Do monarchies still matter?
7th March 2011
Is monarchy anachronistic? You bet.
Nonsense. It represents a basic human impulse. No ‘list of remaining monarchies’ would be complete without including autocratic states from Chavez to Qadaffi to Kim Jong Il, which would expand the nominal total by a factor of two, at least.
“It’s easy just to say, ‘tear it all down,’ isn’t it? But what are you going to replace it with?” asks Mary Thomas, a newspaper vendor who sells royal souvenirs near Green Park in London. “I think most people would say that they trust the queen a lot more than [they do] the politicians who run this country.”
That’s a no-brainer.
Spain’s popular king is the official head of state, but never intervenes publicly in politics. (Although at a 2007 Ibero-American summit he famously responded to leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who was interrupting a Spanish official’s speech, by asking “Why don’t you shut up?”)
Would that an American President would have the balls to do the same.
March 10th, 2011 at 11:29
I wonder where he got the idea that royal weddings were private functions before the 20th century.