Speaking at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Perth, Australia, a smug David Cameron (with "Conservatives" like this, who needs liberals?) triumphantly
announced that he had secured unanimous
agreement from the prime ministers of the Queen's sixteen Commonwealth Realms to amend the law of royal succession to
end male primogeniture and allow potential monarchs to marry Roman Catholics. It is amazing to me that this kind of tinkering makes any sense to anybody, since
as I and others have already explained, the monarchy will remain inherently "discriminatory," favouring older siblings over younger ones, and of course members of the Royal Family over everyone else. One wonders if Cameron and other backers of "reform" have really thought through all the implications, as
real conservatives like
Simon Heffer have. I
hate to agree with the odious Graham Smith on anything, but for once he is right: the idea that the monarchy can be reconciled with modern "non-discriminatory" thinking is absurd. At least ministers had the sense to rule out trying to apply the same kind of "reform" to hereditary peerages.
Hopefully the Duke & Duchess of Cambridge will soon have a boy as their first child to render all this silliness irrelevant for another generation. If their first child is a girl and she remains heir to the throne ahead of a younger brother, I suppose I'll have to grudgingly accept it, as I already do with Sweden, Belgium, and Norway (the three European monarchies whose royal families have already been affected by such "reforms"--it's a moot point so far in the Netherlands, where the Prince of Orange has only daughters, and in Denmark, where the Crown Prince's eldest child is a boy). Only a hardcore Jacobite, the sort who insists that Franz Duke of Bavaria is the "real" British monarch (and I think I've made it clear what I think of that nonsense), can coherently deny that Parliament has the authority to alter the succession, whether it should or not. But at heart, unlike more liberal monarchists, I am ironically inclined to agree with the republicans I so despise when they say that even a constitutional monarchy is incompatible with Modern Democratic & Egalitarian Values. We simply draw opposite conclusions: I say if that's the case, then to hell with Modern Democratic & Egalitarian Values!
6 comments:
Well, England is over. Some of us still remember, though. Let us all pray for a return to sanity and the restoration of England and the United Kingdom to some semblance of rightly ordered Christian monarchy.
I wouldn't quite go that far. It's very discouraging that this egalitarian politically correct insanity is so pervasive, but having spent part of each of the past three summers there, I'd say there's life in England yet. Remember that what one reads in the news is almost by definition the worst of what is happening...
I hope you're right. By the way, according to Laura Wood (http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2011/10/the-boy-who-will-not-be-king/), the proposal hasn't gotten through the various Parliaments yet, which is not the impression I got from any news story, and is somewhat more hopeful. It's pretty scary though; monarchists have been laughing at this since it was proposed because they assumed the Realms could not be so coordinated. And yet it looks like they are very coordinated indeed on this issue.
I often agree with Laura Wood, but she's still too American and republican in her thinking. Why close that entry with the fear that "without the institution of monogamy, democracy cannot remain viable"? Who cares? What is so great about "democracy"?
Also I don't see that the monarchy has "declined" nearly as much as the society it continues to try to serve. If anything the Queen and most of her family are better than modern Britain deserves.
Your points are well taken. Mrs. Wood does not seem to me to be terribly focused on monarchy, if indeed she is a monarchist at all(she has never, that I can recall, stated her opinion on forms of government one way or the other). I read her mostly for her opinion on other issues, especially feminism vs. patriarchy.
I'm not a hard-core Jacobite, I fully accept Her Majesty the Queen as my Sovereign...but I utterly reject the idea that Parliament can alter the succession.
That said - I will fully accept the proposed change, because regardless of what votes are made by various politicians the change will be accepted by the Sovereign (whether in person or through her Governors General). That the Sovereign has the authority to make changes (within reason) to the succession is pretty much beyond doubt.
I don't much care about the change either way, I'd much rather that it be made by a royal proclamation (if made at all), but it all adds up to the same number.
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