Royal Dissent

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Tony Blair may back the Iraq war, but Prince Charles, who's always been a bit of a hippie, does not.

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Books Editor Jesse Walker is the author of Rebels on the Air and The United States of Paranoia.

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  1. Anonymous

    Why is it that most of the high-profile anti-war crusaders are bird-brains? on the fence myself, but not sure if I want to join sides with Madonna and Sean Penn.

  2. Brad S

    Who gives a horse’s hind-end what Prince Charles thinks? The British royal family has not had any real material significance in anything for quite some time now. To quote the movie Naked Gun: “For now matter how silly we think it is to have a Queen, we must be gracious hosts.”

  3. Brad: I must admit that I wrote a piece, 10 or 11 years ago, arguing that no good American should ever care what happens among the British Royal family and pledging never to mention them in my work again. Well, it was a good run.

  4. On any given issue, I always seem to hold with an unpopular perspective. My positions inevitably remain unarticulated, much less supported, by anyone in the popular media. It is very discouraging, watching my society slip every further from the principals of freedom and liberty. Now my cause is being championed by imbeciles. My only hope is that the simpletons will prove to be popular and effective. But that too is a depressing thought. God, I need a drink. If only hard drugs were as inexpencive, dependable, and available… but if that were the case, I wouldn’t need them.

  5. Steve

    Warren, it’s amazing how the imbeciles have been able to come to power, isn’t it? Actually, they’re more like evil geniuses.

    I’ll join you in that drink.

    ;-))

  6. Anonymous

    Jesse,
    What is Jacko’s position on Iraq?

  7. He shares his bed with it.

  8. Jon H

    That picture’s actually pretty old – 1996. He was making a visit to a Shia muslim thingy in London. The shawl was put on over his suit.

    It’s called a photo op. Wearing a Shia hat no more makes
    Prince Charles a Muslim than wearing a helmet makes Mike Dukakis a tank driver, or wearing a Stetson makes George W. “Andover” Bush a cowboy.

    Aziz Poonawalla has more info.

    http://unmedia.blogspot.com/2003_02_10_unmedia_archive.html#90302909

    The picture’s amusing but it’s a mistake to make anything more of it.

  9. I don’t disagree with anything in Poonawalla’s post, Jon. I linked to the story because I thought it was interesting (and because I didn’t realize it had already rippled through the blogosphere); I don’t think Charles is a closet Wahhabi.

  10. tim

    This is just the latest example of Statism’s complex relationship with royalty. The strongest believers in the state have always had a bad attitude toward royal families, on the grounds that they had more in common with each other than with their own populations. In some cases this was literally true: Marie Antoinette by reputation could barely speak French, the early Norman royalty in England outlawed the English language, etc. World War I was something of a boiling point for these ideas, due to the complex minglings of Germanic blood in the English royal family, the Kaiser’s own relations in the UK (I may be imagining that, but I believe he did have some connections with the English), the French strains in Austria-Hungary’s royal family, and so on. The problem was particularly acute in the UK, which seeks to balance the fiction of royalty with the fiction of constitutionality. Thus, in the middle of the war, George V suddenly realized that he did not actually belong to the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (and going further back, the House of Hanover), but to the “House of Windsor”-a completely made up name that endures to this day.

    Of course, it’s a stretch from there to say that Charles is feeling any kinship with the Sauds, and as Poonawalla’s post demonstrates, he may actually be closer to the popular will than Blair is. But war creates its own narratives of shared risk and the centrality of the state, and in that situation the burden of proof is on the Royals, who must go to great lengths to show that they’re as much people of Country X as are the citizens of that country. In this case, Charles’s failure to give a good word to his armed services, in which he holds various phony commissions, is a more serious breach of protocol than his skepticism about the war.

  11. Gene 6-Pack

    God save the queen. At least long enough to raise a competent King.

  12. Brian

    Warren,

    How utterly depressing and beautifully articulated. Drink’s on me.

  13. Heather

    It’s interesting how although there are many reasons why warring with Iraq is illogical, the main stream is in favor of a war largly because of the lefts alienating approach. But what?s really interesting is how the anti-war right has the potential to contribute vastly to the ?cause? as well, but don?t want to associate themselves with the goddamned hippies.

  14. OK, now I have a mental image of Prince Charles in tie-dyes. Thank you VERY much, I really didn’t need that picture living in my head.

  15. Hey Madog, did you attend a poor quality public school? The Brits had as much bloodshed as anybody when it came to developing a parliamentary monarchy. Ever heard of the War of the Roses, Cromwell, the Restoration or The Glorious Revolution? Legal commentators such as Coke and Blackstone attributed the freedoms of the English common man to long force of habit, more than any conscious social development. It’s not known where English freedoms originated, but the Norman conquerors noted the existence of native English notions of property rights, jury trial and due process in 1066.

    The British Royal Family, as you call it, is probably more germanic or dutch than British in origin. The Hanoverians were installed because most of the Stuarts were either killed off, insufficiently stout in their protestancy, insufficiently solicitous of parliament, or all three. In other words, they were the product of a violent, bloody revolution.

  16. Tom

    We need a bigger fence. Plus, a lot of drinks

  17. Madog

    I like the British Royal Family because they remind me that Britian didn’t have to go through the ugly, bloody mess that France, Russian, and others did to get rid of their monarchs and become more free.

  18. David F

    Hey Joe:

    clense your mental image with this one: Jacko and Saddam in tights in bed…. might that help?

    oh, and we could throw in HRC for the trifecta.

    you know, this fence would do well with a set of comfy chairs, a mini fridge…

    cheers,
    drf

  19. Ted

    To the fence sitter that likes not the idea of being on the same side as Madonna and Sean Penn.

    I’s against Bush’s war, myself. But, I definately seee your point about bird-brains like those two and the Prince of Wales. Hey, any room left on that fence.

  20. hey ya’ll wuts up nmh well i dont really care about what ya’ll r talkin about but i g2g bobye

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