AUKUS, The English Speaking Peoples, The Monarchy, the Republic, and The Empire
Queen Elizabeth II understood that royalty requires stewardship. She's an ideal model for tech leadership.
While there will be many photos of Queen Elizabeth II in her regal attire, I like to think of her, aged 18, answering the call of her country and showing that even monarchy is not exempt from the obligations of total war. She was so impossibly young then and willing to take up the burdens that the Second World War had placed upon her generation, and enjoyed her status as the last ruler to have served in the Second World War.
And so it has finally come to pass — Queen Elizabeth II has met her reward after seventy long years on the throne. There is now, apparently, a King Charles III — at last, at 73 years of age, he has a new job. I regret to inform you, dear reader, that I have ascended to the throne. What?! You mean I’m not King of England?
It’s crass to speak ill of the dead or to look too closely at all silliness of monarchy. It’s rude. Don’t be rude. No, you’re not supposed to remember the Soviet agent — art historian Anthony Blunt — who worked ever so closely with Queen Elizabeth II, for example. And what, dear friends, was the Queen’s involvement, alongside the CIA, in the Australia constitutional crisis in 1975? What was that all about? You certainly shouldn’t ask why Jeffrey Epstein was visiting “Her Majesty.” It’s bad form.
You might be forgiven, though, for not really caring about the monarchy. No, you and I are something far better than royalty — we’re Americans.
Calvin Coolidge knew full well that makes us the peer of kings.
This principle can not be too definitely or emphatically proclaimed. American citizenship is a high estate. He who holds it is the peer of kings. It has been secured only by untold toil and effort. It will be maintained by no other method. It demands the best that men and women have to give. But it likewise awards to its partakers the best that there is on earth. To attempt to turn it into a thing of ease and inaction would be only to debase it. To cease to struggle and toil and sacrifice for it is not only to cease to be worthy of it but is to start a retreat toward barbarism. No matter what others may say, no matter what others may do, this is the stand that those must maintain who are worthy to be called Americans. [Emphasis mine].
American citizenship “awards to its partakers the best there is on earth,” Coolidge said.
This is what I, too, have come to believe, and to fight for, and indeed Coolidge gave that speech on Memorial Day in Arlington National Cemetery where my grandparents are buried and where, they, too, took up the obligations of citizenship. That they were so ordinary in their extraordinariness is why theirs is the Greatest Generation.
So no, try as I might, I find it hard to care about all the pomp and circumstance across the Pond.
Am I just all “We wuz kangs” about it? No, we, Americans, are kings — each and every one of us and we submit to no earthly authority except that of each other. Obedience to God means resistance to unjust kings.
And yes, that includes the rioters who, betrayed by a braying treasonous Steve Bannon, criminally broke into the People’s House. The tragedy of January 6th is that the very Americannness of those who breached the Capitol was used against them to lead them astray. When you realize that there are whole lot of Americans whose patriotism was weaponized to overthrow their government you start to realize the artistry of the influence operation. Weaponized autism is real.
A cult of personality is as un-American as anything else (though the presidency does seem to attract its worshipers). We didn’t fight a war for our independence to bow down, though I admit among my least heterosexual pleasures is watching Netflix’s The Crown. And yes, I do find it creepy all the American companies which are referring to “Her Majesty.” We have no titles of nobility here save J.D. or Ph.D.
Of course I love our cousins across the Pond — who doesn’t like strolling through Londontown? — but let’s not forget that the British are permitted their fantasies because we indulge them and to some extent guarantee their security. Increasingly, though, they are guaranteeing ours.
I am a son of the American Revolution on both sides of the family.
And whilst they’ll be all this attention will be on the geriatric King Charles, I’d like to tell you instead about an ancestor of mine who died absurdly young in opposition to all that the monarchy represented.
You see I’m a direct descendant of my sixth great-grandfather Charles Butler, who, aged approximately 50-51, died from wounds he sustained in the Revolutionary War.
“Lieutenant Charles Butler (1732-83) served as sergeant at the Lexington Alarm and, 1777, was lieutenant in Capt. Charles Wells’ company, Col. Thomas Beden’s regiment. He was born in Wethersfield; died from effects of exposure in the field.”
He made it to Bunker Hill and fought alongside Washington during the course of the war. You’ll find Charles Butler serving with General Joseph Spencer and with Colonel Samuel Wyllys.
Today Butler’s grave is run down now and all but forgotten but the country he helped to build rules the world.
Yes, I am also a Charles. Charles means a free man and I intend to deliver what the name promises — to live freely, responsibly yes, but freely.
I don’t bow down to monarchs or kings or billionaires to cult leaders — nor am I much persuaded that they’ll inherit the Earth. Tyrants come and they go, but the People remain.
To the extent that the monarchy exists in the world today, it exists in technology startups. And Silicon Valley has failed in that its founder complex hews too closely to the artifice of monarchy. Far too many rule without regard to their subjects.
I am not so republican as to deny that there aren’t among us natural kings or even emperors — our system makes space for those Jupiteran souls, who learn all too soon that to be enthroned is to be entombed.
And of course, there are just kings and unjust kings. Our founders knew as much.
But I don’t think it a coincidence that Eric Schmidt comes from a long line of Tories and while I won’t go full North Korea on you when it comes to kin punishment, I’m certainly not surprised that Schmidt’s a traitor given his pedigree.
It’s plain to see. He promises to keep America safe but he banged Chinese spies, bought Cyprus citizenship, and bemoaned the very real NSA technologies which kept America safe after 9-11. Rather than collaborate with the intelligence community, Schmidt’s Google has been oppositional to the point of treason. Now, though, he wants to raid the barracks. We will turn to his misbehavior soon enough.
To be sure it’s self serving to say that there are families of patriots and families of traitors but that doesn’t make it any less true. Current efforts by the military to woo technology companies misses that the bloodlines of the tech founders matter lest we allow the children of enemies build the machinery of our enslavement with our tax dollars. Security reviews and checks are essential. You can’t trust Chinese fronts like Sequoia or Andreessen Horowitz to keep your data or your family safe.
We won the war on the sea and in the air because we came together as one English-speaking people. Churchill’s hope that the New World, with all its power and might, would come to the liberation of the Old, still is the hope of the world.
We must hang together or we will surely hang separately, argued anglophile Ben Franklin, on the necessity of a powerful American government.
So, too, with the English-speaking peoples, who have once again joined forces to prevent coups and roll back Chinese espionage efforts in Australia, United Kingdom, and America. (By the way the data sharing in AUKUS should obviously include genetic data, collected with the highest principles of stewardship rather than exploitation.)
The civilizational challenges we face before us are immense, especially as we confront the reality of Chinese kleptocratic technocracy and impending environmental ruin. Once again, the world is calling on us to work together to roll back the menace that Chinese authoritarianism presents. Let’s not forget that Han Chinese is the default setting of the human race.
We don’t need One Billion Americans as Matt Yglesias imagines but we do need all of the Anglosphere to join together in a shared sense of stewardship of the planet and our institutions. The Queen is dead but the spirit of a global alliance among all the Commonwealth countries she built must endure.
We need a restoration of Rhodes’s dream of an empire of liberty, organized alongside the world’s commonwealth countries. It is they who will roll back the excesses as we go from the arsenals of Democracy, whilst we promote the algorithms of Freedom.
Each must do their part, to serve a cause greater than themselves, just as the Queen and my ancestors did. The times and the uniforms may change but the fight remains.
Later that day, Princess Elizabeth, in her ATS uniform, joined the crowds.
She later said, ‘I think it was one of the most memorable nights of my life’.
As always an excellent piece. But the call to action at the end,to build a real legacy for Rhodes, is very powerful and necessary.