I know if I was a monarch I would be working my ass off.
Yeah well even Elizabeth does more than Akihito. I’ve only ever heard of Akihito visiting Canada…and that’s about it. Otherwise the Japanese Imperial Family just kind of…sits there.
@ Gotlucky.
Yes of course, in a group project there needs to be a leader- To lead us to a finished project.
But as in a king or a president, they lead us to nothing, what do they lead us to? Probably just stupid useless wars that they drag us into. Other than that not really use for a leader as in the government. Just steal money.
if only all rulers were that wise.
Yeah, this is one of the great parts about leaders. Good leaders attract people. Bad leaders lose people. I don’t mean this in terms of morality, just in how good they are at leading.
Well the Japanese Imperial Family has a VERY long history of holding little to no power, only taking their imperial status from the fact that they are “divine” or whatever in Shinto, and that the Emperor himself is supposedly a direct descendent of Amaterasu (goddess of the Universe).
Other than that, for thousands of years the ruling power was vested in the Shogun, and now, the Prime Minister. The Imperial Family held power from the 1800s to the 1940s, but that’s about it.
What is more, you just described a key difference between state militaries and non-state ‘clubs.’ In a state military, you are an indentured servant and you follow the orders of the person you are assigned to obey. If he is an idiot you follow his idiotic orders or you go to jail. Whereas when people get together because they agree about things and decide to do something about it, you can call it a militia or a club, it doesnt matter but theres no jail and if an idiot tells you to go get killed you dont listen to him and he becomes unpopular and expelled from the club.
I think you guys don’t fully understand the power of the British monarchy. While it is true that the Queen herself rarely visits, it’s also the case that she rarely leaves the shores of England for any reason. The reason is simple: she’s a target with many, many enemies. She knows she’s secure in her home territory but moving outside of that area is risky. Note that sitting Presidents also rarely travel outside of the US compared to, say, their cabinet members.
The royal family as a whole, however, is extremely active and very mobile. When you factor in their relatives in the House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, as well as the upper crust of British nobility (e.g. Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and his family, the various Dukes and their families, etc.), you realize that it is an extremely active and all-encompassing network.
The Queen refers to Parliament as “My Government”. People think that the Queen is part of the English government. She is no more part of the English government than she is part of Buckingham Palace. She owns the English government. It is her property (Crown property, that is). She owns fully 16 other Commonwealth Realms. And it is beyond belief that the British Crown has simply washed its hands of its innumerable former Commonwealth Realms. British involvement in India, for example, is doubtless extensive.
Clayton -
But that’s beside the point. John Ess stated that he didn’t understand why people would want a so-called monarch if they have no power. The question, therefore, was primarily about perception. Whatever political power the Queen has in Australia (which, regardless of possible power in the UK and elsewhere, seems very little), she is perceived by most (all?) as having none. Thus it’s an example of a people having strong support for a powerless monarch, which I think can be explained as the attachment to the monarchy as the symbol of the nation, and especially of traditional civilization.
Yes, lets abandon the contention that “visible power” is something that people want in a monarch.
I agree, but for the exact reason that the monarchy is preserved for cultural/nationalistic reasons is why the monarch can have so much influence. If the Queen wants something done in parliment, we can feel sure that it will get done, her constitutional power notwithstanding. It really is too bad that the English revolutionaries never won the Civil War (long-term).
Sounds like an ideological clusterf**k.
If you’re going to defend libertarianism, defend libertarianism. If you’re going to defend monarchism, defend monarchism. But a monarchical system is about one single man, a king, owning everything by divine right. It is not libertarian.
“I repudiate the filth propagated by racists, white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-nazis, 9/11 Truthers, conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, private militia movements, pacifists, and other cranks.”
I lol’d.
We are having a discussion to see if we can unclusterunfuckit.
We can take this to a further level and have a private “celebrity/figurehead” agency to be paid to provide housing and food to chosen celebrities by an ancap community.
And then from each community, these celebrities will fight a privatized war to see who is the best.
And therefore one prevailing celebrity/monarch will be chosen as the ultimate figurehead.
But of course al paid for voluntarily.
So its kinda like paying to see who wins in a foot ball game or something?
The problem with that system is how the heck it can possibly remain completely voluntary.
Mercenaries fight for the celebrity king/queen. people must pay voluntarily to fund the king./queen.
if king/queen starts killing the populace, profits will drop and cannot fund mercenaries anymore.
Plus what kind of mercenary would kill his fellow citizens?
I’m a legit Anarcho-Monarchist. Ask me anything? It’s totally consistent with private property rights, so I don’t see what is the issue. It’s merely to believe in a king with Authority but no Power. (Which would contradict righteous kingship anyway because state power is objectively evil).
So you believe in a ruler but you do not believe in a ruler? Seems legit.
The monarch if anything is symbolic, and maybe unconsciously people strive for a “leader” or a “point” in some tripartite or natural heirarchy, and in a true sense of what Malachi posted, having a leader serve them, not the other way around. If you’re going to go with the Hoppean view on monarchism that it’s better than democracy, sure, but we don’t have monarchists raging an ideological war against democracy or government, because it’s not fashionable, simply out of date and we’ve moved on.
Striving to have a monarch in this day and age (and in this country) is ludicrous, I’m sure the American socialist and Nazi parties have more serious supporters. Then again it probably takes a theoretical crank to actually get a party to bring back a monarch, try having that go over easily on 4th of July.