From January 13, 2014
Were columns written for national consumption always chock-full of nutty ideas?
Writing for “Politico” on Jan. 2 ( http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/america-needs-a-king-101691_Page2.html#.UtQcqLSowS4 ), Michael Auslin said, “To save what is left of our common fellow feeling as Americans, we need to create a position above the presidency… [L]et’s call this new national symbol our First Citizen.”
He doesn’t really mean he wants a monarchy, despite the wording of the headline. What he wants is someone to serve as “a non-partisan, non-political national symbol.” We need this because, at any given time, at least half the people hate the president like the plague, Congress has a 6% approval rating, and the Supreme Court isn’t winning any popularity contests, either. This “national symbol” would be there for everyone to love, like Mickey Mouse, only real.
He hasn’t thought this out. How would we choose our First Citizen? And since liberals hate anybody who is not a liberal, and anybody who is a liberal is bound to be hated by conservatives, don’t we wind up exactly where we started from? Only now we’d have two hated and despised big chiefs, instead of one. We would also now have two costly, vitriol-laden national elections, instead of one.
Well, what can you expect from a columnist who gives you a list of corrupt, blatant liars in the White House, and somehow forgets Bill Clinton?
The fact that Americans, by and large, hate, disrespect, mistrust, and make fun of corrupt and dysfunctional national institutions (like Congress, the press, the court system, etc.) and the corrupt, dysfunctional bastards who run the show, demonstrates that the nation has not quite lost its taste for better things. Most of our presidents since Eisenhower deserved to be hated! And so on.
I shudder to imagine an America that’s satisfied with what we’ve got today.
In the book 1984 it was different. Some National guy-forget his name-was the one to hate. He regularly came on the screen, and the object was to vent one’s hate feelings by throwing objects at the screen, or whatever-maybe by committing Hari Kari. That would reduce the population, anyway-one of the goals of the deceivers.
Well, Dave we’re already richly endowed with national figures that are easy to hate. If I had TV, I’d throw stuff at any number of them.
Monarchy, for the most part, is a matter of tradition, if not Divine appointment, in the mind of most monarchs. King James, of England, was known to refer to “the divine right of kings”. This may derive from a school of thought that God appointed spirit beings over the various national groups at the time of Babel, see Deuteronomy 32. The idea is that these spirit kings were the actual power behind the throne.
Monarchy persists in the UK, but in a fairly defanged form. The King of England has a handful of actual duties, but the role is mostly ceremonial and serving as a figure head. I’m not advocating for it, or against it, but I see how it could work for at least some people. BTW, there are plenty of people who would prefer that the British Monarchy be abolished.
Perhaps a more intriguing example may be playing out before our eyes, although the outcome is far from certain at the time of this writing. The Shah of Iran, shah meaning king, was deposed in 1979 and at this time there is a popular uprising against the government which replaced the Shah, and the Shah’s son, who was installed as crown prince, has offered to lead the nation in a time of transition, promising that the Iranian people will be able to choose their long term form of government. Supporters of this proposal claim that having a Monarch holds the rest of the government, which would be elected officials, to account. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
For the US, it’s not likely to happen. There’s no tradition of monarchy in the US, although allegedly some wanted to install George Washington as king at the time of the revolution. Washington himself, had no such ambitions. So, who would be king? Obviously, establishing anything approaching universal support for any one monarch would be a tricky proposition, at best. Ain’t gonna happen.
Not here.
I couldn’t imagine it ever working.