A REAL PRINCE OF A GUY
There is something so anachronistic about royalty.
The basic tenet of it is revolting to republican sensibilities; that one human being is better than another simply because of who his father was. It bespeaks a breathtaking arrogance to believe that you can breed human beings like dogs or horses and expect one’s progeny to be superior to that of another.
That’s why I always thought the American fascination with Princess Diana was so troubling. Here was this nice woman of average intelligence with a little bit of style (bought and paid for with the taxes of hard working Brits) who not only achieved iconic status while she was alive, but whose tragic death turned her into some kind of Kennedyesque martyr.
A martyr to what? Evidently, she held babies afflicted with AIDS…but so do tens of thousands of nurses, aid workers, mothers and fathers around the globe.
They, however, don’t wear Christian Dior dresses and date Arab playboys.
And then there was that lionization of Diana for her “work” with clearing land mines around the world.
Our military, along with volunteers from all over the planet have been doing this for going on thirty years.
Yes, but they don’t have a son who’s going to be the next King of England.
It caused barely a ripple of anger back in 1982 when Nancy Reagan curtsied before Queen Elizabeth. If it had been Abigail Adams, I’m quite sure that John would have been impeached and poor Abby would have been subjected to that fine old all-American tradition of being tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail. (’Tis a pity we gave up on that tradition…I can think of a few moonbats who’d look rather good in feathers.)
The reason for this diatribe against royalty is something the man who would be a would-be King said about those of us unlucky enough not to have had a Queen for a mother. Here’s Prince Charles in all of his regal glory:
“People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history.” (Courtesy of Drudge)
As opposed to having the “natural ability” to be…what? A Prince of the royal blood? A Dumbo-eared dilettante whose insufferable pronouncements about art, architecture, and the culture have shown him to be an elitist of the first order?
The quote came in a memo written by the Charles formerly known as Prince in response to a request by a Secretary for more training at work. The secretary in question, Elaine Day, is claiming sex discrimination and unfair dismissal against the prince’s household and described it as “hierarchical and elitist”, an institution run in an “Edwardian fashion” where everyone knew their place and those who did not were punished.
“Edwardian fashion” may be too generous and off by about 500 years. It seems more like the England of Henry VIII. My God! Even in this day and age, the British press referred to Diana “having done her duty” when she bore this lickspittle a male child to continue the bloodline. (As an aside, Charle’s great-Uncle was Kaiser Wilhelm who fought a little war against his relations at the beginning of the 20th century. The current occupants of Winsdor Castle used to go by the name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, only changing it to Winsdor to placate patriotic sensibilities.)
The web of connections involving past and present royalty in “old Europe” has been fodder for conspiracy theories for years. Thanks to the influence of the old Hapsburg dynasty that ruled first, the Holy Roman Empire and then the sprawling Austro-Hungarian empire, most of the old royal families of Holland, Spain, Russia, Belgium, Germany, and England are related in one way or another. What has always united them is money…and lots of it.
Thank goodness their political influence has been reduced to next to zero.