Of Kings and Queens

A recent poll showed that the majority of Canadians no longer wanted to be under the monarchy. Heck, most didn't know how much they were under the monarchy until the Governor General closed their Parliament last year. I want to talk about the concept of royalty.

Kings and queens are referred to as Royalty. They are given privileges based on nothing other than their birth. Your genes or marriage make you special. Kings and Queens have subject, you are subject to their whim. They are allowed to decide how you will live or if you will live.

There was a time when having kings and queens made sense. Countries could not vote and most were ignorant. Nations, as they grew, needed representatives to deal with other nations. Many took advantage of their position. Caligula and Nero are good examples of this. Often, monarchs claimed to have been appointed by God or in the case of some to be of God or be God. The Pharaohs were big on saying they were Gods on earth.

Why would any country with an educated populace and a constitution want to have a King today? It seems sort of unnecessary and elitist. Personally, I cannot see myself bowing to a queen or king unless forced to. If one studies the history of European royalty we find they were inbreds. The result was a high incidence of hemophilia. There is a reason you are not supposed to sleep with your family members.

"Royals" have always referred to the rest of us in such charming ways. We are the "commoners" (That is why the representatives of non-royalty in England are called "The House of Commons"), in private we are referred to as the "great unwashed masses" or other such dismissive phrases. Recently, the head of British Petroleum referred to the people of the gulf coast as the "little people".

The whole idea of royalty is that you have betters, they don't have to even prove it, it is there by birth right. There is a lot of discussion about citizenship and rights, we are looking at who deserves less and who deserves more. When you question others having the same rights as you, you justify others having more rights than you based on birth alone.

Be careful what you wish for, you may get it. We need to step back for a moment. Do we believe in human rights, that can be lost if we violate those of others or do we believe in birth rights? It is not a crime to be born and we do not pick our parents. A child born of illegal aliens committed no crime, being born is not a crime. The baby had no intent to commit a crime, it is a baby.

Recently, I was in a disagreement with a neighbor. He confronted a young man living in my home, he asked him to prove that he had a right to be in his neighborhood. I corrected the neighbor. The neighbor said he was just protecting the neighborhood from outsiders, he said he kept an eye out on the blacks and Mexicans. He was an idiot, still is.

I feel very blessed to have friends who are black, Mexican, gay, straight, white, asian, rich, poor, smart, not quite as smart, bikers, politicians, buisnessmen and women, ones that can cook (my personal favorite) and whatever else you can imagine. People are often surprised by who associate with, they look at me and see a very conservative person in lifestyle. I am.

I know a couple who chose to have an open marriage. I would never choose such a thing, it goes against what I believe for me. They were concerned that I might have a negative opinion of them because they knew of my Christian beliefs (they are also christian). I assured them that I had no such feelings. It is not for me to judge their mutually agreed upon chosen lifestyle. I am not a king or God and do not wish to be either. I am happy to be me, that is hard enough.

I don't have a lot of requirements for others. I ask that people not be violent and respect others. I also ask that they don't steal from me. I expect mistakes, heck I make them, we all do. What I do not respect is asking others to conform to my beliefs or my lifestyle. In exchange, I expect them to not attempt to put the same on me. I am a very fundamental Christian, few of my friends are the same and we seem to get along fairly well.

As a Christian, I believe God made us different for a reason. He made us different from each other. I believe Satan likes conformity, I believe dictators like conformity, it reassures them that they are right and better than the rest of us. When we attempt to force conformity, we become like mini-Satans or mini-dictators. I wish neither job.

There is right and wrong. The evils we commit on one another, the lies we tell, that is evil. There is imperfection, we all have it, the harms we do to ourselves. We can protect ourselves, we should not attempt to control others to make them like us. Or at least that is what I believe.