By Steve Otto

We are now into the 21st century and there are still many people both here in the US and in the United Kingdom (Mostly Britain and some related countries) who are still going gaga over members of the royal family. They act as if the royal family is made up of story book princesses, princes, kings and queens. Many of our news pundits here in the US still go crazy over every little tidbit of information over the royal family.

These royal people are nothing more than ceremonial remnants of a different time. They are from the Middle ages and their families and their family's wealth are all the results of more than a thousand years of tyranny. In the beginning, the kings and queens of Europe had near absolute power. They could do what they wanted and they enforced their will with extreme forms of cruelty.

For example, how many people really understand what it meant to be "hung, drawn and quartered?"[1] Not only were people executed, they were often torture in some of the most gruesome ways. Giordano Bruno an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, cosmological theorist, and hermetic occultist, was burned at the stake in 1600 for beliefs that differed from what the heads of Europe believed in.[2] His punishment was far from painless. In the early parts of the middle ages these kinds of punishment were quite common.

And the fortunes the royals made were simply from the taxation of the people. They basically just took what they wanted. In the early parts of the Middle ages farmers were treated as slaves, called serfs.

Prior to the establishment of the royal families of Europe, there was the Roman Empire, a system based on secular government, with some elected government positions. Before the Roman Empire, we had various examples of Greek City States, with such grand new ideas as democracy, oligarchy and tyrants. The tyrants were different from the royals in that they could not just hand over power to members of their families. They were all powerful, but not hereditary. So over all these examples Europeans had to chose from, they chose the divine right system, a system where leaders are chosen by God through their birth right.

It was one of the most ridiculous political ideas ever and yet it not only took hold, but members of this system still hold on to their positions of entitlement and wealth. They no longer have any political power, and yet members of the US and British press hang all over them and treat them as if they were still in power.

So why then is it so surprising that members of the royal family are racists? They are an obtuse institution that should have died out years ago. Many members of our own US founding fathers were acting directly against the royal family of England when they started the US Revolution.

On the monarchy, Thomas Paine (about1791) said:

"We have heard the Rights of Man called a levelling system; but the only system to which the word levelling is truly applicable, is the hereditary monarchical system. It is a system of mental levelling. It indiscriminately admits every species of character to the same authority. Vice and virtue, ignorance and wisdom, in short, every quality, good or bad, is put on the same level. Kings succeed each other, not as rationals, but as animals. It signifies not what their mental or moral characters are. Can we then be surprised at the abject state of the human mind in monarchical countries, when the government itself is formed on such an abject levelling system?—It has no fixed character. To-day it is one thing; to-morrow it is something else. It changes with the temper of every succeeding individual, and is subject to all the varieties of each. It is government through the medium of passions and accidents. It appears under all the various characters of childhood, decrepitude, dotage, a thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in crutches. It reverses the wholesome order of nature. It occasionally puts children over men, and the conceits of non-age over wisdom and experience. In short, we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of government, than hereditary succession, in all its cases, presents."

So why after more than 200 years is this point of view being ignored in favor of story book prince and princess tales?

I have to admire Meghan and Harry for trying to distance themselves from the royal family in an effort to try and build a future for themselves. They have their own ambitions which are not found by just letting the royal family to GIVE them their job in life. And there is no surprise that Meghan contemplated suicide nor that she has had mental issues. That lifestyle could tax anyone's sanity. It is not surprising that Meghan and Harry claimed that family members treated Meghan's mental health in a very trivial way.

According to The New York Times:

"The royal family has yet to respond to accusations from the couple, including that one of its members questioned how dark their baby’s skin would be, and that palace officials refused requests from the Duchess of Sussex for medical help when she felt suicidal."

Along with the damning interview Meghan did with Oprah Winfrey, there are now allegations that she and Harry were asked some racist questions about their baby and there are explosive revelations whereas Meghan and Harry accuse the British royal family of failing to protect them.

For me, as a democratic socialist, none of this is surprising. The Royal family is an anachronism of the past. I look forward to the day when both feudalism and capitalism are gone and buried.

Feudalism is in the past, where it belongs. Paine rightfully condemned it, back in 1791 and his comments are as good today as they were back then.

- "we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of government, than hereditary succession, in all its cases, presents."

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From Disney Princess Collection.

[1] From Wikipedia:

"To be hanged, drawn and quartered was, from 1352 after the Treason Act 1351, a statutory penalty in England for men convicted of high treason, although the ritual was first recorded during the reign of King Henry III (1216–1272). The convicted traitor was fastened to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and drawn by horse to the place of execution, where he was then hanged (almost to the point of death), emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered (chopped into four pieces). His remains would then often be displayed in prominent places across the country, such as London Bridge, to serve as a warning of the fate of traitors. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burned at the stake."

[2] From Wikipedia:

"He was turned over to the secular authorities. On Ash Wednesday, 17 February 1600, in the Campo de' Fiori (a central Roman market square), with his "tongue imprisoned because of his wicked words", he was hung upside down naked before finally being burned at the stake.^[34][35] His ashes were thrown into the Tiber river. All of Bruno's works were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1603. The inquisition cardinals who judged Giordano Bruno were Cardinal Bellarmino (Bellarmine), Cardinal Madruzzo (Madruzzi), Camillo Cardinal Borghese (later Pope Paul V), Domenico Cardinal Pinelli, Pompeio Cardinal Arrigoni, Cardinal Sfondrati, Pedro Cardinal De Deza Manuel and Cardinal Santorio (Archbishop of Santa Severina, Cardinal-Bishop of Palestrina)."