Over 500 million people live in monarchies, ranging from Queen Elizabeth II with about 130 million subjects (including one Algebe), down to Albert II of Monaco with just over 30,000. All of these monarchs are supposedly chosen by god, with the exception of Japan's Emperor, who is the son of a former god. Some are benign and mostly harmless, but then there's Saudi Arabia.
If these monarchs were appointed, annointed and paid for by organizations of consenting adults, like the Pope, I would have no objection. But the British monarchy has legal status and receives taxpayer funds to support her and her dreadful family. If Americans are embarrassed about singing "Hail to Chief" to Donald Trump, how do you think it would feel to sing "God save our gracious king about the future King Charles IV? How would it feel to have Donald Trump as president for life by the grace of god?
It's also unfair to them in my opinion. Emperor Heisei of Japan wants to quit for reasons of ill-health, but their constitution doesn't allow that, so he continues to suffer through garden parties despite a faltering heart and prostate trouble. Prince Charles would have been perfectly happy working in a job suited to his talents, such as fast food or sanitation, but by accident of birth (choice of god) he's been forced into a position where his embarrassing lack of taste and intellect are constantly under scrutiny.
Is there any justification for a monarchy in the 21st century? Is this a legitimate target for atheist activism?
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It would not require a violent revolution for England to abandon their monarchy. Why don't they?
Inertia I think. and the lure of the knighthood. Even apparent rebels like Paul McCartney and Elton John have been willing to bend the knee and accept the privileges of medieval thuggery from their monarch.
There are conflicting views if the royal family results in a net financial gain or loss to the UK economy:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/the-biggest-myth-about-the-quee...
Sure they sell a lot of commemorative mugs and tea towels, but I just think there's a principle involved. Why should 21st century states allow god to choose their head of state? And whose god? The British Commonwealth, which includes Australia, Canada and New Zealand, also encompasses large numbers of Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and maybe even a few atheists. Why should they have to accept a titular leader picked by the heavenly non-entity of the Anglican church?
Bonnie Prince Charlie was never recognized as king, so won't the current Charles be King Charles III?
You're right. But maybe his mother will outlive him, and we won't have suffer yet another disastrous Charles.
Personally I am glad we threw those inbreds out 240 years ago. Now we only have to deal with those who would be kings / gueens for a maximum of 8 years. I would recommend it to the rest of you carrying that baggage into the 21st century.
Kings are not and never were made by God/gods…..
The great secret of monarchy was revealed by Bonaparte …….. When accused by the Tzar of stealing the crown of France…….. Bonaparte replied ,”I didn’t steal the crown…I found it ,lying in the gutter and I picked it up on the point of my sword”.
Bonaparte compelled the Pope to travel to Paris , ostensibly to take part in the coronation ceremony.
On the day of the crowning …. Bonaparte famously lifted the crown from the pillow and with his own hands placed it on his own head…….thus rendering the Pope and arguably all religions totally redundant …showing the Pope ,and the world in general that religions held no power.
At the same time demonstrating that real power resided where it always had done ….with the guys with the sharp pointy swords.
Back in the day of course these were the royals and aristocracy…but that was before they interbred themselves into idiocy…
Nowadays,of course, the power is held by security service agents , unknown colonels , anonymous generals , nameless CEO’s & comities of apparatchiks ….
All the time I was typing the above post ..I had this nagging feeling at the back of my mind...only when I'd finished it and posted did it come to me.....
Diderot .....(of course..)
“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
Monarchs chosen by God? I don't think so. Take our own 'royal' family for example, the House of Windsor. They are actually of German descent and were originally called Saxe-Coburg Gotha. However, they changed their name from Saxe-Coburg Gotha to Windsor in 1917 because of anti-German sensitivities at the time (i.e: World War I). Look back far enough and you'll find some rather 'incestuous' marriages and inter-breeding "to protect the blood line" and all that b*llsh*t. No devine intervention there I'm thinking...
Diderot FTW.
There were certainly gods on earth in Egypt, and Hirohito was certainly Japan's god in WWII. At the close of hostilities the terms of surrender the Japanese had to sign into law was that no man is a god. That basically forced upon the Japanese people that Hirohito, who hundreds of thousands of Japanese died for in that war, was nothing but a man and for his part he toured Japan to expose himself as just that. He was instrumental, as part of the Marshall Plan, to demonstrate to the Japanese people that he, and all emperors before him, were mere mortal men. That devastated the Japanese culture more so than any losses in battle and has to this day caused them the ultimate loss of face with the world. As the song goes "...losing my religion.", the Japanese suffered extraordinarily as an entire nation when their god was deposed by its own hand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanity_Declaration
Had this kind of event occurred more in antiquity men would have secured a more secular world by now.
Regarding The House Of Tudor, you must understand that it is merely table dressing at this point honoring a rich history of that and other royal houses the world would be the lesser for at this point, culturally speaking. It serves no other purpose than that. If we should dismiss our cultures for the sake of politicking by some strident utilitarians then we must acknowledge it fully and dismiss all the culture associated with it including the rich visual, literature and cultural arts and development of them as a natural embracing of their time(s). Everything brought forward from them must be collaterally denounced. Savvy?
"That devastated the Japanese culture more so than any losses in battle and has to this day caused them the ultimate loss of face with the world."
Japan's resurgence after World War II wasn't the achievement of a devastated culture. They rebuilt their shattered cities and industries and went on to challenge the U.S. economically, to the extent that Ezra Vogel wrote a best-seller called "Japan as Number One" in the late 1970s. What has devastated them is the stalling of their growth after a financial crisis in the 1990s, followed by the waning of some of their modern gods, like Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic, etc. The postwar generation worked and sacrificed for decades in the expectation that their children would have better lives. Just as it looked like that dream would be realized, it was all swept away by the folly of greedy brain-dead bankers and corrupt politicians.
Don't forget Japan's "Three Principles of Arms Exports" effectively banning the export of defence equipment and technology, on which other nations - most notably the US, Russia, China, Israel and the UK - were spending billions. (In the case of the US, trillions of US Dollars). This allowed Japan to quietly go about their business and focus their attention on the rebuilding and redevelopment of their country after the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.