The Monarchist 1.0
Defending the British Crown Commonwealth and the English-Speaking Peoples
English Flag (1272) Scottish Flag (1286) King's Flag (1606) Budge Flag (1707) Grand Union Flag (1776) United States of America Flag (14 June 1777) United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland (1801) UK Red Ensign UK White Ensign (1864) UK Blue Ensign Australian Flag (1901) New Zealand Flag (1917) Canadian National Flag (1965)

[+] 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'

[+] HONOURING OUR VETS ON THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE VICTORIA CROSS (1856 - 2006)

Monday, June 19, 2006

Saturday, June 17, 2006
Trooping the Colour


Today is the official 80th birthday of the Queen in the United Kingdom. This year it is the Welsh Guards of the Household Division trooping the colour in the Sovereign's Parade, Her Majesty as Colonel-in-Chief taking the salute. It hasn't been the same since 1986 though, when for the last time our Queen, in full regimental and equestrian pomp, rode side-saddle on Burmese in the grand march down the Mall. No monarchy does pomp better than our own.

Thursday, June 15, 2006
Sermon on the Monarch

Archbishop of Canterbury’s Sermon on the occasion of the Service of Thanksgiving for the Eightieth Birthday of Her Majesty The Queen

15th June 2006, St. Paul's Cathedral, London

The curse of our age has been the inhumanity of absolute ideology and of myths of racial supremacy, the great lies that have plunged our continent and our world into darkness and butchery so many times since the nineteen twenties. And in the new century and millennium, what we have to fear is a toxic mixture of religion that has become inhuman, economic power sustained at massive human cost, and the technologies of destruction that can be used by armies and by terrorists alike for impersonal killing.

Holocaust and Stalinism and ethnic cleansing, fanaticism and terror and mass destruction – all varieties of power without a human face, demanding blind loyalties and disregard for the diversity of human life, all working for a false kind of unity or solidarity. But these great lies remind us what a tough question it is when we ask – as we so often do these days - what it is that gives cohesion to a society.

Is it racial identity and solidarity? a monochrome culture? a governing ideology or philosophy? In our country, it is none of those things; instead, and among the several other things that give us such cohesion as we have is a common loyalty to the monarch. You may sometimes hear complaints that in Britain we suffer from being subjects rather than citizens, and that this produces a culture of deference and passivity. But what if our common allegiance to the monarch were in fact something that helped us to be adult citizens?

The identity of the United Kingdom has had something to do with the development of a critical democracy within the framework of symbol and tradition. At our best, we have found solidarity in a network of relationships and practices quite hard to codify, but variously connected with the personal focus that is the monarch. And the British monarch is not an absolute ruler demanding mindless loyalty, but the one who guarantees space for the rest of society to argue and negotiate and change, as mature citizen-societies must, who ‘defends our laws’ as the National Anthem puts it.

Our experience in the United Kingdom – not a smooth progression, not easily won – has shown us something of what a society might look like when it refuses to see its unity and cohesion in abstract terms, in terms of ideology or race or even some great imperial project. After all, in the last half-century we have made a transition from Empire to Commonwealth, a transition whose success no-one could have guaranteed; yet what remained intact was a sense of international convergence and kinship that would have been a great deal harder, perhaps impossible, without the steady presence of a single personal focus.

In other words, monarchy as it has developed here is a way of keeping power human. At the symbolic centre of our political life is a person. There are risks to this: Your Majesty has more reason than most to know the cost of a culture fanatically eager for gossip and trivia and the exposure in public of what should be private. Yet it is also true that something of immense value has been made possible in this climate. We have seen something of a monarch who has shared the vulnerability of ordinary people, and that has been moving in itself. But more importantly we have been able to see a bit more clearly the personal depth of our monarch’s faith, more and more evident in successive broadcasts and testimonies, and her keen sense – to borrow the blunt and resonant words of the Prayer Book – of ‘whose minister she is’, who she is answerable to.

And this means that at the hub of our political life is not only a person with whose vulnerability we can identify but a person visibly standing before God and God’s judgement in humility and hope. Monarchy has been for us as citizens a sign of the humanity at the heart of power, a sign that we can be held together not by the furious rivalries of theory or ethnic exclusion but by acknowledging the common debt of our humanity to its maker and redeemer. The logic of this kind of monarchy is the logic of the Christian recognition of Christ as King – the monarch whose credentials are to be found in his human vulnerability and in his utter dependence upon God his Father.

Birthdays are among the most vivid reminders we can have of our common humanity, and our common call to journey through time with each other. Today, your Majesty, we give thanks with you simply for the gifts of life and experience - and for the beginning of a new year of challenge; we wish you and Prince Philip, who has so devotedly supported you and all that you have stood for, many more happy years. But we also give thanks for a human face to our systems and processes, a human symbol that helps to hold us together. May our thanksgiving strengthen our resolve to resist the great public inhumanities that still menace us all. When we try to be more than human we become less than human. – that much we should have learned in the past century. So may God keep us now in human fellowship as we learn how we may grow in grace into eternal fellowship with him.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Andrew Cusack's blog is filled with Old Guard inspiration. This is easily a Blog of the Order.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Go Fisk Yourself, Robert

I have nearly zero respect for Robert Fisk as a journalist, even though he is apparently the world's most pessimistic decorated foreign correspondent. So it was nice to see Andrew Coyne, a journalist for whom I have the utmost respect, demolish the man piece by piece, in a ruthlessly detailed point-by-point refutation of his recent article in the Independent (in what the blogosphere calls a fisking), for waltzing in here just long enough to denounce the whole Canadian Press as racist; for them having the temerity to assume anything untoward in respect of the 17 Canadian Muslims currently accused of planning to blow up Canadians, storm Parliament and behead the prime minister. To give any credence to terrorism related charges in a world currently at war with terrorism is, in Robert Fisk's world view, an admission of bigotry.

READ: Giving the Fisk to "How racism has invaded Canada".

Clearly a member of the Whiggish Rabble, even though this Kiwi by all accounts opposes Helengrad. Obviously he has more in common with Prime Minister Helen Clark than he realizes, for she would enthusiastically endorse his screed against Queen and Country.

Sunday, June 11, 2006
Prince Philip turns 85

Happy Birthday to the elegant and heroic Duke of Edinburgh. As a long-ago recipient of the gold Duke of Edinburgh award, I was one among many of the world's youth who were inspired by His Royal Consort while growing up. Not only is he a Prince of the Royal Blood, to my mind he is the leading figure of The Greatest Generation. So Happy Birthday, Your Royal Highness!

UPDATE: Happy 85th birthday to our Victor Meldrew in gold braid

Saturday, June 10, 2006
One World Cup and two World Wars

So the Cup is being hosted by Germany. Excellent. Germany has always been beatable on their home turf. Here in Toronto, the people have broken out in their national clans, their home country not being exactly world class in "football", but even if it were, first loyalties would be - are - for the most part, elsewhere. This being multicultural Canada and all. So who do I root for? The Italians? The Brazilians or Portugese? How about the host country, the Germans? Yeah, right. Which side do you suppose most of Canada is on over here? As if it needs to be said. GO ENGLAND, GO!

CROSS POSTED to ANTHEM4ENGLAND

Thursday, June 08, 2006
REGIMENTS.ORG

“Land Forces of Britain, the Empire and Commonwealth ...the oldest and largest website of its kind, presenting a degree of detail rarely found elsewhere”…is, in my opinion, the single best military and military history site anywhere on the Net today. This piece of work by its creator, T.F. Mills, is breathtaking in its audacity, both in its scope and detail; a lifetime undertaking, really, which has been ongoing since 1995, starting as one page of links, and evolving into a 3,000 page regimental encyclopedia - yet much of it is still under construction. I am inspired by its passion.

A word of caution for enthusiasts like myself: be prepared to spend countless hours navigating through the Queen’s old regiments. The site is highly addictive. Be advised that you may run the risk of forsaking family for fun.

CROSS-POSTED to THE TORCH

Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Brigade member, Just Between Us Girls, hoists the Red Ensign Standard #43.

Monday, June 05, 2006
Is England running out of water?

Nothing more green and fertile comes to mind than when I think of the rolling hills of England. But is the long-term future of the southern part of this lush, sceptered Isle actually in question? Canada fed England during the dark days of World War II. If in the future it thirsts, perhaps it would not be too much to offer the abundance of our ample dominion should it come to that. Never-ending transatlantic convoys of merchant ships filled with sweet fresh water for dear old England. It may not be a laughing matter a couple of decades down the road.

English first, British second. I remember when it used to be Canadian first, British second, but we all know what happened to the British part. This is well worth the read.

A Hansard Moment

Why I like Hansard (This transcript from May 5.):

Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh (Vancouver South, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the government was sadly silent in the budget in getting our military the equipment it needs. Out of the National Defence Headquarters, we now learn that conflicting lists of priorities were being passed around between the offices of the chief of defence, the minister and the PMO. The conflicts remained unresolved, with the result being no new announcements to support our troops in theatre.

Who is really in charge of defining what the military needs to perform their mission: the Chief of Defence Staff, the minister or the Prime Minister?

Hon. Gordon O'Connor (Minister of National Defence, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I find it incredible that the member would even ask such a question. That party, when in government, hollowed out the army, rusted out the navy and grounded the air force. The member should put a bag on his head. For shame.

CROSS-POSTED to THE TORCH

More a Commonwealth Loyalist than a Monarchist

Common Cause: An Alliance of Commonwealth Republican Movements. United against that which unites us, in other words. No irony there, is there. Together, we stand opposed to our shared heritage. Right idea, wrong movement.

The fact that they are united is certainly more than can be said of the national monarchist leagues. Is there a common cause there? Is there an Alliance of Commonwealth Monarchist Leagues, per chance? Nope, unfortunately not. Our irony is even more delicious. Somehow we find ourselves divided upon that which unites us.

I think when it comes right down to it, I'm more of a Commonwealth loyalist than a monarchist. I know this because I am rather indifferent to the plight of Nepal's monarchy, or whether one is restored in Serbia. I am by no means convinced that monarchy is a superior system of government, only the evolved British one. I am for the British Crown and tradition, full stop. If that makes me a loyalist more than a monarchist, so be it.

Australia Watch by Australians. The self-loathing on this blog is simply frightening. Peruse through at your own risk.

Sunday, June 04, 2006
It would seem New Zealand's Bay of Plenty has a bay of plenty loyal supporters of Her Majesty. Kiwi republicans, fern lovers and other suckers for punishment are once again, apparently and genuinely confounded. By the perseverance of their own national identity.

Saturday, June 03, 2006
Homegrown Canadian Heroes

Seventeen. That's the number of alleged homegrown terrorists who were arrested last night in Toronto, in what must be the largest terrorist foil on our territory in Canadian history. It's also, coincidentally enough, the number of Canadian soldiers who have died in the service of their country since 9/11. For every homegrown terrorist arrested last night, let us take comfort that there is a genuine homegrown hero that exemplifies the best of who we are:

  1. Captain Nichola Kathleen Sarah Goddard
  2. Corporal Matthew Dinning
  3. Bombardier Myles Mansell
  4. Corporal Randy Payne
  5. Lieutenant William Turner
  6. Private Robert Costall
  7. Master Corporal Timothy Wilson
  8. Corporal Paul Davis
  9. Private Braun Scott Woodfield
  10. Lieutenant Chris Saunders
  11. Corporal Jamie Murphy
  12. Sergeant Robert Alan Short
  13. Corporal Robbie Christopher Beerenfenger
  14. Sergeant Marc Leger
  15. Corporal Ainsworth Dyer
  16. Private Richard Green
  17. Private Nathan Smith
What the Canadian Service Intelligence Service (CSIS) most certainly just did was save the lives of citizens. They just saved my life, and that of my family. That's the way I look at it. I live in Toronto. I work in the downtown core. I take the subway. And even though the subway was apparently not one of their targets, others were: They had enough explosive material for three Timothy McVeigh style Oklahoma City bombings. How grateful I am to CSIS. A government program we can all be proud of today.

Either CSIS is a far superior intelligence service than that of the Americans and British, who were unable to prevent the terrorist atrocities in New York and London, or we are all finally getting good at this. New York, Madrid and London all went badly. Toronto was our first successful catch. I suspect CSIS is quite good, but I also think our combined efforts are finally paying off after five years of all-out counter-terrorist operations. This proves we are all targets, that there is no retreat in this war. The people who are (predictably) linking this planned operation to our efforts in Afghanistan are dangerous fools. That's not a very nice thing to say, but understand this. New York was attacked before we went to Afghanistan. The attack on New York was planned and executed from Afghanistan. That's why we went there, and that's why we must stay there until the mission is accomplished. We really have no choice. If there is any lesson in all this, that would be it.

CROSS-POSTED to THE TORCH

Friday, June 02, 2006
The presumption of inevitability

Another politician over-invested in the presumption of inevitability. I wonder what would happen to that presumption if, say, Prince William married an Australian girl, for example. Anything can happen over a lengthy twenty years. That's a whole generation. Realistically, I give the monarchy in Oz a 50-50 chance in making it past the demise of Elizabeth II. And much, much greater past that. Everyone knows that the only two things inevitable in life are death and taxes. Even for the Queen. But remember: the Queen pays taxes, the Crown doesn't. The Queen may die, but the Crown lives. In a sense, we cannot destroy the Crown. Like Napoleon, we can only place it upon our heads.

Elizabeth the Great

The Royal Arms of Canada, 1921

email: themonarchist@rogers.com

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