The Monarchist 1.0
Defending the British Crown Commonwealth and the English-Speaking Peoples
[+] HONOURING OUR PATRON, SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL, VICTOR OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES
[+] HONOURING OUR QUEEN, ELIZABETH THE SECOND, ON THE 80TH YEAR OF HER BIRTH (1926 - 2006)
[+] HONOURING OUR KING, SAINT EDWARD THE CONFESSOR, ON THE 1000TH YEAR OF HIS BIRTH (1005 - 2005)
[+] HONOURING OUR HERO, LORD NELSON, ON THE BICENTENNIAL OF THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR (1805 - 2005)
[+] HONOURING OUR SONS, THE QUEEN'S COMMONWEALTH SOLDIERS KILLED IN THE 'WAR ON TERROR'
Chief Warrant Officer Robert Girouard, 46, Royal Canadian Regiment, Nov 27, 2006 (Afstan)
Staff Sergeant Sharron Elliott, 34, Intelligence Corps, Nov 12, 2006 (Iraq)
Private Jacob B. Kovco, 25, Royal Australian Regiment, April 21, 2006
[+] HONOURING OUR VETS ON THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE VICTORIA CROSS (1856 - 2006)
Friday, June 10, 2005
My Lord Black
The Australians and New Zealanders invented a phrase for it: the “tall-poppy syndrome”, they call it; a leveling social attitude that scorns visibily outward and hierarchical displays of personal success and status. I’m not sure about the validity of this as an inherently Antipodean trait, but from my own Great War readings I do know one thing: of all the thankless tasks to have been dished out in that war, one of them surely would have been to find yourself as an upper class British subaltern in charge of Australian troops!
Conrad Black would most certainly see tall-poppy syndrome as a deeply embedded national characteristic of English-speaking Canadians. To apply his own autobiographical words, we have “a sadistic desire, corroded by soul-destroying envy, to intimidate all those who might aspire to anything in the slightest exceptional.” In another one of his supercilious biting attacks he labelled the Canadian welfare state as an “overgenerous reinsurance policy for an underachieving people.” And so when his life peerage was blocked by Prime Minister Jean Chretien on the basis that the Queen should desist from granting aristocratic titles in Canada (see: Nickle Resolution), Black was predictably derided in the mainstream media by those "salacious twits" on the "odious soft left" as “Lord Almost”, “Lord Nearly-Nearly”, “His Lardship” or “Lord Tubby of Fleet (pending)”. He was “hardly an unassuming Canadian” who “shamelessly sought noble titles”, “aspired to join the British House of Lords”, and “assiduously courted the royal family, often to laughable effect”:
When Chretien refused to reverse his decision, Black sued the government for having caused him “considerable public embarrassment”, a turn of events that inspired the leftist Toronto Star to offer this piece of bogus sympathy to writers at Black’s National Post: “it must be hard to convince readers that you work for a serious publication when your boss is making a laughingstock of himself on both sides of the Atlantic.” Of course, given Black’s recent proclivity towards civil and criminal lawsuits, such mocking envy has since been replaced by downright glee at his self-inflicted predicament; but the truth of the matter still stands: we deeply resent the man’s achievements and social ambitions, even more so than any crimes he may have committed in his business adventures.
Against this tall-poppy tripe, the Monarchist stands firmly opposed. Apart from the obvious alleged transgressions and his over-the-top Napoleonic arrogance (he actually owns one of Bonaparte’s chairs and compares himself to Julius Caesar but “without the final act”), The Lord The Honourable Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour, comes about as close to a present day living hero of mine as one can get. As a biographer, financier, and newspaper magnate, not only is he the latest in a series of Canadian-born British press lords -- his predecessors being Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, and Roy Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet -- he pulled it off against the 21st century adolescence of his country*, albeit only by renouncing his Canadian citizenship**.
But it goes beyond titles, rank and honour; as a staunch admirer of the United States and Great Britain, it is the concept of greater Anglosphere unity that Black advocates that inspires the Monarchist. It is very much in the same tradition of Beaverbrook between the two world wars, who used his great wealth and newspaper business to advocate greater imperial unity and free trade against the parochial desires of the dominion nationalists, the same nationalists by the way, who today fondly refer to their provincial counterparts as those self-interested, parochial premiers. But it is they -- the anti-American and anti-British elite -- more than anyone else, who have been the ones who have mercilessly undermined our influence as a country for their own narrow-minded and selfish interests. Whatever his failings as a person, Black has given Beaverbrook's ideas new currency in recent years, campaigning for the inclusion of the United Kingdom into NAFTA and pushing Britain's destiny to be primarily an Atlantic power, not a European one. This is why the Monarchist chooses the title Beaverbrook henceforth; it is representative of the idea that the Commonwealth should come together as a way of safeguarding our shared monarchy and heritage; as a way of leveraging our influence to advance our common values and goals; as a way of working confidently alongside the United States, not as an insecure counterweight to it. I thought about adopting that other great multi-kingdom unifier of his day, the chivalrous King Henry V, but that would have been too medievalist and arrogant of me, that would have been too assuming and unCanadian; that would have been too Conrad Black.
* For some childish reason, the governments of Canada, Australia and New Zealand no longer permit their own Queen to grant such honours to their own citizens anymore, even while countless Americans and other foreigners line up each and every year to receive honourary knighthoods from Her Majesty. It is one thing to deny a citizen's use of an official title within the boundaries of one's country (a fate which is bad enough), but to outright deny -- as if it is any of the government's bloody business in the first place -- "free citizens" from ever receiving a British or Commonwealth honour because it doesn't conform to "national values" is demented poppycock in the extreme.
** Interestingly, despite divesting himself of his citizenship, Black is still a member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada and enjoys the privilege of a special Canadian passport as a result.
POSTED BY: The Monarchist AT 6:01 p.m. | LINKS |
The Australians and New Zealanders invented a phrase for it: the “tall-poppy syndrome”, they call it; a leveling social attitude that scorns visibily outward and hierarchical displays of personal success and status. I’m not sure about the validity of this as an inherently Antipodean trait, but from my own Great War readings I do know one thing: of all the thankless tasks to have been dished out in that war, one of them surely would have been to find yourself as an upper class British subaltern in charge of Australian troops!
Conrad Black would most certainly see tall-poppy syndrome as a deeply embedded national characteristic of English-speaking Canadians. To apply his own autobiographical words, we have “a sadistic desire, corroded by soul-destroying envy, to intimidate all those who might aspire to anything in the slightest exceptional.” In another one of his supercilious biting attacks he labelled the Canadian welfare state as an “overgenerous reinsurance policy for an underachieving people.” And so when his life peerage was blocked by Prime Minister Jean Chretien on the basis that the Queen should desist from granting aristocratic titles in Canada (see: Nickle Resolution), Black was predictably derided in the mainstream media by those "salacious twits" on the "odious soft left" as “Lord Almost”, “Lord Nearly-Nearly”, “His Lardship” or “Lord Tubby of Fleet (pending)”. He was “hardly an unassuming Canadian” who “shamelessly sought noble titles”, “aspired to join the British House of Lords”, and “assiduously courted the royal family, often to laughable effect”:
As the honorary colonel of the Governor General's Foot Guards during a royal visit to Canada in 1997, Black hovered just behind Queen Elizabeth in a uniform that, in the view of those editors who seemed to take great delight in running the picture at any opportunity, made him look like an overattentive chauffeur.
---
In stories about Black's 'peerage interruptus,' the picture of him in his Foot Guard's getup was often included - supplanted now and then by a shot of him walking into a costume ball dressed as Cardinal Richelieu...
When Chretien refused to reverse his decision, Black sued the government for having caused him “considerable public embarrassment”, a turn of events that inspired the leftist Toronto Star to offer this piece of bogus sympathy to writers at Black’s National Post: “it must be hard to convince readers that you work for a serious publication when your boss is making a laughingstock of himself on both sides of the Atlantic.” Of course, given Black’s recent proclivity towards civil and criminal lawsuits, such mocking envy has since been replaced by downright glee at his self-inflicted predicament; but the truth of the matter still stands: we deeply resent the man’s achievements and social ambitions, even more so than any crimes he may have committed in his business adventures.
Against this tall-poppy tripe, the Monarchist stands firmly opposed. Apart from the obvious alleged transgressions and his over-the-top Napoleonic arrogance (he actually owns one of Bonaparte’s chairs and compares himself to Julius Caesar but “without the final act”), The Lord The Honourable Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour, comes about as close to a present day living hero of mine as one can get. As a biographer, financier, and newspaper magnate, not only is he the latest in a series of Canadian-born British press lords -- his predecessors being Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, and Roy Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet -- he pulled it off against the 21st century adolescence of his country*, albeit only by renouncing his Canadian citizenship**.
But it goes beyond titles, rank and honour; as a staunch admirer of the United States and Great Britain, it is the concept of greater Anglosphere unity that Black advocates that inspires the Monarchist. It is very much in the same tradition of Beaverbrook between the two world wars, who used his great wealth and newspaper business to advocate greater imperial unity and free trade against the parochial desires of the dominion nationalists, the same nationalists by the way, who today fondly refer to their provincial counterparts as those self-interested, parochial premiers. But it is they -- the anti-American and anti-British elite -- more than anyone else, who have been the ones who have mercilessly undermined our influence as a country for their own narrow-minded and selfish interests. Whatever his failings as a person, Black has given Beaverbrook's ideas new currency in recent years, campaigning for the inclusion of the United Kingdom into NAFTA and pushing Britain's destiny to be primarily an Atlantic power, not a European one. This is why the Monarchist chooses the title Beaverbrook henceforth; it is representative of the idea that the Commonwealth should come together as a way of safeguarding our shared monarchy and heritage; as a way of leveraging our influence to advance our common values and goals; as a way of working confidently alongside the United States, not as an insecure counterweight to it. I thought about adopting that other great multi-kingdom unifier of his day, the chivalrous King Henry V, but that would have been too medievalist and arrogant of me, that would have been too assuming and unCanadian; that would have been too Conrad Black.
* For some childish reason, the governments of Canada, Australia and New Zealand no longer permit their own Queen to grant such honours to their own citizens anymore, even while countless Americans and other foreigners line up each and every year to receive honourary knighthoods from Her Majesty. It is one thing to deny a citizen's use of an official title within the boundaries of one's country (a fate which is bad enough), but to outright deny -- as if it is any of the government's bloody business in the first place -- "free citizens" from ever receiving a British or Commonwealth honour because it doesn't conform to "national values" is demented poppycock in the extreme.
** Interestingly, despite divesting himself of his citizenship, Black is still a member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada and enjoys the privilege of a special Canadian passport as a result.
POSTED BY: The Monarchist AT 6:01 p.m. | LINKS |
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