defend the indefensible: ARISTOCRACY

http://www.affichescinema.com/insc_a/aristocats.jpg

Sure, as long as you have enough money and guns.

Oh wait, you mean morally defensible. Well see, that's exactly the kind of question your average aristocrat finds entirely beside the point.

then why did we have such concepts as "divine right" and "lese majeste"?

see yer average graduate of an ivy league college or oxbridge.

Fear not, Spencer, I know implicitly we're both better than everyone else!

mandarins are also aristocrats, fwiw.

So, presumably, if you are willing to trade a bit if freedom (and equality, I'd add) for the sake of certain (cultivated and institutionalised) values, then aristocracy is for you.

"History had, of course, seen Republics before. Indeed, the concept of a republic dated from classical times - from ancient Greece and from Rome in the period prior to the Empire. But, as the delegates of the Constitutional Convention were only too painfully aware, all such previous republics had been subject to problems as chronic as those which had plagued monarchies. Chief among these perhaps was the propensity of republican governments to fall into the hands of dictatorial individuals or dynasties, who would then become so tyrannical as any sovereign or royal house, sometimes even more so."

(my bold, but really freaking appropriate in the view of the current American political climate, no?)

BTW, did anyone else see "Status Anxiety" on C4 last night, or is this thread only full of Americans? Any weekend Brits, or maybe I should start its own thread... (Any TV docu-thing which mentions Veblen within the first ten minutes is OK by me.)

If the British didn't have the aristocracy, and the class system, and the remnants of Feudalism to blame for their social economic problems, who would they have to blame? Themselves.

Because get rid of the aristocracy, and you *don't* get rid of inequality overnight, any more than getting rid of religion would get rid of war. At least having the aristocracy and having the class system guilts the middle and upper classes into actually providing for the NHS and government housing and all the other things that make being a peasant in England slightly more bearable than being a peasant in the US.