The Outstater
The House of Bayh
WITH BEAU BAYH crossing three state lines to begin his ancestral run for high office here, what better time to reconstitute Indiana as a sovereign kingdom?
The state already owes fealty to the Bayh family, this being the third generation of their civic reign. No, none has been particularly distinguished but achievement is not the justification of monarchy; it is adaptability in the interest of stability. The Bayhs, a family without discernible principle, are a perfect fit. Beau, for example, nominally a Democrat, is running tactically as an independent (the Bayhs can afford the best polling.)
The rise of the House of Bayh encourages those who would cut through the democracy hogwash and just crown a king. True, there are only whispers now but after Mike Pence and Eric Holcomb how much worse could we do?
And how many of our highly elected gentry remain engaged here in any meaningful way? Their fortunes and interests lie elsewhere. Our nonprofit foundation has sent speaking invitations to three ex-governors without generating even the courtesy of a staff reply. An advantage of monarchy is that the king has an actual interest in the kingdom, if for no other reason than to have property and subjects for heirs to tax.
There are other advantages. Here are the editors of Liberty Matters:
“Monarchy as a form of political order leads to an emphasis on the longer term and the durable. It is not incompatible with change or reform, as the history of many monarchical regimes demonstrates, but it means that change will typically be gradual and piecemeal rather than total and radical. This should be welcome even to those who want change because it means that change will be more likely to survive and have legitimacy. That legitimacy leads to the widely noted empirical reality that monarchies (including crowned republics) are more stable and resistant to political radicalism and extremism than other kinds of polity.”
It is pertinent that the 1787 Constitutional Convention thought it wise to endow the U.S. presidency with kingly powers, namely the veto, appointments, commander-in-chief authority, stronger in some respects than those of King George III himself. There was talk of electing the president for life and referring to George Washington as “his majesty.”
And James Madison implied that he could only argue against a monarchy if he could be assured an independent press. (The most recent Gallup poll finds 70 percent reporting limited or no trust in the media, a record low, with 34 percent reporting “none at all.”)
What about individual liberty? Sadly, it is easy to imagine a constitutional monarchy that would better protect the principles of the Declaration of Independence than our congress and courts. Elena Woodacre, also writing in Liberty Matters, makes a tangential argument:
“Monarchy is not static, for it to endure over centuries, or even millennia, it must continue to evolve in line with changes in society. A failure to adapt or keep in step with political and societal changes risks the institution being seen as irrelevant.”
And monarchy is no less inclined to tyranny than is democracy; historians no longer bother to count the elected who became tyrants. Ideology? Woodacre notes that the most liberal governments in the world are monarchies — namely Norway, Sweden and Denmark. U.S. News’ current ranking of “Most Progressive Countries” was topped by Japan, with Sweden fourth and Norway, Denmark 12th and 14th. These same four monarchies all were in the top 15 of the magazine’s overall “Best Countries.”
A favorite take on monarchy is from a 1910 visit by Theodore Roosevelt to Vienna. Roosevelt famously asked Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, how he viewed the role of a modern monarch. There was a pause before the emperor replied: “My job is to protect the people from their government.”
Maybe that’s something useful that the young Bayh could do here. — tcl
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