An Interview with the Monarchist

I’m wondering if you can tell us why Mr. Monarchist – where you derive this rigid inclination towards another time, this ludicrous commitment to stuffy clubs, old dukes and ear trumpets – as if you need to escape the world in which we live today.

I would put it down to boredom, mainly, I can find nothing about modern civilisation that inspires me. I think it is far more ludicrous to be committed to the present state of things.

And so you intrigue yourself by consciously retreating into this anachronistic world of tweedy, fogy types.

No, not anachronistic. We may be chronologically out of sync with the masses, but it would be wrong to imply that our cause is obsolete. Certainly the monarchy still exists, and we don’t believe it will ever outlive its useful purpose, but besides the monarchy we are principally dedicated to the restoration of lost virtues. It is true that much has been lost over the past century, but it would be crazy to believe that virtue is a corpse.

So you don’t think that society has progressed in the last hundred years or so?

Not in a virtuous sense, no. Of course not.

If we accept your premise that virtue is a timeless quality, how do you propose we get it back? Nobody seems to be campaigning on a platform to bring back the gentleman, for example.

Well no, and nor should they. Evelyn Waugh once said something that I found quite striking, and which has stayed with me for years. That is, no good ever came from a public cause, only a private cause of the spirit. That’s what we are, I think – we are a private cause of the spirit. If a few hundred or a few thousand people become captivated by it, then I think we have achieved some good.

When you say that no good ever came from a public cause, do you mean to say that collectivist action basically destroyed private virtue?

Yes, I think so. The advent of democracy brought a decline in values. The old aristocratic virtues of loyalty, duty and chivalry, which one was born with and naturally aspired, have been replaced with statist ideals like equality, tolerance, political correctness and other low level conformist group think, which no one really likes but everyone puts up with.

Yes, but surely there was some social progress. The aristocrats were hoarding all the land and never earned any of their wealth.

Well, the first Duke of Wellington certainly earned his, as did all the other great hereditary first in lines. As for the crime of hereditary wealth, I wonder how many of Madonna’s adopted children will earn their millions, or how many will deserve to inherit her English country homes and landed estates. How many snooty kids and toffee-nosed teenagers of the instant dot com zillionaires will earn their fortunes, I wonder, or how many offspring of high and mighty CEOs will be able to justify their multiplied existence. There is unearned wealth everywhere you look, and more of it than ever before.

But you’re in favour of hereditary wealth?

I’m in favour of hereditary everything. My problem with the new aristocracy is their almost total lack of virtue and class. Today’s propertied elite prefer narcissism over nobility.

And the new middle class...

A welcome development, but I would be happier if they wore old clothes, adopted traditional manners and read ancient liturgy. Spontaneous reorganisation into rural hierarchies would also be appreciated.

Who is the greatest prime minister in history?

My icon is Lord Salisbury because he was a libertarian Tory and an exemplar of traditional aristocratic values. He stands for everything that today’s political class are against, and I find that extremely appealing about him, you know, the fact that he was a patrician and not a politician. Unfortunately he is a largely forgotten figure, or when he is remembered he is usually treated with contempt, probably because his whole philosophy was to do as little as possible while in government.

You consider him great because he did nothing?

Well, he was prime minister at the zenith of empire, so he obviously had a lot on his plate. By do-nothing I mean he was doctrinaire laissez-faire, he believed that government shouldn't interfere in the economic and social affairs of the nation, yet he still told the industrialists to fly a kite by passing the workers compensation act, and ended child labour by raising the age to fourteen, I believe, which in those days was considered a young man. So he was not indifferent to the plight of the masses – he was very much a beacon for liberty and civilisation.

You said you prefer a patrician over a politician, why is that?

Well both bother me because both are paternalists, both think they are there to help us little people. The difference I suppose is that the patrician is detached to the point of aloofness, while the politician sucks up to the masses and depends on the people’s adulation for his own self-esteem. In other words, politicians tend to be cowardly, whereas patricians are more likely to be real leaders with little or no propensity to follow the crowd.

Is that your problem with modern democracy, because it has degenerated into a popularity contest?

In a way, yes, that’s why we should limit it as much as possible. Democracy has a natural tendency to follow fashionable causes, when it is often the unfashionable thing that is right.

Like the monarchy...

Precisely, because it is assumed that there is something stuffy about the status quo, politicians are always looking for ways to differentiate themselves from their opponents, so they are constantly promising change. It is very hard to rally the troops to maintain same old this and same old that, unless of course the change is perceived to be radical.

Is that what republicans are, radical?

Radical yes, but not daring. There is no sense pretending that there is something daring or original in proclaiming yourself to be a republican, any more than there is something original about pretending one is an anarchist, an atheist, a pacifist, etc. The daring thing, or at any rate the unfashionable thing, is to believe in God or to defend the monarchy. Promoting republicanism in this day and age requires no moral courage whatsoever.

What’s so appealing about republicanism do you think?

I think there is nothing appealing about it, but it does have one huge advantage outside of Britain, you know, this notion that Her Majesty is an offshore Queen, that she is not really “one of us”. This is more problematic in far away Australia because that country is much more nationalistic than Canada or New Zealand and some of the other not so stridently self-assured smaller ones. I really think it boils down to this perception that we are ruled by a foreign absentee landlord, along with the fact that the international media takes every opportunity to remind us that she is “Britain’s Queen”.

Last question: If we all had the ability to choose our own name at birth, what would yours be?

A commenter signed off on the name, Howard P. Bickerstaff, Esq. once, and I fell in bed with it. Talk about a tweedy, fogy name.

Well, Mr. Bickerstaff, thank you very much for the interview.