Posted on 06/05/2012 5:53:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It rained on the grand flotilla on the Thames marking the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. How appropriate. It meant that at the center of all the pageantry of the 1,000-boat extravaganza, an 86-year-old woman stood in the elements and waved to her subjects for hours, without betraying a hint of discomfort or complaint.
Queen Elizabeth is a miracle of dutifulness. In an era of irresponsibility, she always does what is expected of her. In an age of self-expression, she has subsumed herself in her institution. In a time of informality and ill manners, she observes all the rules, with grace and dignity.
Who knew that the British monarchy would assert its continued relevance by remaining so admirably out of step? The queen personifies almost everything disdained in our hyperdemocratic times when the “new new thing” is always celebrated. She is tradition incarnate, and — despite, by all accounts, a dry wit — unfailingly abides by the unwritten command that she never do or say anything interesting.
No PR person, no politician would ever counsel acting like the queen. A stuffy devotion to propriety isn’t supposed to sell. Yet her approval ratings in Britain are nearly 80 percent. She is adored throughout the other 15 countries she formally rules. The Thames flotilla drew 1 million people, and her jubilee was the slightly jarring spectacle of a 21st-century celebration of a centuries-old institution.
In the 1990s, Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted to nudge aside the timeless Britain represented by the queen with his “Cool Britannia,” a new, hipper Britain held together less by the monarchy than by execrable shlock. Now, it is Blair’s formerly with-it projects that are fit for a time capsule. He claimed his Millennium Dome, a vast structure housing an exhibition to celebrate the advent of the third millennium, would be “a triumph of confidence over cynicism, boldness over blandness, excellence over mediocrity.” The dome turned out to be one of the world’s great white elephants, an expensive waste that demonstrated the essential callowness of its creators.
What the monarchy has that can’t be simulated or invented on the fly is legitimacy. It is the accomplishment of Queen Elizabeth to have preserved and marshaled it. She knows that she is a national symbol, “a living flag,” to use Lenin’s phrase in explaining why the Romanovs had to be eliminated as a standing threat to the Bolsheviks. Even Britain’s silly royal rituals — the queen owns all the mute swans on the Thames, which are tallied up for her every year — have a whiff of majesty on account of their ancient pedigree.
If the makers of the European Union and its misbegotten experiment of a common currency had studied the British monarchy, they might have quit their foolhardy exercise in seat-of-the-pants nation-building long before they brought the Continent to the edge of the abyss. They might have understood the organic and distinctive nature of nations and the limits of deracinated bureaucratic rule, with no meaningful symbols, no long-standing traditions, no hard-earned legitimacy.
None of this is a brief against change. The British monarchy has lasted so long because it has been so supple and adaptive, in an expression of the pragmatic British temper. Robert Filmer, the 17th-century theorist of the divine right of kings, would look on the diminished role of the British monarchy with contempt. Queen Victoria, dubbed “the grandmother of Europe” because her relations were spread around so many royal houses, would view the shrunken influence of the crown with alarm. But Elizabeth is still queen, and in a few years could pass Victoria as the longest-reigning monarch in British history.
That is a testament to her work — some 2 million hands shaken and countless ceremonies endured — and her devotion to the role appointed her by history. In other words, she did her duty. “God save the queen,” the British sing. In Elizabeth, they have a queen worthy of the saving.
— Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com. © 2012 King Features Syndicate
Never -- our forbears were not so much those of the gold-seekers of Virginia as the Pilgrims in "New England," whose leaders were fleeing from abuses of England's intolerance of their beliefs.
Our country was been blessed as long as we clung to The Righteous One who himself hung from the Cross for political and religious persecution. Jesus Christ is a far greater, glorious, and benevolent Lord and Master than any other the world has ever offered.
At least, in my loyal opinion, as voiced by Emma Lazarus.
With sincere respect ---
That’s my exact point. The closer we get to God, the more God-like we become - the kinder, the more loving, the more tolerant, the more understanding - and that makes everything just work better (including life itself). The more we distance ourselves from the divine, the more ugly, mean and degraded Human life becomes. That is why John Adams said “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Political revolution never achieves true liberty, not for very long anyway. Jesus certainly never preached it. He wanted (and wants) a revolution of the heart, a revolution of the individual. Everything else is window-dressing.
Yeah. I wasted a lot of my early life. I didn't need "religion" -- I'm a preachers kid -- I needed a new spiritual man born inside this shell. He's pretty much got the upper hand, now. But years of repair still doesn't fix everything after the early damage. Eventually though, the LORD will take care of everything. In the mathematics of life, He does the adding and sets the sum, Thanks be to His graciousness!
I can relate to that.
I was just thinking for a couple of days: you know, I was just a sophomore in High School, when Elizabeth's father, the King of England passed. I hazily remember her ascent to the throne. You know, it's been a long time that she has continuously and beyond reproach demonstrated fitness for the role she had then been trained to fulfill.
That is a pretty marvelous record!
Who else of all in her dominion can show the same kind of record, particularly recalling all the peccadillos of so many surrounding her? I believe that she will have less to answer for than they, eh?
And what about all the rest of us who must appear at the Judgment seat of The Christ to have our works evaluated; or more yet, those who will answer at the Great White Throne judgment for final and eternal condemnation?
I personally think that a constitutional monarchy is the finest form of government, but I think even the most rabid republican (small r) would have to admit re Elizabeth II that that is one good woman!
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