Letter to the Editor by Joshua Telser
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – I am a “Brazilophile” and when not there, which is most of the time, I get my fix partly by reading The Rio Times. I found your recent article particularly interesting:
I am no fan of Jair Bolsonaro, but in my opinion, a constitutional monarchy, such as in the UK, Low Countries, and Scandinavia, is the best form of government.
It is crucial to separate the head of government from the head of state, both physically and functionally.
This is possible only in a constitutional monarchy. Countries such as Germany (and Portugal) have a nominal head of state as their President, but such office has none of the historical validity, cachet, respect, and glamour of a monarchy – it is merely a bureaucratic sham.
In the US, we see now the difficulty of having an utterly despicable person as President, who gets to be treated as an equal by HM Queen Elizabeth II. “But we have to respect the office of the Presidency” people say. Such an office is nothing compared to centuries of traditional monarchs, who, as is clear with the British royals, have been trained to function perfectly as heads of state.
In the cases where the monarch is inappropriate, abdication can be imposed from outside, as with Edward VIII, and in the case of health problems, there can be a Regency, as with George III. Note how HRH Prince Charles expertly took over aging HRH Prince Philip’s role in dealing with the repulsive US President.
Moreover, I provide a more consequential example of the advantage of a constitutional monarchy. A key difference between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, besides the obvious ones, is that Italy retained its monarch, whilst Germany (under the Weimar Republic) removed every trace of its glorious history of kings, princes, dukes, et al. (This tragedy was fully supported and extended by the Nazi regime who eliminated the historic subdivisions of the German Reich; replacing them with “Gaue”.)
Thus, when things turned sour in Italy, it was possible for the King to remove Mussolini as prime minister, but in Germany there was no such option, as the military had pledged allegiance to a psychotic Austrian guttersnipe, rather than to a constitutional monarch representing centuries of German history, as a Hohenzollern would have.
Some aristocrats did attempt a coup in July 1944, but it had much less support (and was likely much later) than it would have had the officer class not been sworn to support the “Fuehrer”.
Restoration of the Empire of Brazil, with prime ministers such as Lula or Dilma (i.e., leftists) is perfectly acceptable. It is not a question of government policies, but that Brazil (and the US, Germany et al.) needs a higher authority than an elected leader.
Sincerely,
Joshua Telser