Posted on 02/09/2002 12:14:34 AM PST by badfreeper
Princess Margaret, the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, has died "peacefully in her sleep" at the age of 71. In a statement Buckingham Palace said: "The Queen, with great sadness, has asked for the following announcement to be made immediately.
"Her beloved sister, Princess Margaret, died peacefully in her sleep this morning at 6.30am in the King Edward VII Hospital."
Her children Lord Linley and Lady Sarah Chatto were at her side at the London hospital.
Princess Margaret, who has suffered several strokes in recent years, suffered a further stroke on Friday afternoon.
She developed cardiac problems during the night and was taken from Kensington Palace to the hospital at 0230GMT.
She was born Margaret Rose on 21 August, 1930, at Glamis Castle in Scotland, the ancestral home of her mother's family.
Margaret was last seen in public before Christmas at Princess Alice, the Dowager Duchess of Gloucester's 100th birthday party.
She was confined to a wheelchair and wore heavy dark glasses, her sight having been affected by a stroke. Margaret's face also appeared puffy, understood to be the effects of medication.
© MMII
I wondered about this earlier today. I mean, wondered HOW this happened.
Condolences to her family and friends. I don't understand why so many are dumping on her.
I do not know where you get your sick thoughts from. I trust that America is not like yourself, for it's own sake.
As you sow, may you also reap. Jerk.
[laughs] Wow. And this coming from a libertarian!
Mark W.
Fritz Lang was a prophetic film maker.
True, but she also would have lost her family by marrying Townsend, as they undoubtedly would have disowned her.
But I am so sorry for their loss, especially since they've got to do their mourning under a microscope.
My condolences to you and all the people of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, The Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, and all of the other Queen's Realms in the Commonwealth.
I can't help thinking of the sad thought that the late King (George VI) has been waiting for his wife to join him in eternity, but instead is welcoming his youngest daughter...
Not embarrassing your Royal relatives comes so far down the list that you need a scanning electron microscope to see it, unless it involves something like what's listed above.
Margaret should've walked away. Sometimes, we have a duty to ourselves, and this was one of those times.
I am crude & many think very rude-but I understand that some other nations have valid, positive political systems for the articulation, assimilation & adjudication of the many competing political wants & needs of their people ( took an entire two semester course based on those three words & found it instructive ).
I do not prescribe to the "cultural" and "moral" equivalence school of thought. Some cultures are clearly superior as are some political systems. That after all is the stuff that politics is made of. The European "democracies" with their majoritarian parliamentary systems succumb to tyrannical majorities since the same parties control both the legislative and executive branches and there are no checks and balances.
I do not view the culture of a headhunter society to be valid in modern times any more than I view the European political systems with their entrenched class divisions and class interests to be in any way equivalent to the superiority of the American system engineered by those luminaries we refer to as our "founding fathers". The American revolution was after all an effort to divorce ourselves from that ossified European system.
In my view some systems are more valid than others and some cultures are more superior than others. On both counts the American "republican" system wins hands down.
The fact that the rest of the planet lives in the squalor of their inferiority (including the Europeans) should not mean that we should not point out their inadequacies even if some Europeans or any one else may feel offended.
I will grant that Europeans are a notch above other primitve backward societies such as Muslim ones, but not by much. I will neither retract nor will I apologize for being forward thinking in these matters. I realize that may sound chauvinistic in some quarters, but that's simply too bad.
I do not believe as many in the left do that we should keep these backward societies pristine and on their own. Civilizations and democracy expands by imposing itself outward. All of these cultures need to be swept aside and modernized if they are to survive in the modern world. While we may have inherited a cultural heritage from the Europeans we have moved ahead since 1776 while they have obstinately remained mired in the nostalgic past of their past accomplishments. Throughout most of the 20th century the European contribution to technology, music, art etc. has been marginal at best, though still far ahead of backwaters such as Saudi Arabia.
In politics their major contribution was all of the "isms" such as, nazism, fascism, communism, socialism etc. They gave us two world wars and millions of dead through despotic totalitarian regimes.
I mourn the death of the princess, it is unfortunate that she dropped dead. Hey, we all have to go sometime. But don't expect me to give these parasites any sympathy whatsoever.
I only hope that Europeans will at some point see the light and move forward by ridding themselves of the anachronisms of their societies that no longer have relevance to a modern world.
As for an American nobility, I simply don't see it. I currently see no descendants of the founders of this country having a monopoly on power or living a parasitic welfare like life. Even that wealthy families of this country may have influence as a consequence of our free market system but we have nothing equivalent to the anachronism of European royalty and nobility.
It's helpful to put the events into their historical context. Margaret's uncle, Edward VIII, had done great damage to the monarchy when walking away from his duty. Her mother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, blames Wallis Simpson for the early death of her husband George to this day.
Another point is that Margaret was of the old school. She was taught that with the extraordinary privileges of being royalty come extraordinary responsibilities, much greater than those of other people. It's an idea which the younger members of the family seem to have largely abandoned.
I suppose it's like they say. The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.
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