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The Wedding, cont. (and a debate on the American Revolution)
As the previous entry on the Wedding became more about my thoughts on Richard III, discussion of the Wedding will continue here.
Van Wijk writes:
You wrote: “I have lost any interest I once may have had in the present British Royal Family; in fact, I think Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles are actively devoted to the destruction of what is left of Britain, so I am opposed to the Windsor lineage and think Britain would do well to replace them.”
I find the notion of royalty absurd and more than a little repugnant. I think this is a right and proper attitude to have, particularly for an American. I recall that we fought two wars of national survival against a tyrannical English monarch. Britain would do well to finally put an end to this farce of “royalty” and cease venerating these people.
LA replies:
I did not say I am opposed to the monarchy, only to this royal line. I think the monarchy and the established church are part of the essence of Britain. And while both monarchy and church are in an extremely decadent state, they showed yesterday that they still can carry out a magnificent and meaningful ritual, so their decadence is not total. (I did end up, not through my active choice, seeing a repeat of the wedding last night, and I was glad I did.)
However, Mencius Moldbug makes the interesting point below that the powerless monarchy of Britain is no good, and that what Britain needs is a real king.
Brian R. writes:
One good thing about the Royal Wedding was that neither Gordon Brown or Tony Blair were invited. When Prince Charles married Diana in 1981 all surviving Prime Ministers were invited. This time only Thatcher and Major received invitations.
LA replies:
Interesting. It shows taste.
Karen writes from England:
I agree with you about the Queen and Prince Charles being actively committed to the destruction of Britain. The Queen has carried out her official duties assiduously but has actively encouraged the destructive forces of the EU and multiculturalism. Maybe she acts in this way as a consequence of a combination of poor advice from her courtiers and ignorance but Prince Charles is like a petulant child with no sense of the responsibilities attached to being the heir to the throne.
Many people believe that the Queen has taken leave of her senses allowing this wedding to proceed. The Middletons, like the Woodvilles, are a socially ambitious and pushy family of dubious connections. The source of their wealth is suspect. They claim it is derived from their business which sells children’s’ party items and has wasted no opportunity to cash in on the Royal connections to sell paraphernalia for the wedding. However some believe that this is questionable as the profits from such businesses are low. Mrs Middleton’s brother was revealed as a tattooed thuggish type who sold drugs and prostitutes. The Queen only met the Middleton family just one week before the wedding, which is astounding given that they are now relatives and their bloodlines are now connected. The future King of Britain will now be related to a drug dealer. It is amazing that this wedding has gone ahead and one cannot help but wonder if the Queen actually gave her consent or was outmaneuvered. [Well, given that William and Kate have been living together for many years, and the wedding was announced months ago, the wedding can hardly have snuck up on anyone.]
This is an article which summarises quite well the thoughts of many British people and makes the important point that modernisation is a euphemism for the destruction of ancient and traditional institutions—the monarchy and the Church. Here is another article by the same writer.
It looks as though there will be lots of trouble ahead for the monarchy.
LA replies:
I read the first article by Adam Lovejoy that you linked, and found it vulgar and pointless, a typical piece of British opinion journalism consisting of multidirectional resentment and not a single idea, except maybe for the idea that Kate Middleton has no distinction or particular attractiveness and is not suited to be a royal. But it’s not at all clear to me where the author is coming from.
Mencius Moldbug writes:
Carlyle on the British monarchy:
Heaven knows, the British Nation did and does ever need to be admonished, rebuked, guided forward by some King! Some greatest man, who, with gold crown on his head and bodyguard round him, or totally without any such appendage and mark of recognition, is King of the country; is, I say, and remains King, the other King so-called being merely one of shreds and patches, with much broken meat, expensive cast apparel, and waste revenue flung to him, but with no real authority in this world or in any other,—a Morrice-dance King, most beautiful to the flunky; most tragic, almost frightful to every thinking heart.
Is not this passage all that needs to be said of your Dead Island? Which suffers (along with the rest of the world) one and only one disease, kinglessness—of which all other pathologies are no more than symptoms.
It is possible to be kingless without a Sham-King. But it takes more work. Our presidency serves more or less the same function—providing the necessary symbol of executive authority, to conceal the fact that the reality has disappeared (there is nothing genuinely executive about our executive branch). The Hanoverian dynasty is remarkable, though, in that its monarchs have been worthless from beginning to end, with perhaps a minor exception in George III’s attempts at a king’s party.
What do you think people respond to in the likes of Donald Trump and Gov. Christie? They respond to the obvious kinginess of these figures. Supreme personal authority is a normal human function. The job of king does not exist, at least not in the public sector, but the Trumps and Christies come as close to it as possible and are clearly biologically suited for the position. Thus the genuine enthusiasm for these figures, who alas, win or lose, will never enjoy a fraction of the old Plantagenet, Tudor or Stuart royal prerogative. A true King could still save England, I think, or any other land …
LA replies:
What you’re saying is that Britain (and every nation) needs a king, a leading figure with real and personal authority, and is denied it under the post 1688 regime (or the post 1714 regime, the beginning of the Hanovers), which puts sovereign power in the hands of the House of Commons.
Julian C. writes:
You wrote: “I think the monarchy and the established church are part of the essence of Britain.”
Indeed. It was great to see the pride so many ordinary Britons took in the wedding and the opportunity to celebrate being British.
Mencius Moldbug writes:
You wrote:
What you’re saying is that Britain (and every nation) needs a king, a leading figure with real and personal authority, and is denied it under the post 1688 regime (or the post 1714 regime, the beginning of the Hanovers), which puts sovereign power in the hands of the House of Commons.
Admirably summarized, Larry. :-)
Of course, I was inspired to search for that Carlyle passage (one of many which make the same point) because you had already come up with that point yourself. Not, as far as I’m aware, from reading Carlyle. I really do continue to believe there is a remarkable similarity in political aesthetic, whatever exactly that means, between you and my personal guru TC.
LA replies:
Thank you. But when and how have I made the same point as Carlyle? And what is the political aesthetic I have in common with your guru TC (by which I assume you also mean Carlyle)?
Mencius Moldbug replies:
What I see is the shared realization that a sham monarchy is worse than no monarchy at all—that, by failing to act, by failing to exist in any real sense, the royals are in fact contributing to the destruction of their country.
In the linked post you wrote:
Sometimes my mind works by logic, sometimes by seeing the revelation of an essence. My response to that photo of the Queen is in the latter category.
Yes, I understand that my interpretation of the meaning of the photo will sound extreme to many people. My reply is: res ipsa loquitur—the thing itself speaks.
This insistence on the validity of direct aesthetic engagement with reality is, though not expressed in Carlylean language, distinctively Carlylean. Again I could find half a dozen parallels in the vast Carlyle corpus. (Perhaps you’d prefer Carlyle’s leading disciple, the historian Froude, who thinks the same way but is not so ornate.) Above all in Carlyle there is an almost theological commitment to veracity in the highest possible sense of the term, meaning veracity not just in logic but in the “revelation of an essence.”
I don’t feel this should be as unusual as it is, but it is. From the two short paragraphs above I think I could identify your voice in any context—and not because the language is distinctive, but the perspective.
LA replies:
Thank you for seeing that. It’s so important. Another way of describing it is noesis, the intuitive aspect of rationality by which we perceive first principles and larger wholes. I think many people have noetic experiences all the time, but they don’t articulate them or build on them. The rationalistic, nominalistic, reductive thought forms of modern society militate against it.
May 2
Howard Sutherland writes:
I have followed with interest the comments you and Laura Wood have made on the Royal Wedding. As a former London resident of English and Scottish ancestry, I found it a nice shot in the arm of actual British (mostly English)-ness. I was relieved that, for the most part, whoever arranged the ceremony for the post-modern royals resisted myriad temptations to mess it up. I didn’t see any glaring efforts to enthrone Diversity or assuage the ever-agitated emotions of the Moslems now resident in the United Kingdom. Prince Charles didn’t even finger any Moslem worry-beads in the Abbey, thank God! And Rowan Williams—no ecclesiastical traditionalist, he—played his part in good part, though he might have got a proper haircut and trimmed his druidical eyebrows for the occasion. For what it is worth, I liked Miss Middleton’s dress, and I thought that by going white as well, her sister reinforced the visual image the bride and her train conveyed. My quibbles: I got very tired of the cameramen’s excessive focus on black and Oriental choirboys (and, of course, I thought to myself, “Are there truly not enough English choirboys to make up an English boys’ choir for a Royal Wedding in Westminster Abbey!?”) [LA replies: Men’s and Boy’s choruses in today’s diverse West will naturally have members of a variety of races; are you suggesting that blacks and Orientals be excluded from church choruses?] and I had to suppress a gag reflex every time the cameramen panned—again excessively—on the earringed sodomite Elton John and his catamite. I don’t know if the footage we watched was a BBC feed or original to the network—not sure which one it was—we had tuned in to, so I don’t know whom to blame for that slily insinuated multiculturalist and homosexualist propaganda. Given his high-profile friendship with Princess Diana, however, Elton John was practically speaking un-uninvitable.
I agree that the Queen and the Prince of Wales have done far less than they might to stand up for their country and—more importantly—their real countrymen. In the Queen’s case, as far as I know, she hasn’t done anything to stand up for her subject kinfolk in Canada, Australia and New Zealand (South Africa and Rhodesia, too, once upon a time), either. But I live in hope that future generations of royals may be more practically patriotic. And, also, that occasions such as this Royal Wedding may remind the real Britons—actual Englishmen, Scotsmen, Welshmen …—that they have a great island nation they are in great danger of losing, and maybe they’ll yet do something to preserve it, with or without help from their royal family.
I thought you might be interested in Peter Hitchens’s take on it in The Mail on Sunday. Hitchens is a glass-half-empty sort, so his comments aren’t cheerful, but I think there is a lot of truth to them. He spells out his objections better in his reply to being taken to task by The Times’s Libby Purves, whom he describes—accurately, in my recollection—as “old misery guts.” While I don’t agree with Hitchens about the better role model for the monarchy (he’s a Glorious Revolution type who admires Elizabeth I; I’m an unregenerate Cavalier who, going back still further, admires Henry II, who did not in fact mean his aesthete chancellor-turned-ascetic archbishop any physical harm). If one knows anything about the much reduced state of Britain’s armed forces—especially that once-greatest Jewel in the Crown, the Royal Navy—Hitchens’s comments about the Ruritanian contrast between the magnificence of the Royal uniforms and the enfeebled reality of British combat power is depressingly on-point.
If we’re all lucky, this Royal Wedding may be something of a cultural call to arms, even if, as Hitchens believes, to most of the participants the words they spoke were merely forms. I hope he is wrong about that, but it is still good to have them spoken aloud for all the world to hear. And maybe function will follow form!
May 3
James P. writes:
Van Wijk wrote:
“I recall that we fought two wars of national survival against a tyrannical English monarch.”
Well, let’s not get carried away. The “tyranny” of the British monarchy in the 1760s-1770s was greatly overstated, both at the time and in retrospect. The British government was quite reasonably asking the American colonists to pay for their own defense, as the colonists were undertaxed relative to the population of the British Isles at the time. The idea that Parliament did not have the power to tax the colonies was simply preposterous, and as for “representation,” well, 90 percent of the population of the British Isles were taxed without representation in Parliament, and some method to represent the colonies could have been found if the “patriot” party was not absolutely determined to obtain independence. Britain did not intend to “destroy” the American people in the American Revolution, simply to return them to the fold. If the revolutionaries had lost, then the North American colonies would have evolved from colonies to dominions to independent nations just as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand did. Nor was Britain trying to destroy the U.S. as a nation in 1812. Indeed, the United States declared war on Britain when Britain was engaged in a real war of national survival with France.
An absolutely indispensable history of the American Revolution is Sydney Fisher’s A True History of the American Revolution, which sheds light on the above points (HT: Mencius Moldbug).
That said, I agree that the notion of royalty is absurd and repugnant.
LA replies:
I disagree with James on both points. While it was certainly reasonable for the British government to want some tax revenues from the American colonies, the problem was that for their entire history the colonies had been essentially self-governing as to their internal affairs. The Declaratory Act of circa 1766 declared the right of the British government to legislate for the colonies in all matters whatsoever. In the context of 150 years of colonial history in which the colonies had been self-governing, this was indeed a tyrannical and deeply threatening move. Then, instead of trying to find a reasonable middle ground, the King kept pushing uncompromisingly along the same lines, until, following the Boston Tea Party of December 1774, he essentially the declared the colonists outside his protection and waged war on them. It became evident to the Americans that the King was seeking to treat the Americans as he treated the Irish, as a subject people with no rights. Many British Whigs, most notably Edmund Burke, believed that the King (and the Tory government) were behaving in a tyrannical manner toward the Americans.
Second, it shows a lack of proportion to call a natural human institution, inherited royalty, which has existed through history, and which is obviously in line with basic human needs and instincts (as we can still see today by the deep attraction that much of humanity has for British royalty), “absurd and repugnant.” Of course, royalty presents certain problems, and it is not unreasonable to disapprove of royalty and want a different system of government. But to call royalty absurd and repugnant is like calling human nature itself absurd and repugnant. It is like calling the love of children for their parents absurd and repugnant. It is like calling the natural human attraction to authority absurd and repugnant. Perhaps that attraction is not the highest aspect of our nature. But it is a part of what we are, and one way or another it will find expression.
May 4
James P. writes:
You write,
While it was certainly reasonable for the British government to want some tax revenues from the American colonies, the problem was that for their entire history the colonies had been essentially self-governing as to their internal affairs. The Declaratory Act of circa 1766 declared the right of the British government to legislate for the colonies in all matters whatsoever. In the context of 150 years of colonial history in which the colonies had been self-governing, this was indeed a tyrannical and deeply threatening move.
As Fisher notes, there were in fact innumerable examples of Parliament regulating the internal affairs of the colonies in the century preceding the 1760s. To deny the right of Parliament to regulate the colonies was to deny that the colonies were colonies:
The truth of the matter was that Parliament had the right to rule, and had always ruled, the colonies without their consent. If a community is a colony in the English sense, it necessarily is ruled without its consent. The American patriot argument meant in reality the extinguishment of the colonial relation. [p. 75]
An impression prevails among Americans that, as a result of the Revolution, England learned to retain her colonies by the affectionate method—the method without force or coercion, which such Whigs as Burke and Chatham recommended. It is supposed that England has now acknowledged that the demands of our patriot party were reasonable; that they form a proper method of colonial government, which she herself has adopted; and that if she had yielded to those demands in 1776 America would still be part of the British empire. [JP: nb: the author is writing in 1902 when Britain had a vast colonial empire.]
England, so far from acknowledging the soundness of the methods of Burke and Chatham, or the reasonableness of our demands, has governed her colonies ever since our Revolution by a method which is directly the reverse. No English colony has now [in 1902] any of the rights which were demanded by the Americans of 1776, nor any hope of obtaining them except by a rebellion and war which would by assisted by some powerful nation.
The main contention of our patriot party was that Parliament should exercise no authority in the colonies, should be considered constitutionally incapacitated from passing an act to regulate the colonies, and that the colonies should be attached to England merely by a protectorate from the crown. This demand was rejected by England, and would now be considered as so completely out of the question that no one of her present colonies would think of suggesting it; for if there is anything that is absolutely settled in English political or constitutional law it is that Parliament has the same supreme and omnipotent power in every British colony that it has in London. [pp. 424-425]
In short, what the British demanded in the 1770s was neither unprecedented nor tyrannical; it was no more than they asked of every other English subject, at home or overseas. To contend that this was “tyrannical and deeply threatening,” you must also contend that Parliament tyrannized and threatened English subjects in England itself, as well as colonies such as Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. In my view this is unsustainable. One certainly cannot properly regard British rule in Canada, the closest analogue to the American colonies, as tyrannical. In contrast, what the American patriots demanded—all the benefits of British imperial protection without any of the costs—was deeply threatening to the entire British empire. Why would Britain even maintain an empire under such conditions?
You continue,
Then, instead of trying to find a reasonable middle ground, the King kept pushing uncompromisingly along the same lines, until, following the Boston Tea Party of December 1774, he essentially declared the colonists outside his protection and waged war on them.
Fisher demonstrates that English policy was not uncompromising severity, but one of conciliation and compromise. Indeed, the efforts to conciliate the Americans continued even after the war began (this was why the Whig Lord Howe was sent to command British forces in America). [LA replies: this statement is so far out that Fisher’s entire argument becomes suspect.] Unfortunately, the combination of conciliation without overwhelming military force simply emboldened the patriots, destroyed the credibility of British power in America, and made the patriots more determined than ever to obtain independence. To quote Fisher:
It is a great mistake to suppose that [Lord North] was not an able man, or to say that his failure to be sufficiently conciliatory lost the American colonies to Great Britain; or that the king was to blame and North was merely the king’s tool. Lack of conciliation was certainly not the trouble. [p. 222]
You write,
It became evident to the Americans that the King was seeking to treat the Americans as he treated the Irish, as a subject people with no rights.
That was the patriot propaganda argument, but it is not sustained by the actual facts. If anything, Britain lost the American colonies not because she treated them like the Irish, but because she refused to treat them like the Irish.
You write,
Many British Whigs, most notably Edmund Burke, believed that the King (and the Tory government) were behaving in a tyrannical manner toward the Americans.
What you are not seeing is what Fisher illuminates, which is that the Whigs sided with the American patriots in order to gain political advantage and ensure that the Tory ministry was overthrown. Their arguments are thus tendentious and politically biased to say the least. The Whigs insisted that the Tories were acting too brutally, and the Whigs did everything they could to hobble the conduct of the war. Then, the Whigs complained that the Tories had gotten the country into an unwinnable quagmire! Sound familiar? A domestic political faction in a de facto political alliance with the enemy insurgency is the story of both Vietnam and Iraq—for Whigs, read Democrats, and for “patriots”, read Viet Cong or Fedayeen.
Furthermore, in citing the Whigs, you are leaving out the other side of the argument entirely. Samuel Johnson had an effective rebuttal to Burke and his ilk in Taxation No Tyranny.
You write,
Second, it shows a lack of proportion to call a natural human institution, inherited royalty, which has existed through history, and which is obviously in line with basic human needs and instincts (as we can still see today by the deep attraction that much of humanity has for British royalty), “absurd and repugnant.”
I write, of course, as an American in 2011, to whom being subject to the whims of a hereditary monarch would be absurd and repugnant—especially if the monarchs were creatures like the Windsors but with real power over me. However, the British royal family is “popular” around the world today and in Britain itself not because it exerts a parent-like power and authority over its subjects, but because it exerts no authority at all. It is purely decorative!
Personally, I have no use for expensive decorations. A king with real power can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the man, but history clearly shows that hereditary monarchy sometimes leaves the fate of the realm in the hands of a knave or an imbecile, with fatal results.
LA replies:
And democracy sometimes leaves the fate of the realm in the hands of … ?
Every conceivable system of government is imperfect and unsatisfactory. People living under hereditary aristocracy, where they have to bow and scrape for everything in life, start to find that intolerable and to long for freedom and equality. But then the realm of freedom and equality descends into the mire, and people start to long for order and authority.
James P. writes:
You write:
“And democracy sometimes leaves the fate of the realm in the hands of…?”
Ah, but you can get rid of a knavish or imbecilic democratic leader more easily than you can get rid of a king. If you do get rid of a king, often you are stuck with his equally bad offspring! To be sure, I wish it were easier than it is to get rid of a bad President—only under exceptional circumstances are we not stuck with them for the full four years.
I insist that the British monarchy is absurd and repugnant in 2011—a debased and useless vestige. This opinion is a “2011 opinion.” In the 1770s I would probably have sided with the Tories and the king, and no doubt would have been run out of the country by the mob for my pains.
LA replies:
My shortest defense of monarchy is:
The reason for the monarchy is that it represents and embodies a transcendent dimension of the society. A country with a monarchy has a dimension of reality that a republic lacks.
My argument refers to a constitutional monarchy, so your argument about the absurdity of living under the power of a hereditary ruler does not contradict it.
LA writes:
For reference, here is the entry from which I pointed at the above exchange with James P., since that entry is also a part of the exchange:
In a lengthy reply to me, James P. adopts the argument of historian Sydney Fisher, which he discovered at the site of the royalist blogger Mencius Moldbug, that Britain’s demands on the colonies which set off the American Revolution were reasonable, and that the American patriots overstated the tyrannical character of George III. However, even as he defends the British monarchy from the accusations of the American revolutionists, he also insists that the institution of monarchy is absurd and repugnant. So it’s not entirely established where James is coming from. But clearly he is no Moldbugite.
May 5
Joshua G. writes:
Fischer’s analysis of General Howe’s conduct is not that “far out” at all. Note that he isn’t calling Howe a traitor, merely an appeaser. Howe’s intentions have been a subject of historical debate since the 1770s. The late historian, Maldwyn Jones writes:
“Sir William Howe, one of the Revolution’s most controversial military figures, remains so down to this day. He was, perhaps, the only British commander-in-chief with a real chance to crush the American rebellion. Why did he fail to do so? Why did he let slip a succession of seemingly easy opportunities to destroy Washington’s army? Was he more concerned with reconciliation that with reconquest? Did his political responsibilities as peacemaker interfere with his military obligations as general? These questions raised by his contemporaries, have divided historians ever since and make the problem of evaluation Howe’s record a perplexing one.”
As you can see, many historians share or at least at one time shared Fischer’s hypothesis. It should hardly surprise us that modern “progressive” historians should fail to see Howe’s inability to crush a rebellion as a black mark against him. The two alternatives seem to me to be that Howe was either a grossly incompetent military strategist or utilizing the ever-failing tactic of winning the “hearts and minds” of one’s sympathetic foes. You should really do yourself a favor and read Fischer’s book if you have not. I am no expert on this subject and do not claim the book to be authoritative, but it definitely contains some food for thought. For example, why didn’t Howe pursue the defenseless rebel army after the battle of Bunker Hill? Why did Parliament send a general who had voted against the military occupation of Boston?
We should be asking the same kinds of questions of our own military strategists. We are not calling them traitors, merely suggesting that their tactics of trying to moderate one’s enemies by appeasement and conspicuous constraint are foolish and counterproductive and only serve to embolden the most radical.
Here’s the link to Jones.
LA replies:
Well, it’s a fascinating argument, that the British military during the American Revolution were behaving like contemporary liberal ambivalent America, lacking the will to win.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 30, 2011 08:39 AM | Send
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