The Queen and I
harpers.org
harpers.org
It's very trendy to hate on the monarchy, rationally it makes sense but if we look at the numbers they bring in more money to the country than they take out, Elizabeth evokes a sort of stability in our politics and it's not certain how those affects are felt.
To take the words from Stephen Fry: "It is rational to assume that countries without a constitutional monarchy are freeer, however, the countries which are freeest are Denmark, Norway, Sweden- and they have a monarchy."
I do like this part, "Mrs. Tony Blair was raised in a working-class family in Liverpool and became a successful barrister. Snobbery: the British disease." There's something weirdly similar here, where a fairly huge chunk of working class voted for the person born with $million in his pocket, and quite literally hate the woman born into a working class family and actually worked for most of her life (and was the bread winner) up until heading to D.C. It's almost a kind of self-hate variety of snobbery.
the Human Freedom index[0] is a good start, which is littered at the top with monarchies. (although, there are also some republics like Switzerland/Hong Kong)
[0]: https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/human-freedom-i...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair#Education
The idea that anyone typically "working class" went to Fettes in the late 1960s is rather amusing - it is still rather grand to this day.
Edit: The reasons for the widespread hatred of Blair in the UK have nothing to do with his background.
Edit2: Apologies - I misread, not used to reading "Mrs Tony Blair"....
These monarchies also have very little to no power, so an argument against them, other than the financial burden, usually doesn't hold.
Nigel Farage (typically, ugh).
David Attenborough
The Actor who plays Mrs Brown in Mrs Browns Boys.
The British monarchy as individuals (excluding Charles)
Queen Elisabeth grew up in a time when the monarchy was far more threatened because of the political changes of the 1930s and the actions of her uncle. Knowing how precarious her situation was she tread very carefully. All it will take is one foolish ancestor to expose monarchy as an expensive and useless anachronism.
It is probably good for tourism though!
As an Austrian I'm not buying that argument. It's not as if you need to tear down all the royal palaces when you abolish monarchy. If anything you can give tourists deeper entry, since no one lives there anymore. Just take a look at Schloss Schönbrunn, the Imperial palace in Vienna, which has way more visitors than Buckingham palace for the simple reason that it is open the entire year.
Agree on the insane lies about their thrift.
Bit of a waste of an article. The author is clearly against the monarchy yet fails to enumerate many points in spite of the length.
What amazes me most is Americans. They profess a love of freedom and equality yet love the royals.
Why would this amaze you? We're free to love the royals because for us it's consequence-free.
And while they're not technically completely without power, if the royals tried to actually exercise power it would be stripped from them immediately. And they know it.
These days, for the most part the royals are a show for tourists.
Why in the world would that amaze you? As pointed out above, monarchies populate the top of the Human Freedom Index. That would indicate that "Americans" (even though I think you're painting with a broad brush, since there isn't any one "American" political philosophy) are professing something completely logical.
I was under the impression this was a meme pushed by right-wing, Murdoch-owned, pro-monarchy newspapers like The Daily Mail, The Sun and The Mirror.
A large segment of society hate the very concept of a monarchy, but their inheritance is actually far more constrained than a typical dynasty's, as the state retains ownership of all of the monarchic portions (they of course have significant private wealth as well).
I, personally, feel we would be hypocritical to dismantle the monarchy before we dismantle inheritance wholesale. i.e. 100% inheritance taxation (though I don't propose this is absolutely straightforward; there are many complexities).
This is a deeply unpopular view, but if we hate this kind of power and wealth inequality, we should really deal with it, not make some silly gesture about an artefact of history.