I Guess I'm Insane

Over at More Intelligent Life, Mr. Stephen Hugh-Jones writes:

"Monarchy," The Economist once declared, with the regal certainty dear to readers of our sister-publication, is "an idea whose time has gone." Well, one could wish it, and commonsense says it should be so. But a five-part series that the BBC will finish broadcasting on December 23rd suggests otherwise, in Britain at least. More widely than that, I fear we at The Economist were mistaken.

Really? What kind of common sense? The kind of common sense that gave us the atrocities of the 20^th century and modernist big government? Please do explain! Or are you just interested in pounding in an unexplained concept of “common sense,” Mr. Hugh-Jones?

Mr. Hugh-Jones goes on:

It was crowned fools who jointly ruined Europe in 1914-18, deservedly destroying the imperial thrones of Austria, Germany and Russia in the process.

While I don't let the crowned heads completely off the hook, there were other forces pushing for war. And wasn't there this concept of a war to make the world safe for democracy?

Our anti-monarchist continues:

For a dying idea, and one with umpteen histories of misrule, misjudgment, misbehaviour, misalliance and sometimes missing wits, that's not bad going.

And modern democracy is benevolence incarnate?

Then comes the preposterous claim:

No sane man would invent a monarchy today.

There is much sense in Edmund Burke's dictum that constitutions are grown, not made. Having man design the world will lead to great failure, as we sadly have seen so much of at least the past century. That being said, the modernist regime came about because wars, revolutions, and political battles were fought, not because there was some natural evolution into the objectively better. Shall we conclude that those who realize this are all insane? I guess we then can put the majority of Liechtensteiners in an insane asylum, since they as late as this very decade voted to increase the Princely powers?

Further down Mr. Hugh-Jones notes:

Other could-be claimants have mostly had more sense than to try. The grandest of them, the late Otto von Habsburg, renounced any claim to Austria's ex-empire, and became a valued member of the European Parliament[...]

Late? HIRH Archduke Otto marked his 95^th birthday less than 5 weeks ago. Has our author any recent information that I do not have? How can we expect anti-monarchists' opinions to be well-informed when they can't even get such simple facts straight?

To his credit, Mr. Hugh-Jones says:

I wouldn't go to the barricades against Britain's monarchy, though I'd readily do so against the sort of people most keen, for their sort of motives, to overthrow it.

Yet, he philosophically undermines it.

Change is inevitable. Yet when fish are to take care of the future of their kind, they swim up the rivers – against the stream. Some principles are timeless. Those who are void of substantial arguments, will use the zeitgeist as an argument. It is simply an argument for flowing with the stream.