Will Monarchies all conform to Democracies Soon?

Metaverseguy: There are only four remaining monarchies in the world. In an increasing democratic world, where people are elected rather than appointed by bloodline it seems people favor democracy universally. Will this century be the end of monarchies?

duncan124:
Monarchies are a ' modern ' invention derived from international jealousies. Monarchies were supposed to be the original owner of the land or their descendants.Corrupt Govts lead them astray and sleaze and corruption lead the people to rebel.

All Monarchies have been stopped only to be replaced by new ones chosen by Govts.

Buildings play a very important role in continuing Monarchism and the mental state of those that support Monarchies is related to the buildings be they palaces or barracks.

Metaverseguy: Not sure they are so modern. They have been around since Roman empire was at its height. The problem is that the rulers of the country are selected by hereditary rights (usually heirs of the previous rulers) rather than being qualified or able to run the country. Nowadays political decision making is primarily done by prime ministers and presidents rather than kings, emperors, and other dictators.

duncan124:
Monarchies were invented in the late 18th century.Before that most countries had a social revolution of some kind and the Kings or Queens from before were often not closely related to the new Monarchies.

The Kings and Queens from before had to look out for themselves and as people have joked many citizens never heard the Kings name spoken and could say this is a 'workers co-operative'

Look at King George the German, ' invited to be King ' by his fellow Germans his Palaces had stood empty for decades and he was too poor to pay for the wars in America.

Metaverseguy: Monarchies were invented in the late 18th century? Where are you getting your information. They have been around for thousands of years. Nearly every part of the globe was ruled by a monarch at one time or other.

duncan124:
I don't think you understand that a Monarchy is not the same as a King or Queen.

A Monarchy has to have a large bureaucratic Govt in which members of the Monarchy work. They are not related to the Monarch but claim to be members of the Monarchy.

Kings and Queens were quite different from a monarchy. Were prominent members of the native population who often ( but not in every case ) also owned large areas of land. Before being called Kings or Queens they were called by other names.

They owned large areas of land because they had lived there for many years and were the survivors who seemed suited to the landscape.

They also had the job of defending themselves against others and so would exert their will over larger areas then they actually owned.

They and their friends did as they wanted and became the culture if they carried on winning.

The Kings and Queens were often part of the tribe that defeated others that wanted to take the land from others.They would have many relatives who were equal with the King or Queen and relatives in other tribes.

Metaverseguy: It's an ancient institution that doesn't have much of a purpose in modern society. The members are typically picked hereditarily rather than by merit. I recently saw a documentary where they talk about the subject and one man said that monarchy belongs in Britain "inside the museum of Edinburgh next to the dinosaurs." I just think that the royals are more like celebrities than politicians.

duncan124:
The ' Royals ' in Britain are fake and have been for a long time. they are just a stupid German propagander tool and are giving Moon Landings a bad name.

duchess_: 4???????

Currently, 44 sovereign nations in the world have monarchs acting as heads of state, 16 of which are Commonwealth realms that recognise Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state

duchess_: source : Wikipedia

Metaverseguy: I must have heard "four" from the documentary I was watching. Although, one monarchy that has 16 sovereign nations could be considered one. Since the queen is in bad health, this is an interesting topic because Charles could be the next King.

duncan124:
I thought he only wanted to talk about the Windsors.

duchess_: The documentary you saw might have ment "absolute monarchies" as opposed to constitutional monarchies. Then the nr might be correct . Will have to look into that. But this is offtopic actually, because you ment the discussion to go about the natural increase of sovereignty of the people during history...thats a fact i think.

Metaverseguy: I was just curious if monarchies would decline sometime soon, soon enough to talk about, in preference for executives elected by the people. Many countries favor aristocracy however, and prime ministers, which are usually appointed rather than elected so it seems that they will stick around. The title of the documentary then, Last Monarch, would be a misnomer. Of course, there are flaws with the election process too which are common in a lot of countries and counties. It's easy to think that the election process is better and more fair, but since candidates will say anything to get elected the voters aren't even sure whom they are voting for. Do you know who didn't favor monarchy? Previous Nepal leader's treasonous son, who dethroned his majesty the old-fashioned way.

I did mention the Windsors a few times, btw. Many people in America btw wish there was kings here. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard that the founding fathers made a great mistake by serving elected terms instead of reigning. Oh the eternal lament of every American that they aren't under absolute power by royalty, or a dictator, or at least an emperor or something. It's most likely why things can't get done so quickly; because we don't have "rule of decree" to overturn law in an instant. It takes so much legislature to change anything that everyone is dead by the time a final decision is made and some states have changed their constitution so many freaking times that the final copies are written in pencil nowadays.

Metaverseguy: Well I don't know what it's like in Great Britain or the UK except the difference between GB and UK. The whole continent of EU is about the size of the United States or Russia, but the politics are so different. Most of the states here and a lot of the countries were under reign of some European empire a few hundred years ago, but each state here doesn't have its own national language. I can't imagine how much of a pain in the butt it would be to travel to Colorado if the state expanded its borders through military conquest to cover half the country 100 years ago, had its own language and standing army and then returned back to normal a decade later.

I know a lot of EU countries call royals head of state now rather than kings and a lot of them even have presidents as well. Apparently, there's still an issue of tension and diplomacy conflict between many different countries because a lot of news events and youtube videos I can't even watch depending on where the video is filmed, even if it's a cooking show rather than Italy's secret plan to take over the world through spaghetti sauce and meatballs.

U.S.A, Canada, and Mexico were here before the 1600's why is it historians know almost everything about Greece and Rome 2,000 years ago but nothing about this continent? There must have been plenty of texts here to translate. I know there was pyramids here, but is that it? Was there no towns or villages or anything? wtf. I'm just supposed to believe they all lived in teepees and chased around buffalo for 10,000 years without building houses more complicated than adobe?

Metaverseguy: And now for the joke of the day.

Why does the noble gas cry? Because all of his friends argon.

Zanjan: Whether a monarchy is absolute, constitutional or quiescent, their royal bloodlines continue until such time as the people of their country want them to reign again. They are Crowns in waiting.

The ancients created a monarchy by choosing a heroic military leader - defending the country was their main task so all descendants in line for the throne had to have military training. When war ceases, this will no longer be necessary and a monarch will have different tasks.

Democracy is actually a principle within a system, not a system itself. This is why it fails to live up to expectations. We have democracy in Canada but the system is an Oligarchy, abiding under a Monarch, who's merely a figurehead. Awkward but Canadians like the romance.

Look at how other countries are structured around the world - their models are entirely different but some are coloured with shades of democracy. Democracy can be used in any model of governance, including a Monarchy.

No system of governance in the past has worked well - all have been terribly flawed. Mankind will continue to refine its methods and develop its peoples until it's capable of employing a system that actually works right. I think a monarchy could work in that new system but not act as it did in the past.

chronology: Fortran. You ask why there is little ancient history in North America. There is a simple answer to that, Canada only emerged from under trillions of tons of ice around 12000 year ago. The 'Great Flood' referred to in the Bible triggered events that began a contracting of the Northern Polar Caps that until then included what would become the Northern U.S. States.

Poor America seems to have also suffered an Apocalyptic event just before the Great Flood. Details are disputed among researchers, but imagine every disaster in U.S. History, multiply them a million times and you would still not equal the devastation of the non frozen parts of North America around 12700 years ago.

Some object, either a Comet or Asteroid, exploded over North America in multiple air bursts, each hundreds of times bigger than Tunguska and instantly killed all animals and humans in the blast zones. It also touched off 'coast to coast' forest fires and prairie fires that added to the casualties. The starvation in the aftermath of the initial disaster added to the disaster and wiped out Mammoths and Sabre Toothed Tigers that roamed America before the event.

Not sure I agree with the theory myself, the Great Flood did enough damage on it's own to North America. But the collection of 'micro diamonds' and other samples suggesting some kind of colossal explosion scattered across North America lead some researchers to insist some dramatic and immense catastrophe afflicted the North American landscape coast to coast.

Zanjan: Fortran: "I'm just supposed to believe they all lived in teepees and chased around buffalo for 10,000 years without building houses more complicated than adobe? "


I guess you had to be there. The Americas were populated by Asians who came from Siberia through Beringia, a large tract of land that's now underwater in the Bearing Sea. Due to the impassible Glacial Ice sheets, they split up and traveled in two directions.

One group went east, along the arctic ocean and continued traveling all the way to Baffin Island. These were the forebearers of the Inuit.

The second group headed south along the coast of the Pacific Ocean, building settlements as they went, all the way down to South America. This narrow strip is semi-tropical all the way due to warm ocean currents. Their settlements have been dated back 17,000 years. The last of the mastodons died out on the west coast of Canada, near Vancouver.

Nobody went inland (eastward) until after the Ice Sheets melted, 12,000 years ago. The land was much cooler and dryer (being on the other side of the mountain chains) with severe winters & violent summers (hail, wind tornadoes, etc). Those people had to be nomadic, moving to where the food went; the wildlife migrated along the three North-South corridors on the continent. They had no choice but to live in movable homes.

For a period of 1 thousand years, there were no buffalo on the Canadian prairies for them to eat, but finally the buffalo suddenly returned, as mysteriously as they had suddenly disappeared. Nobody knows why that happened.

I can only surmise that the great civilizations in central and south America had magnificent cities because they were coastal and had all the food and materials they needed at hand, year round.

By the way, the concept of true democracy came from the native peoples of North America - the tribes who lived inland. So who was more advanced - the war-like city builders (long gone), or those wandering tribes, who explored new lands and had to battle the elements, surviving, united, against all odds and are still here to this very day?

chronology: Unfortunately the 'wandering Tribes' of Native Americans, who we have come to know as the 'Plains Indians' were totally unprepared for the alcohol that was carried to them by European Settlers.

This is not in any way a racist observation by some people, alcohol has a long history of being used as a 'liquid Billyclub', not just among Native peoples. A hundred years before the Native American alcohol epidemic, England was in an drunken stupor that lasted for around 60 years after King William of Orange had come to the Throne. The King may have been wondering how to keep the public happy and harmless during the transition years of his Government, it did not take long for someone to hit on the idea of cheap 'Gin'. Pretty soon England had tens of thousands of 'Gin Dives' selling the powerful brew for next to nothing. The streets of English cities were soon littered with drunken men women and children and tens of thousands of people being carried to the cemeteries or buried in makeshift graves.

The distribution of alcohol among Native Americans does not seem to have been as cynical, but the effects were identical, Indians were looking just like Londoner's a hundred years before, and Native American villagers were resembling Hogarth's 'Gin Lane'.

Metaverseguy: I've finally read through your two posts, chronology and Zanjan. I've taken a few geology classes so I have heard about the ice sheets near modern day Canada, overhunting of buffalo by the indigenous peoples here, and how the U.S. was under about 5 feet of water for many thousands of years before it was inhabitable. Usually geologists aren't using the term "great flood" to describe any major activity on the planet, but have specific dates when water level rises because if ice sheets are melting they are going to affect the western continents a lot sooner than the middle-eastern continent.

I've done a little amateur reading up on the ancient peoples of America and there is a lot of evidence that they were here very early, and had formed complicated societies by the 1200's, and had mound empires, their own nations, large pyramids, agriculture with valuable crops like chocolate, tomatoes, and corn and have mostly been ignored by the conquistadors and nearly wiped from history. Of course, there are many classes that offer America from the perspective of the Native Americans, which had their own names for cities and countries and language and beliefs.

While Europeans had been mining for iron, steel, and other precious minerals centuries before the peoples of America had discovered them they were at the mercy of the Spanish, French, Russian, and English that claimed the land for themselves even before stepping foot on the territory. All of the conquistadors were so used to Catholicism they thought that the religion in the New World was like Satanism and quickly began burning many of the texts they thought were heresy. Fortunately, though quite a few texts have survived to be studied by anthropologists.

While many of the ancient civilizations failed, their history survives. Most were enslaved to mine for silver and gold. Of course the red race didn't falter much. Mexico declared independence from Spain hundreds of years ago. Mexico City has the highest population in the New World. And most countries in the Americas are using some form of democracy.

Metaverseguy: As far as the royalty thing goes apparently Chris Hitchens wrote a long piece of satire criticizing the monarchy. Around 40 pages or so I think I'll give it a read when I get a chance.

Zanjan: "the 'Plains Indians' were totally unprepared for the alcohol that was carried to them by European Settlers. "

I know what you're saying but can't blame it on a king. I grew up in a world full of alcoholics who thought they were doing just fine. Most of them didn't vote; heck, barely 50% of the population of Canada bothers to vote. I don't blame them either - tens of thousands of votes get marked "spoiled" then tossed every election because we're too stupid to know how to make an X in the box.

No matter - it's a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. Maybe its time for a Monarchy - no need to worry about corruption. Think of all the money saved from not having to campaign and see those eyesore billboards in lawns. If the king is corrupt, its not YOUR fault.

Hitchens, huh. LOL Fortran, you might want to ask some other people for credible sources.

Metaverseguy: The natives who lived here for 500 years plus were not the innocent and naive fools that everyone makes out. There was plenty of ways to get high here 5,000 years ago and many forms are still legal for American Indians that claim to use the drugs for religious reasons.

Peyote, tobacco, marijuana, and tequila are all drugs that came from this continent.

Tequila being the most recognizable as a variant of alcohol. It's readily available in most bars nowadays and the agave plant, where tequila is from, grows in many desert regions and has been known about for hundreds of years.

Coffee and cocaine most likely originated from south America since it is one of the Colombia's biggest exports nowadays, despite the risks associated with the latter.

While most forms of alcohol are brewed using wheat, which wasn't growing natively in the Americas, plenty of other drugs had no problem at all surfacing and gaining full popularity. Although, most historical films don't focus on drug use but mainly war, exploration, famous people, if the trends stay similar there was most likely small bands of drug addicts throughout every population in history that is virtually ignored in history books.

Metaverseguy: "Hitchens, huh. LOL Fortran, you might want to ask some other people for credible sources."

Didn't Hitchens study at Oxford and wasn't he an English citizen? Seems like he'd be a good critiquer of the monarchy. It is unfortunate he isn't around to issue an Hitchslap.

Zanjan: The Unabomber was university educated too, and he also spoke English. Point?