Bells & whistles
I have been doing my best to antagonize my Chief Texas Correspondent by forwarding media items to him on tomorrow’s Royal Wedding. The latest had the subject line, “Only 24 hours OMG!” and flagged this item from the BBC. I had already sent him a countdown timer so he could set his clocks to it.
As a postscript I mentioned the nice reply of “one of them heavily-dressed full-colour guards” to a media ditz, who asked how he would be coping with the very hot weather predicted for Windsor tomorrow.
“It was warmer in Afghanistan and Iraq, ma’am.”
My CTC is a dogged Republican of the old Yanqui school. Over the years since Vietnam or whenever we have been discussing politics in light of this fact. He is under the illusion that hereditary monarchs are responsible for all the foibles of the world, which aggregated into Twisted Nanny State, and led to The Obama that Makes Desolate, playing King.
I’m afraid these Americans still don’t get it. Some things have nothing to do with each other, except that they may be found within the same Universe, dating from the Big Bang. Twisted Nanny Statehood has prevailed in every single country in the West, and now the World, regardless of its constitutional status. This even includes Natted States Merica. It is not the work of kings and queens. Rather it is the work of the Devil.
It wasn’t the fond idea of those Protestant royals, when they hatched the Divine Right of Kings; for when they tried that on, the power of Nanny was inconceivable. We had not yet had the Industrial Revolution, let alone the French and Russian ones. The Divine Right of Bureaucrats knows no practical restraints.
Had Obama only been a constitutional monarch, he would have been harmless. Indeed, he would have looked good in that rôle. Ditto Pierre Trudeau, of unhappy memory. They knew how to dress the part, and utter occasionally mischievous platitudes. They were comfortable at the centres of their respective courts, and that is all we require. Put their portraits on the coins and spend them. Even Justin Trudeau would be harmless, were he properly supervised by adults. If not, we need arrange only one accident.
As I was explaining to my CTC, I don’t propose to increase the power of our Queen; only to reduce the power of the Guvmint to the point where she looks like something. Parliament can stay, too. So long as it is deferential to the Queen, and keeps the Royal Navy funded and floating. Princes may still fly helicopters, as before. Army, Air Force, and Marines, stet. And the Ordnance Survey, perhaps; and the Heraldry College, sustained by rich sods who like that sort of thing. And some bobbies and Common Law judges in wigs. But the Home Office will be for the bonfire, and the Department of Environment for the fishes.
Won’t this leave the power of big nasty corporations unchecked? The heck it will. They depend on Twisted Nanny. They could not exist without the complex regulatory apparatus that is blindly imposed over entire nations, and without which they would have to seek permissions for each franchise, in ten thousand municipalities; in each of which local businessmen would have the mayor’s personal phone number. And no welfare state will flourish, when taxpayers can see where their money is going.
But everyone loves a parade. God Save the Queen! Cheers to Meghan and Harry!
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Sunday morning clarifying footnote. I’m not saying the marriage was valid, of course. The Windsor wedding of our lively junior prince to a divorced, nominally-Catholic commoner could not possibly be, any more than Prince Charles’s last wedding. But it was perhaps the most impressive display of elegant ladies’ hats of which I have ever seen pictures. And the grand procession of Hollywood celebrities and sports stars into the once-Catholic pilgrim chapel of Saint Edward the Confessor (former Patron of England, and still of difficult marriages) made a merry show. Indeed, the English now have a five-century tradition, of spectacular celebration of invalid rites.
A blessed Pentecost to all my gentle readers!