thinkness

January 14, 2005

Happy regression

thinkness was just looking over The Economist's history of itself and came across this bit:

The monarch, [former editor Walter Bagehot] argued, was head of the "dignified" parts of the constitution, those that "excite and preserve the reverence of the population"; the prime minister was head of the "efficient" parts, "those by which it, in fact, works and rules." The distinction is often drawn, even today.

Which got me to thinking: wouldn't the US be better off with a monarch?

In the US, both of these parts are vested in the president [and a bit in the Constitution], which in many people's eyes makes it uncouth and downright unpatriotic to criticize him. Not so in Britain, where the PM is just a successful politician. Insult him as you please. And it actually leads to better governance, because people and politicians let out their real thoughts rather than hiding behind all this Mr President worshipfulness.

This also brings up the extremely entertaining question of how we would actually select our royalty. I say make it a government-run reality show -- a potential good source of government revenue. First of all, make sure that the government is actually going to dole out some extremely nice official goodies to make the monarchy truly desirable [you have to spend money to make money!] -- I'm talking about attracting aspirants like Michael Douglas/Catherine Zeta-Jones, Brad Pitt/Jennifer Aniston [oops!], Ben Affleck/Jennifer Lopez [big oops!], Donald Trump/that bimbo, Jack Welch/the neutron bomb, etc.

You could create a whole class of nobility that celebrities could compete for, going straight through to grade-D celebrities fighting over each puny, barely-noble position. [Vanilla Ice wins The Surreal Life and becomes the baronet of Yucca Mountain!] This would be the greatest thing ever -- just make sure the royalty and nobility have no actual political power.

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Welcome back, thinkness!

In one of his dialogues, Plato wrote that the best governments are (from best to worst):

Monarchy
Oligarchy
Democracy

And that the worst forms of government are (from worst to best):

Despotism (the evil twin of Anarchy)
Plutocracy (the evil twin of Oligarchy)
Democracy

So, by having a democracy, we 'Merkins minimize our chances of having a truly evil government. We also minimize our chances of having a truly good government.

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Posted by Ezra at January 16, 2005 07:35 PM

Whoops--in my post above I commited a typo. Plato said Despotism is the evil twin of Monarchy, not Anarchy.

Posted by Ezra at January 16, 2005 07:37 PM

interesting [though not entirely relevant for the point of a monarch as a useful figurehead, i reckon]. i wonder: where would plato actually rate anarchy? might he have been a bomb-throwing guy with a long italian name?

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January 14, 2005

Happy regression

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