The advantage of a Monarchy (accuses, weapon, suspect, Canada)

[ciceropolo]

Distilled into its simplest - the advantage of a Monarchy (when it is the actual supreme political head of state and not a figurehead) is that it is much easier to oust / remove a corrupt one more quickly and efficiently than an entrenched institutionalized representantive body of representatives with legions of lobbyists, corporate ties etc.... Look at the USA and the revolving door of Goldman Sachs (sometimes called Government Sachs) executives from Corporate Exec to US Government positions. Robert Rubin, Hank Paulson, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, the list is endless with the 'musical chairs' in these top positions of Finance Government Economic leadership roles as well as the career politicians (the list is endless) who after being in office retire exponentially richer on the back of the productive citizens.

Think of it this way, whenever the USA 'Joint Chiefs / CIA' types want to 'influence' a "Democratic change" somewhere around the globe, do you really think they want the hassle and expense of having to deal with a large body of indigenous people with real representative voice and the amount of resources needed to sway to a 'democracy' favorable to them? Or rather just propping up another dictator and their cabal with 'favorable' economic financial trade agreements amendable to corporate interests?

A "Benevolent Dictator", is the MOST EFFICIENT form of government. And sometimes I think if there was a creative way to do it with a mandatory 'sunset provision' (Execution) that it may be an interesting experiment. Think of it like the whistleblower type situations often found when someone is later in their life and has nothing to lose or much less to lose that they then are willing to do what is right and expose the systemic corruption.

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Let's play here for a moment shall we?....**Dreaming** Enter the Sandman....cue the music.

Say for example, you can be dictator / major domo of the USA for a term of ten maybe 20 years. You cannot have excessive personal gain but you have the task of reengineering the system before a prescribed "term limiting" execution, too which future generations will venerate you for your foresight a la the biblical Wisdom of Solomon!

Your prime directive (should you choose to accept it Mr Phelps) is to champion restoration of integrity in representative government (i.e. craft a system with inviolable checks and balances - abide by much of the Constitution which has been shredded - and definitive penalties to those who seek to subvert the process and inculcating a hyper citizenship model of individual freedom which supercedes the influence of the state organism unless it is determined to be detrimental to the health of the greater good) as the "Prime Directive".
At the end of the agreed upon length of time, the benevolent dictator is summarily term limited by public execution.

Think of it as say, a construction firm that is rewarded for high quality (not the lowest bidder) and getting the project done in the timeline agreed upon and when the project is done they are gone. Or when a sports organization hires a top Pres/GM type who is able to craft his own management team (a la Bill Parcells with NYGiants). The Jon Corzine political types and the panoply of lobbyists, corporate welfare, government rent seeker types are all ignominiously convicted when possible or dispatched summarily and you can start crafting from ground zero.

Institute Zero based accounting budgeting of government expenditures (think of that comedy movie, Dave, when Kevin Kline as the presidential look alike, has his accountants do the books ), reorient the populous to national dialogues that seek unity of understanding on fundamental things, open 'transparent dialogues' on those issues of contention, always with the concern that in most cases no one's individual choices - when not impacting the greater commonwealth - can be pursued, with the caveat that everyone is subject to the consequences of their poor choices.

Sort of the flipping the switch on governments role as dependency parent to one of 'tough love parent' i.e. an expectation that you are kicked out of the collective when you violate the culturally accepted standards. You cannot be protected by your cronies in high office. In effect, turn the role of 'serving as representative' in the future, into one of a short term service requirement where there is absolutely no chance for self gain. Make serving so onerous the egotistic narcissistic student council types are discouraged and the reluctant technocrat and well rounded person is most often recruited by peers to sort of adjust the machinery as needed and serves to ensure the greater commonwealth's quality of life is optimized and that destructive social / political activities are not rewarded in any way. And that their service is limited to say two five-year intervals with no return to the political arena and governing body - there is NO such thing as a "Career Politician" and Lobbyists do not exist.

The task would encompass:
1)Electoral Reform: Restore integrity to elective officeholders. Ban lobbying and political advertising. national quorum requirement whereby people can vote by not voting. i.e. no confidence. Mandatory political candidate sodium pentathol administered by a professional prior to debate. All debates on PBS, CSpan, NPR. ALL candidates thoroughly vetted by a disparate team of investigators.

2)Financial Reform: Restore sound monetary with asset backed currency system, no more fractional reserve banking games. Decouple the casino financial vehicles (Derivatives, CDS, CMBS, etc..) from conventional banking.

3)Educational Reform:
a) A strong fundamental core everyone takes with emphasis on student achievement measured in variable intelligences that acknowledges not everyone is meant to go to college.
b) A system where rather than feel good 'PC' and administrative bloat that a variety of choices (everything from Khan Academy and Online course work in significant doses) for those who want to learn at their own pace and when a topic of interest challenges them can be worked into the system.

4) Welfare Reform - discourage dependency on government types via severely diminshed rewards for bad behaviors (encouraged by current leaders to grow large govt dependent voting blocs).
Elected officials have same benefits / pensions / healthcare etc... as regular citizen.

5) Security: A National Defense (only offensive internationally when needs to, BUT when attacked response is OT Biblical in nature). Think Switzerland model of everyone serves, is trained and retains weapons FOR DEFENSE until a certain age. Also any electronic eavedropping device that can be used on citizens are instituted 24/7 on the elected representative a la, "The Truman Show". Double standards are eliminated.
Wars (and their declarations) are determined by those who will be fighting in them.

6) Technological innovation is encouraged to benefit quality of life for all. Less work more leisure higher quality of life.

I hear Roy Orbison .....'a candy colored clown they call the sandman tiptoes to my room every night'...and the Everly Brothers, 'dream, dream, dream, dream, dream, dream'....

[Gungnir]

Originally Posted by squarian

Well done - you have correctly identified the Queen's descent, in part, from a German family. And of course, red-blooded Americans hate anyone who has any trace of German descent.

Now, prove that the Queen is "a leech and a pillager".

It's not from a German Family, it's from predominantly german families.

The Queen a pillager? No but the statement was about the Royal Family. In that case Hell yes, Magna Carta was drafted to restrain the legalized pillaging of the English Lords (much of it caused by financing Richard's 3rd Crusade, and for his ransoms, the remainder caused by his poor attempt to reestablish the Angevin Empire). Edward III pillaged Valois France for many years, what would you call the sack of Caen other than pillaging? Would you like me to go on.

As far as leeching... Have you never heard of the Civil List? Depending on who you ask the cost of the Monarchy is between 32M and 186M Pounds sterling. They receive as a family a payment of 31M GBP per year. Historically much of the Royal Estates has been ceded to the people of the UK, over time some has been returned (i.e. after Oliver Cromwell the entire Royal Estates were in public hands).

So yes both today and historically the Royal Family is a leech. Indeed if you want to look at it honestly, the British Royal Family took property from it's original owners (and of the many houses that have held the name Royal Family, this has happened many times), used that property as it saw fit (often displacing it's original residents), lost that property to the public, was returned some properties for good will, and during it all has traditionally taxed and levied those very same people. Talk about a sweet scam.

[theunbrainwashed]

Originally Posted by nzrugby

It was amusing to hear people who criticised Bush/Obama as being unpatriotic, in the UK and other realms it is seen as being patriotic to criticise the PM and other ministers.
For they are just the hired help .


The Crown persists in the UK (and 15 other Commonwealth Realms that have voluntarily kept the shared monarch) for several reasons.
1. The Crown separates patriotism from politics. No British politician has ever been accused of being unpatriotic when they criticise a Prime Minister. Something that often happens in the US.
2. The Prime Minister may be master of the political landscape and have the power to fire nuclear weapons, but authority for that power is vested in the Crown and the Constitution, not in him. He may issue orders but it is still considered “advice” that the Crown is bound to act on.
He must address the Queen and senior members of the royal family as Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Ma’am, or Sir. He gets’ a townhouse and a small country retreat, while the Royal Family has multiple palaces. And while the Queen is first in precedence at all state occasions, the Prime Minister comes in 19th. It teaches humility to politicians, who are not noted for their humility.
3. The Crown makes Prime Ministers and cabinet members disposable. Because a President is both Head of State (symbolic leader of the nation) and Head of Government (in charge of running the government). They are very difficult to get rid of when scandal hits. Had Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton been Prime Ministers they would have been dumped in a matter of weeks instead of dragging the issue out for months.
And while a King is difficult to force out, when push comes to shove an unsuitable King has been forced out, twice, in 1688 and 1936.
4. What is now the UK had a republic. Parliament killed King Charles I and established Cromwell as Lord Protector (effectively President-for-Life). England was mired in war and became a military dictatorship until the Restoration. Not a good record.

It's 2013. Monarchies of all kinds are long passed their use-by date. Time to replace all constitutional and absolute monarchies around the world with at least a French style semi-presidential system

[BruSan]

Originally Posted by theunbrainwashed

It's 2013. Monarchies of all kinds are long passed their use-by date. Time to replace all constitutional and absolute monarchies around the world with at least a French style semi-presidential system

No thank you! Observing those systems at play has given me an ingrained repugnance for anything like them.

Presidents elevated above and beyond the status of a sovereign citizen to commence filling their treasure chests through outright bribes and pay-offs so they can retire in luxury. It's all about "who owes me a favour" and "who can I stroke for more" within the supposed superior capitalist democracy.

Squandering millions upon millions for things such as birthday parties and holidays in Hawaii seem vaguely familiar of royal treatment but perhaps I'm splitting hairs here.

Fomenting wars and the deaths of thousands of our best and brightest young for the pure enhancement of corprorate interests and crafting foreign policy for that same reason to feed that military complex is simply replacing the monarch with another form of entitled azzhat but perhaps one with even less accountablility.

I much prefer having an additional level of oversight endowed with the moral imperatives an appreciative citizenry bestow upon him/her.

[EdwardA]

I don't support universal suffrage. A monarchy has its plusses but I prefer a democracy where the welfare people and other losers can't vote.

[squarian]

This thread has attracted the confused responses usual whenever the topic comes up among (a mostly) American audience.

Some of the responses primarily reflect two reactions which can be easily disposed of: anglophobia and egalitarianism. Anglophobia is obviously pointless to any discussion of the advantages of constitutional monarchy as a form of government over republican forms: not only is it blatantly stupid, but it also ignores the fact that the United Kingdom is not the only constitutional monarchy in the world.

Objections based on egalitarianism ("no one should be raised above anyone else") are also not germane: every nation or state will have an head of state, even in cases such as the Swiss Confederation where the headship of state is exercised collectively. Simply by virtue of their office the head of state is "raised above" other citizens: this is inherent in the function.

That leaves two serious questions, which shouldn't be conflated but usually are. The first is the superiority of systems which distinguish between the roles of head of state and head of government over systems which conflate the two roles. The second is whether, among systems which divide the two roles, a hereditary head of state is superior to one who is elected or selected.

The argument for separating the two roles (which, recall, makes up the greater part of the case made by the OP) is clear enough but unfamiliar to Americans. Almost all systems which divide the roles allocate the functional executive duty to a democratically-elected political leader, while confiding the ceremonial and representative duty to a "figurehead".

The only real question in this case is whether executive power should better be entrusted to the same person exercising ceremonial or representational power. Because, increasingly in a media-saturated age, ceremony or representation is power (see under "Riefenstahl, Leni" for extreme examples).

It seems clear that one reason the American presidency has increased in power in the modern age, since Roosevelt's innovation of the "fireside chat", is its greater ability to wield the ceremonial and representational powers of the office. One clear argument in favor of separating the roles of heads of state and of government is to deprive one political faction of this undue advantage over their competitors: in our media-driven age, allowing the leader of one party to increase his standing by wearing a second hat as symbolic head of the nation, by for instance presiding over military funerals or greeting sailors on the flightdeck of aircraft carriers, is an unfair and possibly dangerous way of warping the democratic process.

But if the argument for separating the roles is accepted, then one must confront the next question: which is better, an elected ceremonial headship of state, such as the Irish or Italian presidency, or an hereditary headship, such as the Danish or Spanish monarchies. The arguments typically break down as follows: raising an individual above all other citizens to be ceremonial head of state by election is more faithful to the democratic principles of modern Western society.

The problem is that in a system with divided headship, the office of head of state is not only ceremonial. It is also responsible for some hopefully rare but crucial tasks, usually involving a mediating or "umpire" role, and in any ultimate crisis, as the last defense of constitutional government.

In other words, in addition to ceremonially representing the state or nation, the head of state is also charged in most Western democracies with a crisis-management role when all other safety-valves fail. In the words of a Canadian senator and constitutional scholar, the ceremonial head of state is a fire-extinguisher: most of the time, it's simply a shiny, brightly-painted object which is mounted for all to see, but if the house should ever catch fire you need it desperately.

On this last point, the argument is also clear enough: elected ceremonial heads of state rarely have the moral authority to act successfully in a profound crisis, while recent history provides several examples of constitutional "figurehead" monarchs doing exactly that: King Juan Carlos of Spain's personal intervention against the Francoist coup d'etat in 1981, for example. There have been a few elected ceremonial presidents who have gained the moral authority to carry out such an act, but for the most part their authority is diminished by the fact of their election rather than enhanced.

Therefore, setting aside silly things like whether King George VI ate hotdogs, the real issues in this question are whether separating the ceremonial and executive roles in government is a good idea, and if so, how to select the ceremonial head. In my opinion, separating ceremonial "media power" from executive power is a crucial check on government: in fact, in the modern age, much more important than any of the now-archaic checks on executive power built into America's aging constitution. And on the subsidiary question of how best to select a ceremonial head of state, the residual "constitutional emergency" powers exercised by most Western heads of state decides the question in favor of the greater moral authority (not to mention often longer experience) of a hereditary head over an elected one.

[stiffnecked]

We don't need any ceremonial figure heads in the United States of America. Keep that garbage outta here. If I wanted to live in England I'd move there.

[PullMyFinger]

I tell you what, if I had to have GW Bush as my president or have the country go back to UK rule I wouldn't have a difficult time choosing. God save the Queen!

[TriMT7]

Originally Posted by jetgraphics

IN short, the individual American is a sovereign, a social equal of any other monarch, until he surrenders that sovereignty. That's why Americans don't bow nor kneel to any other monarch, nor should they accept titles of nobility from other monarchs.

I agree with this part of your post.

[Mathguy]

I think the OP is confusing the ease of a Multi-party system with that of a 2 party system in turning on someone in a leadership position that needs to go.

I don't think the presence or absence of a monarchy changes that.