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