Why are some people obsessed with creating an American monarchy?

[Screaming Lord Byron]

Would George W Bush occupy the White House were he not his father's son? Would Jeb Bush be governor of Florida were it not for his family's connections? One could of course accuse us of the same with the Kennedys, although RFK was clearly qualified as a Presidential candidate in a way that George W can only dream of.
What is this need to have generational leadership? Does this tie in with the interest many people still take in the Royal Family? Is it perhaps a conservative impulse to want to be governed by selected families? What do you think?

[Alpharetta]

1. A lot of WASPs have an inferiority complex about England

They're the ones who think everything sounds smarter if it's said with a British accent.

They want an American version of royalty.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

5. I never understood the inferiority complex.

The USA is the dominant superpower. What more do you want? Do you want the bad teeth, bleak humour and sexual hang-ups of the English as well? :evilgrin:

[YellowRubberDuckie]

19. Um, our sexual hangups are far superior to those of England's.

[amber dog democrat]

2. This is something i have wondered about for years.

I honestly believe many Americans can't see beyond their greed or cultural obsessions. Maybe crass stupidity is another reason, ( fostered by a propagandistic aspect of news and infotainment media ).

Pardon my rant. Too much coffee has something to do with it.

But I am floored at how willing we as a nation seem to be to create a royal dynasty out of these crooks and con artists. It MUST be in part due to a general dumbing down of the American electorate, created by the false images spawned by a manipulative corporate owned media.

Maybe, just maybe the siver lining will be how reforms might come out of the egregious abuses. But my feeling is that things will get much much worse first.

These are dangerous times.

[demnan]

3. I don't think so

But it is increasing difficult for someone of average means to run for office in this country. You have to have mounds and mounds of inherited wealth. So that leaves the Kennedys, the Rockerfellers, the Forbes (Kerry is one), and the Bushes.

[Ripley]

4. It's not an obsession really.

It's the "dumbing down" our culture has been pounded with for many years. Many Americans vote on name recognition only. If they had a good impression about one Bush or one Kennedy, they simply check the box by that name again and again, year after year.

[ProfessorPlum]

6. The media really wants a monarchy

You can just feel the softly glowing way they create auras around the images of the Bushs and Reagan. Why? Probably laziness. Hero worship is easy, not questioning authority is easy, "us against them" tribalism is easy. Being on constant, skeptical watch over those in power is hard. Better just to make idols out of them and get back to going to Washington power lunches.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

7. Maybe we can re-fight the Wars of the Roses between various Reagans.

[Blue Wally]

8. I don't think........

we are likely to get a dynasty out of the Reagan kids.

The Adams were one of the first families to have multi-generational connections with the government. The Byrds of Virginia were involved in leadership positions for a couple of hundred years.

[ProfessorPlum]

10. I wasn't really talking about dynasty

especially with regard to the Reagan family. But rather monarchy, and the media's penchant for driving us in that direction.

[Blue Wally]

16. The Kennedy's

were really the first "royal" presidency. Jackie was treated like a queen by the press. The press still yearns for the return of "Camalot". None of the Presidential families have quite measured up since (though the tracking of Chelsea since her father left office has been excessive).

[H2O Man]

9. Good question.

It is one of the central issues discussed in "American Dynasty," the important book authored by Kevin Phillips. He also wrote "Wealth and Democracy."

In "Losing America," by Senator Robert Byrd, the first chapter deals with this same issue. Byrd has served with 11 presidents. He points out that Bush is the only one with absolutely no qualifications, except being his father's son.

It is interesting to note that the surge in interest in genealogy in the United States includes an unhealthy trend of people hoping to find some evidence of "royalty" somewhere in their distant past. This is absolutely against the ideals of American democracy, where one might assume more pride would be found in locating a foot soldier in the wars against royalty, than in identifying ones' self with the enemies of our national ideals.

[Ripley]

13. Ah, but Americans are obsessed with wealth and materialism.

Thus praising your "foot soldier" Virginia farmer relative doesn't sound hip today. But laying claim to be the descendent of blue blood is Impressive and might get you a good tee time.

[H2O Man]

17. Yes.......

on the current Plame thread, we discuss Erich Fromm's books, including "To Have or To Be." And, of course, that is the obsession with wealth and materialism versus the internal structure ..... you are right that the "blue blood" is a possession, though actually in two ways.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

14. You'd think a country founded in a democratic anti-monarchist revolution

would be wary of such things. History is loaded with irony.

[H2O Man]

18. In my recent

"local history" book, I examine the social, political,and economic history of rural, central NYS in terms of Hamiltonian versus Jeffersonian terms. Obviously, I was not looking for a "best seller" here. But, for example, there is a "cross-roads" community that was named Van Buren's Corners in the early 1800s. The people who lived there clearly had strong feelings about decentralized democratic government. While I do not think many Americans are looking to re-name their community as Agnewville or Cheneytown, the mindset that results in a community being named after Martin Van Buren seems long gone.

[sweetheart]

11. Is the self soveriegn?

I myself am soevereign.
You yourself are sovereign.
That is the truth.

Government is a media lie.
All government is a media lie.
Liberalism, and the enlightenment
from which america derives its
"superhuman" sovereign power is all
based on the root seed
of individual liberty
sovereign in the individual.
There is no monarchy and
never will be.

Yet trapped in the media abstracts
of these hero characters, is
the recurrent theme that the
individual knows right in their own
heart more than a system of laws does.

Everything great about america comes from its individuals,
and a minor cultural crack of the individual
encodes eternity most creatively when left alone in peace.

Creating the vacuum for complex individuals
in a simplistic youth culture media market
with monopolies rife and poor practices
is indeed much work, yet it is the media,
university, government and television that
in reporting the news and the truth, choose to
focus on non-starters.

I would be much in favour of a media that
was not selling its own cutthroat culture in
video and film, as well in news media. It is murdoch
and his ilk, the reincarnate muck journalists
of another century that most threaten democracy.

Guns in to plowshares,
ALL reasons for war are a lie.
Forgiveness begs us all.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

12. No Dynasties!

[dr.strangelove]

15. I think its natural

My firm has been doing business with the some family business clients for two or three (in one case five) generations. Family businesses are a key part of the American model economy. Families can train their children to take over when the senior family members step down. I am more comfortable with succession in this manner.

It seems natural that this positive feeling of family succession extends to politics as a family business. Of course some children are not qualified to take over a business, but those that are extend a feeling of comfort.

I don't think it is about creating an American Monarchy, but its about the feeling of comfort that family "baton passing" often creates. Just my two cents.