Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Habsburgs Revisited

I don't usually link to articles I don't like, but this one is too frustrating to ignore. It's like the writer feels guilty for regretting the collapse of the Habsburg Empire at all, so contradicts himself with baseless assertions, oversimplifications, and half-truths. The incoherent article might be summarized like this: "Yes, Europe was better off when the Habsburgs ruled, but the Habsburgs deserve absolutely no credit for that and what's happened since 1914 is all their fault anyway."

Since Prince Philip Kiril of Prussia asked the British people's forgiveness for his great-great-grandfather's role in the beginning of World War I a century ago, perhaps the British and other Allied governments should ask for _his_ forgiveness for their role in the republicanization of Europe--a monumental tragedy from which Europe has never recovered and for which Europeans, clinging to egalitarian and republican lies, have never repented. That the 20th century would have been better for everyone, including non-monarchists, if the Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, and Romanovs had remained on their thrones is so blindingly obvious that it ought not to be controversial to say so. Republicanism is Death, basically, and Europeans should never be allowed to forget that.

2 comments:

Aaron Traas said...

That was a painful read. Why is it so hard for moderns to admit that the regimes during Europe's glory days were a good part of the cause of those days?

Ponocrates said...

I stopped at "Europe's most embarrassing anachronism" in the subtitle.