From: utzoo!decvax!minow Newsgroups: net.politics Title: Re: Monarchies today Article-I.D.: decvax.428 Posted: Thu Mar 10 18:53:36 1983 Received: Fri Mar 11 05:37:27 1983 References: hplabsb.1424 In the Scandinavian Constitutional monarchies, the king or queen carries out the symbolic functions of the government, leaving elected officials free to perform the actual decision making. This has several advantages over our system whereby one official must perform both duties: people can be opposed to the current government without seeming unpatriotic. Because elected office -- in the Scandinavian monarchies -- has few symbolic trappings, it is certainly less expensive than the American system. For example, Tage Erlander, who was prime minister of Sweden for about 20 years, lived in a perfectly ordinary apartment building without armed guards and bullet-proof limosines. (I dated a woman who lived in the same building for a while.) His wife was a high-school teacher, and she generally drove him to work in the mornings. Unfortunately, we have had a few recent presidents who wanted the best of both worlds -- the political power along with the comic-opera fancy dress guards and military music. What is worse is that any criticism of their political views is seen, by them, as a crime against their royal being. Martin Minow decvax!minow