I understand that, thanks.
They are seeking to defend the principle that ‘rich people should not be able to buy a layer of protection denied to poor people (i.e. guns) merely by opting in to paying for it’.
And of course fucking John Oliver had to go on a rant about Charles being the issue of cousins marrying. He has gone too many times to that well, especially when you consider ER2 and Phillip were 3rd cousins (a couple times removed, also.) Most people in America dont even know who their 3rd cousins are (I dont, but I know a couple of 2nd cousins), and in insular areas many people likely have married a distant cousin without knowing it. Hell, it is not impossible that Oliver’s parents were also distant cousins. That would be hilarious.
I have to say that when I first moved from a big coastal US city to a small city in the US Midwest I thought everybody looked like their 2nd cousin 5th-inbred.
Well…I agree, 3rd cousins doesn’t mean much in a general sense and taken in isolation. But as a family generally they do have rather more pedigree collapse than the average bear. I mean comments like “the royal family’s wealth, unlike their gene pool, is massive” may be mean (as well as funny) and even exaggerated, but they do contain a grain of truth.
But then I despise constitutional monarchies on principle, so I tend to think John Oliver’s mockery of them is a sound public service.
However, they do a valuable service. A great deal of the presidents time is doing ceremonial or public duties- cutting ribbons, attending funerals, etc. The Monarch does all that.
And sure, attack the idea of a King if you like, but he has done that same cousin joke too many times. For all intents and purposes, a 3rd cousin several times removed is not a relative at all.
So do elected presidents, like Ireland’s.
It will never not be funny, either.
Don’t expect this lawsuit to get too far:
That’s A definition of the term “valuable”, I don’t know if it’s the way most people use the term though.
And Charles has ruled for too long based on the simple fact that his great great great… great grandpa was real good at killing people.
And without the disgusting implications that a hereditary monarchy has.
Rather, the simple fact that his position as monarch is based on laws passed by the British Parliament.
I don’t think any of his ancestors were particularly good at that. His 15×great-grandfather, Henry VII, slew his 16×great-grandfather’s brother, Richard III, which did move the kingship to that line, but in general their prediliction for killing wasn’t the best path to the throne.
In any case, the number of people that share his murderous ancestors is staggering. The only reason it’s Charles and not someone with the same bloodlines is primogeniture. It’s not based on descent, but on descent via the eldest male line (50% change of that changing late in the century, depending on what children Prince George has, if any).
I only bring that up because it’s an even more arbitrary “qualification” than simple descent from the previous monarch. The only benefit I can see is that if you know who it’s going to be while they’re still a child, you can train them up, but I agree that actual qualifications would be better.
I never thought much about Queen Elizabeth as our head of state, partly because I didn’t grow up in Canada, but the thought that I have an actual king feels decidedly archaic. I’m sure unconscious sexism is part of that, too: why should a king feel more medieval than a queen?
Maybe because there was a queen for such a long time? I was only a few months old when Liz became queen, and I’m old. A king seems more unfamiliar and therefore more archaic?
Charles has never ruled. No Monarch has ruled in the UK since 1689 or so. Charles reigns.
Yep.
Back in the day, having a clearly-established and widely-accepted line of succession meant you were less likely to have, y’know, wars and shit.
Quite right. But in most of the civilized world we now have more sophisticated techniques to prevent local warlordism.
I don’t have a dog in the ceremonial monarchy fight, but I generally hold that it’s an idea whose time has passed, but that will probably dodder on in zombie-like form for another generation or two before keeling over for good. IMO King Charles III is not the final monarch of the UK and associated realms. But the final such monarch may already be born.
The other ceremonial royals of other nations might outlast that of the UK et al, or might not. Cogent arguments can be made either way, but IMO those various timelines will be highly contingent on the specifics of country, personality, and external pressures. Which are so highly contingent 50 to 150 years hence as to be completely unpredictable.
The currently active action on the useful-forms-of-government front is to push tyrants of all stripes onto the ash heap of history for good. That’s taking longer than we thought.
Do you have any idea of how much the Royals bring in tourism money? Just the Coronation brought in over $400M usd. The Royals overall bring in about $2Billion per year.
So they free up the PM, and bring in scads of badly needed foreign funds. Overall a big win-win.
Hard numbers are a bit difficult to locate, and COVID has turned everything topsy turvy recently, but Disneyand Paris generates on the order of 2-3billion Euros of tourism every year over in France.
And has not in fact been all that profitable a venture for many of the ~30 years since it opened. It has had some excellent eras and some lackluster ones. Immediately pre-COVID things were looking pretty good, and now post-COVID the recover portends more of the same.
As modified by laws passed by the English, Scottish and British Parliaments between 1688 and 1707.
Across the channel, a couple of mice in a fake castle bring in more.
And no one has to pretend that Mickey was hand picked by God to reign over France.
Eta: I see that @LSLGuy beat me to this point…