The Monarchist has moved!

Gentlemen followers of the Monarchist blog, please note that The Monarchist has moved. You are following an old version, the new version is here.

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flags of the world

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That Great Tory Tradition

Daniel Hannan, a British Member of the European Parliament, decimates Prime Minister Brown here for presiding over Britain's rapid economic decline. It is enjoyable not just because of the blistering attacks and gifted delivery, but because it reminds me of why Britain was once great.

For on full display here is that wonderful Tory tradition of English Parliamentary debate, that natural ability to cut and thrust through your political opponent until he is reduced to an inadequate heap - the body language says it all, as Gordon Brown diminishes into a rather uncomfortably brave smile. Tories of yore did not just participate in debates, they reveled in them - it was their one and only vocation. Although a self-proclaimed Whig, Mr. Hannan here is putting on a show worthy of an old fashioned Tory. My my, what wonderful, wonderful stuff.

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"The Commonwealth@60"

IT NEVER WOULD HAVE OCCURRED TO ME that the Commonwealth was born in 1949. In fact, it would have never occurred to me that the Commonwealth was even born at all, merely a long evolution that had its origins with the British Empire, which eventually transpired into a free association of independent Commonwealth states. But if I had to choose a date, it most certainly would not have been the London Declaration of April 26, 1949.

The term 'Commonwealth of Nations' was invented by Lord Rosebery on a trip to Australia in 1884. The first meeting of colonial heads of government was held back as far as 1887 and there were many that followed, including the all-important imperial conference of 1926 that resulted in the infamous Balfour Declaration, whose pronouncements were formalised by the Statute of Westminster in 1931.

Indeed, the Statute of Westminster was until very recently considered the real beginning of the modern Commonwealth, because for the first time each country was legally recognised as equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. It was a truly transformative development.

On the pages of the Commonwealth Secretariat you will even find that Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand "joined" in 1931. (Interestingly they are mute on when the United Kingdom "joined".) Certainly, the significance of 1931 cannot be overstated. The Imperial Commonwealth at that point stood for independence, equality, unity, allegiance, patriotism and free association of its members.

1949 is noteworthy only as a weakening of those things. The dropping of the British pedigree, the end of our united allegiance to the King, the loss of our common patrimony, all in order to make way for the newfound Republic of India, who would not countenance associate membership. The London Declaration was the moment the British Crown Commonwealth became de-Britished, unCrowned and Common-poorer, in that the wealth we had in common became much less so.

1949 was the point in time when our monarchy was demoted to the status of symbol in order to make way for republicanism. We were no longer required to recognize the King as our sovereign, only as the symbolic "Head of the Commonwealth". As a result, Commonwealth republics now outnumber Commonwealth realms, but even more apparent than republicanism, was the ever increasing political need to turn the page and erase from historical memory our so-called "colonial legacy". Her Majesty herself on coronation day in 1952 gave an indication of this desire:

"The Commonwealth bears no resemblance to the empires of the past. It is an entirely new conception built on the highest qualities of the spirit of man: friendship, loyalty, and the desire for freedom and peace."

The spirit of that international fellowship technically still lives on, but nobody gets excited about the Commonwealth anymore. The popular fraternity - our pan-Britannic patriotism - has evaporated forever. Admittedly, our cultural loyalty may have gradually withered anyways, and certainly culture and identity are increasingly complex notions in the 21st century. But if defending the British Monarchy or an "English Queen" on the basis of national identity now seems like an increasingly remote possibility as we head further into the cosmopolitan mire, that path was firmly set in motion back in 1949.

Sixty years of celebration. Yippee and hooray.

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On Stephen Harper and his Shameful Behavior

A rather long time ago, our Prime Minister here in Canada, the 'Right Honourable' Stephen Harper made a comment about Canada's war in Afghanistan. He said, if my memory holds, that Afghanistan had had an insurgency more or less forever, and that final victory for our forces there was impossible.

Let's turn back the clock to the mid 20th century. 1940, to be precise. France had fallen before the dark tides of Nazi aggression, Russia had a pact of non-aggression with Germany, Japan had yet to awake the sleeping giant at Pearl Harbour. Berlin, Rome and Tokyo now turned their gaze towards Britain and her Commonwealth, the last bastion of liberty and reason in Europe. The Battle of Britain, the turning point of the Second World War, was about to begin. It was, by far, the darkest days of the War. Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa, India and New Zealand together faced odds far greater than what we face today from the challenge of Islamic Extremism. But then entered Winston Churchill, the last great British lion. Or perhaps bulldog would be the more accurate descriptor, considering his reputation and appearance. An heir, in direct lineage, to Sir John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, and the first great hero of the United Kingdom. Churchill, despite all the logic in suing for peace, would not back down, would not talk to the fascists, would not compromise with murderers and madmen. Despite all the tides of evil that rose up to oppress the British Isles and it's Empire, the forces of civilization and reason won through and secured the supremacy of the Rule of Law and Parliaments in Europe. Fascism was overthrown by the alliance of the Russians and the English-speaking peoples of Britain, the Commonwealth and America. Peace was restored. Our freedom was earned. Our civilization was preserved.

And now, the feckless Stephen Harper, a man facing odds far less daunting than Churchill (though our opponents are no less brutal or barbaric), speaks already of defeat. In this post-Vietnam era, the people have forgotten that it takes time, effort and much heartbreak to win a war against a determined enemy. The people of the United States, ever since Vietnam, have had this little irking fear in the back of their minds. A fear that any war that lasts longer than the average flight time of a Tomahawk cruise missile will degenerate into a slogging, shellshocking, Vietnam-esque mess. And this fear has spread across the English-speaking world. All the way into the halls of power, it seems. Our armed forces, our country, we cannot afford to have a PM speak of defeat. At least not in public! Not only does this undermine Mr. Harper's political position, it undermines the morale of our troops currently in Afghanistan. And more importantly, it undermines our war effort as a whole. I've no doubt that the Taliban could, given a little effort, access CBC news broadcasts. And if they hear that leader of the Canadians, one of their most hated group of enemies I'm sure, is talking about how the Canadians can't win... Well what can they do but be elated? Strike with greater boldness, greater confidence, greater audacity.

In my life, i've learned that if you are always saying to yourself "I can't do well at this", whatever 'this' may be, you make a self-fulfilling prophecy for yourself. A student who goes into a test expecting to do badly will usually do badly. If you say you won't win this race, then you probably won't win. What then will happen when the Prime Minister says his country will lose their war? It follows that victory becomes impossible for the country.

And considering the opponent we face, we can't let that happen.


God save our Queen and Heaven bless the Maple Leaf Forever
Gladstone,

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A Lion not a Mouse

Four more soldiers fighting with the Royal Canadian Regiment and the Royal Canadian Dragoons were killed in Afghanistan on Friday, and eight others were seriously injured. Canada has now lost 116 soldiers and one diplomat in that war-torn country, including several hundred non-fatal combat casualties.

My bud from military college, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Misener, acting commander of 2 Mechanized Brigade Group, CFB Petawawa, addresses the media on March 21, 2009, on the subject of the deaths of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

This sacrifice is proportionately greater than either the Americans or the British, and in real numbers significantly more so than all of Europe combined. But like anything Canada ever does, it gets greeted by the media and the world with a collective international yawn. Or worse, the subject of trash entertainment by Republican chickenhawkes on Fox News, who shamelessly chide Canada's military men as frigid wimps, whilst demonstrating their own macho credentials without ever serving a day in their life. To hell with neocon sissies.

I know a lot of men who are serving in theatre because I trained with them over 20 years ago. They are now in positions of command, like LCol. Misener above who has been rotating in and out of Afghanistan since 2002. Does he look like a wimp to you? He's as professional as they come, not a warmongering television idiot, but a field commander on the front lines who has to carefully measure his every word with manly restraint, unlike the belligerent fools on Fox who laugh at him.

It is fashionable among many so-called conservatives in the United States to think of Canada as a joke of a country. It's a view that began to take shape ever since Pierre Trudeau famously declared Canada a mouse next to the American elephant, affected by every twitch, every grunt. In one fell swoop, the historical image of Canada as a British Lion was gone forever. Liberals perferred to think of Canada as a mouse not a lion. And so a mouse in the image of many we became.

But Canada doesn't need to demonstrate its fortitude to the world, only its soberness. Canada cannot afford to be a gung ho, kick ass nation, nor should it desire such a reputation. It almost came apart at the seams during both world wars, when conscription riots in French Canada threatened the political survival of the country. Yet it still sent hundreds of thousands of men overseas to save Europe from itself. Over 100,000 Canadians perished as a result. The decision by Canada to stay out of Vietnam and Iraq has probably been more or less right. It's decision to tough it out in Afghanistan has also probably been more or less right. The desire to go to war for macho reasons is a profoundly unconservative attitude, and nearly all Canadians rightly perish the thought.

Update from American Vets: Ouch

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Eaton's and the Monarchy

The Eaton's chain was a legendary Canadian retailer, it's famous catalogue an icon to generations of customers. A family firm, one of the reasons for its demise in the late 1990s, the Eaton's were staunch monarchists who celebrated every major event in the life of the Royal Family.   Their prominent downtown locations were often festooned with Union Jacks and other paraphernalia of Anglo-Canadian patriotism.  Below is a selection of photographs, taken from the Archive of the province of Ontario, of Eaton's stores through out the company 130 year history:

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"the knowledge of gangsters but with the behaviour, if possible, of gentlemen”

The SOE

Although SOE agents were inevitably reliant on Resistance forces to be effective, few of the accounts in Forgotten Voices give any sense of the local people who were involved, or of the extent to which SOE actually controlled them. The SOE circuit organizer Ben Cowburn is one of the few to attempt to explain why SOE had such an aura with the Resistance. He emphasizes the importance of radio, of concrete proof of contact with London – he could get the BBC to broadcast a phrase given by his Resistance contact, and even more important, summon up RAF supply drops. This, he convincingly argues, was a real “manifestation of power: this thing had come through, it had roared through the German defences and everything, and it was they that had ordered it. And you were somebody from then on”.

Just a bunch of chaps trying to save the world from evil. Just a spot of bother on the continent.

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Peasant as Master

Es ist kein Schwert das schärfer schiert,
Als wenn ein Baur zum Herren wird.

(There is no sword that cuts sharper,
Than if a peasant becomes master.)

– Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus

This past month, we marked Presidents' Day, and it was also the bicentenary of the birth of the “log cabin President.” The newly inaugurated POTUS is struggling to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln.

The myth of Lincoln as the “Great Emancipator” lives on in spite of the efforts of Professor DiLorenzo through The Real Lincoln and Lincoln Unmasked. The war was not about slavery initially. It was about the right to secede.

Now, let's leave the argument over why the South seceded, and let's assume that it was due to the slavery institution being threatened by the North and the federal government, e.g., through the weakening of the institution a ban on slavery in new territories would give. Let's also suppose that Lincoln did have an agenda of abolishing slavery, but he could not openly be an outright abolitionist due to the risks that would give to his political career. Let's also presume that the Emancipation Proclamation, which did not apply to territories under Union jurisdiction, not only was strategically designed to avoid intervention by the British Empire, but also strategically designed for domestic purposes – to abolish slavery whilst not provoking those in the North who opposed abolition. If we make these assumptions, slavery was abolished as a result of the war. We don't even have to make these assumptions. Slavery was abolished nonetheless.

With or without these assumptions, however, there still is a major problem, to say the least. These facts remain:

• The rest of the West ended slavery peacefully.
• Lincoln violated the U.S. Constitution big time.
• The right for the States to secede was in effect abolished, removing an effective check on the federal government.
• The more aristocratically oriented Southern culture was demolished.
• The more decentralized system was replaced by a central state run from Washington, D.C.
• A behemoth to run around the world “making it safe for democracy” was created.
• Life, liberty, and property were destroyed.

It is praised that a boy born in a log cabin can grow up to be President. Likewise, it is praised that a boy abandoned by his Kenyan father can grow up to be President.

Across the Big Pond, Peter Tatchell praised the inauguration of the first black POTUS. He says about his own country:

If [Britons enthusiastic about the inauguration] were consistent they would join the call for a democratically elected and accountable head of state, open to British people of all races, classes and faiths or beliefs.

Oh yes, everyone's right to be our Overlord; that concept that has given us so much progress.

What about caring for liberty instead of the right to rise to the top irrespective of class, race, gender, or whatever classification you can think of?

The “login cabin President” grew up to be a tyrant. Napoleon came with his ambitions and put Europe through hell, not to speak of a mere corporal from Austria with a moustache. Obama has a Civil Rights agenda, where combating employment discrimination is central. Is Obama a group representative using his power to tell everyone else how they shall treat his kind? Never mind property rights?

Peter Tatchell also says:

The current monarchical system of determining our head of state is premised on the assumption that the most ignorant, stupid, immoral white Windsor first-born is more entitled to be our head of state than the best-informed, wisest and most moral black or Asian Briton.

The democratically elected politicians are well-informed, wise, and moral? And a democratically elected head of state will be? Of course! And pigs will fly!

Plato told us:

No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.

What now is the case is that we get a contest between those who have the highest ambitions of governing.

On that Tuesday back in November, Americans had the choice between McCain and Obama. Isn't it great that you get to choose your own Overlord?

A “stimulus” package has just passed through Congress. The concept is tantamount to my refurbishing my bathroom if I get laid off to get my personal economy going. Wisdom amongst those who are elected by the masses?

Fact is that interest rates should be set up, not down. However, most people are in debt, and they don't like interest rates going up. The politicos are taking care of their reelection, and they prefer injection of more alcohol to accepting the hard hangover. Allowing the hard medicine of liquidation of debt would make the masses of debtors upset. The politicos who want their votes would not risk that.

It was about the same in Versailles 90 years ago. There had been a war between peoples, and the people, who had suffered the war, wanted “someone” to pay. The politicos gave the people what they wanted good and hard. So there could be no peaceful peace, as the aristocrats had arranged about a century earlier.

That's the concept of modern democracy in a nutshell. Isn't it grand?

The democratic century has given us lots of intervention, domestic and foreign. The politicos interfere in our lives, homes, and businesses to an unprecedented level. The economy is managed, which gives us booms and busts. The omnipotent democratic government seems to have no limits.

But I guess that's OK when anyone, of whatever class, race, gender, etc., born in a log cabin or a mansion, can grow up to be President.


Originally published at the Intellectual Conservative.

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The "Distasteful" British Empire

A leading college at Cambridge University has renamed its controversial colonial-themed Empire Ball after accusations that it was "distasteful".

The King & Queen unveil the War Memorial, Ottawa, 1939 by Margaret Fulton Frame
The £136-a-head Emmanuel College ball was advertised as a celebration of "the Victorian commonwealth and all of its decadences".

Cool: Students were urged to "Party like it's 1899" and organisers promised a trip through the Indian Raj, Australia, the West Indies and 19th century Hong Kong.

Yawn: But anti-fascist groups said the theme was "distasteful and insensitive" because of the British Empire's historical association with slavery, repression and exploitation.

Sigh: The ball Committee, led by two extremely weak-kneed and politically correct presidents, Richard Hilton and Jenny Unwin, dutifully announced the word 'Empire' would thus be removed from all promotional material.

In any event, Padre Benton speaks, and so do I.

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Nothing Special About Britain? Britain!?

Re: the anonymous Obama administration dufus who said: "There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment."

As an unapologetic, full-throated Anglophile I find those comments idiotic, offensive, ahistorical, and in a certain sense anti-American.* I'm of course appalled.

But it's worth focusing on one aspect of this sentiment: It's idiocy. According to the liberal-realist school, some countries matter more than other countries because they are powerful and have the ability to adversely affect our national interest. According to the liberal-internationalist school, allies matter more than non-allies because grand international coalitions are the best way to do the wonderful things want to do on the world stage. So, China matters because it's a rising hegemon. Burkino Faso matters . . . eh, not so much. "Europe" matters because they are allies on security, global warming, human rights, etc. Well, Britain just happens to be our most important, reliable, and powerful ally.

So even if you take the pragmatist's razor to our shared history, culture, and all other romantic attachments to Great Britain, the bulldog still matters — a lot. In other words, to say that Britain isn't any more special than the other 190 countries in the world, you actually have to dislike Britain to the point where you're willing to suspend what are supposed to be your guiding principles and objectives about foreign policy.

* Just to be clear, what I mean by anti-American isn't a knee-jerk attack on anyone's patriotism. Rather, I simply mean that if you think the country that gave us our system of laws, our democratic tradition, our dominant culture, much of our greatest literature, and even our language is no more special than any backwater country which immiserates or brutalizes its people, then you must not think very much of America's culture, traditions, etc. either.

— Jonah Goldberg

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George Medal And Bar

Not a posthumous VC, but two George Medals basically equates to the same thing.

THE QUEEN HAS AWARDED A SECOND GEORGE MEDAL to a bomb disposal expert killed in Afghanistan last year. This is the first time a second George Medal, known as a Bar, has been awarded in 26 years. Warrant Officer 2nd Class Gary O'Donnell, 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Regiment Royal Logistic Corps, was killed defusing an improvised explosive device in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, on 10 September 2008.

The posthumous award to Warrant Officer O'Donnell, who died whilst attempting to disarm an improvised explosive device, was announced in the presence of his widow Mrs Toni O'Donnell. The George Medal is awarded for acts of great bravery.

WO2 O'Donnell, who at the time of his death already held the George Medal for his work defusing bombs in Iraq, was recommended for the further honour in recognition of his remarkable actions in two separate incidents, in May and July 2008.

On both occasions WO2 O'Donnell - who during his last tour in Afghanistan disposed of more than 50 IEDs - placed himself in immense personal danger in order to protect his comrades.

Commonwealth Note: The George Cross and Medal are no longer awarded to Canadians and Australians. The Queen of both countries replaced the George Cross with the Cross of Valour back in the 1970s, though still retaining the honour as the highest civil decoration, second in order of precedence only to the Victoria Cross. Both the Victoria Cross and the Cross of Valour/George Cross are awarded for acts of great bravery, however in order to qualify for the Victoria Cross, military personnel (or civilans operating under military command), must demonstrate conspicuous acts of bravery in the presence of the enemy.

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Where in the devil is Prince Charles?

Curious images of Nazi hegemony are probably not the ideal photo opportunity for a British prince on Commonwealth day. I mean, what's next: Goosesteps and pickelhaubes on Remembrance Day? Gestapo tea, anyone? Goering aftershave?

The Prince of Wales inspects the Guard of Honour at the Presidential Palace in Santiago, Chile, on the second day of an overseas tour to Chile, Brazil and Ecuador, 9 March 2009. His Royal Highness is accompanied by The Duchess of Cornwall on the tour, which is being carried out at the request of the British Government and which focuses on environmental issues and the Government's climate change priorities.
© Press Association

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New Zealand Restores Knighthoods!

News to swell loyal hearts from the happy plot at the bottom of the Earth.

The Queen receives the Prime Minister of New Zealand, the Hon. John Key MP, at Buckingham Palace, 25 November 2008.

This is huge. It is being reported that New Zealand is to restore the rank of Sir and Dame to its honours system nine years after it abolished titles in favour of Republican-style distinctions.

If we called Prime Minister John Key a limousine liberal in the recent past, we do at this moment take it all back. I mean, wow. What a glorious turn of events. Hallelujah for rare political miracles. By George, he did it!

Come on Australia and Canada, do the right thing, and follow New Zealand's lead. If a foreigner like Ted Kennedy is allowed to accept the honour of a knighthood from the Queen, it is only our ancient God-given right as Her Majesty's own subjects to be permitted the same.

Why the fall of Helengrad was a good thing. Happy Commonwealth Day indeed.

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A Tale of Two Royal Banks

Royal Bank of Canada: 2008 Profit = $5 billion

Royal Bank of Scotland: 2008 Loss = £24.1 billion

Whether measured by market value, balance sheet strength or profitability, Canada's banks are rising to the top. Since the credit crunch began in the summer of 2007, the Big Five banks with a combined asset value in excess of $2.5 trillion - the Royal Bank of Canada, the Toronto-Dominion Bank, the Bank of Noval Scotia, the Bank of Montreal and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce have booked a total of $18.9-billion in profits.

In roughly the same period, the five biggest U.S. banks have lost more than $37-billion (U.S.). One, Wachovia Corp., was forced to sell out to avoid failing. Another, Citigroup Inc., long the world's largest bank, may have to be nationalized and this week became a penny stock.

The picture is even more bleak in Britain. The Royal Bank of Scotland alone lost a staggering £24.1 billion this year, as much as the top five U.S. bank losses put together. I fear for the future of Britain, I really do. What that country had more so than any other country was a mighty financial services industry - London had even boastfully topped New York as the financial centre of the world.

So now what? Unlike Canada, it does not have an abundance of natural resources to guarantee its prosperity, as Britain imports most everything. If its financial system collapses, what does it have to fall back on? I'm very disappointed by this nasty turn of events, as I was preparing my family for the big move to London. Unfortunately we will now be putting off our plans for the long unforeseeable future.

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Being a Gentleman in an Ungentlemanly World

Recently, I was walking in a park near my home, enjoying the brisk air of a Canadian winter, and the exquisite beauty of a snow-covered landscape. It was evening and the setting sun stained the white snow with shades of crimson and gold. There wasn't a sound to be had, all was quiet and beautiful, truly serene. But then I did hear something, sounds like shouting and struggling. Naturally concerned, I followed the sounds to behind a small grove of trees, where I saw another young man attempting to force himself upon a young woman, who was against a fence. She naturally took objection to this, and was struggling to push him away, but with his greater strength and size he was easily winning the struggle. I consider myself to be a gentleman, and a gentleman could not stand by and allow this to happen. Moving quickly, I set a hand on the man's shoulder and pulled him away.

"Sir, I don't believe the lady wants your company this evening," I said. The young man shouted a curse word, then drew back and struck me across the jaw, whereupon I struck him back and sent him sprawling onto the cold snowy ground. He looked up at me with anger, pain, and perhaps more than a bit of drunkenness in his eyes, decided that it was not worth the effort, and scrambled off. I then turned to the young woman to see if she was alright.

"Are you okay, miss?" I asked. She did not answer me. Instead she drew a can of pepperspray from her purse and sprayed me with it, shouting "CREEP!" loudly. She then quickly and sharply raised her knee into my reproductive organs, and ran off, leaving me doubled over from the pain which was, i'm sure you know, quite excrutiating.

I sit at my desk today, pondering what that young lady, scared and possibly traumatized as she may have been, was thinking when she inflicted such pain on her rescuer. Perhaps in the confusion she mistook me for the other young man, we were roughly the same height and build, both light brown hair, blue eyes. Perhaps she was a 'liberated powerful modern woman' and a hardline feminist, for whom being rescued was just as bad as being sexually assaulted. Perhaps she was just crazy. But the fact remains that this was not an unusual occurance, I am often punished or scolded or reproached for trying to be a gentleman in this ungentlemanly world.

For example, at my ex workplace I arrived by bus, at the same time as a lady who also worked there. I usually hold the door for her, it's just good manners. This had gone on for about five weeks, and though she never thanked me, being a gentleman was reward enough for me. I was then approached by my boss and told to stop holding the door for her, because she was perceiving me as a sexist who was mocking her, as holding the door for her did not imply my good manners, but that she was too weak to open the door for herself.

Another time, I was out for a walk in the evening, when I saw a group of three young ladies dressed rather... provocatively, being harassed by five or six young men who seemed rather intoxicated. Naturally, I rushed to the young ladies aid and, with a few blows exchanged, saw the young men off and on their way home. But I obviously overstepped my boundaries when I commented that if the young ladies wouldn't dress like the harlots those young men usually associated with, then those young men would no longer bother them. They then launched a tirade about, if they had 'it' they were going to flaunt 'it' and that was their right, no matter what trouble it would get them into.

It's sometimes hard to be a gentleman in today's world. I am snickered at when people learn I listen to Bach, Handel and Tchaikovsky. In a recent writing course I took, I was openly discouraged from sharing a passage of Kipling for a required reading we were supposed to conduct, due to Kipling supposedly being 'racist, imperialist and chauvinistic'. I am mocked for wearing a properly-fitted suit rather than the "style" of the modern young man, which is either excessively baggy or disturbingly skin-tight based on your social group. My military aspirations, my desire to serve Her Majesty as an officer of the Royal Canadian Army (and it will always be the RCA to me), my personal dream of defending God, Queen and Country, that is made ridicule most of all by my peers.

But still I stay the course. We must all stay the course, or else all those distasteful elements of society that we so oppose will have won at last. We are outnumbered, outmanuevered, outgunned perhaps, but I know that I at least will hold the faith. I hope you all hold that faith as well. As long as I live, I shall remain a gentleman and well dressed.

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The King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery

The King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery leave London's Green Park after firing a Royal salute of 41 rounds to mark the anniversary of The Queen's accession to the throne in 1952, 6 February 2009.
© Press Association

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First Powered Flight of the British Empire

On a cold morning in February, the vision of flying a powered aircraft for the first time in Canada and the British Empire came to be when the Silver Dart took to the air above the frozen waters of Baddeck Bay in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

This inaugural Canadian aviation feat on February 23rd, 1909 was the result of innovative thinking, entrepreneurial spirit, unrelenting determination and a talented team of experts who had a common vision. When world-renowned and accomplished inventor Alexander Graham Bell decided to turn his gaze toward the skies and find a way for man to fly, it was based on a lifelong fascination with flight.

Read more at the Flight of the Silver Dart Centennial Celebration

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For a so-called monarchist, Mr. Harper has a funny republican way of showing it.

Of all the hidden agendas the Conservative government in Ottawa has been suspected of harbouring, republicanism seems the least likely. In the past, the Tories were considered the federal party most inclined to support Canada's national institutions, from the military to the monarchy. Yet as Globe reporter Michael Valpy revealed on Saturday, the Harper government has rebuffed efforts to have the Prince of Wales visit Canada. The same, of course, applies to the Queen. Both have dined at the White House much more recently than they have last set foot in Canada. It does give rise to the thought that this particular hidden agenda might be genuine.

The Canadian government in fact has shown much less enthusiasm for visits by Canada's current head of state and her heir apparent than has the republic to the south. The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, the Mayor of Quebec City, and the province of Nova Scotia have all asked Ottawa to invite the Queen in recent years, and all were turned down by Canadian Heritage. The Globe on Saturday reported that the Prince of Wales, and various organizations he is associated with, have also been seeking permission to undertake a visit, and once again the requests have been shelved. The situation is such that the Liberal era of Jean Chrétien is now remembered by loyalists as a golden age for the Canadian Crown.

Yet Mr. Harper is not a republican. In his foreword to a book, Crown of Maples, published in 2008 by the federal government, Mr. Harper writes, "The Canadian Crown is central to our uniquely Canadian identity." He goes on to advocate "an even greater awareness and appreciation of this Canadian institution and its ongoing importance to so many aspects of our country's daily life and collective identity." His allegiance, then, need not be questioned. Only his strange way of showing it. If Canada is to remain a monarchy, and there are reasonable people on both sides of that particular debate, then it should welcome the Queen and the Prince of Wales.

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Charles Who?

The vanishing future monarch.

He's constitutionally Canada's next head of state. A top aide says he's keen to deepen his relationship with the country. He wants to visit, get to know people. He's arranged meetings with key Canadian philanthropic and community leaders with the aim of cementing connections with his own charitable interests.

So where is he? Find the Prince of Wales. Find Charles Philip Arthur George.

He hasn't been here for eight years.

He wanted to come to Canada four years ago – to introduce his new wife on her first royal tour – but the federal government told him it likely wasn't a good idea because there might be an election campaign when he arrived. So he bypassed Canada and took Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, to the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

Sure, he does hang out with all the cool kids, but he'd love to swing by your place too. Just waiting by the phone, humming "Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week." Perhaps in the style of a Handel oratorio. Minority governments are hell on everyone's schedule, but surely a quick trip to Ottawa or Toronto could have been arranged? The Queen visited Alberta and Saskatchewan in 2005 to celebrates those two provinces' centenary. Since then Prince Edward (twice), Prince Andrew (three times) and Princess Anne have all shown up and exchanged dignified pleasantries with their ex-colonial subjects. Is the future George VII - his rumoured styling upon ascension - just not worth the price of admission? Perhaps I'm just paranoid, but methinks certain republican elements in the Canadian government are perfectly willing to have the people of Canada forget who their future sovereign is.

The monarchy drags up all sorts of unpleasant memories for the country's governing elite. Terrible images of British overlordship when armies of Redcoated terrorists imposed the rule of law, free speech and property rights on their unruly Canadian subjects. Not the kind of things you'd want to talk about infront of the electorate. Who knows they might remember that principles of anglo-saxon jurisprudence don't fit well with secularized inquisitions like the Human Rights Commissions.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

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The Grand Old Duke of York

The grand old Duke of York,

He had ten thousand men.

He marched them up to the top of the hill

And he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up;

And when they were down, they were down.

But when they were only halfway up,

They were neither up nor down!

THE DUKE OF YORK in question was Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (1763-1827), Commander-in-Chief of the British Army during much of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic period. In his own lifetime he was derided as a corrupt philanderer who, like his elder brother the future George IV, was rather too fond of women and wine. Two generations before Prince Frederick's disastrous expedition to take Dunkirk in 1793 - the supposed inspiration for the rhyme - his grandfather, George II, had commanded his forces at the Battle Dettingen. The royal person was no longer welcome on the battlefield by the time of French Revolution. Merit mattered in the minds of the public. The gentleman was giving way to the technocrat in the world of business and politics.

Popular history records York as the youthful blunderer, given his command by virtue of a compliant cabinet and willful monarch, eager to promote his second eldest son's career. When political embarrassment became too great, the younger Pitt wrote a careful letter to George III, requesting York's transfer from the field to a staff position. The young royal had blundered badly. Besieging the port of Dunkirk he failed to take account of the position of the French Revolutionary Army under the command of Carnot. Unexpectedly the French Army turned, speeding toward Dunkirk, threatening the British expeditionary forces' flanks and rear. 30 siege guns and some 300 barrels of gunpowder were abandoned in a hasty retreat.

Searching for a dignified, but unobtrusive, army post, the Prime Minister alighted upon the office of Commander in Chief. Then occupied by the ancient Lord Amherst - a victorious general of the Seven Years War (1756-1763) - it was seen as a safe landing spot for a disgraced officer of royal blood. Pitt, the genius of contemporary parliamentary politics, lacked his father's famous eye for military talent. He searched in vain for another Wolfe. Only belatedly did he spot the Wellesley brothers, dying before the Peninsular and Indian campaigns that would make both men legends. In appointing this failed young royal to a back office job of seemingly no importance, Pitt had helped secure ultimate British victory in the struggle against Revolutionary France.

Prince Frederick's failings had been those of inexperience and bad luck. Against a France blessed with soldiers of genius, and the first mass conscript army, York had been given a small ill-trained and ill-equipped forced. Even worse his main ally, the Austrians who then controlled Flanders, possessed an ossified command structure and their soldiers and NCOs were wanting in enthusiasm. The position of Commander in Chief, its office in House Guards and his small staff of 35, gave the young Prince more than a comfortable patronage position, it was the perfect vantage point from which to modernize the British Army.

Signaling immediately that he had no intention of being the royal holder of a sinecure, he plunged into a frenetic schedule of planning meetings, issuing edicts and promoting competent officers where he could find them. A prince of the blood had little influence on the field of battle, but in the class conscious world of late Georgian London, the title HRH and his rank as Field Marshal matched the entrenched interests of the army. The poor cousin of the Navy, the Army had been the province of younger sons of well connected minor gentry. A vast engine of patronage, it had seen little real action since the American war, which it had lost. It was not uncommon for officers to have late breakfasts, or late afternoon tea, while their regiments marched on ahead, commanded in effect by a highly competent band of NCOs. Officers whose regiments were posted overseas had the ability, through a legal loophole, of waiting nearly a year before reporting to their COs. Among the Duke's first acts was to demand these officers immediately report for embarkation. He could not dismiss commissioned officers, even though his father was the sovereign and supportive of his efforts, but could delay their promotions. An idle threat from almost anyone but the second in the line of succession.

A poorly led and equipped force had impressed upon York the need for reform, the size and the fickleness of Britain's continental allies against the French, convinced him of the need for expansion. Britain needed the ability to field a military force independently, able to exploit the Royal Navy's supremacy at sea to the Kingdom's strategic advantage. A large army needed a large officer corp. While Prince Frederick spent much time improving the lot of the ordinary soldier, he understood that the key to building a first class army capable of checking French ambitions lay in a strong cadre of young officers. To that end he first established something we might today describe as an Army Staff College. A few years later, in 1802, he founded Sandhurst, ensuring a steady stream of well trained young men to lead the Army, in what was even then a decade long struggle against French imperialism.

To ensure these young officers did not languish in the lower ranks, he stemmed the practice of purchasing commissions and "recruiting for rank," the ages old practice of making men captains and even colonels if they raised regiments for the King. Those who felt they were denied promotion due to the influence of patronage, were encouraged to approach the Duke privately - even at social occasions. Through the some three hundred letters he answered a day, he did everything in his power to promote men of ability, see that they were trained and were able to train their men to the height of efficiency.

There were early, though minor victories, like at the Battle of the Pyramids in 1801 that served as proof of the success of York's reforms. It would fall on Wellington, a friend and protege, to show what the new army could do in the battlefields of the Peninsula. Just as Wellesley was proving his worth in Portugal, scoring a victory at Vimiero, his great patron was stricken by scandal.

As so often with great men of this era, trapped in the loveless marriages which the royal politics of the age condemned them to, he became infatuated with one Mary Anne Clarke. A charming and beautiful opportunist she extracted a lavish subsidy of a thousand pounds a year. When the relationship ended, Clarke sought vengeance. Allying herself with MPs eager to see the fall of the Great Duke. His reforms had done as much to irritate the gentry - who saw easy sinecure vanish from their grasps - as to improve the fighting form of the army. Rumour held that the Duke of Kent, the jealous younger brother of York, was financing Clarke's extraordinary claims. The story that emerged was of Clarke accepting payments to influence the Duke's decisions on promotions and appointments. It was good fortune that the conspirators failed to pay off Clarke, who in turn retracted her evidence before a parliamentary committee two years later. While the Commons cleared the Duke of York of any wrong doing, the scandal cost him his position as C in C, much to the outrage of Wellington. Only Clarke's retraction, and the passage of two years, allowed York to return to his vital work of reform as C in C.

His elder brother having failed to produce legitimate heirs, York spent much of the Regency period as heir presumptive - something which only added to his ability to push through further reforms. He predeceased George IV by a few months in January 1827.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

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Ascended into a Tree and onto the Throne

For the first time in the history of the world, a young girl climbed into a tree one day a Princess and after having what she described as her most thrilling experience she climbed down from the tree next day a Queen — God bless her.

Edward James Corbett (1875-1955)

Plaque commemorating Accession at Aberdare Treetops Lodge, Kenya

For you are beautiful, I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell

Roger Whittaker (born 1936 in Nairobi)
bids farwell to the Land of Endless Sunshine

The current Aberdare Treetops Lodge

On the eastern shore of the great Lake Victoria of Africa, source of the mighty Nile, lies the Land of Endless Sunshine. It was in this beautiful gem of the British Empire the Duchess and Duke of Edinburgh came in the early days of 1952. Here lies the magnificent Aberdare Mountain Range. Here lies the beautiful Aberdare Forest. Here lies the mighty Mount Kenya.


The waterhole at Treetops Lodge

Three years short of three score years ago, on February 5, 1952, Their Royal Highnesses the Duchess and Duke of Edinburgh ascend into a tree. On that night the Princess Elizabeth ascends the Britannic Throne. The Princess becomes Her Britannic Majesty. Unknowing of the Accession, the Royal couple descend from the tree the next morning, returning to the Royal residence of Sagana Lodge in the foothills of the mighty Mount Kenya. It is at Sagana Lodge Her Britannic Majesty receives the tragic message about her father – His Late Britannic Majesty.


Their Royal Highnesses the Duchess and Duke of Edinburgh at the grounds of Sagana Lodge before the night at Treetops

It is said that it was the first time in more than two centuries that a Sovereign succeeded the Throne whilst being abroad. George I succeeding Queen Anne was the previous time. Queen Elizabeth II was simply in another part of the British Empire. Her Majesty ascended to the Throne on firm ground where she was Sovereign, or at least in a tree that stood firmly on such ground.

During an uprising in the 1950s the original Treetops lodge was destroyed. A new and larger lodge was built at a nearby location.

Upon independence, Sagana Lodge was given to the government of Kenya. Upon independence, Her Britannic Majesty was given the title of Queen of Kenya, a title which she retained for exactly one year.


A waterfall in the Aberdares

Congratulations to Her Britannic Majesty on Accession Day!

Happy Accession Day!

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London Snow

As a Canadian I can appreciate the message that snow brings out the best in people. London is enjoying the kind of winter it hasn't seen since 1991, perhaps even 1891, and all of a sudden a big cold heartless city is magically rendered a warm and gentle playing ground for people of all ages. There are reports that people are actually talking to one another in the streets, whispering such pleasantries as "hello" and "good morning" to complete strangers. It seems that civilisation has returned for a brief wintery moment.

London Snow
by Robert Bridges


When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelled - marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;
The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.
Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;
Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder!'
'O look at the trees!' they cried, 'O look at the trees!'
With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,
Following along the white deserted way,
A country company long dispersed asunder:
When now already the sun, in pale display
Standing by Paul's high dome, spread forth below
His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.
For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;
And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,
Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:
But even for them awhile no cares encumber
Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,
The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber
At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.

For more inspiration read Peter Hitchens: What's so bad about cold weather?

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The Peaceable Kingdom

The Canadian political crisis is over with Prime Minister Harper's (awful) budget passing in the Commons today. For the root of political and social tranquility in Canada, we need look no further than the Maple Crown.

Globe and Mail cartoon depicting Prime Minister Stephen Harper as King of the Realm following his success in getting Parliament prorogued, thereby saving his political bacon.
"But even if better practices can be instituted to guide the parliamentary head of state (be it a monarchical or republican model) in determining whether all the possibilities of forming an effective government have been exhausted and that a hung parliament must be dissolved, some element of discretion will remain, and the system’s smooth functioning will depend on the good judgment and honourable behaviour of the key actors."

This statement is just so, and if the Canadian political crisis has taught us anything, it is that we cannot depend on the honour of our parliamentarians to get us out of these types of political messes, for they are the ones who get us into them. In these situations when parliament has become dysfunctional, when no act of parliament can be passed, when there is no mechanism in the written constitution we can defer to, and no judiciary we can turn to, the crisis can only be solved by the neutrality, dignity and independent power of the Crown itself. Indeed, a proclamation issued by the Queen under the discretionary powers of the Royal Prorogative, what AV Dicey called "the remaining portion of the Crown's original authority":


Proclamation Proroguing Parliament to January 26, 2009

ELIZABETH THE SECOND, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom, Canada and Her other Realms and Territories QUEEN, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. To our Beloved and Faithful Senators of Canada, and the Members elected to serve in the House of Commons of Canada, and to all to whom these Presents may in any way concern,

A PROCLAMATION Whereas We have thought fit, by and with the advice of Our Prime Minister of Canada, to prorogue the present Parliament of Canada; Now know you that, We do for that end publish this Our Royal Proclamation and do hereby prorogue the said Parliament to Monday the twenty-sixth day of January, 2009.

IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, We have caused this Our Proclamation to be published and the Great Seal of Canada to be hereunto affixed.

WITNESS: Our Right Trusty and Well-beloved Michaëlle Jean, Chancellor and Principal Companion of Our Order of Canada, Chancellor and Commander of Our Order of Military Merit, Chancellor and Commander of Our Order of Merit of the Police Forces, Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada.

AT OUR GOVERNMENT HOUSE, in Our City of Ottawa, this fourth day of December in the year of Our Lord two thousand and eight and in the fifty-seventh year of Our Reign.

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Real Sleaze on Slime-Green Benches

The Monarchist reported about eight months ago on the entry of the High Tory Gerald Warner into the pages of the Daily Telegraph, with Is It Just Me?, after the apparent sacking from Scotland on Sunday.

Gerald Warner did have a Scotland on Sunday column at the end of last June, and the Warner column occasionally ran until November. Since November 16, however, whilst blogging at the Daily Telegraph is going strong, Scotland on Sunday has been running a Warner column without exceptions. The column has been revived.

Writes Gerald Warner this Sunday:

The Lords are more representative than the scoundrels down the corridor

THE controversy over alleged corruption in the House of Lords has provided an excuse for MPs to parade their hypocrisy, clapped-out modernisers to revive the canard of "Lords reform" and commentators to display their consummate ignorance of everything to do with the institution of the peerage.

Clearly, the allegations against the four peers must be investigated and, if well founded, punished. Otherwise, the issue is fogged in spin and stupidity. This is not House of Lords sleaze, any more than l'affaire Jonathan Aitken was described as Commons sleaze: it is Labour sleaze. It is typical of Labour, having ejected hundreds of hereditary peers of impeccable character and replaced them with its own nominees, when the latter sully the reputation of the Upper House to condemn the institution instead of the perpetrators. Sleaze allegations in the Lords are rare: can the same be said of the sanctimonious Commons?

Real sleaze can be found on Parliament's slime-green benches

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Charles I

Three hundred and sixty years ago today the English Puritans dared to murder their anointed King. Kings had of course been killed before, but never so openly and never with the claim of "legality."

The American Society of King Charles the Martyr will hold its annual mass and meeting tomorrow at S. Stephen's Church in Providence, Rhode Island. The British SKCM of course commemorates the anniversary annually as well.

In this excerpt from Cromwell, Alec Guinness movingly portrays the King's final moments.

On the 131st anniversary (1780), as Americans were engaged in another rebellion against another King, the heroic loyalist Rev. Charles Inglis, rector of Trinity Wall Street, preached this sermon on "The Duty of Honouring the King." Other materials related to King Charles the Martyr can be found here.

Remember!

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In Defense of Civilisation, or Pro-Proposition 8

AMERICA, FAMOUSLY DEPRIVED BY ITS OWN HAND of an aristocracy of land and church, has one in the present day comprised of the pompous and the charlatan. They think just like Gladstone on the matter of man-marriage; Tom Hanks, or Lord Hanks of Sanctimony and Fathead-on-Thickneck, has said emphatically that those who voted in favour of Proposition 8, which overturned a narrow judicial imposition of gay marriage on the state of California, were un-American. But slaying that (in)judicial perversion in a hail of ballots is merely an excellent example of the stolid, plain-sighted, clear-minded yeoman stock of the average Yank (be he white, black, yellow, red or brown), or cut from however-so-much bits of cloth in this globalised age, (for the votes came equally from all minorities and majorities), rebuking the festering fools they are lamentably now stuck with for their lordly lords. We should defend them! In this instance they are absolutely correct. Gladstone’s heartfelt defense of homosexual marriage is a curious little flag to run up the Monarchist’s mast of a Monday morning. But it is the blankest white of surrender, and flaps only with the wind of the spirit of the age. It is terrible. Where shall it blow next? Who can tell?

Of course, this post riding into the lists against him might seem a silly contest over a small point, but in being so small, it is perilously great. The true test of a conservative (or traditionalist, or monarchist, or gentleman), like Luther’s true test of a Christian, is not whether they will boldly stand for 99% of the Truth, but whether they will stand in the breach for that 1% presently being assailed. Their fidelity to nearly all of it is as nothing to their infidelity on the point being troubled. They are fair-weather friends; and in a sky filling with clouds, such men have a duty to correct themselves, or be corrected. Gladstone, sadly, has failed that test. And I do not blame him. It is a terrible prospect to stand before the world and be so uncivil and preposterous as to question the current orthodoxy on homosexuality. Marinated by sympathetic Hollywood storylines and characters, encouraged by leftist political hand-wringing and all-pervasive, swift-moving political correctness, and now coerced by what currently passes for ‘good form’ in the wife-swapping middle classes, where shall a traditionalist dare profess that he holds to the unbroken wisdom of the millennia, against the temporary experiments of the decade, on this matter? Only in a very, very small and safe room, from behind a very carefully constructed shield wall.

Here are some thoughts, anyway. (Read on)


1. Gay marriage is not just about gay marriage. This will sound harshest for those who think homosexual marriage is simply the means by which people can be made happy in their lives. But for better or worse, long before the idea of gay marriage ever turned up, there was no - and there remains no - prohibition on gay couples cohabiting permanently until death parts them. They are free to do so. In recent times they have always been free to do so. So that is not, in fact, what they are seeking. If they were, they wouldn’t be asking for gay marriage. They wouldn’t be asking for anything. In fact they are seeking society’s approval, religion’s benediction and authority’s enforcement; and for a verdict which agrees that there is no difference between monogamous sodomy and reproductive marriage, and that there has never been, and never shall be any such distinction. This cannot be allowed.

It would be the final nail in a coffin diligently put together by the liberal left these past fifty years, by which they seek once and for all to bury traditional marriage. And it would have society, religion and authority’s feckless hands driving it in. They wish to entomb that old relic at a time when social breakdown, moral decay, rampant youth crime and murder, mass illiteracy, paralysed birth-rates, cultural anarchy, and widespread hopelessness and depression tells us the that the world, having given it up, can scarcely live without it.

For the argument in favour of homosexual marriage has only been allowed to form even the most dim notion in the heads of those who now scream it from the rooftops, because heterosexual marriage has itself been transformed into something alien and odd since the Flesh Revolution of the 1960s. It is the only way that it has become even slightly plausible. You can only trick yourself into seeing some resemblance, you see, between the two, if you have transformed traditional heterosexual marriage likewise into a compact involving two bread-winners, lots of unproductive sex, interchangeability of gender roles, symmetry of duty and authority, separation from child-bearing, obsession with immediate satisfaction, and nothing else. And in so far as ordinary marriage has become like this, we already have gay marriage: it is what modern society has made of natural marriage. But natural men and women must reject this, all of this, and any further solidifying of the changes, which gay marriage would utterly confirm. It leads not to happiness, but to wrack and ruin, and innumerable broken marriages, and countless lost souls, and frenetic pathetic lusting, and the constant bloody Massacre of the Innocents, every day, in hospitals up and down our world, for the great cause of convenience.

I am not saying gay marriage causes this. I am saying gay marriage is the affirmation of this, and the confirmation of this decided change in the general notion of marriage - and the further postponement, and prevention, of it being mended. It crowns the false god. And we shall have a deal of time dethroning it if we keep going down this path.

2. The simple but obstinate matter of facts. I dislike it when people knowingly lay down reality for the comfort of wishful thinking (which, before any wise alecs say something stupid, differs from the Christian religion in so far as that religion is the comfort in reality by facing its harshest fact of death). Are people blind? Do they really need someone to stand forth and point out the blaring obvious fact that a contract of monogamous sodomy is not, has never been, and can never be the same as the Christian contract of holy matrimony? What have men or women with such desires got remotely in common with the complimentary, clearly purposeful (whether evolution or God is your, er, God), genuine and productive union of man and wife, in a long-term stable relationship ideal for the rearing of children, communication of virtue and prosperity, and the obviation of lust and loneliness in real complimentarity (rather than coincidence of desire)? What has one kind of relationship, prohibited by the ages and our ancestors, got to do with the other, lauded by the ages and our ancestors?

Christian (or heterosexual, or traditional) marriage, as Peter Marshall put it, is a coming together of two tributaries, which after they are joined together flow forever in a stronger course. They are not a treaty, nor even a federation, but a Union. And how shall we test if this is true? As with anything, by its fruits: and its fruits are children, and by them the binding together of society in generations, and by this the furtherance of civilisation in kindness, care, development, and slowly accrued, carefully handed on wisdom. It is the heart of the real great principle of true Progress: inheritance! It clearly works. I shall not name some of the more infamous fruits of homosexual relationships. I wish to be polite. But you see it cannot be the same thing. In terms of a family tree, it is deforestation. It is altogether a different beast. It is a complete and infantile category error to be even talking of gays 'marrying'.

And to say, in opposing such arguments, as many have, that the existence of childless traditional marriages must allow childless monogamous sodomy, is like saying that broken chairs license the production of chairs which were never designed to work. Likewise, bridging the childless gap with tubes and dishes and all manner of science scarcely less violent than that of Dr Frankenstein’s merely proves this (rather than, as some nonsensically say, erasing it).

3. The mixed-race argument is one too often trotted out without much thought or reason behind it. Gladstone is right in identifying this old perversion as wicked; but I should point out that it was, like gay marriage, precisely that: a perversion, or ineffectual and day-dreaming amendment of nature. And really the issue here would be if Gladstone was correct in saying that the quite correct alteration away from this brief error, post-Civil Rights, renders impossible all opposition to any other redefinition of marriage in the future (like gay marriage). Thank God he is wrong. The implications of being right almost don’t bear thinking about. Upon this basis nothing could withstand nuptials between dogs and Dutchmen, your fob watch and your left brogue, or your aunt and her Audi. (Or think of some more plausible horror, which I shall not dirty this website with, but which your average daily newspaper can undoubtedly furnish you with many suggestions for).

The issue here connects to a broader one: that of anchors. If we are not to make biology, or tradition, or religion our rule (because homosexuality and homosexual marriage radically defies all of those), we have thrown out every rational and successful measure and restriction of behaviour available to us. You can knock down such things, but whither shall you run for defence when society’s decay advances in another fashion? You are making what is polite and fashionable your final rule. This might seem at first quite proper, and superficially gentlemanly; but the truest gentleman bears no resemblance to the simpering, craven, substanceless man of such philosophy, who has always been known by the appellation - Cad.

4. And lastly, though it is a small thing in his original post, the matter of Mr Gladstone’s first rejecting altogether the Word of God, and then snatching a portion of it triumphantly to his chest in a victory pose. Such trifling use of any document would strike any disinterested observer as absurd; doing so with sacred things borders on the abominable. It is enough to remind him that nothing in scripture is inconsistent, as long as you are guided in your interpretation of any given text by all the rest of the scriptures, in whatever ways they may touch it. Clearly, a Bible which also warns against homosexuality, cannot possibly be later including it as a positive example of God’s love. Gladstone may indeed feel that he worships a God who he is allowed to stand roughly in the same sort of equation to as a gay man stands to his husband (if such love is, he says, godly); but he shall not go around buggering up Holy Scripture as long as I’m around here.

Please direct all hate mail to your lavatory and/or compost heap, c/o a flamethrower.

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The Queen's money squandered by crazy Keynesians and drunken spendaholics

THE QUEEN WITH ALL HER ROYAL PALACES AND GOLD RICHES has always been a picture of parsimony, prudence, restraint and thrift compared to our insanely profligate political culture. All this massive public deficit spending led by that fiscal socialist, George W. Bush, the five trillion dollar man, is deeply deeply wasteful and hugely irresponsible, and will most certainly bite us all in the ass in the end. Gordon Brown too is a glutinous pig, so is Stephen Harper with his tens of billions in throwaways announced today, though not yet nearly to the same extent. Fiscal stimulus is a forlorn hope, at best government acts like a big clumsy retarded giant when attempting to pull and push the unwieldy, mammoth levers of a nation's economic pulse. Apart from handing money back to taxpayers to spend and save as they see fit, it is a criminally dumb thing to try and do. It won't work, it'll just saddle us with future gargantuan debt loads and it'll be decades before we climb back to where we were. We just never learn, do we. It's back to the future once again.

What this recession calls for is a little stinginess on the part of everyone, to save and invest for the future and stop overextending ourselves which got us into this credit mess in the first place. We need to become Scrooges not spendaholics to free ourselves from this cycle of debt and put us back on a sound footing once again. Short-term pain for long-term gain, instead of the other way around. But common sense and stingy doesn't sell in an economy and population and politicians addicted to the instant gratification of borrowed money.

I prefer stingy alright, I prefer stuffy dukes over slick politicians, like I prefer stern fathers over dead-beat dads. As always, count me with the minority. Democracy, the God that failed indeed.

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Happy Australia Day

Whilst The Monarchist is happily not prone to the Australian folk tradition of irreverence, mockery of authority and disregard for rigid norms of propriety, we do nevertheless have an enormous soft spot for that brave Commonwealth Down Under, which was claimed by the British Crown in 1770 and initially settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales, founded on 26 January 1788.

The founding of Australia, 26 January 1788
Uncultivated or not, who can not but admire that broad Ockered accent, that distinctive slang born of mateship and booze. The larrikin Ned Kelly can rot in hell, but strines like Paul Hogan and Steve Irwin and other free spirits of the Bush and the Outback probably exemplify manly virtue better than the whole stock of males across the rest of the English-speaking world.

To wit, congratulations to Trooper Mark Donaldson, VC. That the British and international press could scandalously and virtually ignore an Australian winning the Victoria Cross last week, is thankfully no skin off the tough Aussie back who pays little attention to what others think about him anyways. It happens to be the Australian way.

So Happy Birthday, Oz, and God Save Your Queen!

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Concerning 'Proposition 8'

In November of last year, California passed a ballot proposition which restricted the definition of marriage to be between a man and a woman. Perhaps this issue does not concern the Monarchy, but it does concern societal values and our culture, and I think that this blog is about that just as much as it is about Her Majesty's God-given right to be our Queen. Now, before I continue, I think it is important to note that I am a heterosexual, Anglican Christian, white male, with no great amount of homosexual friends or relatives, exactly the sort of person who you think would approve of Proposition 8.

And yet... I don't approve... and I find that as a conscientious gentleman, I can't approve of this. The world is not a fair place, and neither is life. Life is predisposed towards making human beings hateful and bitter, and true happiness is often fleeting. All these homosexual couples wish to do is be allowed to marry, to celebrate the love they feel for each other, to gain a little bit of that happiness that heterosexual married couples feel. And those same heterosexual couples are telling them that "No, you can't marry". How do you think it feels to be one of those people right now? Having been able to marry in your home with whomever you loved, but now having that taken way. All you other white religious gentlemen and ladies, who according to the polls are the ones who voted for Prop. 8, how would you feel if your right to marry the person you loved was taken away?

Some people who are against homosexual marriage will complain that it's 'redefining marriage' in the US. But let us remember that if the US hadn't redefined marriage before, white people would still not be able to marry black people. In 1967, fifteen seperate states had laws preventing the marriage of Caucasians and Africans. In 1967, Barack Obama's parents would not have been able to marry in fifteen of the states he would grow up to govern. Looking back further, black people could not even marry other black people, as slaves were property and not able to be husband and wife. Looking in from an outsider's perspective, as I am Canadian, I can clearly see that marriage has been redefined in the US at least twice, and both times for the moral good.

Others will say that homosexual marriage is an affront in the eyes of the Lord. Now, I can find and read the passages of the Bible which say that a 'man laying with another man' is a sin. But any gentleman or lady who takes the Bible literally is a pillock. And really, who are we to say what the Lord finds distasteful? We are but men, flawed as all humans are, and every religion is made of our own beliefs and opinions on what God is and what he teaches. I am a Christian man, I always have been and always will be, and I know there's something else the Bible says that is relevant on this matter: 'God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him', from the first letter of John. It is clear from my, admittably limited, acquaintances with homosexuals that they love each other, and as a Christian I cannot conscientiously object to love. Being heterosexual, perhaps I cannot understand how they love each other, but I can see that they can, and that their love is a true and as whole as that of any married couple i've known, even moreso in certain cases. The world is entirely too short on love between human beings these days, why would anyone want to impede people who just want to let a little more of it into our world?

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"An American Coronation"

America has simply replaced the pomp and ceremony of hereditary monarchy with the pomp and ceremony of elected monarchy.

An American Coronation, writes the Los Angeles Times, and who can disagree with them given the lavish preparations now underway in Washington. Words can be deceiving, but appearances generally are not.

It was a century ago when Theodore Roosevelt explained that an American President is "an elective King", making the implausible point that the United States was essentially a monarchical country within a republican framework. Contrast the power of His Mightiness with the limitations of our own Monarch, and you see increasingly the reverse in Commonwealth countries; that is, republican governments camouflaged within a monarchical framework, to the point where they effectively become "crowned republics" completely sapped of their royalist spirit.

As David Flint points out in President Obama: the elective King inaugurated, "The considerable British jurist, Lord Hailsham explained that the American system centres on ‘an elective monarchy with a king who rules with a splendid court and even...a royal family, but does not reign.’ He contrasted this with the Westminster system which he said involves ‘a republic with an hereditary life president, who being a queen, reigns but does not rule’."

But the important fact here is that both trends run contrary to the conservative impulse, as both are marked by a distinct lack of constitutional deference. American republicans are weary of their countrymen swooning over Princess Obama and becoming a monarchy in all but name, and Commonwealth monarchists are concerned about the increasing emasculation of their own constitutions, with the creeping regicide of Her Majesty.

The BBC's Katty Kay, for her part, is somewhat appalled at "the coronation of King Obama":

So this is why you booted us out a couple of centuries ago. You simply replaced the pomp and ceremony of hereditary monarchy and with the pomp and ceremony of elected monarchy. OK, you didn't opt for the dynastic duo of Bush and Clinton, which really had us scratching our crowned European heads, but the fanfare with which Caroline Kennedy has entered the political picture suggests your infatuation with royal families is still not over.

This week Washington feels like London in the run up to one of our own grand royal events. Hostesses twitter on the phone, or just Twitter, to woo A-list guests to pre- and post-inauguration parties. A-list guests measure their piles of invites in feet, not inches...

Still, there is a more serious problem with treating Barack Obama as an elected monarch; one that affects us journalists, in particular. Put a man on a pedestal and suddenly it's hard for the press to drag him through the political wringer. It happened in 2003 in the run up to the invasion of Iraq and risks happening again.

In Britain, we invest the Queen with our ceremonial hopes which leaves us free to treat our prime minister as exactly what he is—an elected official, paid for by the taxpayers, and serving at the people's will. While George W. Bush was being asked patsy questions by a subdued White House press corps, Tony Blair was being drubbed by un-cowed political hacks. It is far easier to do when you don't stand the moment the man walks into the room.

Certainly it is no secret that the political ambition of the British Left is to abolish the British Monarchy, but how does one square that with the Kennedyesque tendency of the American Left to institute its own national dynasty? Probably because the Left wants untrammeled democracy, equality and "progress", and the Right wants limited democracy, liberty and constitutionalism.

That is why an elective monarchy is intuitively fine for an American Democrat, whereas hereditary monarchy is an insufferable anachronism for the British, Canadian and Anzac lib-laboury. What right does a hereditary monarch have to say no to an elected government, they chime.

And there is reason to believe that this contradiction at the heart of the American soul, which has in recent years led several congressman, including Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Harry Reid, to introduce legislation to repeal the Twenty-second Amendment, may continue to evolve towards monarchy USA. In each of 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2009, Rep. Jose Serrano introduced a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the 22nd Amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as president. Each resolution, with the exception of the current one, died without ever getting past the committee.

But with Congress going formidably Democrat, and President Obama assuming Office, one has to believe they now have a fighting chance.

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A Gentleman's Library

Step one in the recovery of our civilization: zero tolerance for dust jackets.

— David Warren

The cancerous proliferation of the dreaded dust wrapper in modern society, to say nothing about the uncontrolled accumulation of cheap "paperbacks", has done much to degrade the gentleman's natural environment, writes David Warren.

I WISH TO THUNDER TODAY against an abuse that is rampant in our culture. In a few short decades it has grown from being the vice of a small minority of the perverse until it has spread to every section of society. Moreover both in itself and through commercial pandering to it a disgusting habit has led to many other evils — made them possible and contributed to a fiendish inventiveness in the production of still more.

The rot goes deeper -- j'accuse! -- and the very institutions of our state have conspired to spread this vice among our innocent children. Our very libraries once citadels of chaste instruction have joined in the parade of this horrific disorder perfidiously souring the generations to come.

Make no mistake the slide in our standards is enforced and is accelerated by a hidden network of damnable vested interests. It would take the utmost exertions of selfless individual labour and perhaps parliamentary legislation to break their grip. Indeed while I may decently hesitate to recommend the employment of the strong arm of the law for the invasion of domestic privacy it is hard to think what else could be efficacious in suppressing this affront to all we once held dear.

This is a vile business. The things are everywhere and I passionately hate them. I do not allow them into my own quarters and I remonstrate with others who try to bring them in -- verily right into the house in which I live. And yet I am taunted daily by the sight of them insolently littering the bookshelves of my companions and my neighbours.

For I refer to none other than the unspeakable habit of keeping "dust jackets". Nay not merely keeping them but keeping them wrapped around the books with which they were distributed and thus visible wherever and whenever the books themselves are on display.

So far as I am able to make out there were no dust jackets at all before about the middle of the 19th century. I speculate that the practice began with the use of blank tissue or wrapping paper to protect the covers of books especially the delicately-tooled often gold-leafed lettering on the (usually leather) spines. The bookbinder put this on and then the bookseller took it off for the wrap-around necessarily obscured such essential information as the book's title and author.

Then some innovative person thought of printing such information on the outside of the wrapper. This led inevitably to its retention by the bookseller. This ancestral dust jacket could continue protecting the book from scratching airborne grime and the effects of casual handling in the bookshop. The jackets also prevented the sun from bleaching the rich colours in the cover if the book were shown in the shop window.

It was found that more information about the book could be put more boldly on the jacket's spine face reducing the need of the casual browser to handle it. Then discreet advertising blurbs began to appear on the jackets' front covers only encouraging them again. Like material then spread to the front flap to the back cover to the back flap and catalogue information was finally put on the reverse side of the wrapper. All fair enough no reasonable man will object to a gentle sales pitch.

But then some mute inglorious Milton got the idea of putting a picture on the wrapper. At first decorative woodcuts and the like but soon more elaborate and attention-grabbing illustrations. Colours came into play then photography and rotogravure and other printing methods to make the jackets "sing" against the competition -- and by tiny increments they grew more and more objectionably shiny. Coatings were applied to make the colours more vivid. And in the space of little more than a century the average dust wrapper had become unmistakably loud and lewd.

I leave aside the development of these vicious modern "paperbacks" -- a direct consequence of the evolution of dust jackets with their screaming soft covers crudely glued around their cheap pulp innards. As newspapers and magazines paperbacks are meant to be read and discarded -- and thus handled without respect. To allow them to accumulate is to allow one's environment to be degraded.

But a book is a book is a book -- meant to be passed down the generations while speaking to each successive reader. No expense should be spared in preparing it for its journey through time. With age and careful use it should develop a fine patina; or in the case of disintegration the binding renewed or replaced.

Dust jackets are not merely an awkward impediment to reading (requiring real butchery when the public libraries plasticize them and glue them into place). What has happened in our time -- and owing directly to this wicked practice of keeping the dust wrappers -- can be seen if only the jacket is removed.

For the book within it is now often as not an hideous abortion. It is made no better than a paperback only larger. Stiff nasty grease-absorbing pasteboards encase unstitched puffy acidic sheets bearing garishly oversized typography. And that is only the outward manifestation of something deeper. For when you condescend to read the "book" almost invariably you discover it was mere vacuous stuffing to fill the lurid come-on wrapped around it. The jacket has been used to cover a multitude of sins.

Step one in the recovery of our civilization: zero tolerance for dust jackets.

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His Imperial Majesty The King-Emperor

King Edward VII (1901-1910) of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions,
Emperor of India and "Uncle of Europe".
The most resplendent and radiantly impressive portrait of any king of any era. — Glorious —

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Australian Digger awarded Victoria Cross first time in 40 years for heroic gallantry

The Monarchist salutes the selfless courage of Australian Trooper Mark Donaldson, VC


Governor-General Quentin Bryce awards Trooper Donaldson the Victoria Cross

Trooper Donaldson received the award for "exceptional bravery" after saving the life of a Coalition forces interpreter during an attack in Oruzgan in Afghanistan.

On September 2, a convoy of Afghan, American and Australian vehicles were ambushed in Oruzgan in Afghanistan.

While under sustained machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades, Trooper Donaldson selflessly drew the enemy's attention to himself so wounded soldiers could be moved.

Seeing an Afghan interpreter lying motionless on the ground, Trooper Donaldson ran 80 metres across exposed ground then carried the wounded man back to a vehicle and gave him first aid.

Trooper Donaldson then rejoined the patrol and continued to engage the enemy whilst under fire and to provide medical aid to fellow soldiers.

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Liberty or Equality: Would you feast at a medieval banquet or dine in a modern democracy?

Imagine, writes the erudite monarchist philosopher, Erik von Kühnelt-Leddihn (1909—1999), in Liberty or Equality, a tale of two feasts:

Let us conjure up the memory of a late medieval feast. The guests have arrived in a great variety of clothes, and even the costumes of the males show the most adventurous diversity. But they all would have belonged to one faith (devout Catholicism) and one basic ideology (feudal monarchism). Based on this common denominator, one might expect a relatively homogenous pattern of behaviour and conformity and not a society where liberty, individualism and the creative impulse flourished.

- OR -
Yet we can very well imagine a dinner given in a "modern democracy" in which all the men arrive in black tuxedo uniforms, all of them with clean-shaven faces, all of them uttering in unison with parrot-like monotony the same identical political and social clichés. After some questioning and investigation one would nevertheless find that this monotony stems from a chaotic cauldron of the most varied religions and philosophies. If a deist Mason, a Catholic, a Barthian, a vegetarian with Hinduist notions, and a "Freethinker" consider it as natural that they all believe in equality, majority rule, compulsory education and "progress" - then we have to doubt sincerely not only the logicalitv of their capacity to think, but also their real freedom of thinking!

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How did the anti-monarchist Nazi Party fair in the 1932 German federal election with monarchist friendly Catholics?

Percentage of Nazi Votes July 31, 1932

Percentage of Catholics in Germany (census 1934)

Not very bloody good, as it turned out.

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Genius and Aristocracy

If The Monarchist can be accused of eccentric behaviour, it is apparently because we stem from a mind so original it cannot be conformed to societal norms:

Eccentricity is not, as some would believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.

— Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), English Poetess

Speaking of eccentricity, I suspect that if you commissioned a scientific poll and asked people if they generally thought our shared monarchy was an ancient glory, harmless eccentricity or intolerable relic, 5% would declare it a glory, 60% would decide it was harmless and 35% would spit and wail intolerable, or somewhere thereabouts (we have opened a new poll in the sidebar, you are encouraged to generate grossly unscientific results).

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Much Ado About Nothing

Lieutenant Harry of Wales Wins Poll by Massive Margin:

"Leave Dude Alone" (An Officer and a Gentleman): 73%

"Racist Douchebag" (An Officer but not a Gentleman): 27%


POLL SAMPLE: More than 40,000

Note that the poll is written in the rough idiom of the times, so for our Gentlemen Scribes who do not understand today's vernacular, I took the liberty of translating it.

This non-story is nicely put to bed here, here and here.

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His Grace is in the Long Library

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Bring back Dames and Knighthoods

Hat tip to Professor Flint. The New Zealand Herald gets it:

"Much as the honours system is valued, it has never quite recovered from the former Government's decision to abandon titles such as knights and dames. These titles were thought to be redolent of the English class system and not appropriate for an egalitarian country such as New Zealand.

The argument was never wholly convincing. But what seems certain now is that the egalitarian version has not caught on as well as was hoped. Moreover, it is not likely to while the public sense that some appointments are political or simply matters of form. What is needed is a system that is thoroughly independent and that recognises outstanding contributions rather than just time served."

You mean to tell me that all you have succeeded in doing is replacing the English class system with a New Zealand class system? As in there's the political class and then there is everybody else? New Zealand needs to stop acting like a "Politician's Republic".

The only way to free the honours system from political taint is to take it away from the politicians and to put it in the hands of Her Majesty or Her Majesty's representatives. Always and forever.

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The Hipster: Enemy to the Gentleman

Counter-culture is a pervasive piece of Western civilization. Wherever there is one cultural trend dominant in a society, there will always be those who rebel against it. From the Hippies of the 60s to the Disco-goers of the 70s to the Punks of the 80s. We here at the Monarchist, and our comrades at the Chap magazine, can be considered a counter-counter culture. We seek a return to the more dignified times of our Edwardian forefathers.

Those who know me personally will know that I loath the subset of people known as hipsters. We all know the type. Vacant expression, horrible haircuts, skinny trousers, an "I don't give a damn" attitude, porkpie hats, unneccessary eyeglasses, oversized sunglasses, a love of post-modernism and irony, no respect or reverence for... anything really. Not the Queen, not their country, not any 'old' or 'uncool' institutional. They don't even have any respect for forms of comedy that aren't quirky and ironic. These are the people who made quirky-for-it's-own-sake films like "Juno" and "Superbad" enormous successes. They are, in essence, the bastardized product of the Hippie, Punk and Grunge movements, all mixed together into one bland, homogenized whole. They are the antithesis of everything gentlemanly. Most frustratingly, the vast majority of hipsters are from the Upper Classes, people who we expect to act out with more chivalry, more gentlemanly conduct, but instead these hipsters immerse themselves in the trappings of the working class. They eschew everything perceived to be 'old', chivalry included. Respect for Her Majesty, respect for government, respect for law, respect to family, they scoff at it all and shrug it off as unimportant. There's that "I don't give a damn" attitude I mentioned earlier. These people are the reason why voter turnout in countries like Canada has been at record lows in the recent years: Because young people are too self-absorbed to care about who governs them.

I recently found an article that i'd like to post here, that I think lays out, in precise and concise prose, what hipsters are, and why exactly they damage culture by their very existence. Perhaps it doesn't side with the Gentlemanly counter-counter culture that we here at the Monarchist uphold, but it does tear a strip off the Gentleman's biggest enemy. And you know what they say about the enemy of my enemy...

Ah, just a note of warning: This article does contain some coarse language which some gentlemen and ladies may find offensive. I know there are at least two incidents of the F-word. If you find that particularly distasteful, then abstain from reading. If you can handle a few instances of coarse language: Read on.

I‘m sipping a scummy pint of cloudy beer in the back of a trendy dive bar turned nightclub in the heart of the city’s heroin district. In front of me stand a gang of hippiesh grunge-punk types, who crowd around each other and collectively scoff at the smoking laws by sneaking puffs of “screw-you,” reveling in their perceived rebellion as the haggard, staggering staff look on without the slightest concern.

The “DJ” is keystroking a selection of MP3s off his MacBook, making a mix that sounds like he took a hatchet to a collection of yesteryear billboard hits, from DMX to Dolly Parton, but mashed up with a jittery techno backbeat.
“So… this is a hipster party?” I ask the girl sitting next to me. She’s wearing big dangling earrings, an American Apparel V-neck tee, non-prescription eyeglasses and an inappropriately warm wool coat.
“Yeah, just look around you, 99 percent of the people here are total hipsters!”
“Are you a hipster?”
“Fuck no,” she says, laughing back the last of her glass before she hops off to the dance floor.

Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.

But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of “counter-culture” have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the “Hipster.”

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its recent past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the perceived dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.

Take a stroll down the street in any major North American or European city and you’ll be sure to see a speckle of fashion-conscious twentysomethings hanging about and sporting a number of predictable stylistic trademarks: skinny jeans, cotton spandex leggings, fixed-gear bikes, vintage flannel, fake eyeglasses and a keffiyeh – initially sported by Jewish students and Western protesters to express solidarity with Palestinians, the keffiyeh has become a completely meaningless hipster cliché fashion accessory.

The American Apparel V-neck shirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Parliament cigarettes are symbols and icons of working or revolutionary classes that have been appropriated by hipsterdom and drained of meaning. Ten years ago, a man wearing a plain V-neck tee and drinking a Pabst would never be accused of being a trend-follower. But in 2008, such things have become shameless clichés of a class of individuals that seek to escape their own wealth and privilege by immersing themselves in the aesthetic of the working class.

This obsession with “street-cred” reaches its apex of absurdity as hipsters have recently and wholeheartedly adopted the fixed-gear bike as the only acceptable form of transportation – only to have brakes installed on a piece of machinery that is defined by its lack thereof.

Lovers of apathy and irony, hipsters are connected through a global network of blogs and shops that push forth a global vision of fashion-informed aesthetics. Loosely associated with some form of creative output, they attend art parties, take lo-fi pictures with analog cameras, ride their bikes to night clubs and sweat it up at nouveau disco-coke parties. The hipster tends to religiously blog about their daily exploits, usually while leafing through generation-defining magazines like Vice, Another Magazine and Wallpaper. This cursory and stylized lifestyle has made the hipster almost universally loathed.

“These hipster zombies… are the idols of the style pages, the darlings of viral marketers and the marks of predatory real-estate agents,” wrote Christian Lorentzen in a Time Out New York article entitled ‘Why the Hipster Must Die.’ “And they must be buried for cool to be reborn.”

With nothing to defend, uphold or even embrace, the idea of “hipsterdom” is left wide open for attack. And yet, it is this ironic lack of authenticity that has allowed hipsterdom to grow into a global phenomenon that is set to consume the very core of Western counterculture. Most critics make a point of attacking the hipster’s lack of individuality, but it is this stubborn obfuscation that distinguishes them from their predecessors, while allowing hipsterdom to easily blend in and mutate other social movements, sub-cultures and lifestyles.

Standing outside an art-party next to a neat row of locked-up fixed-gear bikes, I come across a couple girls who exemplify hipster homogeneity. I ask one of the girls if her being at an art party and wearing fake eyeglasses, leggings and a flannel shirt makes her a hipster.
“I’m not comfortable with that term,” she replies.
Her friend adds, with just a flicker of menace in her eyes, “Yeah, I don’t know, you shouldn’t use that word, it’s just…”
“Offensive?”
“No… it’s just, well… if you don’t know why then you just shouldn’t even use it.”
“Ok, so what are you girls doing tonight after this party?”
“Ummm… We’re going to the after-party.”

Gavin McInnes, one of the founders of Vice, who recently left the magazine, is considered to be one of hipsterdom’s primary architects. But, in contrast to the majority of concerned media-types, McInnes, whose “Dos and Don’ts” commentary defined the rules of hipster fashion for over a decade, is more critical of those doing the criticizing.

“I’ve always found that word [“hipster”] is used with such disdain, like it’s always used by chubby bloggers who aren’t getting laid anymore and are bored, and they’re just so mad at these young kids for going out and getting wasted and having fun and being fashionable,” he says. “I’m dubious of these hypotheses because they always smell of an agenda.”

Punks wear their tattered threads and studded leather jackets with honor, priding themselves on their innovative and cheap methods of self-expression and rebellion. B-boys and b-girls announce themselves to anyone within earshot with baggy gear and boomboxes. But it is rare, if not impossible, to find an individual who will proclaim themself a proud hipster. It’s an odd dance of self-identity – adamantly denying your existence while wearing clearly defined symbols that proclaims it.

“He’s 17 and he lives for the scene!” a girl whispers in my ear as I sneak a photo of a young kid dancing up against a wall in a dimly lit corner of the after-party. He’s got a flipped-out, do-it-yourself haircut, skin-tight jeans, leather jacket, a vintage punk tee and some popping high tops.

“Shoot me,” he demands, walking up, cigarette in mouth, striking a pose and exhaling. He hits a few different angles with a firmly unimpressed expression and then gets a bit giddy when I show him the results.

“Rad, thanks,” he says, re-focusing on the music and submerging himself back into the sweaty funk of the crowd where he resumes a jittery head bobble with a little bit of a twitch.

The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks. While punk, disco and hip hop all had immersive, intimate and energetic dance styles that liberated the dancer from his/her mental states – be it the head-spinning b-boy or violent thrashings of a live punk show – the hipster has more of a joke dance. A faux shrug shuffle that mocks the very idea of dancing or, at its best, illustrates a non-committal fear of expression typified in a weird twitch/ironic twist. The dancers are too self-aware to let themselves feel any form of liberation; they shuffle along, shrugging themselves into oblivion.

Perhaps the true motivation behind this deliberate nonchalance is an attempt to attract the attention of the ever-present party photographers, who swim through the crowd like neon sharks, flashing little blasts of phosphorescent ecstasy whenever they spot someone worth momentarily immortalizing.

Noticing a few flickers of light splash out from the club bathroom, I peep in only to find one such photographer taking part in an impromptu soft-core porno shoot. Two girls and a guy are taking off their clothes and striking poses for a set of grimy glamour shots. It’s all grins and smirks until another girl pokes her head inside and screeches, “You’re not some club kid in New York in the nineties. This shit is so hipster!” – which sparks a bit of a catfight, causing me to beat a hasty retreat.

In many ways, the lifestyle promoted by hipsterdom is highly ritualized. Many of the party-goers who are subject to the photoblogger’s snapshots no doubt crawl out of bed the next afternoon and immediately re-experience the previous night’s debauchery. Red-eyed and bleary, they sit hunched over their laptops, wading through a sea of similarity to find their own (momentarily) thrilling instant of perfected hipster-ness.

What they may or may not know is that “cool-hunters” will also be skulking the same sites, taking note of how they dress and what they consume. These marketers and party-promoters get paid to co-opt youth culture and then re-sell it back at a profit. In the end, hipsters are sold what they think they invent and are spoon-fed their pre-packaged cultural livelihood.

Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance.

An amalgamation of its own history, the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it. The cultural zeitgeists of the past have always been sparked by furious indignation and are reactionary movements. But the hipster’s self-involved and isolated maintenance does nothing to feed cultural evolution. Western civilization’s well has run dry. The only way to avoid hitting the colossus of societal failure that looms over the horizon is for the kids to abandon this vain existence and start over.

“If you don’t give a damn, we don’t give a fuck!” chants an emcee before his incitements are abruptly cut short when the power plug is pulled and the lights snapped on.

Dawn breaks and the last of the after-after-parties begin to spill into the streets. The hipsters are falling out, rubbing their eyes and scanning the surrounding landscape for the way back from which they came. Some hop on their fixed-gear bikes, some call for cabs, while a few of us hop a fence and cut through the industrial wasteland of a nearby condo development.

The half-built condos tower above us like foreboding monoliths of our yuppie futures. I take a look at one of the girls wearing a bright pink keffiyah and carrying a Polaroid camera and think, “If only we carried rocks instead of cameras, we’d look like revolutionaries.” But instead we ignore the weapons that lie at our feet – oblivious to our own impending demise.

We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.

So there it is, ladies and gentleman, the Hipster. A vapid, loathsome group, with nothing but disdain for all the virtues we at the Monarchist try to promote. Honour, loyalty, reverence, it means nothing to them. Being a gentleman means nothing to the men, being a lady means nothing to the women. They have no zest for life, no appreciation of the miracle that is life. They are shallow in the most profound of ways. The deep sense of spiritual satisfaction one would find in an Edwardian gentleman's club, that is something utterly unknown to them. Of all the distasteful parts of a distasteful modern age, they are the worst. They are the ones who undermine all the values we hold so dear. Let us hope that the Hipster movement dies off soon, as the first decade of the 21st century comes to a close.

God save the Queen and the Maple Leaf Forever
-Gladstone.

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The Great White Fleet

The Centennial Celebration of the U.S. Fleet's worldwide voyage of circumnavigation from 16 December 1907 to 22 February 1909.

A handsome postcard featuring King Edward VII of Australia and President Roosevelt of the United States. Featured in the middle is The Lord Northcote, Australia's 3rd Governor-General
In the twilight of the Old World and Theodore Roosevelt's administration, the president sought to demonstrate growing American naval power by dispatching 14,000 sailors and sixteen U.S. Navy battleships of the Atlantic Fleet along with their escorts, on a worldwide voyage of circumnavigation. The voyage was truly Magellanic for the Panama Canal was not yet open. The ships had to negotiate the Straits of Magellan, and the ice floes of the Southern Ocean, beyond the tip of South America. With their hulls painted white except for the red, white, and blue gilded banners scrollworked on their bows, these ships would famously come to be known as the Great White Fleet.

The fleet was greeted almost everywhere it called with crowds waving American flags. The highlight of the long deployment was probably the foreign port visits to New Zealand and Australia in August and September 1908. The 'Fleet Week' parades and celebrations in Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and Albany were perfect pandemoniums.

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Lord Dunsany's Dean Spanley

A gentle tale of Edwardian spiritualism set in Imperial England where upper lips are always stiff and men from the Colonies are not entirely to be trusted. The perfect winter warmer, says Tom Woollen.

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The Naval and Military Club of Australia

THE nation's most famous military club, which once boasted members such as General Sir John Monash and Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey, is on the brink of collapse.

Melbourne's Naval and Military Club is in danger of closing its doors after one hundred and twenty seven years of hosting some of Australia's (and the worlds) most renowned military personages, according to the Australian.

"THE nation's most famous military club, which once boasted members such as General Sir John Monash and Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey, is on the brink of collapse. The 127-year-old Naval and Military Club in Melbourne is saddled with debts of more than $10 million as a result of failed property deals and a fast-shrinking membership base. An independent audit report obtained by The Australian has found that the private club, which once hosted the Duke of Gloucester, Earl Mountbatten and Field Marshal Sir William Slim, could soon be forced to close its doors."

While technically not a gentleman's club (it accepts women members) it is still a club which deserves saving, and I intend to apply for membership to do what I can. But what else can be done to save such a venerable institution?

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Touring the Countryside, 1887

click print to enlarge

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The Philosophy of Loyalty

Contrary to popular assumption, "loyalty" is not a dead virtue. It may have evolved from the ancient feudal notion of fealty and homage towards kings, to the now well-established idea of a "loyal opposition", but it is still - and will always be - our most important virtue.

HOLINESS, THAT HIGHEST OF HIGH TEMPLE VIRTUES, is nothing without loyalty. If the very definition of loyalty is faithfulness and devotion to a cause or being, then what is holiness or sanctity if not loyalty to God, after all?

Truth is a high temple virtue too, so is honour. But truth only triumphs inasmuch as one is loyal to it; honour, inasmuch as one is loyal to the code. Loyalty is the cardinal virtue because it makes the other virtues possible. It is virtue enabling.

For example, what is love without fidelity? What is hope without faith? What is charity without fealty or obligation? What is respectfulness without deferance? What is duty or service without allegiance? What is perseverance if not faithfulness and devotion to the end? And what is responsibility if not loyalty to our families, our careers and our communities? Personal responsibility. Corporate responsibility. Civic responsibility. Duty and commitment. It all comes down to loyalty.

One could go on and on about the interconnectedness of loyalty with virtue. Is justice not just adherence to a common belief in fairness, is morality not just cultural allegiance to a virtuous set of principles, ethics and values? As the American philosopher Josiah Royce postulated in his Philosophy of Loyalty (1908), "Loyalty is the fulfillment of the whole moral law. You can truthfully centre your entire moral world about a rational conception to loyalty. Justice, charity, industry, wisdom, spirituality, are all definable in terms of enlightened loyalty." He called his grand ethical theory, "loyalty to loyalty", defending the unifying virtue as the supreme moral good.

Once you appreciate that loyalty is the greatest human virtue, you understand that betrayal is the greatest human vice. The old evils of blasphemy, venality, cowardice, avarice, gluttony and sloth were all interpreted as betrayals of one form or another. Self-treachery can lead to any number of personal follies, since betrayal can empower all matter of sins. In Shakespeare's own immortal words, that Colossus of English literature, "self-love my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting". Shakespeare understood that there is nothing beneath betrayal in the whole catalogue of sin.


And yet loyalty has often been misconstrued as a vice, and disloyalty sometimes misconstrued as a virtue. The "virtue of disloyalty" as put forward by Mark Twain and Grahame Green argued against giving in to the demands of loyalty in order to best protect the individual from those who exploit it, fearing it could potentially be used as a means to pursue unethical conduct on a grand scale. And indeed who could deny the idea has considerable resonance after bearing witness to history's murderous crimes under the fanatically loyal regimes of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia?

But as it is with any other virtue, loyalty does not ask for us to suspend our moral judgements. Conscientiousness and sincerity may be directed to unworthy objects, but conscientiousness and sincerity do not for that reason fail as virtues. Does the corruption of courage, by which we mean foolhardiness, prove then that courage is not a virtue? Obviously there is a point at which virtue becomes not a virtue at all, for confidence can be corrupted into vanity, generosity into extravagance and loyalty into complaisance and servility. The trust that tends to accompany loyalty need not encompass gullibility and credulity.

It was Aristotle who described every virtue as a balance point between a deficiency and an excess of a trait. The point of greatest virtue lies not in the exact middle, but at a "golden mean" sometimes closer to one extreme than the other. Virtuous loyalty then is just the golden mean between fanatical disloyalty and fanatical loyalty. The mean between treachery and subserviance.

Society may be somewhat off its golden mean these days (we no longer worship virtue), because the needs of liberty have (over)entrenched the practice of limiting loyalty. The ancient fealty towards kings has progressed into the well-established idea of a "loyal opposition", since we have come to Whiggishly accept that for loyalty to be virtuous there must be openness to corrective criticism on the part of both the subject and object of loyalty. The "corrective" qualification is important, for not any opposition is permissible. A loyal opponent is not just an opponent, but one who remains loyal, and that entails the opposition to stay within bounds that are compatible with the well-being or best interests of the object of loyalty.

Predominantly speaking, a loyal opposition will not advocate rebellion or revolution or even radical change, for the latter would endanger the object of loyalty and perhaps replace it with an undesirable alternative. Perhaps it is the commitment to opposition within the prevailing structures that has led some radical critics of loyalty to see it negatively as a conservative virtue, or not to view it as a virtue at all. It is conservative because it involves a commitment to securing or preserving the interests of its object, an object that has come to be valued for its own sake.

Nevertheless, the existence of a loyal opposition does not preclude the possibility that a more radical opposition might and indeed should subsequently be mounted. If the loyal opposition proves incapable of "reforming" the object of loyalty, the exit option might be taken. In such cases it could be argued that the object of loyalty was no longer worthy of its claim to it. It is only if we mistakenly or misguidedly think of loyalty as making an absolute claim on us that a derogatory charge of conservatism (for those who see conservatism as derogatory) against a loyal opposition will have any traction.

We can limit loyalty but we cannot eliminate it altogether, nor should such a thing ever be desired, for that path leads to anarchy and destruction. Suffice it to say that no person, no profession, no culture and no country can survive long without it. Loyalty is the glue of society, the gospel of reason and the creed of nations. As part of the natural order, loyalty is the cardinal virtue and the whole cornerstone of Tory philosophy. It is absolutely critical to our existence.

It goes without saying that The Monarchist holds it in the highest possible regard.

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"With emotion, to the man I used to be"

Emile Verhaeren (1855-1916)
THE PROUD TOWER built up through the great age of European civilization was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty and dark cellars. Its inhabitants lived, as compared to a later time, with more self-reliance, more confidence, more hope; greater magnificence, extravagance and elegance; more careless ease, more gaiety, more pleasure in each other's company and conversation, more injustice and hypocrisy, more misery and want, more sentiment including false sentiment, less sufferance of mediocrity, more dignity in work, more delight in nature, more zest. The Old World had much that has since been lost, whatever may have been gained. Looking back on it from 1915, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian socialist poet, dedicated his pages, "With emotion, to the man I used to be."

— Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower, A Portrait of the World before the War

A Reading by Emile Verhaeren (1903) - Emile Verhaeren as seen from the back in his red jacket

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The Strength of the Monarchy is Faith

Belief, Conviction, it has many names, but I shall call it Faith for the purposes of this article. The point I intend to make is that faith is the strength of Monarchy and a Monarch's subjects, and the lack of faith in... anything really, the country least of all, is what leads to the sorry state of affairs in republics such as the troubled US of A.

A Monarch is a representation, a symbol, of the Nation, much like a flag. Except far superior to a mere flag, which is a point that has already been made in previous articles here at the Monarchist. In the ideal monarchy, the citizens of the nation have faith in their Monarch, and vice versa. Since the Monarch is a representation of the country, faith in him or her becomes patriotic fervour. Patriotism lends strength to the country. Let us examine, for example, how the patriotism of Britain in the first half of the 20th century allowed that great kingdom to weather the strains of two world wars successfully. One may consider the Soviet Union of those times to also be a monarchy, albeit a non-lineal, autocratic, communist, absolute monarchy, not at all the constitutional monarchy that we at the Monarchist support. Still, the faith that the people had in their ruler became patriotism, which led the Soviet Union to victory on the Eastern Front of the Second World War. An earlier British example would be the patriotism of British citizens during the Seven Years War and Napoleonic Wars, a patriotic fire which became turned the Royal Navy and British Army of those times into an indomitable fighting force. Patriotism is a strong force indeed, a force to be reckoned with, and when it comes to inspiring patriotism, none do it better than a monarch, and none have done it better than a British monarch. In the golden age of Britain's empire, the Victorian era, when a soldier was to be sent to the Sudan or any other unattractive colonial posts, he would not ask himself "What does that stretch of desert have to do with Britain?", he would ask himself "What does that stretch of desert have to do with Her Majesty the Queen?". Many decades later, in the dark days of the First World War, it was King, God and Empire that motivated the British and Commonwealth soldiers on the front.

Now, i'm not suggesting that blind and dogmatic nationalism should be the dominant emotion of every loyal subject of Her Majesty. The right to question your government is a hallmark of a developed, free society. However, the distinction must be made between Government and State. In the United Kingdom, and the Commonwealth countries who base their government upon the Westminster system, Her Majesty is Head of State, and a Prime Minister is Head of Government. Case in point: Her Majesty Elizabeth II and the Right Honourable Gordon Brown. All British citizens have the right to question the government of Mr. Brown if they see fit. However, despite being able to question government, all British citizens (certain odious republicans, europhiles and immigrant radicals notwithstanding) love and revere Her Majesty the Queen. Because the Queen is the living symbol of the United Kingdom, she inspires patriotism in her subjects, strengthening the country as a whole. And with the position of Head of Government seperate from Head of State, British citizens may still question their elected officials, elect new officials, etcetera, etcetera. But not out of personal dislike or selfish concerns, as you see in some modern republics where politicians strive for the female vote, the youth vote, the ethnic vote, etcetera. In a Commonwealth Realm, at least as I have experienced it, one votes out of love for the country, out of believing truly that this will be the best thing for the country, not because the politician supports legislature that is best for you. In an ideal world, what is best for the country is best for the Queen, and vice versa, and people would vote as such. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world and thus we get odious republicans like Mr. Dennis Skinner elected to Parliament.

Now what happens when the Head of Government and Head of State are combined into one office, as in America? Well, sometimes things work out for the better. Oftentimes, you get figures like George W. Bush, who has made the Presidency an object of ridicule for the eight years of his term. Perhaps Mr. Obama will restore some reverence to the office, that remains to be seen. But I digress, when the Head of State is an object of ridicule, the country itself is an object of ridicule. Patriotism declines, and the strength of the country's people declines with it. People are the lifeblood of nations, and patriotism is the immune system which protects the blood from malicious outer forces. When there is no faith in the Head of State, the country is as a person who has lost his immune system to disease. Weak, fragile, sickly. And the lack of faith in the country spreads to other things. People start to think things like "Well if we can't believe in our country, what can we believe in?". Some become bitter cynics, others turn to cults, many fill the void with pop culture and celebrity worship. It ends up weakening the country as a whole. Even on their worst days, people still have faith and reverence in Her Majesty and the Royal Family, and thus in their country, and that is why Britain has, historically, been one of the strongest and most resilient of countries. Britain did not succumb to the republicanism of the 19th century, the nationalist seperatism of the Teens, the communism of the Twenties, the fascism of the Thirties and Forties, and none of the world wars that happened in that span. Why? Because faith in the monarchy was the strength of the Empire, and is the strength of the Commonwealth. As long as that is maintained, the Commonwealth will endure.

God Save the Queen and the Maple Leaf Forever!
-Gladstone

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We Three Kings

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Dublin (In the Rare Old Times)

Sackville (now O’Connell) Street, Dublin, United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland.

Stolen from Andrew Cusack. Although probably authentic, it appears that an identical image has been vandalised of its true Britishness, no doubt some mildly depraved Irish nationalist removed the Union Flags from this photo in a pathetic attempt to rewrite one of the most glorious episodes of Dublin's history.

It is of course plausible that the opposite is true, that the image above is the one that has been doctored by some overly eager Irish Tory who wanted to embellish its imperial splendour. If true, let me be the first to say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that kind of tampering.

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Grooming the Future King

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Positively Edwardian

Hair to the throne. A bearded, pheasant shooting Prince in the future mould of an Edward VII or a George V is perfectly fine by me. Bring back the old British kings!

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The Queen's Christmas Message 2008

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Old Father Christmas

Jolly old Saint Nick is as old as the Reformation. Today's merry old Santa came about as an allegorical response to joyless Puritans who condemned Christmas celebration as "trappings of popery" and the "rags of the Beast."

When England's Puritan rulers banned Christmas in 1647, pro-Christmas rioting broke out in several cities, and for weeks Canterbury was controlled by the rioters, who decorated doorways with holly and shouted royalist slogans. The Restoration of Charles II in 1660 ended the ban, but many clergymen still disapproved of Christmas celebration.

The symbolic personification of Christmas as a merry old figure began as resistance to Puritan criticism of observing the annual Christmas feast. He is "old" because of the antiquity of the feast itself, which its defenders saw as a good old Christian custom that should be kept. Allegory was popular at the time, and so "old Christmas" was given a voice to protest his exclusion, along with the form of a rambunctious, jolly old man.

In the British tradition, he was referred to as "Sir Christmas" or "Lord Christmas" during the Victorian era. Today he is affectionately known as Father Christmas.

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The First Royal Christmas Broadcast

With a hoarse voice as if roughened by weather, King George V delivered the first Royal Christmas Broadcast - written by author and poet Rudyard Kipling - from a study at Sandringham House, Norfolk, on Christmas Day 1932.

The text, of timeless simplicity, bore the hallmark of the master: "I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all; to men and women so cut off by the snows, the desert, or the sea, that only voices out of the air can reach them."

In emphatic tones and the accent of an Edwardian country gentleman, it sufficed to carry his words to world-wide acclaim. With its very first delivery, the Christmas broadcast from Sandringham had become an institution.

Legend has it that the King used a gold microphone. It was in fact a standard one encased in Australian walnut. A thick cloth covered the table to deaden the sound of rustling paper, for the King's hands were known to tremble with nervousness. He spoke from a little room under the stairs: "I broadcast a short message of 251 words to the whole Empire from Francis' room."

Although moved by its reception, the King had no wish to repeat his triumph. It was an ordeal, he complained, which spoilt his Christmas. Some of his courtiers also thought (correctly, as it turns out) that an annual broadcast would lose its impact through familiarity. The politicians were of course encouraging, even if the King was unimpressed.

He agreed to continue only when shown a batch of appreciative letters throughout the Empire. The broadcasts of 1933, 1934 and 1935 never quite achieved the sublime appeal of 1932; perhaps the replacement of Kipling by Archbishop Lang as the principal draftsman exchanged magic for mere eloquence. Yet all who gathered year after year for the King's Christmas message awaited the voice of a friend.

Source: King George V, by biographer Kenneth Rose.

Photo © Press Association

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Stand Up for Royal Prerogatives!

In these pages we are concerned with the British Crown Commonwealth.

Occasionally, however, arises a situation that seemingly has nothing to do with the British Crown Commonwealth. Such a situation is the situation in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, where the Grand Duke stood up on grounds of conscience against a new euthanasia bill.

The Parliament of the Grand Duchy swiftly acted to vote on a constitutional amendment to change the Grand Duke's power from that of assenting or sanctioning to that of promulgation. We hear, however, that there must be another vote in a few months, either in Parliament or in a referendum.

The situation is sadly a likely scenario of what might happen were the Commonwealth Sovereign to stand up against the will of politicians.

It is the Grand Duke of Luxembourg this time. It may be the Commonwealth Sovereign next time.

There is a petition, where apparently persons of all nations are welcome.

So if one values the Royal Prerogatives, signing the petition, with an optional personal message, in support of the Grand Duke would certainly be a right thing to do. Supporting regal privileges in other realms may give much needed support for the concept of regal privileges as such, which in turn may give support for the concept in the Commonwealth Realms.

Remember also that Queen Victoria was the grandmother of Europe.

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The Powers of the Crown – Satisfactory?

The so-called crisis in Her Britannic Majesty's Kingdom of Canada has been described as a situation where the choice was between two evils. Either the Governor General had to do as advised – block the popular will as expressed through Parliament, by prorogation – or refuse to do as advised by an elected official.


I'll leave the specifics of this situation to others, making more general comments here on the two main issues of principle; whether advice should be automatically heeded or not and whether a parliament should be suspended or not.

Let us have a look at the assertion that advice given must be followed. This is largely based on Walter Bagehot's three rights; the rights to warn, to encourage, and to be consulted. In addition, the case is made for so-called reserve rights, rights only exercised in emergencies, from time to time.

We will examine the assumption that the Crown must remain above politics. There is first of all a difference between being above politics and being above party politics. Also, there is a difference between being above politics and being above day-to-day politics. And perhaps above all, there is a difference between being above and ejected to irrelevance. We need to remember what the preposition above means. It says something about who or what is above whom or what. Being above and being totally sidelined are two very different things. One cannot be above and sidelined at the same time.

We so often hear that the Crown should remain politically neutral. However, there is also the issue of having a check on Parliament, and even on the popular majority. Any balancing act against the will of Parliament or the will of the popular majority will necessarily not be politically neutral. It may be political party neutral, but it will never be politically neutral. You cannot have an office as a check on democracy and politically neutral at the same time. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

The concept that the Crown must only act upon the advice of elected politicos reduces the Crown to a rubber-stamping machine. If the Crown is to be a rubber-stamping machine, it would be appropriate to ask what the point of monarchy is.

It can be argued that the rights of the monarch are there to prevent the “advisors” from coming with indecent advice. However, if assent is taken for granted, one could wonder if there is any such prevention at all.

Of course, there is the issue of emergencies. If you really have a machine, this machine would consent also in the most severe emergencies, wheras a monarch or its representative may not. It is, however, tempting to ask if we ever will encounter an emergency severe enough for royal intervention to occur. It is more probable that our liberty will continue to be nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts, to paraphrase the great Edmund Burke.

We should have a look at what this month has happened in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The Grand Duke refused to give his assent to a new euthanasia bill. The politicos, headed by the PM, promptly responded that the Grand Duke's role would be changed from assenting or sanctioning to promulgating. The PM was himself opposed to the euthanasia bill, but now a “more important” cause was at stake; the will of Parliament.

From time to time, we hear nice and fancy speeches along the lines that “democracy must be something more than majority rule.” We also hear the talk of constitutional democracy being a form of government where the will of the majority is limited. However, when a real check on the will of Parliament is exercised, that check is debunked, and we hear that nothing may stand in the way of the will of Parliament.

The Parliament in Luxembourg has reportedly acted swiftly. The constitutional amendment was passed reportedly this passed week. It took less than two weeks from the constitutional conflict arose to the politicos had passed the constitutional amendment. We have been told that debate on important issues is something we should allow time for. However, when parliamentary power is threatened there seems to be no limit to how little time there is.

The story in Luxembourg may serve as a scenario for what will happen were the Crown in a Commonwealth Realm ever to intervene in a similar way. Remember though, that scenarios are not certainty. Another scenario is that the Crown continues the policy of total non-intervention for decades – or even for another century and more – and people get even more accustomed to the concept that the Crown is a decoration.

The story in Luxembourg may also serve as an illustration of how far we in this world have come when it comes to unlimited democracy. Nothing must stand in the way of a popularly elected parliament. Nothing must stand in the way of the popular majority. It is sad.

Some people say that the Governor General of Canada did no wrong, but that it was Stephen Harper who gave the wrong advice. Advice is just that, advice. As we have established, it is a sad state of affairs where “advice” becomes verdict – where the Crown is ejected to irrelevance.

Now for the issue of prorogation. Situations do arise when there is a need for a monarch or a viceroy to tell the politicos to pull themselves together. When monarchs or viceroys do this, they are much criticized, but their doing so is still much needed. If parliamentarians decide one thing one week, and then turn around and decide the opposite the next, sending them on leave is perhaps not such a bad idea. We can think of other things also that are not so bad ideas in such a situation either.

Here we take issue though with something a bit beyond merely telling politicos to pull themselves together.

Yours truly often longs for the times when parliaments sat only a few weeks a year, and perhaps they didn't even meet every year. The federal Parliament in Switzerland is still like this, meeting only a few weeks a year.

When people complain about politicos having longer vacations than the regular people, we should respond that it is a good thing with longer vacations for politicos. When they're on vacation, they don't get to pass lots of new legislation.

We should rejoice when a parliament is suspended. There should be more of it. Of course, if Parliament has a secretariat that is not suspended, the suspension isn't as effective as it otherwise might be.

We have grown accustomed to parliaments and other legislatures meeting most of the year.

We should keep in mind what Judge Gideon J. Tucker told us:

No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

The thinkers that warned about the effects of unbridled democracy are many. Amongst them were Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Alexis de Tocqueville, and W.E.H. Lecky. Edmund Burke wrote of tyrannical democracy. So have many others. When we see that they were right, we should take their warnings seriously.

We have grown accustomed to popularly elected assemblies as always present, and we are told – and most of us believe – that they are guarantors of our freedom. Yet government interferes in our lives, homes, and businesses to an ever increasing level, not to mention to a degree foreign to most – if not all – monarchs of old. As the power of parliaments and legislatures has risen, the power of monarchs has declined. Declined also has our liberty.

We mark this year 320 years since the so-called “Glorious Revolution.” In these 320 years, democracy has far from delivered on its promise of liberty.

The right to vote is what is supposed to protect us. Yet, liberty is nibbled away anyway. We are told that the individual vote gives the individual influence. Yet, no one asserts that an individual right to pour a bucket of water into Lake Superior gives the individual influence.

If parliaments didn't meet so often, if their suspension was not so uncommon, and if the parliamentary will couldn't be taken for granted, it is likely that this world would be a better place.

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400 years of John Milton (1608-1674)

...he was a true Poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it.
- William Blake on Milton's Paradise Lost.

John Milton was born 400 years ago today, on December 9, 1608. If Oliver Cromwell is English history's most famous republican, John Milton must be regarded as England's most famous republican poet. Samuel Johnson called him that "acrimonious and surly republican" for his dangerous commitment to the English Revolution and his continuing unpopular attacks against Royalists right up to the time of the Restoration. Milton was very much a political, social and religious radical for his time, who fought for oligarchical government over absolute monarchy, who supported legal measures for divorce and polygamy, who rejected the Holy Trinity of the Bible and believed in mortalism over the divinity of Christ. He forthrightly hated the High Church, he hated the Lords and he hated the natural power of Kings. He was the very opposite of a Cavalier Poet.

Two weeks after the execution of Charles I in 1649, Milton committed himself to the Republican side by publishing The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates in support of the regicide. His argument (which runs in direct opposition to Hobbes' Leviathan published in 1651), was that a monarch's power is not absolute, but derived from the people he rules and held in accordance with a social contract. If a monarch breaks this contract by abusing his position, the people have the right to remove him from power. Not exactly radical stuff by the standards of today.

Milton joins hands with John Locke as an early apostle of liberalism who fought against the absolutist monarchist writings of Robert Filmer and Thomas Hobbes. His last major pamplet published in 1660 was an anti-monarchical protest in the face of the coming Restoration, which expresses a feeling of despair at seeing his countrymen so eager to run back to servitude. Milton seemed to think that it was better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven, but there is also a real sense of the man as a lone but stalwart adherent to a greater truth rebelling against a false authority. "The work is an impassioned, bitter, and futile jeremiad damning the English people for backsliding from the cause of liberty and advocating the establishment of an authoritarian rule by an elitist, unelected parliament." Perhaps fearing the tyranny of the many in addition to the tyranny of the one, he favoured not a democratic solution but a perpetual Rump Parliament, a kind of governing council with a permanent ruling membership. Unfortunately the modern word Politburo comes to mind, but to Milton this was The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth.

Milton's view of monarchy and the decadence of monarchy is a theme later emphasized in Paradise Lost. Within this epic, Milton's magnus opus, Satan is directly linked to monarchical rule. The tone of the piece is to ensure that the citizenry would not backslide into their old monarchical ways. In particularly, Milton relied on predictions of the future combined with biblical analogies to ensure that people knew the dangers inherent in such a governmental system. In particular, Milton argued that it would be a sin against God to bring back the monarchy and warned against the lack of freedom and virtue that would correspond with a king.

How stunned Milton would be 400 years after his birth to learn that freedom and virtue wear a Crown.

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The fall of Helengrad

I'm not sure why we failed to mention that New Zealand has a new prime minister, but the Honourable John Key nows heads up the other Down Under. Like so many others who are wedded to the spirit of the age, he reportedly believes that it is inevitable (yawn) that New Zealand will become a republic, so I'm not sure how much of an improvement this limosine liberal is over his predecessor. In any event, unlike his colleague across the Tasman, he had the dignified good sense not to raise the republican issue in advance of meeting Her Majesty a couple of weeks ago. (Notice also how his tie matches Her Majesty's dress!)

The Queen receives the Prime Minister of New Zealand, the Hon. John Key MP, at Buckingham Palace, 25 November 2008.
© Press Association

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Stephen Harper: Traitor to the Dominion

Now, I know that many of you here will have a good deal of respect for the so-called Right Honourable Stephen Harper, but let me say this: I have lost the respect I had for the Prime Minister. Allow me to elaborate.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the political drama occuring in the Elder Dominion these days. For those of you who aren't, allow me to sum it up: A coalition has formed of the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois, in unison declaring that the minority Conservative government of Mr. Stephen Harper no longer has the confidence of Parliament. The coalition wishes to put forward a non-confidence motion and if it passes, which it probably will, Stephen Harper will be forced to call an election, which he probably will lose against the Coalition of the Left. Why? Because of the Bloc Quebecois. Quebec, as i'm sure all of you know, is a pretty big, pretty populous, pretty important province in the Canadian electorate. Stephen Harper has never been able to build a political base there, mostly because of the dug-in Bloc Quebecois, which tailors specifically to Quebecois concerns on a national scale, especially seperatist/sovereigntist sentiments (exploring those two terms is another topic entirely). The Governor-General, doing her duty, intervened and prorogued Parliament, basically giving the two immensely angry sides a time-out to cool their tempers.

So how is Mr. Stephen Harper using this time-out? Why inciting hatred against the Bloc, of course. He's been portraying the Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition as a 'deal with the Devil', Conservatives across the country have been calling the Bloc 'seperatist scum', basically he's just been trying to turn English Canada against French Canada. Why? You may ask? Because Stephen Harper is hungry for a parliamentary majority, and Quebec is the one bastion that he will never overthrow. So his solution? Simply remove them from the equation. If his cunning little campaign of hate works, the Quebecois will feel alienated, will feel that L'Anglais hate them, and if the Bloc calls another referendum, they WILL seperate. And with Quebec out of the picture, that's 75 seats in Parliament gone right there. The loss of those 75 seats means that Parliament will be reduced to 233 seats... and the Conservatives control 143, a strong majority. To sum this up, Stephen Harper will divide up this country, which has stood united for over a hundred years, just to claw his way up on the pecking order.

THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why Mr. Stephen Harper has lost my respect! Any man with true loyalty and devotion to this Dominion would not divide the country just to further his own power. I think it must be said: Stephen Harper is an underhanded traitor to the Elder Dominion for resorting to such dishonourable and undemocratic means just to further his own power. It is not the will of Her Majesty the Queen for Quebec to seperate from Canada, and the majority of Canadians do not want it either. I certainly don't. And what kind of example does it set to the world if Quebec seperates and Canada is divided? To much of the world, we are the city on the hill, the example of peace, prosperity and unity to follow. What is next if Quebec and Canada part ways? Will Scotland leave the United Kingdom next? Will Northern Ireland and Wales go as well? Will all the great old empires and states be divided up by damnable nationalists, convinced that their petty differences are matters of life and death? This is exactly the kind of thinking that led to the powderkeg of the Balkans, and we are all well acquainted with what the Balkans caused in 1914.

If you continue as you do, Mr. Harper, perhaps you will gain your precious majority, but you will live on through out history as the great betrayer of Queen and Commonwealth, the man who divided up the Elder Dominion, Canada's Benedict Arnold.

God Save the Queen and the Maple Leaf Forever!
-Gladstone

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The Queen's Speech

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Why the Governor General was right.

It’s over: the day, the decision, the crisis, the coalition, and Stephane Dion’s leadership. After the abortive putsch — constitutional as it may have been — the field is strewn with bodies, and the bloodletting has just begun.
- Andrew Coyne on the end of the crisis, the Governor General's decision and the impending death of the Coalition.

I applaud the Governor General and her wise counsel on her decision to prorogue Parliament and to give its Members a badly needed time-out. In my judgement, she picked the least worst of two very bad options, and she should be commended for doing what was required to defend the neutrality and dignity of her office. Make no mistake about it, on the face of it this sets an awful precedent, of backing a prime minister and his ministry on the run from the will of Parliament. But she demonstrated considerable prudence - perhaps even courage - for the following reasons:

1. Parliament expressed a degree of confidence in the Conservative government when it passed the Throne Speech last week. I say again, last week.

2. The current government was elected seven weeks ago with a stronger minority. In a five party/leader race, Stephen Harper won 143 of 308 seats and 37% of the vote, compared to just 77 seats and 26% of the vote for Stephane Dion's Liberals. The Liberal leader received no mandate to be prime minister.

3. Granted you should never govern based on polls, but there are polls and then there are polls. Polls now indicate that had it been a two leader race, one between Harper's Conservatives and a Dion led coalition of the Left, the Conservatives would have won a comfortable majority of the seats with a commanding 20 point lead in the popular vote, something like 47% to 24%. Canadians do not like it.

4. Had the GG thrown out the Conservatives and installed the rickety Coalition in government, the populace would have goaded for her removal or even worse, brought our whole parliamentary monarchy into disrepute.

5. The GG showed a small degree of courage in her home province of Quebec by not handing a share of power to the Bloc Quebecois. Although she stands to gain by completely dispelling any notion that she's in league with the Quebec sovereigntists (an issue that came up just prior to her appointment by the Queen), this will not be a popular move in much of la belle province.

6. Granting power to the Coalition would have fanned the flames of national disunity. It would have pitted Quebec against the rest of Canada, especially Western Canada.

7. Removing the Conservatives from power would have enraged the West. I'm not talking about anger here, I'm talking spiteful, seething and spitting rage.

8. The Coalition is an inherently unstable and factionous thing led by an unusually weak leader, who may have not lasted past Christmas. The Coalition is deeply unpopular with the country partly because it appears like a naked grab for power so soon after an election. Having installed such a fragile edifice, the Governor General would have received a share of the inevitable blame that would arise as a result of the Coalition's failure to properly and responsibly govern the nation.

9. The Conservatives will still have to face the music in January, only this time on a more substantive issue, like the expected federal budget. If they lose the confidence of the House then, the Coalition should be given an opportunity to govern. This is not a cop-out, it's a time-out. A badly needed time-out.

10. As a result of all of the above, few are questioning the political neutrality of the Crown. Our Queen has been saved. God Save The Queen.

Update: Andrew Coyne says it better than I can on the merciful death of the Coalition

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Over to You, Your Majesty

T'WAS THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, and all through the House, not a creature was stirring, except Dion the mouse. It is amazing how such an enfeebled Liberal leader, who got so thoroughly trounced in the federal election held barely six weeks ago because Canadians did not want him as prime minister, stands to become Prime Minister of Canada nonetheless if Governor General Michaëlle Jean refuses Prime Minister Harper's formal request this morning to prematurely prorogue Parliament; a request made for no other reason than for the current government to avoid facing a non-confidence vote they would very likely lose. This is a technical abuse of the British Parliamentary system.

And now the Queen's representative has been put in a very tricky political situation, because to deny the wish of a sitting prime minister is as unpalatable as granting it, of overseeing a transition to power to a man who just lost the election, who so clearly lacks the democratic legitimacy to lead the country. Yet Stephane Dion apparently has the confidence of the House through behind-the-scenes coalition dealing with the three leftist/left-leaning opposition parties, who combined have about a dozen more seats than the ruling Conservatives. How did Harper so badly miscalculate their weaknesses, how did he not see that the Liberal leader far from being weak, had nothing to lose after losing an election so badly, one that forces him to vacate the Liberal throne once a new leader is chosen. How did he not see that the social democrats and their leader would sign on to anything and with anybody who would promise to waste billions in an utterly futile "economic stimulus" package. And how did he not see that the Quebec nationalists/sovereigntists/separatists/socialists (take your pick) would support any spending measure that would see the dole role into Quebec by the truckload. Harper is an evil genius alright, we know he was able to singlehandedly unite the Right, and now he has shown an equally remarkable aptitude for uniting the Left.

To sum up, every federal party leader in this political crisis has egg on their face for dragging the Queen into this unbelievable mess. The pundits go on about some perceived "constitutional crisis", but let's be clear: there is no crisis here that the Crown cannot referee or solve. A decision simply needs to be made by Her Majesty's representative, and that is that. She wields an incredibly awesome power right now, contrary to the constant assertions of republicans, the Crown is not some useless instrument that should be discarded, but an abolutely necessary and critical part of our government. We are witnessing just how critical it still is today.

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A Team of Three

The Monarchist League of New Zealand has a wonderful new website: Monarchy New Zealand. One of their pages caught my attention, which I think should be used more often to bolster the argument that our countries are better constituted than all of the world's modern republican states.

All countries have a "head of state" and a "head of government". In some political systems the president is the head of state and the head of government. In other countries, the two roles are separated. Sometimes the head of state is a president, but in all constitutional monarchies, the head of state is the monarch. The head of government is the Prime Minister. He or she is elected by the people and controls day to day government operations. This separation of powers is designed to prevent one person from having too much power.
New Zealand is fortunate because, as a Commonwealth Realm, it has a Governor-General. The Governor-General is neither head of government nor head of state. Often he or she is referred to as the "de facto head of state" which means that he or she operates like a head of state, but isn't legally one. Because we have a Governor-General, we can divide political power between three people, instead of just two.

The Governor-General can keep watch over the Prime Minister to ensure he or she is not attempting anything illegal. The Queen can keep an eye on both to make sure they are doing their jobs. Fortunately, the system works so well that there have been very few cases where the Queen or a Governor-General needed to take action to stop a prime minister from abusing power. It has happened before in other countries, and if it happens here in the future, kiwis can be confident that their democracy is safer in the hands of three people than in the hands of one or two.

New Zealand and the other Commonwealth Realms (except Britain) are the only countries in the world which divide their highest political powers between three people. This arrangement has made our democracy much stronger. To concentrate the powers of three people into the hands of two would be a fundamental change in our political system and would take us down a road that has not be very successful in many other countries.

One is good, two is better, three is best!

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The Imperial State Crown

Her Majesty the Queen gives a talk on the Imperial State Crown.

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A Whig's Perspective

Good day to all you fine, discerning gentleman and ladies here at the Monarchist. I am a new scribe here, and I have written this article as a way of introducing myself. You may call me Gladstone. Not only that, but I would like to introduce my beliefs in this article, so that none of you excellent Tories will be surprised by my decidedly Whig perspective.

I am a Progressive, a Leftist, a Liberal, and a Whig. With all that, you'd expect that I'd be firmly against Her Majesty the Queen, correct?

No. No, I am a most loyal Canadian subject of Her Majesty the Queen. In fact, I sing God Save the Queen every day while going about my morning routine. I have been this way since a young age (though some would argue I am still at a young age, but I digress). If I could have Red Ensign bed sheets, I probably would. If I could change the Canadian anthem from the overly neutral O Canada to the more patriotic Maple Leaf Forever, of course I would. I love Her Majesty, and I love my English heritage, and I love my Canadian homeland, and I love this great British Commonwealth of which we all belong.

So how is this so? You will find many Whigs these days to be odious republicans (The political belief, not the American political party, of course). Hopelessly idealistic egalitarians, or staunch democrats who can't stand the mere idea of having a dignified part of government, set above the unwashed masses. The heirs of Woodrow Wilson, the Great Idealist himself. Many of them are just Dennis Skinner-type working class buffoons with no reverence for the Crown that has lasted for nearly a thousand years. Proletariats rising against their, quote-unquote, “oppressors”, Marx would be proud. On a related note, Dennis Skinner is one of my all-time most hated MP's ever. I will tell you why. It's because, despite my leftism, I am a proud and unabashed elitist. As the eloquent scribes here at the Monarchist put it: “Equality be damned!”

Oh, I am no racist, nor sexist, nor homophobic. My elite is not based on things that do not matters, not based on things a person has no control over. The noblesse, to me, are those who strive to do better than their peers. And we will always have those people, who elevate themselves and their families above the unwashed masses. Hereditary titles, like the noble Peerage of the United Kingdom, are continuing honouring of a man's deeds, by acknowledging those descent from him. Her Majesty, our fount of honour, is a living acknowledgement of William the Conqueror's prowess and ambition. That is my elite, not based on any race, gender or sexual preference, but on your quality and that of those who came before you. Is that elitist? Indeed so, and I embrace it.

This is why I support Her Majesty and the House of Windsor. They are the dignity of Britain and it's Commonwealth. In addition to the great services they provide as a national symbol (far superior to any mere flag), a unifying force, as diplomats, in the case of the Princes, soldiers, and the historic British championing of minority rights, they are the source, the fount of honour, of dignity in government. Pomp and splendour, they lend magnificence to matters of government. Can anyone truly compare a Presidential inauguration motorcade to Her Majesty's coronation? I think not. The pros they provide far outweigh the cons, or the possible pros of discarding them. Some other nations tell us to 'grow up' and force Her Majesty to abdicate. How is it grown up to reject a magnificent tradition? Is the mindless rebellion of an angry teenager throwing a fit against his or her parents 'grown up'? Most would say no. Then why is it grown up to discard a tradition that has done nothing but good for Britain and the Commonwealth? I say: God Save our Queen, God preserve the Windsors, and the Maple Leaf Forever!

-Gladstone

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The Wrinkles of Centuries

While reading J.K. Baltzersen's post on Queen Maud of Norway, as well as noticing that rather striking portrait of our future sovereign in the headers celebrating his 60th birthday, I began to ponder the question of dynasty. Victor Hugo, who was himself a republican but not overtly hostile to crowned institutions, observed in Les Miserables:

But it is not always easy to create a dynasty. At a pinch any man of genius, or even any soldier of fortune may be made into a king. Bonaparte is an instance of the first, and an instance of the second is Iturbide, the Mexican general who was proclaimed emperor, deposed in 1823, and shot the following year. But not any family can be established as a dynasty. For this some depth of ancestry is needed: the wrinkles of centuries cannot be improvised.

I am a monarchist by tradition. It is the tradition of my country, Canada, to have a monarchy. Historically monarchies have been more stable and humane institutions than their republican competitors, the only really successful republics in history are the Roman, the Swiss, the Dutch (which is today a monarchy) and the American. Most republics have been disasters. The French Republic - now on version 5.0 - survived into the second half of the twentieth century largely because of the efforts of one man, Charles de Gaulle, whom many called an uncrowned king in his dozen years as President. Why are most republics such spectacular failures? The modern world affords many examples of stable democratic republics, South Korean, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Greece and most of the states of Eastern Europe. Notice, however, that none of these republics have strong liberal democratic traditions dating before 1945, most were dictatorships of one variety or another as late as the 1970s or 1980s. None, importantly, have faced a grave military or economic crisis and should - forbid the thought - the world undergo another Great Depression I cannot see many standing for very long.

The period between 1929 and 1932 signalled the end of what has been called the first era of globalization, it was also the end of the first era of global liberalism, in the broad and original understanding of that word. Poverty and crisis overwhelmed the feeble republics of Europe and Latin America. Among the republican states only Switzerland, France - barely - and America survived. The stability of the House of Windsor, and the houses of Scandinavia, were never questioned. The secret is not, I think, really monarchy but something we sometimes miss here at the Monarchist, dynasty. Lloyd George, no friend of the peerage or the crown, once remarked about the House of Lords:

There are no credentials. They do not even need a medical certificate. They need not be sound either in body or mind. They only require a certificate of birth just to prove that they were the first of the litter. You would not choose a spaniel on those principles.

Too clever by half, as Lloyd George often was. The first of the litter doesn't seem an inspired method of selection, and it goes as much for monarchs as for peers. Yet it works well. An inherited position, especially of great wealth, mitigates corruption or ambition. A politician has the perspective of a few years between elections, and he is always fund raising. A monarch, or one in waiting as Prince Charles, must take the perspective of centuries. Unlike private wealth, which may come without responsibility, the wealth and glory of a monarch in a modern liberal democracy does not. The Queen and the Prince of Wales are among the hardest working people in the United Kingdom, enduring a schedule as brutal as that of many cabinet ministers or top executives. To whom much is given, much is expected.

It instills a sense of duty and public service, in the older meanings of those words. Today duty is seen as a thankless task performed with reluctance. Public service a code word for subservience to an over mighty state. No sane man would wish to be King, but having been placed in that line of fate, awesome even in a constitutional state, the opportunity to make an impact on the world is still great. It is this perspective, the wrinkles of centuries, that gives a monarchy its flavour and grandeur. To have lasted so long does not guarantee goodness, but it suggests that an institution has spoken to some deep desire and need of the human race. We ignore this truth at our peril. Those eager to replace the House of Windsor, and the personal union of Her Majesty's 16 Commonwealth realms, with some kind of crowned republic are pursuing an, at best, foolish, and often dishonest strategy. Crowned republic is another way of saying republic later. Any soldier of fortune can be made a king, or in our more stable times any patronage appointment can be made a king.

We too, in Canada, Australia and New Zealand can have some bloodless head of state like Italy or Israel, a nonentity plucked from obscurity to shake hands with foreign diplomats, a figure too weak and irrelevant to challenge an overly ambitious minister of state. A monarch like our current sovereign is not crossed lightly. She has seen too much and been enough away from the fray of politics, a detached and largely impartial observer, not to have learned much. We do not know what she thinks. We are fairly certain she was no fan of Mrs Thatcher, but very much liked Mr Wilson and Mr Major. Yet government worked as smoothly as ever. It was headlines when the Queen was alleged to have reprimanded Mrs Thatcher for being "uncaring," yet Thatcher could not - whatever the rightness of her cause - ignore the crown with impunity. Even a constitutional monarch who reigns more than rules, provides a valuable check on the power of her ministers. A monarch who was made a monarch by chance, by political whim or election, is a feather in the breeze. A dynasty is something not to be trifled with.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

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In Memory of Maud of Wales

It was November 26, 1869. A Princess was born to Prince Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, and Princess Alexandra, the Princess of Wales. The newborn Princess was Maud Charlotte Mary Victoria of Wales.

As such she was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, the grandmother of Europe. It was a time when non-morganatic marriage was not only the norm, but a strict norm. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who saw his last day in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, could not let the throne pass to his children with his consort Sophie, who was only of aristocratic blood. She was a mere noblewoman. It was a time when royals marrying consorts of the lowest order – with “pasts” – was unthinkable, save for the most extremely vivid imaginations.

Princess Maud of Wales was born in the year Royal Assent was given to annual ordinary sittings of Parliament in the country she was to become Queen Consort. In the year she turned two years old, annual sittings came into effect. Previously, ordinary sittings had been every third year. She was born before parliamentary government was very much an issue in the country she was to become Queen Consort.

On July 22, 1896 Princess Maud of Wales married Prince Carl of Denmark. On July 2, 1903 the marriage was blessed with Prince Alexander – later Crown Prince Olav and King Olav V of Norway.

It was in an age when dissolved unions and independence gave states that sought kings of their own. It was in an age when the default form of government was monarchy. It was in an age when nations that sought to establish a form of government sought to establish a monarchy. It was in an age when the revolutionary republic was the only republic besides the ancient republic of the Helvetic Confederation among the major states of Europe. The revolutionary republic was looked upon with suspicion, and rightly so.

The powers of Europe, the revolutionary republic included, wanted Norway to retain her monarchy.

It was time when the ancient Kingdom of Norway, so often erroneously referred to as a new monarchy, sought a King of her own.

There was a referendum on whether to consent to the Norwegian Parliament – the Storthing – inviting Prince Carl of Denmark to ascend the vacant, ancient throne of St. Olav. This referendum is so often referred to as a referendum over the issue of monarchy vs. republic. 79 % consented to make Prince Carl King, and thus to make Princess Maud Queen Consort of Norway.

Prince Carl was proclaimed King on November 18, 1905, upon which Princess Maud became Queen Consort of Norway. Having taken the name Haakon VII, the new King came with his Queen Consort and Crown Prince Olav on a cold winter day, November 25, 1905, to the Norwegian capital of Christiania.

The Danish Prince had been selected to ascend the throne of St. Olav due in large part to his status as son-in-law of His Britannic Majesty King Edward VII. Building an alliance through relations of one's royalty was important. Such was this age.

King Haakon and Queen Maud were crowned in Trondhjem on June 22, 1906. A post-coronation photo taken in the local royal residence with robes and regalia reportedly prompted His Britannic Majesty to report back that his daughter and son-in-law suited the outfits well. In the wake of the coronation, the King and Queen traveled their Kingdom. In the city of Haugesund the dessert Queen Maud Pudding was composed to His Britannic Majesty's daughter's honor. The dessert is popular at weddings and other occasions till this day.

Whilst accepting popular sovereignty, whilst being much less publicly confrontational than his predecessor, King Oscar II, whilst seeing himself as significantly less a power in his own right than his predecessor, King Haakon VII did have ambitions of being something else than a marionette of the politicos. There was a struggle. His Majesty once commented that a handkerchief was something he was allowed to poke his nose in. By his side was Queen Maud.

The republican politicos who brought the new King and his Consort, Maud of Wales, to the land had other plans than the country to remain a monarchy. They wanted to use him as security in the beginning and later dump him for a republic. His Majesty was to reign for almost 52 years – well into the democratic republican age.

Queen Maud visited the land of her birth quite often. She attended the latest coronation of a King in Westminster Abbey, that of His Britannic Majesty King George VI, Her Majesty Queen Maud's nephew. That was to be her last public appearance in the United Kingdom. She passed on on November 20, 1938, 70 years ago today, less than 17 months too early to be at King Haakon VII's side when his Kingdom suffered the consequence of the politicos not following Majestic advice about defense level.

Queen Maud is laid to rest with King Haakon VII, who survived his consort with almost 19 years, in the Royal Crypt in Oslo.

The widower King Haakon VII boarded HMS Devonshire on June 7, 1940, bound for London, which was to be the capital of the Kingdom of Norway for just about five years. The King, with few exceptions, met with and chaired his Cabinet every Friday for about five years in what was then the official Royal seat, the Royal Norwegian Embassy, today's Ambassador's residence, close to Kensington Palace.

The Norwegian Government today has this historic building in its possesion, but has let the Cabinet offices from the WWII years go.

As an uncle-in-law of His Britannic Majesty, King Haakon stayed mostly at Windsor Castle. His Majesty's 70^th birthday was celebrated in Royal Albert Hall. His Majesty served as a symbol of liberation through the war years, and his voice was welcomed on all the "illegal" radios around the occupied land. King Haakon's popularity outclassed what was thought of the politicians who served as his Cabinet Secretaries. At the end of the war, there were voices speaking up for more regal powers, notably that of Johan Scharffenberg, a man who had pushed for a republic back in 1905.

Queen Maud Land in the Antarctic is the largest Antarctic claim, a Norwegian dependency. It was recognized by the United Kingdom and His Britannic Majesty's dominions of Australia and New Zealand.

Queen Maud Mountains in Antarctica are also named after Maud of Wales. So is Queen Maud Gulf in Nunavut in Her Britannic Majesty's Kingdom of Canada. There is also the Queen Maud Secondary School in Hong Kong.

Maud of Wales may have had a back seat in history compared to King Haakon VII. However, without Maud of Wales there probably would not have been a King Haakon VII, and we certainly would not have had King Olav V, whose subject yours truly was born.

The relations between the House of Windsor and the House of Norway are stressed from time to time, realtions which make yours truly a subject of a great-grandchild of Edward VII.

We honor the memory of Maud of Wales on this 70^th anniversary of Her Majesty's passing.

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Ranch Republican or British Monarchy?

We remember the wars, the five trillion dollars in added American debt and the calamities that bookend the Dubya years. But the English-speaking gentleman did not truly become aghast until that unforgettable summer day in 2007 when Her Majesty came to Washington on one of her rare state visits to the Capitol.

How not to wear white tie, courtesy of George W. Bush:

1. The waistcoat should never extend below the bottom of the tailcoat.

2. The shirt collar must be a wing collar.

3. The trousers are to be worn at the waist, not slung down around the hips.

4. The shirt sleeve should have at least 3/4" of cuff. (To be fair, Prince Philip is equally guilty of this particular faux pas, but you didn't read that at The Monarchist. By the way, what do you suppose our Grand Old Duke is thinking as he sets his eyes on Dubya?)

5. Also, avoid goofy laughter in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen.

From The Black Tie Guide, A Gentleman's Guide to Evening Dress. (Except for number five which is mine).

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High Anthony

Did Drinamyl, a combination of amphetamines and barbiturates, destroy the British Empire? Or at the very least impair the judgment of its Prime Minister, during one of the gravest moments in British history? In a new book David Owen, a physician and one of the youngest foreign secretaries in history, traces the influence of illness in the personal judgment of various world leaders, including one of his predecessors, Sir Anthony Eden. Blessed with matinee idol good looks, a fine sartorial style and impeccable manners, Eden served three times as Foreign Secretary, and was Churchill's closest ally and lieutenant during his two terms as Prime Minister. Widely popular in the country, and generally respected as one of the century's most effective foreign secretaries, he succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister in April of 1955 with great promise; quickly calling and winning a snap election. In a little more than a year and a half he was out of office, forced out by ill-health and one of the greatest foreign policy blunders in the country's history.

Gamal Abdel Nasser, the opportunistic young military office who helped overthrow the Egyptian monarchy, only to then seize power for himself. Seeking to consolidate his power, both in Egypt and establish his credentials as the leader of the Arab world, he seized control of the Suez Canal. The proximate cause was the refusal by the American government to finance construction of the proposed Aswan Dam, later built with Soviet assistance. Nasser's long-term goal was the removal of British influence in the Middle East, replacing its near century long hegemony with an Egyptian one. Although built by French engineers, the majority of the shares were owned by the British government, thanks to the quick thinking of Disraeli and his friends in the Rothschild banking family during a financial crisis in 1875.

To Eden, who had resigned as Foreign Secretary in 1938, in part, because of Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, Nasser was a latter day Mussolini and nationalization, something akin to the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. President Eisenhower, and his usually bellicose Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, saw the Suez Crisis differently. Supporters, in principle, of decolonization and keen to supplant British influence in the oil rich region, the American government refused to support military action. It was at this moment that Eden, arguably, committed one of the gravest strategic errors ever made by a minister of the crown. Overestimating the importance of the special relationship in Eisenhower and Dulles calculations, and Britain's comparative economic strength, he launched a plan of subterfuge remarkable for both its scale and complexity.

British, French and Israeli representatives meet in secret at Sèvres, near Paris, and agreed that Israel should invade the Sinai. Using this as a pretext an Anglo-French force would invade and seize the canal, arguing that it was attempting to keep apart the warring parties. The protocols of Sevres, as they became known, recalled the Great Power deals of a different era, like the Sykes-Picot Agreement which divided the Middle East between Britain and France during World War One. 1956 was the era of the Superpowers; Britain and France were now firmly in the American orbit. The deception of Sevres was too convenient and complex not to be discovered. In a less democratic and, from geopolitical perspective, bi-polar world this might not have been a problem. Eisenhower, fearing a Soviet response and greatly annoyed for having been kept out of the loop by Eden, forced London and Paris to agree to a cease-fire and withdraw. Eden had gambled that Nasser's flirtation with the Soviets would compel Washington to accept, if none too happily, an Anglo-French fait acompli over Suez. Instead Eisenhower threatened to, literally, starve Britain into submission if it did not agree to an American cease-fire plan. Much of Britain's war debt was held by the American treasury, Eisenhower threatened to dump enough of this debt on world markets to force a collapse in the pound. A nation dependent on imports of food to survive, Britain would be unable to feed itself. Eden, from force majeure conceded and went to seek medical treatment.

During the tense months of Summer and Autumn 1956, Anthony Eden stood at the center of Anglo-French efforts to retake the Canal. Had he been able to persuade Eisenhower to, at the very least, not interfere in his efforts to undermine Nasser, there would have been no Suez Crisis as we understand it. The retaking of the Canal would have been a dramatic coup for Eden and Britain and probably would have broken Nasser's power. When an elected Persian government nationalized its oil industry, Britain responded by orchestrating a coup - in conjunction with the CIA. Having successful defied a major western power, something no Arab leader had done in centuries, Nasser became a regional hero and icon for decades. Emboldened by Egypt's success a wave of nationalizations swept the Middle East, granting the region's dictatorships a flood of oil wealth to sustain their regimes.

If the sin of Suez lies with Washington, for failing to support British efforts, the error of the crisis lies with Eden, for miscalculating American and, to a lesser extent, Commonwealth support. Neither proved willing to follow London's, and his, lead. Owen points to a medical reason for Eden's poor judgment, a combination of prescription drugs required to deal with a recurring infection, itself the result of a botched surgery to remove gallstones. A slip of a doctor's scalpel may have altered the course of history for the worse. The counter argument to this is that nothing, not even Eden's considerable powers of persuasion, could have convinced Eisenhower to support a military retaking of the Canal. He might, however, in the fashion for which Dulles brothers (John Foster's brother ran the CIA) were well-known even then, have orchestrated a coup against Nasser. The Egyptian dictator was extremely popular, but so was the Iranian government the CIA had overthrown less than three years earlier. Over the long-run, however, Eden looks the most prescient. If Nasser was no Mussolini in the making, the failure of will at Suez established a de facto policy of appeasement toward the Arab world. Two years after Suez the Iraqi monarchy, a British puppet, fell to an Army coup, a military regime was installed and later taken over by Saddam Hussein.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

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Armistice Day, 1918

Armistice Day, 1918 at the Corner of Bay and King in the City of Toronto.
(click on the photo to enlarge)

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Their Name Liveth Forevermore

At the 11th hour, the 11th day and the 11th month, the guns fell silent 90 years ago today. Abide With Me, O Valiant Hearts. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.

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Saving the Aerodrome of Democracy

F.D.R called Canada the Aerodrome of Democracy for its massive undertaking and central responsibility for flight training of pilots and aircrew from all across the British Empire during the Second World War. Unfortunately we now learn that 447 Wing, the last of the so-called "H-huts", is facing the axe from its apparently ungrateful host.

"HAMILTON — Real Second World War history is a messy business, soaked with blood, sweat and countless spilled beers. And so it is at 447 Wing, also known as the last of the “H-huts.”

Here, at the edge of Hamilton Airport, you enter a time capsule where you can blink your eyes and find yourself in 1942. The bar rail is dented by boots that worked the rudder pedals of Spitfires and Lancasters, and the walls are hung with squadron insignias and photographs of young Princess Elizabeth.

The clientele is vintage too – some of the men who come here for a quiet drink have been regulars for close to 70 years..."

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Reflections

(Linked from The Soaring Eagle)

I had some time to reflect on things today, and a passage from Shakespeare came to me: "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown." It is a passage from Henry IV, in Part II, and possibly one of the most straightforward quotations of Shakespeare's work. Or so we assume, anyway.

I say this because I realized a deeper meaning while reflecting on this passage. Is the head uneasy because it wears the crown, or because of the typical symbolism of thereafter responsibility?

Most people would claim that it is a simple symbolism for the responsibility that a man at the top feels weighing down on him. However, that's an overly simplistic view of the situation. Every person feels weighed down with responsibilities, no matter their station in life. Rather, it seems to me that the true weight of the crown, the weight that makes the king feel uneasy, is rather the fact that he must do so alone.

The eagle that flies highest is always alone.

That simple realization made me reaffirm my commitment to the Monarchist cause, and indeed, it has made it all the stronger. Thanks to that reflection, I understand now that the real weight on the shoulders of the monarch is the fact that they have no one else to help them carry it. For that reason, I say now that no one who has not felt the despair of true loneliness has any right to criticize those who accept the weight for the sake of letting no one else have to go through it.

We often state the extensive media exposure of the Royal Family as a downside to their job, and indeed, that is true. However, perhaps it is also through that media exposure that we can understand just how alone they must feel. When the Queen, or any of her family for that matter, greet the people outside their lavish palaces, do they seem barely tolerant, or truly happy? When Prince Harry visits his charity projects, does he act cold and aloof (as one might suspect a pampered prince to behave), or does he interact with the children and look happy as he does?

Why is that happiness so apparent, we must ask. Kings and Queens have always had the unspoken right to be dismissive and aloof, but these princes and princesses seem to love the interaction with their people, more than they do the return trip to their palaces. What else could explain it but the joy of being recognized and thanked for their unspoken work? For carrying that burden of solitude most other people would be crushed under? I say again,

The eagle who flies highest is always alone.

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We Will Remember Them

A WAR FILM, by Teresa Hooley (b. 1888)

I saw,
With a catch of the breath and the heart’s uplifting,
Sorrow and pride,
‘The week’s great draw’ -
The Mons Retreat;
The ‘Old Contemptibles’ who fought, and died,
The horror and the anguish and the glory.

As in a dream,
Still hearing machine-guns rattle and shells scream,
I came out into the street.

When the day was done,
My little son
Wondered at bath-time why I kissed him so,
Naked upon my knee.
How could he know
The sudden terror that assaulted me?...
The body I had borne
Nine moons beneath my heart,
A part of me…
If, someday,
It should be taken away
To War. Tortured. Torn.
Slain.
Rotting in No Man’s Land, out in the rain -
My little son…
Yet all those men had mothers, every one.

How should he know
Why I kissed and kissed him, crooning his name?
He thought that I was daft.
He thought it was a game,
And laughed, and laughed.

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