springs to mind
He admits that there are many successful modern republics, but reminds us that many countries have become much worse places after losing their monarchies. Idris II of Libya was less tyrannical that Colonel Gaddafi; the Romanovs were less awful than the Communists; the Hohenzollens were less monstrous than Hitler.
@Teinosuke
“You seem to have completely misread what Ed West is saying - he more or less agrees with you. ”
Lol it wouldn’t be the first time and it’s not just Ed West either.
I don’t think there is much difference between and absolutist monarch and a dynastic dictatorship like NK in terms of the democratic deficit, but I guess some kings really handsome and wise and their people love them.
If ED is saying that their is no need for a politically powerful president or monarch in a democracy then we agree, for the life of I don’t understand why people elect a democratic chamber and the hand power to president, democratic or otherwise.
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23 Sep 22
@teinosuke saidTellingly, in photographs of Persian women living under the Shah, they look a lot happier than Iranian women under the Republic - if you can even tell from their veiled faces!
But he's saying the worst monarchies are very much better places to live than the worst republics. Who wouldn't rather be in Morocco than Algeria? - who wouldn't rather be in Jordan than in Syria? Even Saudi Arabia, horrid tyranny though it is, is much more prosperous than Yemen and arguably less repressive than Iran.
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23 Sep 22
@teinosuke saidIn fact, the Romanovs and Hohenzollerns were trying, slowly and carefully, to improve their subjects' lots. In the case of the Romanovs, even, against their subjects' Slav instincts. And the king of Morocco appears, also slowly, to be succeeding.
Ed West's argument is that on average a democratic constitutional monarchy is better than a democratic constitutional republic which is better than an autocratic monarchy which is better than an autocratic republic.
He admits that there are many successful modern republics, but reminds us that many countries have become much worse places after losing their monarchies. Id ...[text shortened]... the Romanovs were less awful than the Communists; the Hohenzollens were less monstrous than Hitler.