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rfmcdonaldThe Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, the other Commonwealth realms, and--incidentally--the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is reaching an apex in London right now, with a regatta on the Thames tomorrow (my time) and a week of parties.
A 2009 [FORUM] post asking what readers thought of monarchy revealed that most of my commenters had republican leanings of one kind or another, directed substantially against the institution of the monarchy and not so much the persons filling positions in said class of institutions. (I do not look forward to King Charles, mind.) Me, while the idea of the Commonwealth as a cultural forum based on shared history does have a certain logic to it, and the idea of republican constitutional reform here in Canada appalls me, the monarchy certainly isn't an institution I'd recreate in Canada if it somehow ceased to exist. My tepid support for the Canadian monarchy is rooted in the fact that Canada is virtually a republic already, with an elected parliamentary government and a monarch represented by a Governor-General who performs virtually all of the monarch's functions as head of state. (Yes, the installations of Juan Carlos in post-Franco Spain and Sihanouk in post-Communist Cambodia as heads of state did stabilize and legitimize the transitions from dictatorship, but those are exceptional circumstances: deported monarchs played marginal roles in the politics of post-Communist southeastern Europe or post-Nazi southern Europe while the Greek monarchy in its final decades arguably caused more trouble than it solved. Monarchy formulated as virtual republicanism is acceptable for me; any other form deserves to be ended.
And you? What do you think?
A 2009 [FORUM] post asking what readers thought of monarchy revealed that most of my commenters had republican leanings of one kind or another, directed substantially against the institution of the monarchy and not so much the persons filling positions in said class of institutions. (I do not look forward to King Charles, mind.) Me, while the idea of the Commonwealth as a cultural forum based on shared history does have a certain logic to it, and the idea of republican constitutional reform here in Canada appalls me, the monarchy certainly isn't an institution I'd recreate in Canada if it somehow ceased to exist. My tepid support for the Canadian monarchy is rooted in the fact that Canada is virtually a republic already, with an elected parliamentary government and a monarch represented by a Governor-General who performs virtually all of the monarch's functions as head of state. (Yes, the installations of Juan Carlos in post-Franco Spain and Sihanouk in post-Communist Cambodia as heads of state did stabilize and legitimize the transitions from dictatorship, but those are exceptional circumstances: deported monarchs played marginal roles in the politics of post-Communist southeastern Europe or post-Nazi southern Europe while the Greek monarchy in its final decades arguably caused more trouble than it solved. Monarchy formulated as virtual republicanism is acceptable for me; any other form deserves to be ended.
And you? What do you think?
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