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A very insightful essay! I particularly appreciated -- because it was a new idea for me -- that the Founding Fathers' clever focus on a monarch as our oppressor, rather than on a government, useful as it was at the time, has distorted Americans' understanding of the potential contribution of a constitutional monarchy to peaceful democratic social evolution.

It was the great sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset who noted that of the dozen European countries which were democracies at the time of his writing, in the late 1950's, ten were constitutional monarchies.

Some people in countries which have thrown off their monarchies have taken note of what they may have lost, and even hope for their return. An especially poignant case is Ethiopia, which should be leding Africa into modernity, but which is now consumed in a terrible civil war. [https://ethiopanorama.com/?p=154733]

And it's worth nothing that Winston Churchill wanted to preserve the German monarchy after WWI, putting the Kaiser's nephew on the throne. What might we have avoided had his will prevailed!

When the quasi-fascist Spanish dictator Franco died, the Spanish monarchy was restored, along with democracy. And not long after, when ultra-right Guardia Civil officers tried to make a coup, the Spanish king Juan Carlos went on to television and condemned it. And that was the end of that. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Spanish_coup_d'etat_attempt]

What a shame that the French, Russian and Chinese monarchs were too stupid to see which way the wind was blowing, and adapt accordingly!

And as for us Americans ... the time may come when we wish we had our own, home-grown, Elizabeth.

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