Queens are on my mind lately. I think that’s largely owing to my having read the Sally Bedell Smith biography during my med downtime; when I read books while my body’s blitzed out the books sort of stick with me like a fever dream. That book certainly did. I kept juxtaposing my life, lying there in bed or sitting at the table choking down soup, with that of Queen Elizabeth II. She is a little dynamo. She’s trained herself to go for eight hours without a “health break”–what we in my family call “having a pee.” The only things I can go without for 8 hours are colonoscopy prep and political commentary on 24 hour news channels. I pretty much have to have a pee every 90 minutes.
When I reviewed the love letter, er, book on Goodreads it became pretty clear very quickly that most of the other reviewers were like the author in that they were impassioned Anglophiles who dreamed of an American monarchy.
Say WHAT?!?
Yes. These people are actually convinced that we need a QUEEN. Or a King. That’s largely owing, I suppose, to the author’s positioning of the Monarchy as a sort of innocuous figurehead designed to keep the country sane in spite of the shifting sands of politics. You know–“I sure hate Obama and my brother hates Romney but we all LOVE the Queen of America!” The last century has seen Britain remake a milennium of despots and tyrants into a sort of staid political Mickey Mouse. The queen is a filthy rich figurehead that everyone feels all warm and fuzzy about and who rakes in the tourist dough. Gosh. Don’t you wish we had one of those??
I’ll overlook how much of a slap in the face that is to the people who died to get us shot of the King. Well, other than that sentence, I guess. And now I’ll dive right into the crisitunity part of this ramble:
We do have a thing upon which we can all agree, which transcends politics and unites us.
It’s called Liberty.
France realised how important that was, and they gave us a big ol’ statue with a somewhat mannish face. We stuck her in New York Harbor and most of us now think of her as just a giant green woman full of elevators and staircases. But she’s our queen. She’s the personification of that thing that is greater than all of us and ties us together.
Freedom. True and absolute and utter freedom.
The way we’re going, however, I think perhaps we deserve a Queen or a King, because we’ve spent 11 years forgetting just why she is so important. We’ve sold her off for parts as we willingly allow the government to strip us at airports and wiretap our phones.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. People living here in America are actually wistful and longing for a monarch. No wonder we’ve agreed to sell Liberty to the lowest bidder.
But you know, this is the opportunity that those of us who are still in tune with the transcendent glory of liberty can take. We can point out that liberty is that ideal which transcends political differences and unites us all.
A queen. People actually want a queen. Excuse me while I bash my head on the desk.
First: I had to look up “crisitunity” because I thought it was a typo. Guess I don’t watch enough Simpsons.
Second: you said “We do have a thing upon which we can all agree, which transcends politics and unites us. It’s called Liberty. ”
Sadly, that’s no longer the case. I have at lease one friend (and a few more whom I suspect feel the same way) who actually said to me “I think Socialism is a far superior system and it’s only a matter of time before America moves to it”. Now granted, his wife is from Canada, where they have all sorts of Socialistic government programs (though, ironically, they live _here_ for some reason), but I think it’s interesting that my friend is comfortable enough in this political climate to say something out loud that would have gotten him socially ostracized three generations ago. Sadly, he might be right in his estimation.
And this is the crux of my beef here: with so many dozens of reportedly “better” Socialistic governments out there (ignoring the fact that they’ve all just about run out of other peoples’ money), _why do they have to change THIS country_? Why can’t they just move to one of the many Socialistic countries like Canada, Sweden, Norway, etc, etc, etc instead of chopping down the tallest poppy- the last, greatest country on the planet- so that it can “measure up” to the rest of the failed states? THAT, in my opinion, is the biggest slap in the face to the people who fought for our right to fight for our own freedoms. A fight that we are, tragically, refusing to engage in.
Ya know, Jason, three generations ago your friend would have been ostracized around Nashville for being a Catholic or a Jew, too. Being a Southern Baptist would have gotten him socially ostracized around St. Louis, where I grew up. Being black would have gotten him socially ostracized by whites pretty much anywhere in this country. And I could go on. Just because certain things were thought to be wrong three generations ago doesn’t mean that they were wrong then, or are wrong now. And that is absolutely, positively the only response I’m going make to your comment.
Coble, I’d disagree with you that we have ever had, or were ever intended to have, “absolute and utter freedom” in this country. I think the people who wrote the Constitution were influenced enough by Hobbes to regard absolute freedom a little sceptically. I think we have a goal of achieving as much freedom as can be achieved within the limits of our obligations to the General Welfare, but I think that promoting the GW (as it has been understood over time) has put some limits on individual actions from the beginning.
Liberty doesn’t work as a queen in our hyper-partisan, highly polarized society because there is no agreement that “I hate Obama, you hate Romney, but we all love liberty.” Instead the general feeling seems to be “If you don’t vote for the same politicians I do, you must hate liberty.”
I agree with nm that we didn’t/don’t/shouldn’t have absolute freedom. Once one acknowledges that freedom MUST be somewhat curtailed to maintain civilized society, then the debate simply becomes where the line is. As long as we (as a nation) disagree so vehemently on where that line is, then we can’t really unite under “liberty” because we’re too busy thinking the other guy opposes it (jason’s comment would work as a good starting example).
Having spent half my life studying the gap between popular and elite conceptions of the meaning of the American Revolution (and the tensions between the two as reflected in the evolving Constitution and early national law), I too am skeptical about your idea that “utter absolute freedom” was ever in their minds. As nm suggests, most (regardless of social station) abhorred the idea of license. Liberty carried responsibility and consequence, a different proposition from the freewheeling state of nature they formed government to escape. Elites confused the General Welfare with “what is good for me”; more ordinary sorts emphasized the God-giveness of their rights as a counterweight to government infringements. Both, however, gave significant consideration to the community obligations that gave individual liberty its meaning and limit. (And actually, that’s where I think modern libertarianism tends to go wrong, as it seems that too many emphasize an ideal of unlimited personal freedom but subordinate the community to an optional “if’n I want to” engagement.)
Good post. In a depressing kinda way.
One of my favorite historian/analysts, Ralph Peters said, “…there are entire segments of the world’s population that prefer certainty – no matter how backward or oppressive – to the rights and responsibilities of liberty.”
We have forgotten how to live as free individuals in community with one another. And the more we forget, the more tangled the web becomes that holds the veneer of civilization together. I’m afraid eventually it will wind up being a Big Brother label, duct-tape strait jacket.
Thanks for a cheery start to a Memorial Day weekend. ;)