{"id":632,"date":"2018-12-31T21:56:40","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T21:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=632"},"modified":"2018-12-31T21:56:40","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T21:56:40","slug":"on-monarchism-and-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2018\/12\/31\/on-monarchism-and-morality\/","title":{"rendered":"On Monarchism and Morality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img width='400' height='358' border='0' hspace='5' align='right' src='\/~totl\/skywritings\/uploads\/juancarlos-havingfun.jpg' alt='' \/>As a Canadian and British citizen (left-leaning), I am sentimentally and aesthetically a royalist, as long as the royals conduct themselves in a way that is aesthetically and ethically positive (and not too much public money is spent on them). <\/p>\n<p>A monarch with a historic pedigree can, like a flag or soil, be a more palpable symbol for a populace to identify with, and take heart in (especially in hard times) than an appointed or elected figurehead. (My native Hungary&#8217;s current presidential fiasco is a case in point.)<\/p>\n<p>But nothing excuses <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/news\/2012-04-18\/king-s-elephant-hunt-is-disgrace-to-humanity-commentary\">a monarch who is old enough to know better<\/a> from going out and wantonly shooting elephants (whether or not his people are groaning under a heavy financial yoke).<\/p>\n<p>If the British royals ever did anything like that today, I would immediately become a republican. <\/p>\n<p>(I&#8217;m rather afraid that if I took a closer look at current royals&#8217; domestic hunting, I might already become as anti-sovereignist, with reason, as the separatists [ironically calling themselves &#8220;sovereignists&#8221;] among my fellow-quebeckers already are, without reason, alongside Canadian and Australian republicans, likewise without reason.) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a Canadian and British citizen (left-leaning), I am sentimentally and aesthetically a royalist, as long as the royals conduct themselves in a way that is aesthetically and ethically positive (and not too much public money is spent on them). A monarch with a historic pedigree can, like a flag or soil, be a more &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2018\/12\/31\/on-monarchism-and-morality\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;On Monarchism and Morality&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":633,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions\/633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}