About That Coronation...

This past weekend, Charles, son of Elizabeth of the House of Windsor, was crowned King of the United Kingdom and the rest of the Commonwealth. Some on this side of the pond took in the spectacle, some gave it a moment's glance, some yawned, and some griped.

I don't get devoting energy to griping about a ceremonial monarchy and ceremonial ceremony that's happening elsewhere and has little relevance to America ever since the Treaty of Paris (well, perhaps excluding the War of 1812).

Over there, as in within the borders of the Commonwealth, it's a Big Deal. The event is estimated by some to cost up to a hundred million pounds, and from what bits I gleaned, it was quite the show, even discounting the Meghan-and-Harry foofaraw. While the subject of the monarchy is contentious within the UK, it remains that there are millions of Brits who like it, revel in it, or cherish it. Given that it’s the first coronation in seventy years and, presuming the best health care in existence for the new king, there won’t be another for a couple decades, it’s no surprise that tens of thousands turned out (some of them gathering days early) to watch the proceedings in person and that it's garnering massive press coverage throughout the Commonwealth and across the world.

For the Brits, the Crown is a relic (the nation's sovereign is a powerless position), a divider (the wealth and spending frustrates many, and the concept itself offends and the notion of a monarchy, even an impotent one, offends some), and a uniter.

It is the last that interests me, within modern context.

In my one visit to London, wherein we played stereotypical tourists for three days (Westminster, the Tower, and so forth), I felt a massive presence of history. Not just the ancient history of my Greek fatherland, where 2500 year old ruins speak of a separate time, but of continuous history. And, indeed, the coronation and the monarchy embrace that continuity. Charles III is the 40th monarch to be crowned in Westminster Abbey, a chain going back over 900 years to 1066 and William I, the Conqueror. The Stone of Scone has been part of the ceremony since the 1300s. The first of several crowns to be put on Charles' head is the St Edward's Crown, which was crafted in 1661.

And on and on and on. Everything about the monarchy conveys age and continuity. They tie the nation together and convey principles that serve as cultural anchors and foundations.

America, by contrast, is very young. The nation's founding principles weren't even ideated until the advent of the Age of Enlightenment in the seventeenth century. The nation was born in principle in 1776, in liberation in 1783, and in form in 1787. It has endured severe growing pains, including a civil war that killed one out of every forty Americans.

Despite being young, the nation has long had an enormous sense of self, of pride, and of determination. It also has a long history of internal criticism, disagreement, and dissent, all of which are healthy and necessary.

However, in the last couple decades, disdain for the nation itself, and for its founding principles, has grown. More and more people don't even believe in freedom any more, and they're inculcated and encouraged by destroyers such as George Soros, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Richard Delgado, Bernie Sanders, The Squad, and too many others who reject the values of the Enlightenment that birthed the Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Our educational system doesn't even teach civics any more, replacing it with Critical Theories and the hate they contain. The nation's great historical figures, including Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Paine, Franklin and more, are derided for their flaws and imperfections far more than recognized as part of the essence that is America.

This is the bit I envy about the Brits: the incredible heft of their history. While each of Britains' forty monarchs can be picked apart if one is motivated to do so, the combined weight (might as well insert a Henry VIII joke here) conveys a sense of identity to the citizens of Great Britain that stands against destroyers, even though the Commonwealth is a shadow of what the Empire was. Such a weight of history still exists in large swathes of America, where national pride remains high and where people stand for the National Anthem even when on TV (and freaking out some self absorbed nitwits in the process). That we seem to be losing that identity, that unity of America even during times of massive dissatisfaction with leadership, is not just a tragedy, but a descent into self-destruction.

The coronation, silly as it might seem to us outsiders, is a reminder of national identity. America doesn't have kings (though some of our recent Presidents act otherwise, and some of our contemporary citizens treat them otherwise), and properly rejects hereditary power and the inequality of a peerage class, but she has her own national identity. While our string of forty-five Presidents aren’t viewed as England’s forty monarchs are (nor should they be - America doesn’t and shouldn’t do royalty), we have long respected and looked to the leadership role of the Presidency, even when the current residents of the White House are not to our liking. The national identity, the ‘Murica!, is real.

That this national identity, this pride in American values, is now derided by our Best-and-Brightest and those who repeat their rejection of the nation’s ideals, is nothing short of a disaster.

If we lose our national identity, if we allow the values of liberty to be relegated to ancient history, we lose what made the American Experiment the greatest example of human self-organization ever conceived, and we will all suffer for that loss.