Today's Monarchist Howler

I don't swear my oath of loyalty to the Queen, insists Louise Beaudoin, the Parti Québécois international relations critic, "I whisper it".

LOL!

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Republic Rollback: Restoring Government House

With the newly elected Liberal-National (conservative) government now in power in New South Wales, the question for constitutionalists and traditionalists is "will the Governor return to Government House?"

Viceregal representatives in Canadian provinces do not necessarily live in an official residence, but that has always been the case in Australia, until the previous premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, announced that incoming governor in 1996, Gordon Samuels would not live in Government House. Carr's expectation was that he would not be a full-time Governor and would continue to work as Chairman of the NSW Law Reform Commission. While the former was in Carr's control, the latter was deemed to be unconstitutional.

The ceremonial and community work of Samuels and his successor, Prof. Marie Bashir, has been full-time - but the convenience of a working residence in downtown Sydney has been denied them. It is said Carr made the change to both "soften up" NSW for an Australian republic, and as an act of tribal revenge on behalf of his party against the Crown, as his party perceives itself to be a victim of past use of vice-regal reserve constitutional powers in Australia.

With the change of government in NSW, hopes are high in constitutionalist circles that the new Premier will honour the longstanding commitment of his party to return Government House to full working order. My understanding is that while the new Government will honour its commitment, there is anxiety about how to fund it when its other commitments involve significant outlays on new infrastructure and improved public services. The timeframe is also unknown - it is unclear whether Prof Bashir and her husband, Sir Nicholas Shehadie, will move in or whether that will be reserved for the next vice-regal couple when they assume office some time in 2012.

The good news however is that either way, NSW will have a Governor properly ensconced in their rightful residence and properly equipped to resume a full community and ceremonial function. The office of Governor of New South Wales, is, after all, the oldest continuous office in post-settlement Australia.

The vice-regal banner of the Governor of New South Wales since 1981 is below. It is a variant of the design used by the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario in the early 1960s, and is now part of the common style of vice-regal standards for Australian governors.

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A High Tory on Democracy, Revolution, and Money

High Tory Gerald Warner writes this Sunday at Scotland on Sunday:

Liberal democracy is part of the "accepted political landscape"? Accepted by whom? By China, which occupies a not inconsiderable portion of the landscape? Increasingly it is viewed with scepticism in the developed world which spawned it. Yet Western "statesmen" are still trying to market this flawed commodity abroad.

Further:

Last week the leaders of the G8, representing countries that are de facto bankrupt, pledged £12bn to Egypt and Tunisia to develop democracy.

The same High Tory wrote last Sunday in the same pages:

Critics like to condemn Britain as class-ridden and deferential, mainly on the grounds that the public schools and Oxford and Cambridge dominate the education system, while a few happy mortals receive gongs or titles in the Honours List. That is what comes of living under a monarchy steeped in privilege – if only we lived in an egalitarian republic such as France…

Moreover:

The IMF should have been abolished years ago. It is a phantom survivor of the Bretton Woods agreement marinated in Keynesian delusion. Whenever a country has been living beyond its means the IMF thrusts a large loan upon it, then imposes conditions such as inflated tax rates that prevent genuine recovery.

Cross-posted at Wilson Revolution Unplugged.

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Master Class

The French elites are different from you and me. They're French. From the Steyn:

Whatever the head of the IMF did or didn't do, the reaction of the French elites is most instructive. "We and the Americans do not belong to the same civilization," sniffed Jean Daniel, editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, insisting that the police should have known that Strauss-Kahn was "not like other men" and wondering why "this chambermaid was regarded as worthy and beyond any suspicion." Bernard-Henri Lévy, the open-shirted, hairy-chested Gallic intellectual who talked Sarkozy into talking Obama into launching the Libyan war, is furious at the lèse-majesté of this impertinent serving girl and the jackanapes of America's "absurd" justice system, not to mention this ghastly "American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other."

As you'll recall - at least those of you not victimized by a public school education - a couple of centuries back the French had a revolution. Let me differ with Zhou Enlai and say that enough time has passed for us to make a judgment. The French Revolution was a failure. This was rather apparent at the time. A bid toward liberal democracy quickly degenerated into the modern world's first totalitarian state, then limped along for the better part of a decade until order was restored by Napoleon. Edmund Burke, that great prophet, foretold the disaster almost from its onset. It is rather remarkable that so few have grasped its consequence with the hindsight of two centuries.

The popular image of the revolution is of desperately poor people slaughtering the rich and powerful. The image is a product of Charles Dickens vivid narrative skills in A Tale of Two Cities. Thus most in the English speaking world recall the revolution as delayed justice becoming bloodied vengeance. Up with the people and down with the aristos. Like with most revolutions it was actually run by an intellectualized - and politically inexperienced - middle class.

Another great myth of the revolution is that it established a meritocracy in France. Certainly many professions were opened up to ordinary people. The real power in France, after the fall of Napoleon, has basically been kept within the same social class. Whereas financial success can buy any American into the front row of life, in France going to the right school - such as Sciences Po and the ENA - is vital to having any real influence in the Fifth Republic. While access to these schools is suppose to be meritocratic, their selection pool is so small, and their alumni so influential, this hardly matters.

The French elite is not fluid and is not especially accountable. It's one of the reasons the French take to the streets as often as they do. Power is centralized overwhelmingly in Paris and in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians. In a society where the state occupied a small slice of the economy this would be of little importance. The French state, however, looms over its society and economy in a manner hardly imaginable by North Americans until the Obama Era.

The gap between the ENA graduates (Enarques as they are known) and ordinary people is vast. They stand at the end point of a vast government administered selection process. The French state school systems is far tougher than its anglophone counterparts, especially in the maths and sciences. This is one of the reasons that City firms seek out French graduates. Those who don't make their way through the tough academic meat grinder are left with few prospects. While the education is excellent, it is the credential that is vital. No credentials means no luck.

As a point of comparison, take Mark Steyn. By his own admission he barely graduated high school. His first job after leaving was as a DJ at a local radio station, which he obtained by basically talking his way in. Such an improvisational personality would have little chance in the hierarchical society of France. While Anglophone schooling is on average much worse than that of France, our societies are far more dynamic. The purpose of schooling in the Anglo-Saxon world being - in theory - preparation for the real world. In France it is pre-screening for high level positions in the bureaucracy, political apparatus and in the country's highly regulated business sector.

For the French life is much like school. A flood of not always relevant information, regimented hours and lengthy examinations. You spend two decades completing test questionnaires so that, if all goes well, you can spend a life time filling out government questionnaires. The clever and lucky may get to administer those questionnaires. It is a self-contained universe where one is ranked and categorized. After surviving such an ordeal a sense of entitlement is only natural.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn was one of those clever boys who won all the prizes (except admission into ENA oddly enough, having to settle for a Ph D from Paris X Nanterre). He was better than everyone else. His test results proved it. Why should he be bound by such hum-drum things as decency, civility and mutual respect. Ordinary rules apply to ordinary men. The French Revolution replaced one aristocracy with another. The ancien regime, however, gave us les liaisons dangereuses. Their modern descendants will bequeath DSK in American handcuffs. You may decide for yourselves which example of decadence is more engaging.

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Protocol, Mr President

I can only imagine what was going through Prince Phillip's mind. No doubt very funny and very incorrect. It's interesting that the One is very careful about respecting all cultures, except the culture that made his country possible. It need not be added that had a conservative committed such a faux pas the media would have denounced him as an idiot.

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The Royal Wedding and How to Take Marriage Seriously

Hugo Burnand: TRH The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

Writes Ms. Mary Kochan of Catholic Lane:

There was no pretending that this marriage was merely about the two young lovers and their “feelings.” Despite the fairy-tale aspects and all the Cinderella references, this wedding anchored their marriage into a familial and social order that goes way beyond them in time and geography. Contra the modern conception of the atomized individual, both families were present and involved as though “t]he future of humanity passes by way of the family” (Familiaris Consortio), because indeed it does. Human beings do not create themselves; they do not create their own identities. They discover who they are and for (blessedly, still) most that discovery takes place in a family context, where roles of son or daughter, nephew or niece, brother or sister, weave the texture of life.

Just as human beings do not create themselves, they do not create marriage. Marriage is an estate given to man by his Creator and human beings stand under the judgment of God regarding how seriously they take it. There was no mincing of words on that score and everything attending the ceremony underscored the sacred nature of the proceedings. The couple did not use the wedding to showcase their hobbies or any other frivolity. They married in a sacred place, the most opulent and venerable space available to them given their station in life. Their wedding was presided over by the highest ranking clerics available to them. And the ceremony was accompanied by beautiful sacred music, some traditional and some composed especially to mark the occasion – but composed, as was their own prayer, in accord with the religious tradition they both inherited and assented to, screwed deeply into the sacred history of that heritage and thus timeless. Timeless the music, timeless the readings, timeless the prayers, and even the dress, for it is by such timelessness that we celebrate what is transcendent.

Further:

Woman then is a gift to man in a special way, something for him to “unwrap” and treasure. Hence the handing over of her by her father; hence the veil; hence the virginal white of the gown. And here come the cynics to remind us that they have lived together already for four years. Yes, but they did not on that account forgo the ceremonial giving and rightly so, for while the gift may have been opened illegitimately before, the giving here was still real – some things are honored even in the breach and you could see it in her eyes. They no longer live a lie, but William has in the old, but so true, terminology, “made an honest woman of her” — they tell the truth now, to each other and the world. The woman is given to the man and the world should pause and ponder.

Among other things, this means that there was no pretending that this man and woman could have been interchangeable with two men or two women. Imagine for a moment that Prince William had announced at 17 that he was “gay” and taken up with another young man. Would there have been a royal wedding and perhaps a new heir gotten by means of a lesbian surrogate and a turkey baster? No. It would not be. And we don’t say, “It would not be” with a proper British accent and a tone that indicates we simply mean “It just isn’t done.” No, we mean it would not exist. In the face of the homosexual agenda and all its propaganda, this wedding proclaimed the truth of marriage and showed homosexual pretense up for the play-acting absurdity that it is. Marriage is something, the lifelong union of man and woman, and marriage has ends – purposes – the chief among them being the procreation of children.

H/T: Tea at Trianon

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The Queen's Speech at Dublin Castle

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dans la belle époque

Taki talks about the old days:

This disappeared life sounds frivolous today, but as a wise philosopher once said, “the superfluous is extremely necessary”. We were also superfluous then, but playboys added not only to the spirit of the times, they added glamour and gaiety and chivalry and were a hell of a lot of fun to be around. During the great balls given at the period, the Rothschild, Ruspoli, Agnelli, Weiller and Rochas balls, playboys were the most in demand. Ladies of high society were particularly drawn to them, but then ladies were really ladies. Little English lower-middle-class girlies like Anna Wintour and Tina Brown, had they been around, would never have come close to meeting them or even seeing them.

Sorry I missed it...

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Her Majesty Surpasses George III

On Thursday Her Majesty's reign reached 59 years and 95 days. His Late Majesty George III's reign reached 59 years and 96 days. With Her Majesty having two more leap year days in her reign, this marked the day when Her Majesty's reign became the longer of the two.

Cecil Beaton: Her Britannic Majesty

LONG MAY SHE REIGN!

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"Better British liberty than American equality."

Once upon a time in the Great Dominion:

This was not Canada’s intended destiny, Ms. Smith said. “All the way back to the very beginnings of Canada … we were a radically free-enterprise and small-government nation – more so even than the Americans. ‘Better British liberty,’ our ancestors proudly declared, ‘than American equality.’

“Good heavens, where did that spirit of liberty disappear to? What we now tout as traditional Canadian values and virtues – unearned entitlements, paying people not to work, paying provinces not to succeed (and not to secede) – all these were unthinkable to the stalwart people who founded and built Canada. Today’s celebration of the easy ride … [is] the complete antithesis of [Canadian values and virtues].”

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God Save the Duke and Duchess!

Writes Danny Sanchez of the Ludwig von Mises Institute:

All this makes me wonder, why not use this nostalgia and popular acclaim as momentum to transfer some real power back to the House of Windsor, and maybe even the House of Lords too?

And wrote Dr. Kenneth Minogue over at Taki's Magazine roughly a month ago:

The other piece of nonsense is that there is a single solution—in this case the thing called democracy, or election—to any problem in social and political life. Why do we need a hereditary family when we can have an elected head of state? As a reactionary, my view is that the great thing about the British monarchy is precisely that no one ever elected them. They have good public relations and conspicuous charm, but that is irrelevant to our constitution’s continuity and tradition. Bright radicals have been trying to pull the same democracy trick with the House of Lords for a century now, and no one has yet come up with a popular solution. Who, one wonders with Henry II, will rid us of these meddlesome fools? For reactionaries, that is one of the great historical questions.

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