Some believe it makes good representation for Norway when its representatives (read royal family) travel the world. I doubt that is the whole truth. I am embarrassed that we send someone who is born into such a position to represent us. And I am everything but impressed if a nation send an individual with an inherited position to represent them. To believe our democratically elected representatives treat them with anything more than an obliged politeness is silly. The whole thing is beyond rational and I am not proud to be a part of it.
We live in a democratic state, monarchy represent a very different time and is the opposite of democracy. The majority may very well elect the current king or crown prince to represent us, but it should be based on a democratic and regularly repeated process.
That the current representatives of the Norwegian royal family are good and nice people might very well be true, I have no personal grievance against any of them. For all I know they are all better and smarter than me, but even if so then we are only lucky and nothing more. We should by 2011 be in a position to expect that whatever we do is based on elementary democratic principals and we should strive to live by such elementary principles. No matter if we currently like the monarchs or not.
| "The thoughts of man, in order to be of any real worth, must be free. Under the influence of fear the brain is paralyzed, and instead of bravely solving a problem for itself, tremblingly adopts the solution of another. As long as a majority of men will cringe to the very earth before some petty prince or king, what must be the infinite abjectness of their little souls in the presence of their supposed creator and God? Under such circumstances, what can their thoughts be worth?" [Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872] |
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