Love, parenthood and the British aristocracy

Kate has a British history exam today. For Kate's benefit, I thought I would pass on the message from my calendar today. On this date in 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated the throne for "the woman he loved." I appreciate the glamour and pageantry of the English crown, but, personally, this would have been just as good a moment for the English people to get rid of the royals. Edward's parents were decent royalty but lousy parents. Edward did things which were petulant and harmful to his family and the British people, and ended up hurting the status of the English crown. He courted the Nazis in Germany and sublimated himself to an American. Heavens!

Unfortunately, kings and queens are human too. I remember my father once stated to me that a benevolent dictatorship was the best form of government. I think his point lent more to eternal governance rather than human dictators. I hope so, anyway. I could agree with the concept of God's beneficent providence, but the concept of men being dictators runs up against my Jeffersonian background and the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity.

Thank God for the American Revolution and our understanding that the people who govern us are simply citizens like we are. Despite our apparent desire as a country to create family dynasties from time to time (Adams, Harrison, Roosevelt, Bush, Clinton?), I think we still realize that the men and women who govern us are prone to the same weaknesses and follies as to which we all are prone. That should inform the understandings of the governors that they are no better or worse than the people who elect them. It should also inform the understandings of the electorate that those people in the marble buildings in the state house and the District of Columbia are subject to our fallacies.

A little John Stuart Mill would go well now. Mill thought that a democracy would weaken the government by moderating the status of the elected. Kind of a McDonaldization of the government. However, Mill, like Samuel Johnson before him, took too high an opinion of the concept of royalty. In his defense, Mill thought that the cornucopia of social strata present of British society and government lent itself to a more complete representation of that society. In other words, a government consisting of different strata of society and different experiences of life would enable the government to represent the totality of the society better than a government comprised of the hoipolli of democratic society, which always tended toward the middle.

American society, on the other hand, is based on the concept that we are all equal, but if there is an aristocracy at all, it should be one based on merit and talent, rather than on some family connection. I think that time has shown us that a representative democracy does not create a society which necessarily tends toward the middle. The last seven years has clearly shown that the trends can be manipulated to favor the ends rather than the middle. Wealth and privilege does tend to breed wealth and privilege, just as poverty tends to produce poverty. One of the greatest beauties of the American system is the tendency to allow those who exhibit talent and merit to rise to the top, despite their beginnings.

All the c--- that goes along with the aristocracy and family governance should someday become a footnote in a history book. Even now the writings and opinions of Samuel Johnson and John Stuart Mill sound like antiquities.

We should not have to endure the boresome (my grandmother's word) meanderings of such silly puds like Edward VIII, the woman he loved, and his family. Not to mention Charles and Diana and the rest of them.