Off Topic Tuesday: Picking On Ron Paul

Lord help me, I’m going to say something nice about Ron Paul. First, let me get some preliminaries out of the way: as I have already detailed in the past, Congressman Paul cannot win the GOP primary and he could never be elected President of the United States. We don’t elect people from the House of Representatives to the presidency, the pro-war crowd would never support him, the big business lobby would never support him (he’s too capitalist for them, believe it or not), the Jewish lobby would never support him, none of the racial minorities would support him, the university liberals would never support him and the religious right would never support him -and that’s pretty much everyone aside from the Libertarians. However, I cannot help but feel for the man due to the way he is constantly singled out and picked on, by the Right more than the Left (only because the Left know he’s unelectable and he serves to divide the Right) when, agree with him or not, he has been probably the most principled and consistent politician in office in the last few decades. He does not deserve to be treated with the ridicule he often is and, as I have also said before, he is also right on quite a few things.

Right now, as it is primary season when the contest is ‘who is conservative enough’, the one issue he is picked on the most is foreign policy. His stated position on foreign policy is one of non-intervention. Frankly, I disagree with that, however, I don’t think Ron Paul is as far off the reservation as he is portrayed as in the media. I have heard people say they are afraid of Ron Paul because he would never take us to war, even if it was necessary. But, that is not exactly true. Ron Paul would say that NO president should ever take us to war because the Constitution says it is the Congress that has the power to declare war and conclude peace. So, just because Ron Paul was President of the United States does not mean that the USA would never go to war, only that it would have to be done (as in the old days) by a vote of Congress. However, let us get right down to the nub of the issue and that is Iran. The big issue at the heart of all the controversy around Ron Paul in the GOP primary is that he refuses to say he would go to war with or bomb Iran and he does not believe that Iran is a threat, he does not believe they are close to having the bomb and yet he also says he wouldn’t really blame them or be concerned if they did get the bomb.

In the name of full disclosure let me say that I am in favor of bombing the Islamic Republic of Iran just on general principle. I regard them as a criminal, horrific and illegitimate regime that the world would be better without. That is all there is to it. However, here again, I think Ron Paul is being treated unfairly. The truth is that none of the candidates are anxious to go to war with or bomb Iran. They just like to talk tough and pretend that they are. When pressed on the subject they all say that the military option should “remain on the table” but that it should always be the last resort and they get very, very evasive when a reporter tries to pin them down on exactly what circumstances would prompt them to take military action. All of them (aside from Ron Paul) basically advocate doing the same thing the US has been doing to Iran for years but all to no avail. So, I really don’t think there is such a vast gulf between what Ron Paul and the other candidates, realistically, would do regarding Iran, he’s simply honest in saying what he thinks and too principled to go against his belief in non-interventionism just because that is what the primary voters would want to hear.

Congressman Paul (and I almost hate to say this) is also correct when he says that Iran is simply not a threat to the United States. Even if they had the bomb they have no missiles they could stick it on that could possibly reach North America. The only way Iran could pose a threat to the national security of the United States is if they smuggled a weapon into the country with a person carrying it. Which, by the way, is something that hardly anyone seems concerned with guarding against. The World Trade Center was not destroyed by missiles launched from Afghanistan. If the U.S. had occupied Afghanistan in 1999 or 2000, that would not have stopped 9-11. What would have prevented it would be keeping dangerous and unauthorized people out of the country and that is something the US is still not doing and shows no real interest in ever doing. Blowing up Iran (satisfying as I would find it) would not make America safer, secure borders and ports of entry and keeping a close eye on foreign nationals inside the country actually would. Whether Paul would do that or not, I don’t know, but I do know he is technically correct when he says that Iran is not a threat to the United States of America. A threat to Israel? Certainly. A threat to Europe? Possibly. And Ron Paul would have no problem with those countries doing whatever they pleased to protect themselves. He would say it is none of our business what Iran or Israel or Europe does.

The whole issue is a fraud. I say that as someone who is not an unqualified supporter of Ron Paul. He loves to describe the United States as an “American Empire”, and I totally disagree with that. He thinks that if the U.S. were more like Switzerland we would have no enemies. I totally disagree with that, experience having proven that the U.S. is just as often criticized for not getting involved as it is for getting involved. For me, World War I is the best example of this. The Allies begged and begged and manipulated and cajoled the U.S. into coming into the war and then, once America did and the war was won, promptly blamed every ill-effect of it on America getting involved, even for the Versailles Treaty which the U.S. never signed. Where I will agree with Ron Paul is that so much, perhaps even the majority, of U.S. intervention and the U.S. military presence overseas does not serve any practical value in terms of American national security. How is America safer because of the 50,000 troops in Germany or the 30,000 troops in South Korea? After all, if North Korea ever got a wild hair and decided to invade South Korea those 30,000 American troops would not make any difference at all. Thirty thousand men between two Koreas with armies numbering in the millions is not a drop in the bucket. I don’t see how the United States itself is any safer because of our bases in Afghanistan, Thisistan or Thatistan. Enemies of the U.S. are extending their influence into Central and South America and the eyes of Washington DC are on the Middle East and Central Asia.

I do not share the foreign policy outlook of Ron Paul but I see no point in doing favors for people who don’t like the U.S. and I see no sense in offending foreign powers we have no problem with in order to smack down some petty dictator who is no threat to American security in the first place. For instance, how does it benefit the United States to have bases in Central Asia that (evidently) terrifies the Russians? Everyone knows the U.S. has no intention, will or desire to actually fight the Russians -ever. So, why maintain these bases that frighten them so? Because of Afghanistan we are told. But why do we need to be in Afghanistan? The Taliban was removed from power, Osama bin Laden is dead and now feeding the fish at the bottom of the ocean. So, what is the point of our continued presence in Afghanistan? Well, if we leave now, we are told, the Taliban will come back and take over again. By that logic we should never leave any country (though I sometimes wonder if that is not a reality as we still have thousands of troops in Germany, Italy and Japan). And, though I don’t want to sound heartless, but if we leave and the Taliban does come back … who cares? The Taliban did not attack us, they were no threat to us and they could do us no harm, again, unless we allowed them into the United States and then failed to keep track of them -a problem no one wants to address.

Ron Paul also makes a valid point that is never considered. When he gives it, interviewers usually ignore it and carry on as if he had never said it. The point Ron Paul makes with Iran is that U.S. forces are or have been established in both Iraq and Afghanistan, putting them on the eastern and western borders of Iran. How would the U.S. react to an enemy invading and occupying Canada and Mexico? Of course, the U.S. would never tolerate such a thing. Since at least the American Civil War the United States has quite frequently displayed behavior she would never tolerate on the part of any other power. This has often caused confusion and anger on the part of foreign powers. For example, the Japanese raised no fuss when the U.S. took the Philippines from Spain and so were rather annoyed that the U.S. would make such a fuss over Japan taking Manchuria from China. I’m sure, in 1914, there were some Germans who found it odd that the U.S. which had so recently sent troops into Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean was so outraged at their own soldiers being sent into Belgium.

I was never fond of the “Monroe Doctrine”. It seemed to me like little more than the U.S. claiming all of North, Central and South America as a “republics only” club. This was the doctrine which the U.S. invoked in pressuring France to pull out of Mexico, leaving Emperor Maximilian high and dry and ensuring his defeat at the hands of the loyal American ally Benito Juarez. Yet, how many times has the U.S. done, in other parts of the world, pretty much the same thing France did in Mexico. The U.S. would not tolerate any other power “interfering” in the Americas, what the U.S. claimed as its exclusive sphere of influence, yet the U.S. seems perplexed that other countries would be upset at all over American interference in their own sphere of influence. Many would argue that it is the character of the regimes in question that we are dealing with that makes all the difference. It sounds nice and all, but that’s really an absurd line of reasoning as the U.S. (like any other country) deals openly and sometimes in a very friendly fashion with regimes many would regard as terrible dictatorships. That is all a matter of opinion, who is “untouchable” and who is not. Paul has mentioned before the absurdity of the U.S. trading with Red China while still maintaining an embargo on Cuba. I think it is absurd as well, though I do so as one who doesn’t think we should be trading with China, but it is a double standard nonetheless.

Again, I certainly don’t agree with Ron Paul on everything, and he doesn’t have a prayer of getting elected President in this day and age or even winning a primary in either major party. However, it seems wrong to belittle or dismiss him. He has ideas worth considering, he has been proven correct in many of his economic predictions and he is presenting a challenge to the American people and the political establishment that, frankly, I love to see. Unlike many of my countrymen, including Ron Paul, I do not hold the Founding Fathers and the system of government they established as being “divinely inspired” or somehow sacrosanct (I would have been one of those horrible Tories had I been in New England in 1776). At the heart of all of his positions, Ron Paul is simply challenging people today to practice what they preach in terms of upholding the Constitution of the United States. If they really believe the Founders were so brilliant and the Constitution such a sacred document, they should have no problem in strictly adhering to it. That means no government interference in the economy, no entangling alliances, no military adventures or treating people as POW’s without a declaration of war and no cradle to grave welfare.

Additional note: one reason I cannot unequivocally support isolationism is the case of Iran itself. Ron Paul bemoans U.S. assistance in restoring the late Shah to power in Iran. I have no problem with that and one of (if not the) biggest complaints I have against Jimmy Carter was his failure to intervene and assist the Shah against the revolution that brought him down and elevated the current, horrific, regime to power.

The Case for Monarchy: France

The Kingdom of France holds a special place in the heart of most western monarchists because so much of the subsequent dominance of republicanism and the idealization of revolution stems from its downfall. Even today it would not be totally untrue to assert, as past republican figures have done, that France IS the Revolution. Because the French Revolution assumed such a place of worshipful devotion it has been necessary for subsequent republican leaders to glorify the leaders of that horrific event and to blacken the name of the old Kingdom of France and in this they have, sadly, been mostly successful. For most people, the colors of blue-white-red, the French national anthem and even the guillotine evoke things like patriotism, the struggle for liberty, equality and fraternity, the overthrow of oppression and so on. Likewise, for most people, the Kingdom of France is often viewed as a terrible period of absolutism, exploitation, impoverished peasants being preyed upon by corrupt, distance aristocrats clustered around a hedonistic court presided over by power-mad monarchs and hypocritical clerics. Like most pieces of propaganda this is the result of ignoring unpleasant facts, facts that do not fit the narrative, and greatly exaggerating real problems to the point of inventing falsehoods.

France can be seen as revolutionary in one way. For almost as long as it has existed as a recognizable nation it has known a series of rises and falls. There was the rise of the empire of Charlemagne (though it is still a matter of bitter dispute among some whether this was a French or German accomplishment) which dominated western Europe before dividing and going into decline. Then there was the rise of France as the great right-arm of Christendom with French knights subduing enemies and rivals across Europe, from Sicily to the Balkans and who made up the bulk of the crusader armies that held out against the powerful forces of Islam in the Middle East. Then there was division, the Hundred Years War with England and a long period of relative weakness. However, France rose up again, briefly, before being submerged for a time in religious turmoil only to rise again and become the single most dominant power in western Europe. French explorers reached Canada and the Mississippi, France was the center of art, science and philosophy. During the reign of King Louis XIV it is no exaggeration to say that everything revolved around France as almost everything done by any nation at that time was a reaction to some action by King Louis. Yet, not long after, came a number of setbacks and finally the Revolution.

It is important to note that the only subsequent major French accomplishments on the world stage were achieved by, on one or two occasions, when the Kingdom of France was briefly restored, or during the two periods of the French Empire. Napoleon I dominated Europe for a time (not necessarily a positive accomplishment but definitely an accomplishment nonetheless), King Charles X extended French influence into North Africa, Emperor Napoleon III briefly extended French influence in the Americas, established the first real presence in Indochina and made France at least a major player in events in the Middle East, the Balkans, Italy and Africa. The French republic, any of the five, have, by comparison, accomplished very little and what they have managed to achieve was done with significant help from other powers and was usually simply building on the foundations already established by their monarchial predecessors. However, the royal period in France had high and low points as well. In any given time there is no doubt that the French have proven themselves capable of great things when they set their mind to it. Government can only help or hinder in this regard. The monarchs usually helped, the republic has, without exception, always hindered.

For the French, the real question is; what sort of France do they want to be? During all of the ups and downs of French history, there is an ample selection to choose from. It would be unfair to present the choice as being between the finest examples of the Kingdom of France and the most horrid examples of revolutionary republicanism. There is not much of a comparison between St Louis and Robespierre after all. At least for humane and civilized people. The problem is that the adherents of the republic often romanticize and justify what most French monarchists would consider the most wicked and terrible pages of their history. Republicans would justify things like the Reign of Terror and the Paris Commune and those who scorn the history of Catholic France in favor of secularism (and there are plenty of them) do see the likes of Robespierre or even Marat as more admirable figures than St Louis or St Joan of Arc. And, just for further consideration, there are those like Napoleon I, King Louis Philippe or Napoleon III who tried to combine the two.

Revolutionary republicans also tend to take the “Whig” vision of history; that progress means moving ever forward and that there is no time better than the present. Given that, one could point to even the grandest heights of royal France and fairly compare it to today. Is the France of today truly representative of the best the French are capable of? A monarchist would certainly say “no”. One can also look at the French Revolutionaries and their own ideals to judge how well they have lived up to them. Originally, they were quite nationalistic, as was seen in the vilification of the once beloved Queen Marie Antoinette as the hated foreigner, the Austrian and so on. Yet, at no time in history has France been less ethnically French than it is today. There are large numbers of non-French Europeans in France, a huge and rapidly growing Arab and African Muslim population and even the most prominent couple in France, the President and First Lady, are an ethnic Hungarian and an Italian. So much for the republic being more “French”. Of course, the Kingdom of France (and even the French Empire to an extent) were cosmopolitan places with their own sort of diversity but it was never enforced in such a way as to water down the distinct native population. A Frenchman was a Frenchman, a German was a German and a Spaniard was a Spaniard. Able to get along, but certainly not the same thing and definitely not interchangeable. Fraternity has been a failure.

What about liberty? Surely the republic has improved in that area over the old days of the monarchy? An objective observer would have to say, again, say “no”. The King was unelected and (theoretically) unaccountable to the people and yet much of French life today is regulated by the bureaucrats of the European Union in Brussels who are, likewise, unelected and unaccountable. And, unlike the kings of old, they do not even have the welfare of France as their top priority. Assuming their first concern is not themselves, they are expected to act in the interests of the EU as a whole rather than in those of a single country. If the republic has been such a blessing to France, so democratic, so accountable and such a champion of liberty, one would be forced to ask why they have had to have so many of them. For about a thousand years the Kingdom of France operated, in good times and bad, with the occasional change in the Royal Family line, on the same basic principles of a Catholic monarchy. Yet, just since the Revolution (just a little over two centuries ago) France has gone through a directory, a couple restorations, two empires, one “State” and a grand total of five different republics. In fact, many of the low points in the recent history of France can be attributed simply to political instability. Furthermore, for those who uphold the present state of affairs as ideal, one could hardly credit the Revolution for this level of liberty since plenty of other countries have almost identical rights and freedoms that never went through a revolution at all.

As for the goal of equality, that can be easily dismissed since no society has ever achieved it, nor are any ever likely to. A simple look at France today will show that there is still an elite, still those who have power, positions and privileges which others do not and who are treated better, even put somewhat above the law, just because of who they are. In short, like most modern supposedly egalitarian societies, they still have all of the failings of a titled nobility but none of the benefits. It should be clear to anyone by now, simply by observing, that an upper class will always exist. You can either admit it and expect a level of responsibility and noblesse oblige from that upper class or you can hypocritically ignore it and have it exist as an unofficial elite based more often than not on the negative aspects of self-advancement.

So, again, France must make a choice. What sort of France do the French want to have; the Catholic French monarchy that was the “Eldest Daughter of the Church”, the vanguard of Christendom and the most respected source of culture and civilization for centuries (recalling a time when even English and German monarchs spoke French almost exclusively) or the France of the Revolution, the Reign of Terror, anti-clerical genocide, a guillotine in every town, constant turmoil and instability and a country being sold-out by professional politicians and bureaucrats with no connection to the land or people at all? In the past few centuries the French have seen every alternative firsthand, the kingdom, the republic or something in between. All that remains is to make the choice. Of course, if monarchy is chosen there will still, sadly, be another choice to be made afterwards, but nonetheless, we can take this one step at a time. For my part, I look at France today and see a nation that has proven it can be so much more, so much greater and yet clings to what is easy and familiar even if it is mediocre at best and harmful at worst. The French have every right to aspire to greatness, to be a noble, righteous and chivalrous example to the world as they have been before. That is the example that should be embraced and that is why the whole culture of the revolution should be looked at for the horror it is, totally and finally rejected and the monarchy restored.

MM Video: Queens of Thailand

MM Video: Christmas in Monaco

Royal News Roundup

The big royal news in the Far East has been the royal transition in the Kingdom of Malaysia. HM King Mizan Zainal Abidin ended his 5-year term on Monday as the thirteenth King, or more precisely as Yang di-Pertuan Agong or “He Who Is Made Lord” of Malaysia. The Prime Minister congratulated the out-going monarch (who of course remains Sultan of Terengganu, don’t panic) on his able leadership, smooth and steady reign and his personality humility and good character. On Tuesday the formal installation ceremonies were held for his successor, Sultan Abdul Halim Mu’adzam Shah of Kedah, who now has the unprecedented honor of being the King of Malaysia for the second time in his lifetime. His is 84-years-old, making him the oldest King Malaysia has ever had, and he’s a Sinatra fan. Also in Asia, this week the King and Queen of Bhutan attended the start of a new tradition, the Dochula Druk Wangyel festival, which honors the fourth King of Bhutan and the Bhutanese army for defending the country. There were traditional dances and special prayers were sung which had been written by the King.

On the southern European front, Spain was hit by a royal scandal. Iñaki Urdangarin, Duke of Palma, husband of HRH Infanta Cristina, had been accused of embezzlement in his role as head of a non-profit organization from 2004-2006. The Duke said that he regrets the trouble this has caused the King and Royal Family who had nothing to do with his activities in that regard. The Duke maintains his innocence but has been excluded from any formal royal duties because of his connection to the scandal, which has caused particular outrage in Spain which is deeply in debt and has a huge unemployment problem. The scandal and the class warfare (for lack of a better term) being stirred up have caused the Spanish monarchy considerable harm. So far, King Juan Carlos himself is still respected (as he consistently has been throughout his reign) but support for the monarchy overall has dropped recently. Yet, the royal duties continue. On Tuesday, the King and Queen attended the opening of a new exhibition at the National Library of Spain and on Thursday Queen Sofia was on her own attending the ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the Special Operations Command of the Spanish military. HRH Princess Caroline of Hanover was honored for her humanitarian work on Monday in Germany. Meanwhile, her eldest son, Andrea Casiraghi, was inducted into the Order of the Golden Tankard by his uncle Prince Albert II, patron of the group, and the other members of the beer appreciation club at the Hotel de Paris. Prince Albert and Princess Charlene later carried on another time-honored tradition in Monaco by handing out Christmas presents to Monegasque children at the Princely Palace.

In the Low Countries the biggest news this week was the tragic mass murder in Liege, Belgium. Five were killed and dozens wounded on Tuesday when Nordine Amrani, a Moroccan Belgian and ex-con, went on a killing spree before taking his own life. Authorities are still trying to determine a motive for the tragedy and have stated it was not an act of political terrorism and that Amrani was not a practicing Muslim who didn’t even speak Arabic. The King and Queen visited Liege that very evening to meet with survivors and the families of the victims. On Wednesday TRH Prince Philippe and Princess Mathilde traveled to Liege University Hospital to also visit the victims recovering there and sign the book of condolences. The monarchs of Luxembourg and the Netherlands as well as a number of other government leaders in Europe sent message of sympathy to the Kingdom of Belgium over the tragedy.

In Scandinavia the big royal event was the Nobel Prize awards. On Saturday, in Oslo, the King, Queen, Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Norway met with the three ladies who won the Nobel Peace Prize before attending the award ceremony. The winners this year were President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia along with Tawakkul Karman, a journalist and political activist from Yemen. The rest of the prizes were given out in Sweden. The awards presentation was attended by the King and Queen, Crown Princess Victoria, Prince Daniel, Prince Carl Philip, as well as the Grand Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg who were there to congratulate one of the winners of the Nobel Prize in medicine, a Frenchman born in Luxembourg. On a different note, HM Queen Margrethe II of Denmark visited London this week to take care of her Christmas shopping and enjoy a little private time away from it all. Other than shopping the Queen took in a performance of “Richard II” at Covent Garden.

Consort Profile: Caroline Matilda of Wales

One royal consort who had a pretty rough time of it was Queen Caroline Matilda of Wales, consort of King Christian VII of Denmark and the daughter of HRH Frederick, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of King George II of Great Britain, Elector of Hanover. She was born at Leicester House in London on July 11, 1751, the youngest child of Prince Frederick and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. She was referred to as Princess and as Caroline Matilda of Wales even though by the time she was born the title of “Prince of Wales” had already passed to the future King George III. She was christened when she was ten days old by Thomas Hayter, Bishop of Norwich and her godparents were her aunt Princess Caroline, her sister Princess Augusta and her older brother the future George III. She was raised in a very strict fashion by her mother who kept her away from the squabbles at court and ensured that she had a good education. As a child she was known for being friendly, down-to-earth, a bit of a child of nature who loved the outdoors, riding horses and such things. She was also a very talented singer with a beautiful voice and was taught to speak German (of course), French and Italian.

Since their father had died only months before she was born, King George III was her dominant father-figure and took responsibility for seeing that his baby sister was brought up properly and, to her great misfortune, he quickly began seeking a suitable marriage for her. When she was only fifteen years old Princess Caroline Matilda was forced to say “goodbye” to England and sail off to Denmark to marry her cousin King Christian VII. Ordinarily this would be a happy occasion but, neither King George nor the teenage bride-to-be was aware of the sad fact that King Christian VII happened to almost completely insane. As a child he would simply sit and stare at his hands and as he grew older he became obsessed with his appearance, to the point of stripping down in public to admire his own physique and as time went on he only grew worse. On November 8, 1766 the two were married at Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen and Caroline Matilda, then Queen consort of Denmark, noticed rather quickly that her husband was barking mad. She was positively enraged that she had been forced into such a union but, to her credit, she did not give up and run away back home. She braced herself and set about to do her duty.

It must have been oddly comical when her brother King George III wrote constantly inquiring about her as he was very anxious that the marriage would be a successful and fruitful one. All the while the King was getting up to all sorts of unspeakable acts, obsessing over masochism, threatening to kill himself or anyone around him in his violent ravings and quite displeased that he was expected to do the duties of a King. He had as little desire to do his duty as a husband, preferring the company of loose women to his wife, saying that it was unfashionable to sleep with your wife. Nonetheless, Queen Caroline Matilda had two children by Frederick, a son and heir to the throne, Prince Frederick, and a daughter Princess Louise Auguste. The Queen tried to make the best of her situation and was willing to play the part of regent of the Kingdom of Denmark, which was just as well for the King who did not want to be a sovereign anyway and was even rather thrilled by the idea of female domination. The courtiers were embarrassed and rather exasperated by his behavior but, like everyone else, struggled along as best they could.

She found the Danish court too strict for her liking and her friendly and charming nature was put to the test in the extreme in this environment and with such a husband. Once the succession was secured the King found his recreation in brothels and the Queen was kept largely isolated. When the King went on a tour of several cities in Europe in 1768 Queen Caroline Matilda got something of a vacation and shocked Danish sensibilities by walking around Copenhagen rather than being driven in a carriage. When the King finally returned he brought with him a doctor that was to be his personal physician named Johann Friedrich Struensee, a German doctor from Prussia. He had been able to do some good for the King and the reluctant monarch came to like and trust the man. He even managed to get the King to show some kindness to Queen Caroline Matilda but she knew it was Dr. Struensee who was behind it all. She admired the charming doctor and this admiration grew into affection. When he was given a room in the palace the temptation was too close to resist and by 1770 the Queen and the Prussian doctor were engaged in a full blown affair. Even when it became fairly common knowledge the King didn’t seem to care in the slightest (and honestly it would have been rather hypocritical for him to do so).

The Danish court and public were scandalized by this if the King was not and soon there were opposing parties consisting of the Queen and her paramour and their supporters and the opposition. Things might have gone on in that way as long as Christian VII lived but, as he became more and more incapacitated, Dr. Struensee effectively took over the government of Denmark and began ruling himself according to the fashion of the “Enlightened Despot” which he fancied himself as. Anger further mounted when the Queen gave birth to a baby girl, assumed by virtually everyone as being the child of Struensee. In January of 1772 the backlash erupted and the Queen and the doctor were arrested. She denied her relationship with Struensee in an effort to save him but it was to no avail. The King and Queen were declared divorced in April and Struensee and his chief accomplice were executed. King George III sent an envoy to obtain the release of his sister and the Danish authorities agreed and deported their former Queen to Hanover. Due to her behavior the King preferred not to have her back in England and she had little desire to go and even maintained some aspirations of returning to Denmark, deposing her ex-husband and ruling as regent through her son. However, nothing ever came of this plans and she died still in Germany of scarlet fever on May 10, 1775.

Monarchist Profile: Lev Tikhomirov

The Good Book says that God loves a sinner come to his senses and this aptly describes the life of the Russian monarchist and author Lev Alexandrovich Tikhomirov, an ardent revolutionary who later became one of the most zealous defenders of the Russian Orthodox monarchy. He was born in Gelendzhik on the Black Sea on January 19, 1852 to an officer in the Russian army medical corps and his high-born wife. His family was conservative and traditional for the time but not overly political. However, like so many unfortunate youths, his mind was corrupted by the fashionable left-wing radicalism that was sweeping through those chattering classes who considered themselves the “educated elite” of the time. He became one of the so-called Narodniks, a group of puffed-up middle class dissidents that arose after the emancipation of the serfs and who envisioned using the peasants to overthrow the monarchy, stamp out any creeping capitalism and establish a new socialist Russia free of monarchy, aristocracy and other elements they deemed as remnants of “feudalism”.

Tikhomirov’s dissident activities did not go unnoticed and in 1873 he was arrested for advocating subversive activity and sentenced to four years in Sts Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg. His confinement and eventual release had little effect on him, if anything it was viewed as something of a right of passage in revolutionary circles and he climbed all the higher in the dissident hierarchy because of that. He became one of the leaders of “Land and Liberty” (part of the Narodniki) and in 1879 joined the terrorist group “The People’s Will”. During this time, the Narodniki had become increasingly radical and inclined toward violence. Their efforts to inspire the peasants to rise up and overthrow the monarchy had failed miserably. They blamed “superstition” on the part of their supposedly imbecilic countrymen. The truth was that the Russian peasants were deeply religious people who, according to the dictates of the Orthodox faith, viewed their Tsar as occupying a sacred place and they were devoutly loyal to their monarch who they lovingly referred to as “The Little Father”.

To combat this, which, again, the Narodniki viewed as mindless superstition, Tikhomirov and his fellow revolutionaries decided they would have to assassinate the Tsar in order to “prove” to the peasants that their “Little Father” was a mere mortal and this, they assumed, would break the faith of the peasantry and cause them to come flocking to their revolutionary banner. In this, these highly educated people displayed their own ignorance. The peasants were not well educated of course, but they were not stupid enough to actually believe the Tsar was immortal or impervious to harm. Yet, the revolutionaries convinced themselves that this was the case and so in 1882 carried out the brutal and gruesome assassination of Tsar Alexander II, the “Tsar Liberator”. Needless to say, the peasants did not rise up en masse in rebellion and Tsar Alexander III succeeded to the Russian throne, determined to rule with a much firmer hand than his more moderate father had. He brought down a world of hurt on the secret societies, terrorist gangs and assorted revolutionaries and Lev Tikhomirov, like many others, was forced to flee Russia.

The radical escaped to Switzerland and then moved on to France where he stayed for a number of years. Perhaps what he saw around him had some impact as well as the low place to which he had fallen. While many of his old comrades mindless stuck to their conspiracies, Tikhomirov actually stopped to think. He engaged in a little self-reflection and, the more he thought about what he had done and what his opinions were, the more he began to realize that he had made a terrible mistake. In 1886 he wrote, “From henceforth our only hope is Russia and the Russian people. We have nothing to gain from the revolutionaries…In light of this, I have begun to reconsider my life. I must now build it in such a way so as to serve Russia according to the dictates of my conscience, independent of all parties”.

Tikhomirov did reconsider and by 1888 he formally and publicly renounced his revolutionary activities. This is nothing to shrug off, he was putting his life in real danger by doing this; making himself a traitor to his former revolutionary comrades. However, he actually publishes a book explaining his change of heart called, “Why I Am No Longer a Revolutionary”. He also applied to return to the Russian Empire. Believe it or not, Tsar Alexander III, the man upheld by the revolutionaries as the archetype of the merciless, autocratic tyrant, accepts Tikhomirov’s change of heart as genuine and allows him to come home. Welcomed back with open in arms in fact and soon rising to become one of the leading conservative writers in the Russian Empire. His past was forgiven and forgotten and his contrition was heartfelt. As he later wrote in his memoirs, “I do not like my youth. It is full of the passioned desires of a corrupt heart, full of impurity, full of a stupid pride, a pride of someone who, while realizing his potential, has not yet matured to analytical thinking or independence of thought. I only begin to like my life from that point (in my last years in Paris) when I matured and was liberated…began to understand the meaning of life, began to seek God”.

Yes, as usual, along with becoming a monarchist came a conversion (or more accurately reversion) to his Orthodox Christian faith. In his writings he was able to put the wealth of his life experiences (much of it bad) to good use. He had seen the other side and he knew that where the revolutionary path would take his people and his country was no place anyone would want to be. From his years in France he had gained firsthand experience with democracy and republicanism, how political parties dominated the people and how the parties were manipulated by self-seeking elitists be they politicians or wealthy private citizens. He was certain that, while Russia had problems, democracy was most certainly not the answer. He wrote, “We must seek other ways, understanding that great truth, which is now apparent given the negative experiences of the “new era”: that organizing a society is only possible by keeping the spiritual balance in every man. And this spiritual balance comes from a living religious ideology”. He had come to grasp the heart of monarchism and the core of what is known as “traditional authority”.

Now an ardent monarchist, in 1905 Tikhomirov wrote a massive four-volume masterpiece that became the literary guide to Russian monarchists for years to come entitled, “On Monarchist Statehood”. In it he defended traditional authority as an absolutely essential part of any well ordered society in order to maintain that balance he spoke often of, but realizing that as the best “constitutions” (for lack of a better word) grow up naturally, also admitted that such a traditional authority would not be identical for every people in the world. In this work he wrote, “If a powerful moral ideal exists in a society, an ideal calling all to voluntary obedience to, and service of, one another, then it brings about monarchy because the existence of this ideal negates the need for physical force (democracy) or the rule of an elite (aristocracy). All that is necessary is the continual expression of this moral ideal. The most capable vehicle for this expression is one individual placed in a position of complete independence from all external political forces”.

By 1909 Tikhomirov had become editor of a state-owned monarchist newspaper, the “Moscow Gazette” though in 1913 government funding was cut and Tikhomirov resigned. He moved to Sergiev Posad and began writing “On the Religious and Philosophical Fundamentals of History” which would be his second-largest work. In this he went into detail about how he came to view the world, which he saw as being dominated by dualistic and monistic visions. The dualistic vision saw God and all that God created while the monistic vision saw only the material world and nothing more. He classified every epoch of history as the story of the struggle between these two competing visions and stated that it would go on until a final, apocalyptic clash between the forces of religion and the forces of revolution. Possibly by 1917?

Perhaps he was expecting it, but Lev Tikhomirov retired from addressing politics in 1917 and after the revolution and the establishment of the provisional government he took a job as a school secretary. He died still in Sergiev Posad on October 10, 1923.

Mad Rant: Mistreating Flags

As most long-time readers know, I have a bit of interest in what educated people call vexillology (a fancy word for things to do with flags). One of the things that really chaps my hide is the misuse of flags or people who ascribe certain character traits to flags. Of course, it speaks to the immense power of symbols (something monarchists should appreciate) but we must also be careful when it comes to calling something like a flag “evil”. At the end of the day it is a piece of colored cloth on a bit of stick -it cannot speak, it cannot toil nor spin and it certainly cannot hurt anyone. A flag has meaning only insofar as the meaning we, the public, choose to attach to it. I know I am going a little out of the way here, but I am coming to a point eventually I promise. It seems that almost every “First World” country has a problem related to this. In almost every country there are flags that are deemed politically incorrect or even “evil” because the nation or government they represent did something wrong. In some countries this has even resulted in certain flags being banned.

Being born and raised in Texas, I learned in high school what a controversial symbol the Confederate flag was in the United States. The argument over what it ‘means’ still flares up occasionally, though for the most part it is regarded as politically incorrect at the very least and is increasingly scarce. At first, I thought this was a unique situation, but it is not. It turns out that almost every North American and European country have a similar flag. Japan as well, which is really a problem for them as they have only ever had one national flag and it would be hard to imagine anything different. Up in Canada it has lately become the Canadian Red Ensign that has the bad reputation. In Great Britain it is the St George Cross of England and of course in Germany the Nazi German flag is strictly forbidden. Here is where my blood starts to come to a boil. Do you notice anything really wrong with the examples I just gave? Such as, why the hell would the Canadian Red Ensign, the English St George Cross and the flag of Nazi Germany be in any circumstances grouped together? The St George Cross originated in a different era of history and the brave boys from Canada fought under the Red Ensign in wiping out the Nazi German menace.

The problem is the misuse of flags and it seems to be becoming more and more widespread and really, really infuriates me. The most infuriating thing about it is that the regular people and the civic authorities let these malcontents who misuse flags get away with it! Let me calm down and explain: Nazi Germany was an evil regime and pretty much everyone on earth by now agrees on that point. So, the Federal Republic of Germany banned the Nazi flag, which was not and never had been a symbol of Germany or the Germans prior to Hitler gaining power. So, what were the modern, neo-Nazi malcontents to do since their beloved swastika was forbidden? They decided to misuse older flags such as the flag of the old German Empire and in particular the Imperial German Ensign. Now, because of that, many associate the symbols of Imperial Germany with the neo-Nazis. Such an association should be viewed as just as criminal as the flying of the swastika. It is outrageous that this has been allowed to happen. It is beyond contemptible that many now view the Imperial German flags as racist. These flags represented a German Empire in which Jews served in every level of government, the military and achieved great success in society. In some cases, these flags were carried by armies made up almost entirely of Africans, who won great fame, during the First World War. They are NOT symbols of racism.

And, of course, it doesn’t stop there. Only recently a Dutch politician was forced to remove the old, orange-white-blue flag from his office because those colors had been used by the Dutch Nazi Party in World War II and it is now associated with racism and political extremism. Just to be clear, this is the original Dutch flag, used by the old Dutch Republic and known as the “Prince’s Flag” because it bore the colors of the House of Orange. The Princes of Orange were the primary leaders of the Dutch Republic and, of course, later became the Royal Family of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The modern, red-white-blue design of the Dutch flag became popular because of the influence of the French Revolution but the orange-white-blue design (chosen because they were the colors on the arms of the House of Orange) long predated that design. Just because some Nazis misused the Prince’s Flag is no reason to hand them the victory by considering it to be thus forever tarnished.

I find it even more ludicrous that the St George Cross, the English flag, should be considered politically incorrect today. It dates back to Medieval times as the English national symbol and is meant to represent, for crying out loud, a saint! St George, the gallant, brave knight who killed the dragon and saved the princess (or something like that, I’m sure others know the legend better than I). It is also a very widespread flag design used by people all over the world, English and non-English alike. I am not entirely sure how the English flag ever came to have negative connotations. Such a thing is rather rare for non-historical flags and the St George Cross is still, just as it has always been, the flag of England. Yet, evidently, in these hyper-sensitive times, some people who have been labeled as racist make use of the St George Cross and so it too has become guilty by association. As stated, I am not entirely sure how this association came about or who is responsible for it. It is true, though most would not believe it, that one can be opposed to multiculturalism without being a racist. This seems to be a mostly “First World” problem as it does not ever seem to apply to anyone else. No one views the former colonial peoples of the Third World as racists for wanting to “take back” their country for their own people and drive out all the Europeans -they are viewed as freedom fighters, not racists.

Speaking to that, one could, of course, make the argument that the English flag is evil because as times the Kingdom of England was involved in some rather unsavory undertakings. However, that could be applied to virtually any flag because no nation or government on earth has ever been perfect. Such is why we usually do not allow anyone to expropriate flags currently in use. The United States flag, for example, flew from slave ships, was carried by troops who wiped out the Indians and was carried by the Ku Klux Klan in their mass rallies and parades at the height of their power in the 1920’s. Yet, for most Americans, this changes nothing. They still view the “Stars and Stripes” as a symbol of liberty, freedom and all the best qualities of America. Another, perhaps more interesting, example is the French tricolor. It was the flag of the Revolution (Boo! Hiss!), the Reign of Terror but was also the flag of the First Empire, the July Monarchy, the Second Empire and is still the flag of the French Republic today. Most in France (who are sadly not monarchists) still view it in the best possible light as the symbol of “liberty, equality and fraternity” and, in a wider context, it has been used by so many different sorts of governments that most view it as simply “French” and nothing more, neither good nor bad in itself. If the most vile of racists do or were to wave the French tricolor, I doubt they would be allowed to change the perception of the flag to represent themselves alone.

Yet, when it comes to a flag not in official use, villains can get away with co-opting the colors. The Canadian Red Ensign is, evidently, another example. Again, I know of no formal groups that do so, but apparently some unsavory individuals have taken to adopting the Canadian Red Ensign as their own and have aided in the flag acquiring a rather bad reputation. I have heard it described as the Canadian version of flying the Confederate flag in the United States. In other words, politically incorrect and used by people the mainstream regard as rather villainous. This is particularly outrageous because the Canadian Red Ensign has long been a flag favored by many Canadian monarchists, United Empire Loyalists and those (with whom I am certainly in sympathy) who look back on Canada’s place in the British Empire with great pride and nostalgia.

Without getting into a debate on the reputation of the Confederate flag, to compare the Red Ensign to the colors of the Confederacy seems absolutely ludicrous. There never really was any slavery in Canada at all. The Canadian Red Ensign only came into widespread use after the American Civil War was over, it was never a flag of rebellion or dissent but was the flag of a country which developed and came to independence peacefully with (originally) no animosity but pride and respect for the British Empire it sprang from. The Canadian troops who came charging to the rescue of Great Britain and the other Allies in World War I and World War II carried the Canadian Red Ensign with them and for such people as in The Netherlands for example, the Canadian Red Ensign should be seen as a flag of liberation recalling the Canadian troops who marched in to free them from Nazi subjugation. Some, of course, do and always have objected to it because it is, well, just “too British” what with the Union Jack being on it and all. It’s too “colonial” and reminds them too much of the British Empire. Well, if the truth hurts I am sorry for you, but Canada would not exist today had it not been for the colonial era and the British Empire. That is just a simple fact of history. To allow a few undesirables to tarnish the Canadian Red Ensign is as despicable as their own misuse of it and it is an insult to the proud history of that flag and all who lived, fought and died under it to do so.

To get back to where we started, I am not big on making flags “good” or “bad”. I tend to assume the best as that goes. There are some I dislike of course, the obvious examples as well as others which annoy my monarchist sensibilities. Yet, I also see no point in holding a grudge against an inanimate object like a flag. For instance, I am (as most readers know) a patriotic Texan. When I see the flag of Mexico, I don’t see the flag of the perpetrators of the Goliad massacre or such things, I just see the flag of Mexico, the flag of a neighboring country and a flag that is part of our own history. One of my favorite local flags is the “Alamo flag” which is basically a defaced Mexican tricolor. Today many historians doubt it was the real Alamo flag (we cannot know for sure if it was or even if they had one, primary flag) and I know some who dislike it because it is “too Mexican”. All I see when I look at it is the flag most associated with the Alamo, a critical and heroic page in Texas history and the fact that it is of the same basic design as the flag of Mexico does not bother me in the least. Mexico was where Texas came from, not the United States, and it would be ridiculous as well as futile to try to cover up that fact. It is part of our uniqueness. My simple point is that we should not judge people simply by the flag they fly and we should certainly not judge a flag solely by the people who use or misuse it. Evil people (who are invariably revolutionary republicans by the way) who misuse and tarnish the flags of great kingdoms, royals and empires of the past make me a very, very … Mad Monarchist.

Off Topic Tuesday: The Rape of Nanking

Japan putting its best face forward

What really happened when Japanese forces took Nanking (then capital of the Republic of China) in 1937? Everyone has heard about the massacre and rape wave that shocked the world. At least it did almost a decade after the fact. No one wants to be the “bad guy” and ask questions about such a horrific event. In Japan, obviously, it is a contentious issue and many do question the version of events accepted as fact in China and the West. Try that in western countries and you will be put in the same category as those who deny the Holocaust. Try it in China and you will probably be sent to one of those happy, cozy, “reeducation through labor” camps and spend the rest of your life turning big rocks into little rocks -provided you’re not killed so the government can sell your internal organs in that communist utopia called the “People’s Republic of China”. Well, I’m used to holding unpopular positions and being called evil for it (I am a staunch monarchist living in the United States after all) and while I would not deny terrible things happened and I would not claim to have all the answers or know exactly what happened with 100% certainty -there is certainly enough information that doesn’t add up to make me ask some questions.

First of all, and this happens quite a bit when it comes to these types of stories (see the Congo Free State), there are the claims of an immense body-count. Some claim that 300,000 Chinese people were killed by the Japanese at Nanking. The only problem with that is that there were not 300,000 people living in Nanking at the time. When Japan occupied the city in December of 1937 the population was only about 200,000. Census reports can be wrong of course, but not usually by 100,000 on a scale as localized as one city and even if that were accepted, it would mean that the Japanese would have killed off the entire population which obviously didn’t happen and no one has ever claimed. So, which is more likely; well over 100,000 people just slipped through the cracks in one city or, perhaps, that the casualty figure of those killed was exaggerated? To further complicate matters, only a month later in January of 1938 the reported population of Nanking was 250,000. Obviously, something is amiss if the city which supposedly was all but exterminated to the last man, woman and child had a population increase of 50,000 in one month. More people moved to Nanking, obviously, but why would tens of thousands of people move to a city where such horrible atrocities had occurred only the month before? If hundreds of thousands of Chinese people were killed and tens of thousands raped, one would think the Chinese would tend to avoid the place where that happened.

Most will have heard of the German businessman and Nazi Party member John Rabe who is now famous for saving Chinese lives during the Nanking affair and for providing much of the evidence for Japanese atrocities. However, his story is a bit suspect as well. Along with his letters reporting atrocities by Japanese soldiers to government officials, there are also letters in which he thanks the Japanese army for their professionalism and for securing law and order. After being recalled to Germany, because of his accusations against the Japanese we are told, he was supposedly given some rough treatment by the Gestapo and ordered to keep silent on what he had allegedly witnessed in Nanking. Yet, this man later produced “evidence” of what had happened which, in the course of his arrest and interrogation and surveillance by the Gestapo, was never confiscated. It is rather hard to believe that the SS, of all organizations, would be concerned enough to arrest a man for saying the Japanese committed crimes in Nanking, order him to stop talking about it and yet knowingly allow him to retain the proof that such a thing happened. Rabe also causes a problem by putting the death toll at about 60,000 -terrible enough to be sure, but far, far less than the 300,000 claimed by others.

This, however, feeds into another fact which casts at least some doubts on the official story and, again, it is common in these types of cases; that is, wildly divergent casualty figures. Again, this is not a case of one report being slightly more or less than another. That would be common and uniformity is almost never seen in such reports. However, when accounts differ by the tens of thousands, that is something which should cause concern and perhaps even a bit of skepticism. Most widely accepted numbers range from 200,000 to 300,000. Our benevolent member of the Nazi Party put the number at 60,000. Then we have the account of American Dr. Lewis S. C. Smythe, a man who actually testified after the war about the Nanking affair at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. He was there, witnessed the events, lived in Nanking after the war until 1951 and yet, in his original accounts, he puts the death toll at only 6,600 including both dead and “missing”. These are not minor differences that can be accounted for by human error; 300,000 to 60,000 to 6,600 is a pretty gaping disparity in numbers all coming from first hand accounts.

Another numerical problem that crops up is the lack of babies. When the Soviet Red Army went on one of the most horrific rape rampages in recorded history in Berlin in 1945 there was, nine months later, a huge number of half-Russian babies born to the unfortunate women of Berlin. In Nanking there were no reports at all of such a thing happening and with the claim that some 20,000 women were raped, even if some of the women were killed later or had abortions, there still should have been a significant sudden increase the baby population. There is also the issue of motivation. Why would Japanese troops do this, or be allowed to do it, on this one occasion in a war that lasted over a decade? The Imperial Japanese Army code of justice called for seven years at hard labor for any soldier who raped a civilian. No documents show a surge in convictions at the time of Nanking of course, few would expect there to be assuming the commander approved of such conduct. Yet, that doesn’t make much sense either. The commander was HIH Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, an uncle, by marriage, of Emperor Hirohito and the son-in-law of Emperor Meiji. Prior to his assignment at Nanking he had been reprimanded (in his usual, understated way) by the Emperor for his extreme views. Why would a man, stung by such a reprimand, order or allow such an atrocity that would besmirch the name of his country and double-down on the perception that got him into trouble in the first place?

There are uncomfortable questions concerning the actions of the Chinese as well. For example, despite continued hostilities, the Republic of China did not actually declare war on Japan until after the U.S. did so on December 8, 1941. Prior to that, every time Japanese force won a battle, took a city or pretty much gave someone in China a dirty look, the Chinese would make a formal complaint to that useless talking shop known as the League of Nations. They did so, for example, after the Mukden Incident in 1931 and at almost every hostile action afterward. Yet, they made no report at all about the alleged massacre of 300,000 people at Nanking in 1937. Why would they rush to report hostile acts, some of which were no more than skirmishes, but fail to report a massacre of hundreds of thousands? Similarly, the Chinese Communist Party (which today regularly uses the Rape of Nanking to stir up anti-Japanese hostility) made absolutely no mention of the incident until almost a decade later when it was brought up at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. In all his writings and correspondence, Chairman Mao never seems to have mentioned it even once. Considering how much mileage the Communist Party has gotten out of it in the decades since, it seems rather odd that none of their people at the time even mentioned it.

For such a horrific crime, it seems incredible that there was no official mention of it until the Tokyo War Crimes Trials after the conflict was over. Yet, since that time, it has seldom been absent from the public discourse, particularly in China. It also seems rather suspect that the Chinese Communist government brings up the story of the Rape of Nanking whenever mention is made of communist atrocities against the Tibetans, the Uyghur minority or even Falun Gong practitioners. Recently, scientific studies were done of the evidence produced to prove the stories of atrocities at Nanking only to find that literally hundreds of the photographs showed signs of manipulation. Not all of them it is important to note -but still, hundreds were proven to be fakes. Certainly, all of this taken together, should at least be enough to make people a bit more skeptical about the accepted version of events and, not deny all allegations out of hand, but at least be brave enough to question their most extreme extent.

The worst part about this today is the way the Rape of Nanking is used by the present communist tyranny. Oddly enough, if the worst stories are true it makes the misuse of the tragedy all the more reprehensible. The fact is that the Communist Party in power in China today killed or caused the deaths of far, far more people than the Japanese even if the most extreme stories of their crimes are accepted as fact. Moreover, their misdeeds continue to this day rather than remaining decades in the past. The same government with the blood of tens of millions on its hands (more than Hitler and Stalin put together) still brings up Nanking as a way of taking world attention off of themselves and puts Japan on the defensive by demanding apologies or reparations or something that makes Japan the villain and themselves the victim in the world media. So far, they continue to do this because it has consistently worked so well. Everyone can be made to forget about Tiananmen Square, Tibet, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, the persecution of religious minorities, the arrest of dissidents, the state-sanctioned slave labor programs and on and on simply by the government bringing up Nanking. At that point, even nearly 75 years later, it is Japan that is forced to defend itself, make apologies or issue denials (all of which are met with matching outrage) while the far greater and more immediate crimes of their accuser get shuffled out of the limelight yet again.

Call me a deranged conspiracy theorist, and you will, but it all seems a little too convenient for me and, taken as a whole, something just doesn’t quite ring true. The worst accounts may be completely true, but if so they should be able to stand up to scrutiny and those who ask questions should not be dismissed out of hand.

Additional note: only today on CCTV the anniversary of the Nanking massacre was noted and used to justify the recent construction of a new aircraft carrier, military drills at sea and the build-up of the People's Liberation Army.

Monarch Profile: King Michael I of Romania

Amongst the most remarkable monarchs of the World War II and post-war eras is King Michael I of Romania. Even as a young man in the most difficult of circumstances, with all of the odds stacked against him, he proved just how valuable monarchy can be to a country and a people and for that reason alone his life story should be well known to monarchists everywhere. Circumstances beyond his control forced him to spend the greater part of his life in exile from his homeland and yet it is a testament to his character and leadership that when he returned to his beloved Romania in 1992 he was cheered by a crowd of 200,000 people. Moreover, monarchists especially would be buoyed by how he lived his life in exile. Even when the Communist regime in Romania collapsed and he was urged to run for president by the National Liberal Party he refused to do so and has always remained adamant that he would return to government only as the constitutional monarch and not in any other capacity. Romania had him for only a relatively short time, yet, in that time, he proved to be the best national leader modern Romania has ever had.

Michael was born on November 25, 1921 to Crown Prince Carol of Romania and his recent bride Princess Helena of Greece. He was named in honor of Saint Michael the Archangel and Prince Michael the Brave. The young boy was scarred from his earliest years onward by the absence of his father who abandoned his wife and son to be with his mistress. In 1925 he was forced to renounce his rights to the throne and the young Michael was declared heir apparent while plans were made for a council of regency to rule on his behalf when his turn came. With the death of King Ferdinand I on July 20, 1927 his six-year-old grandson succeeded him as King Michael I of Romania. The regency, mostly under the control of the prime minister, governed the country while only a year later the royal father, Crown Prince Carol, was implicated in an attempted coup against the government but it was stopped when he was arrested by British police on his way to the airfield. He would not have many years to wait, however, as the Peasant Party invited him back to Romania after taking power in 1930. Their only condition was that he break things off with his mistress and return to his legitimate wife and son. For the young King Michael the whole episode would be emotionally painful and a personal disaster.

His father did return to Romania, deposed his son, and was crowned King Carol II of Romania with the support of the national assembly in spite of the opposition of the liberals. After only 2 years, 10 months and 19 days the reign of King Michael I had come to an end. He probably would have been just as happy to leave the royal duties to his father and enjoy something like a normal childhood, but the wished for reconciliation of his family was not to be. Queen Helena, understandably so, did not want her husband back, refused to attend his coronation and neither did the new king seem the slightest bit interested in reuniting with her. He assumed full custody of the newly demoted Crown Prince Michael and before long, against the wishes of almost everyone else involved, his mistress was in Bucharest living like a queen in a place of her own.

Prince Michael was forced to watch at a young age as the woman who had come between his parents was treated better than his own mother, with her own little court of sycophants and men on the make. He saw his father encourage everyone to treat his mother as badly as possible in the hope that she would leave Romania. King Carol II generally made life miserable for his family and the only ones who prospered around him were the bankers, industrialists and assorted boot lickers who fed his vanity in return for royal favors. In no time at all the Romanian economy began to sharply decline, banks closed, soldiers and civil servants went unpaid and radical groups on the left and right began to emerge. Crown Prince Michael was often at the side of his father during public events in this period, showing support, whether he liked it or not, for the new programs and organizations Carol II instituted which seemed to many an effort to establish an absolute monarchy.

On the left were the ever-present communists, radical socialists and their like. On the right was the green shirted Iron Guard under Cornelius Codreanu, leader of the Christian fascist group the Legion of the Archangel Michael. They advocated Romanian nationalism, Christianity, corporatism and opposition to the Jews and minorities. In the middle was King Carol II and his royalist youth group the Straja Tsarei and his own royalist secret police trying to keep an eye on potential enemies and playing rivals off against each other. In 1938 father and son went to London for a state visit followed by a trip to Paris and finally a stop in the Bavarian Alps to meet Adolf Hitler in Berchtesgarten. Hitler let Prince Michael go on a ride up to the very peak of the mountain retreat in his Mercedes while he and his father talked business. Hitler offered to give the King his full support if he would finally get rid of his (Jewish) mistress and release the Iron Guard leader Codreanu from prison. Not only did the Romanian monarch refuse, but soon after returning to Bucharest Codreanu was shot; allegedly while attempting to escape. Few believed it and Hitler certainly did not and assumed it was meant as an act of defiance toward him by King Carol.

Ten months later the prime minister was assassinated and Carol II warned his son that he and his mistress would likely be next. However, the killers were caught by the secret police and quickly executed. His paranoia aroused, Carol II established the Front for the Rebirth of the Nation. The blue uniformed group with their Roman salutes and absolute loyalty to the king were meant as a royalist paramilitary, somewhat fascist organization to oppose the Iron Guard and cement in place the absolute rule of Carol II. However, the King lacked the temperament of an autocrat and although he wanted no one else running things, he lacked the dedication to direct the state himself and the strength of Romania continued to decline. The country was all but powerless when the Soviets retook Bessarabia which was followed by Hitler returning Transylvania to the Hungarians. Carol II belatedly sided with Germany as the Greater Romania that had emerged from the First World War was sliced up among his neighbors.

This was too much for most Romanians to take and opposition to the King centralized under the Iron Guard (though Codreanu had been an avowed monarchist) and the former secretary of war General Ion Antonescu. The military went over to this group and the fate of Carol II was sealed. He was forced to abdicate and Prince Michael was awakened in the night by a phone call summoning him to the palace to take his oath to the constitution as King of Romania once again. His father went into exile in nationalist Spain while the public rejoiced at the news that their young monarch had been restored to the throne in the hope that happier times were now before them. King Michael was 19-years-old and fully capable of assuming full royal duties but the real power in the country was General Antonescu and he did not intend for the youthful monarch to have any decision making role in his regime. Romania became a military dictatorship with the King spending most of his time in the country palace of Sinaia, spending more time talking to his people than to his government ministers. It was only via the BBC that he learned Romania had allied with Germany in the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. This brought about many changes in policy that King Michael was powerless to stop. One controversial area was the fate of minorities in Romania. When Antonescu, at the urging of the Nazis, tried to isolate and deport the Jews, Gypsies and others of Romania King Michael did his best to hinder such efforts, saving many lives in the process.

Like his mother, King Michael favored Britain and the western democracies over Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. In spite of the constant surveillance he was subjected to by what was nominally his government he essentially set up a secret court and managed to sneak emissaries out of the country to meet with the Allies and discuss peace between them and Romania. He even gave out information on German troop strength and placement to aid in an Allied airborne assault on Romania. If the government or the Germans had ever discovered any of this it would have almost certainly meant his death but to the dismay of the young monarch the Allies never responded to him. Little did he know that agreements had already been made by the Allies which would surrender Romania to the mercy of the Soviet Union. The British, in particular, must have been particularly unperceptive as they had essentially traded Romania for Greece with the Soviets. In hindsight, this was obviously a mistake even for the British given what was to happen to Greece after the war.

Nonetheless, this was an act of courage, leadership and skill on the part of the young King Michael that cannot be overstated. He was under constant scrutiny, in an Axis country, surrounded by enemies and yet, under their very noses, he carried out these clandestine diplomatic moves, ran his own intelligence and communication operations and a secret royal court to work towards taking Romania out of the Axis camp, restoring the constitutional monarchy and joining the Allies. Had the government, the Germans or any unreliable person gotten the slightest hint of what the King was doing he would have been ruined and the monarchy with him. Part of the reason he was able to carry this out was because General Antonescu completely underestimated him and when the more astute German Gestapo agents expressed concerns about the King, Antonescu dismissed their fears as unwarranted and shrugged off his monarch as a harmless youth who had not the ability or inclination to interfere in government matters. Obviously, he could not have been more wrong.

This was proven on August 23, 1944 when the careful plans of King Michael reached their climax and he launched a coup against Antonescu. In a carefully orchestrated series of events King Michael arranged a surprise meeting with Antonescu in which he asked the general to take Romania out of the German camp and make a separate peace with the Russians. As expected Antonescu refused and then the King gave the signal and loyal forces rushed in to arrest the dictator. King Michael quickly arrested the old ministers as well, appointed a new government and when the Germans came looking for their ally the King informed them that he had resigned and that more information would be forthcoming. That broadcast announced the end of hostilities with Russia and the restoration of the democratic constitution. Jubilant Romanians rushed to the palace to shout praises to the king and the Romanian national anthem was played on the BBC when they received the word of what had happened. Knowing that German retaliation would be swift and ruthless, the King and his party left Bucharest early the next morning and escaped under fire from their former allies. As predicted the Germans attacked the palace that same day, destroying the very house the King had been staying in.

In the ensuing days Romanian troops fanned out and captured the German troops in their country and prepared for their hoped for liberation by the Soviet Red Army. The King and Queen Mother soon returned to Bucharest once it was secure, however, they were to learn very quickly that their new Russian friends were anything but. As the Soviets rolled in from Hungary the Romanian troops who stood welcoming them were taken prisoner, Romanian civilians were harassed or killed and their cities and villages were pillaged by the Red Army. Communist Party officials traveled with the troops and immediately began setting up across the country with Romanian traitors and radical leftists under the protection of Soviet guns to establish a Communist Party organization in the country for Stalin was determined that he and his ideology were in Romania to stay. Events were happening so rapidly and amidst the confusion of war that King Michael was not aware of the full extent of Russian brutality toward his people. He was busy enough trying to reestablish a working government under the restored 1923 constitution.

Until elections for a new parliament could be held King Michael ruled by decree with the advice of his cabinet and he took frequent trips into the country surrounding Bucharest to assess the situation for himself and keep the pulse of the people. In September he traveled to Moscow to officially sign an armistice with the Allies. However, it seemed that the Romanians had liberated themselves only to be brutalized by the Russians who grabbed the territories of Bessarabia and Bukovina from them. King Michael was informed that the Soviets would keep an army of occupation in Romania and he was ordered to appoint a new prime minister. Naturally, the Russians meant for him to appoint a pro-Communist prime minister but King Michael defied them by appointing one of the most zealous anti-communists in Romania to that post as a sign that Romania was not willing to become a Soviet puppet state.

Outraged by the audacity of this King they viewed as a royal upstart the Soviets put their Communist network in Romania to work. Russian troops suppressed or intimidated all other political parties and spread subversion against the Romanian government and used their sympathizers in the government itself to make the threat they that they would allow nothing to be accomplished unless and until King Michael submitted to Moscow. They used the very chaos they had created as an excuse to pressure the King into appointing their nominee for prime minister. King Michael had no choice but to make the appointment. However, he was dealt another complication when President Harry Truman of the USA informed him that America would not sign an armistice with Romania until they had a democratic government; the very thing Russia (the ally of America) had prevented him from doing. In another bold and courageous move King Michael sent letters to Britain and America informing them that he would, therefore, have to dismiss the pro-Soviet prime minister. This done, he informed the Russian military commander in Romania himself, handing him a copy of the same letter he had sent to the western Allies.

The Russian was so stunned that he nearly fell over and warned that the Soviet Union would view this as an act of hostility. King Michael dismissed him and then left for the summer palace where he effectively went on strike; refusing to sign any bill which came to him from the Communist dominated government. As he was still recognized by all countries as the head of state, all bills required his signature to become law and the government effectively shut down and there was nothing the Russians could do about it. In December of 1945 the British, Russians and Americans made resolving the Romanian standoff a priority and King Michael was confronted by the Soviet foreign minister and the British and American ambassadors to the Kremlin who presented their idea of solution. As far as compromises go it has to be one of the worst in history. The plan called for the cabinet, which was entirely communist at this point, to include two new members, one from the National Peasant Party and one from the liberal party. Even though there would be only two of them, they would still not be allowed any voice. It was, in effect, window dressing for an ultimatum to force the King to go along with the Soviet imposed government of his country.

King Michael was shocked and outraged and his mood did not improve when he and the Queen Mother met with the British and Americans on their own. They essentially told them that so long as he agreed to this proposal and held elections sometime in the future they would be willing to wink at the situation, call Romania a democracy, sign the armistice and leave Romania on her own. All the royal couple could do was to plead for the elections to be held as soon as possible before the Soviet grip on Romania grew even tighter. Sadly, it did no good. It was nearly a year later when the elections were held, but probably long before then the Soviets had so dominated the country that no free elections would have been possible even had they been held the very next day. The result was an absurd vote of eighty percent for the Communist Party. With what seemed like the whole world against him (yet again) King Michael was sidelined while the Communists massacred thousands of Romanians who had opposed them and made sure that anyone in the government or army loyal to the King soon disappeared. Afterwards, in one of the greatest acts of hypocrisy in history the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin called King Michael to Moscow to award him the Soviet Order of Victory for his coup against the pro-Axis government. The King got a medal and Stalin got Romania.

Late in 1947 King Michael was permitted, by his Communist PM, to go to London to attend the wedding of Princess Elizabeth of Great Britain and Prince Philip of Greece. It was there, at a reception, that he met the love of his life; the Italian Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma. The following year the couple were married. While in London though, King Michael had been offered asylum by the British government which the King refused. He was understandably bitter that the western democracies had not helped him before to save his country from communist oppression and he was not about to abandon his people for an offer of safety when they needed him the most. The Communist government in Romania probably would have been happier had he accepted as they wanted nothing more than to be rid of him as it went against everything in the Marxist playbook to have a King on the throne no matter how little power he had. They were further displeased when he announced his intention to marry Princess Anne. A royal wedding was the last thing they wanted for fear that it would arouse royalist sympathies among the populace. Yet, they had no legal grounds to refuse as the princess had a spotless pedigree being descended from King Christian IX of Denmark and King Charles X of France.

Nonetheless, no good communist ever let the law get in the way of their wishes and on December 29, 1947 they summoned the King to a meeting the following morning and presented him with an act of abdication and demanded that he sign it. King Michael refused on the grounds that such an act was unconstitutional but that was not about to stop them either. The communists threatened to execute one thousand students, who had already been singled out for the firing squads, unless he signed the act of abdication instantly. With no other option, the King signed the act the following day in order to save the lives of his people. The communists were satisfied and allowed him to leave the country with his entourage but able to take little else with him to sustain himself and his family in exile.

Determined to get on with his life, one of the first things King Michael (as he still rightly called himself since his abdication had been coerced and was invalid) did was propose to Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma. However, this set off a great deal of unpleasantness with the family of his bride-to-be and the Catholic Church, reaching all the way to Pope Pius XII who refused to give the Catholic princess a dispensation to marry the Orthodox former monarch because, still faithful to the Romanian constitution, he would not promise to raise the children Catholic. It was unfortunate but both sides were being faithful to their principles. When Princess Giovanna of Italy had married King Boris III of Bulgaria such a promise had been made and then swiftly broken as the children were immediately baptized into the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, so the Pope was inclined to be a little more hard-line on this issue. For his part, King Michael was being honest and upright, refusing to make things easier by simply making a promise he had no intention to keep. Still, it was unfortunate as the head of the Bourbon-Parma family refused to allow the bride’s parents to attend a wedding taking place without papal approval.

As a result, Princess Anne was ‘given away’ by an uncle but things were little better on the groom’s side as his father, former King Carol II, was not even invited to the wedding. The marriage took place in Athens, Greece on June 10, 1948 with HM King Paul of Greece in attendance. It was to be a very happy marriage with the first of five daughters being born the following year. The religious difficulties were, many years later, overcome at a time when the Catholic Church became a little less hard line on such issues and King Michael and Queen Anne were married again, in a Catholic ceremony, on November 9, 1966 in the historic St Charles Church in the Principality of Monaco. The couple first lived in Italy, then moved to Switzerland and after that moved to the United Kingdom before returning again to Switzerland. The communist government took away the King’s Romanian citizenship and he had hardly any fortune of his own, but he never gave up and went about training himself and joining the workforce. He obtained his commercial pilots license and later worked for an aircraft equipment company. He never gave up his rights to the Romanian throne and never ceased his condemnation of the communist dictatorship.

Finally, in 1992 King Michael was able to return to his beloved homeland after the communist regime had collapsed. However, when he did so, the hugely ecstatic welcome he received, with over a million people swarming Bucharest to see him, that the President and republican authorities were terrified. They had no idea that the bonds of loyalty between the Romanian people and their long-absent King would be so strong. As a result, the King was hurried on his way out of the country and not allowed back in for another five years. In 1997 his citizenship was restored and he was allowed to return after a new government had taken power and he was able to reclaim some property with the legislature voting him the status of a former head of state. Some urged him to get into politics, but he refused to do so in any other capacity besides a restoration as the constitutional monarch. However, he did agree to perform errands for the government as a sort of ambassador-at-large for Romania, usually in efforts to increase investment in the country.

The King has still managed to cause some controversy after his happy homecoming. At the outset, some monarchists were upset that he did not actively campaign for his restoration. He stated he would be happy to accept the throne but only if offered by the Romanian people in a democratic referendum and he has not actively supported any royalist party or movement trying to make that happen. In 2007 he named his daughter Princess Margarita as heiress to the late Romanian throne, openly going against the established rules of succession, and said to the Romanian parliament that if the monarchy is ever restored Salic Law should be the first thing to go. This upset some of the German cousins of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen who were cut out of the succession by this action and while Princess Margarita is popular enough, her husband, Prince Radu Duda, is a very controversial figure. Many more traditional monarchists object to his use of the title of “Prince” as well as some aspects of his background. When he announced his intention to run for President and with King Michael endorsing his son-in-law many objected to this as well and complained that the King was surrendering his claim of political neutrality by doing so.

Some of the actions of the King have been criticized but, there has never been any widespread lack of respect for King Michael himself. He is the last remaining living head-of-state from World War II and he will always be honored for his bold actions in overthrowing the pro-Nazi dictatorship and taking Romania out of the Axis and into the Allied camp. In 2011, in tribute to his 90th birthday, King Michael was invited to address the Romanian parliament. He remains quite active in spite of his advanced age though, naturally, his schedule has been reduced in recent years. Although not without his critics as of late, King Michael remains a greatly admired and highly regarded man both in Romania and around the world for his integrity, his devotion to his people and his courage in the face of daunting odds.

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