A column in The New York Times suggests that America should abandon its political foundations and consider something more King Georgian: a monarchy.
Written by Nikolai Tolstoy, historian and chancellor of the International Monarchist League, this dual citizen of Britain and Russia believes the current polarized state of American politics is primed for a big change:
That their head of state should be elected by the people is, I imagine, the innate view of almost all American citizens. But at this unquiet hour, they might well wonder whether — for all the wisdom of the founding fathers — their republican system of government is actually leading them toward that promised “more perfect union.”
After all, our American cousins have only to direct their gaze toward their northern neighbor to find, in contented Canada, a nation that has for its head of state a hereditary monarch. That example alone demonstrates that democracy is perfectly compatible with constitutional monarchy.
Tolstoy goes on to call countries that are ruled by a king and queen “fortunate” and “more stable and better governed than most of the Continent’s republican states.” The writer also states that monarchies keep dictators at bay and he uses a Winston Churchill quote to back that up:
Reflecting in 1945 on what had led to the rise of Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill wrote: “This war would never have come unless, under American and modernizing pressure, we had driven the Hapsburgs out of Austria and Hungary and the Hohenzollerns out of Germany.”
“By making these vacuums,” he went on, “we gave the opening for the Hitlerite monster to crawl out of its sewer on to the vacant thrones.”
Tolstoy also praises the actions of President Harry S. Truman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur for reserving the Japanese monarchy at the end of World War II: “This wise policy enabled Japan’s remarkable and rapid evolution into the prosperous, peaceful democratic society it has been ever since.”
British statesman and pro-Colonist Edmund Burke is quoted in the article as having written, “The people of England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation, and a sure principle of transmission; without at all excluding a principle of improvement.”
And if that isn’t convincing enough, Tolstoy adds: “It may be remembered that no British monarch has been assassinated for about five centuries, while no fewer than four American presidents have been murdered in the last 150 or so years. A factor to ponder, I suggest.”
In the end, Tolstoy said it’s time America considers “an alternative” to its current political turbulence and pursue the British model -- because stability or something.
