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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

Note to Americans: "Republican" in the U.K. refers to the "movement which seeks to remove the British monarchy and replace it with a republic that has a non-hereditary head of state" [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism_in_the_United_Ki...

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For Non-UK readers, the Wikipedia article is a little dry.

There is little "serious" republican activity within the UK, the general idea is that it is a massive vote loser, with minimal gains as politicians already get elected etc.

There are regular and increasing stories noting Charles' unsuitability for the post (using his position to lobby for his personal preferences in architecture, alternative medicine etc). This is mostly anti-charles than anti-monarch.

Until the Queen marches into Parliament to arrest and behead Cameron, we are unlikely to have any serious debates on Republicanism, and if she actually did that most of us would be on the streets asking her not to just stop at the PM ...

Looking for most of Whitehall to roll with heads?

As many as it takes ;-)

A throw away comment on a throw away thread about a hopefully happy woman having a baby.

As long as no medical problems, who cares. More important things anywhere and everywhere else.

I think the Queen is far too popular for a republic referendum to happen in her lifetime. Granted Charles would certainly help the cause, but I think that if the throne passes to William then his beautiful family will probably fill the gossip pages (and hence the minds of the masses) for generations to come.

On balance, the monarchy does actually provide the UK with an unquanitifiable mystique that you don't really appreciate until you've lived abroad for a while (I've been away since 1998 and I'm just beginning to appreciate the seductive power available to top UK businesses through Royal connections).

I think that if you are a visiting dignitary / trade envoy to the UK and your host swings you an invite from "The Queen of England" to Buckingham Palace for dinner, you've been beaten.

So, despite the seeming overt display of opulence at tax payers expense, they probably do pay their way.

Commonwealth countries won't change either, the leaders now enjoy the faux celebrity being around royals gives them, plus it would take forever to change existing laws of Crown vs defendent, as the arguing and agendas would be infinite if they were to start changing laws, land status (crown land) ect.

Aboriginal treaties will also have to be renegotiated as the Crown wouldn't exist and thats never going to happen

The name for the US republican party has always surprised me, especially because the other party is "democrat". Here in France too, "republican" mostly means "a non royalist administration". Democratic then precises what kind of organization. So, it kind of sounds like US republicans do not stand for democracy.

Being an anti-royalist was a good thing in early American politics.

If I'm remembering my history right, there were two main reasons for the name. It was, in part, a callback to the older, defunct, Democratic-Republican party that had been around in the early US.

It was also a mild dig against the Democratic party, implying that their support of slavery stood against republican ideals.

I see, thanks for clarifying.

I don't know much about early US history, I think I'll dig in, because having democrats being pro slavery and republicans anti slavery is something I wouldn't have expected.

The Democrats used to be pretty racist; before the American civil war, they supported slavery, and afterwards supported segregation, while the Republicans generally opposed slavery (Lincoln was a Republican, for example). As a result, the US South used to be heavily Democrat, and the north was heavily Republican. They basically flipped in the 40's and 50's due to the Democrats support for civil rights and the "southern strategy" (basically: appeal to racism, sometimes subtly, sometimes not, to get votes in the South) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Today's (US) Republican party is nothing like the Republicans from 100+ years ago. It's kind of sad.

It was 150 years ago. The parties have changed quite a lot since then.

In the US, we had six party systems since the revolution. Each time we translation, we get two mostly new political parties which sometimes reuse the names of the defunct parties. Wikipedia has a good description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_system#United_States

you (GP) could also check out the XKCD of american political history. it has quite a few of the party names that people used throughout (which are entertaining, in a geeky kind of way):

http://xkcd.com/1127/

full res: http://xkcd.com/1127/large/

Thanks you all, this has been very instructive. I realize I had a massive misinterpretation about left and right in the US.

That's because, in France, left wing has always been associated to humanism (humans first, economics then) and universal rights (the whole world deserve to have rights), while right wing is most about economics and nationalism.

From what I understand, US left wing is historically about equality for the "real USians" (kind of nationalism of the poors) while right wing, until getting own by far right in XXth's end, was for a very liberal society, be it in term of economics or in term of social rights.

This would explain a lot in the recent NSA reactions, where we were very shocked that the debate seemed to focus on whether or not US citizen were spied, rather than if mass surveillance was a problem at all.

Am I correct, here ?

I don't think the parties have changed much. The same moralist convictions that caused Republicans to be anti-slavery in the past are the same ones that make them anti-abortion today, for example.

For extra comedy points, the American Republican party formed largely from the American Whig party, which named itself after the British Whig party, which is today known in the UK as the Liberal Democrats.

In modern English, republic and democrat are virtually synonymous.

Is that a crack concerning the state of US politics? :-)

I'm not sure that's quite right, but I see your point. 'Republic' in modern parlance indicates a democracy with an elected head of state. There are many democracies with monarchs, but constitutionally they have little or no power.

Both parties: 1) support larger government with more power 2) support unending wars 3) refuse to go after Wall St. for financial crimes 4) make their entire platform about social issues that shouldn't even be within the realm of government 5) work to exclude 3rd party candidates from the political process 6) refuse to address in ineffectiveness of the unending federal "war on drugs" that has made the US the #1 country in the world for prison population, with over 1% of our population involved in the prison system, over 25% of which are only for non-violent drug charges, a victimless crime that is a personal choice 7) refuse to address corporate personhood which has grossly corrupted the political process 8) refuse to address the revolving door between big business and the regulatory agencies responsible for policing them 9) refuse to address the destruction of our currency by the Federal Reserve system, and how the current fiscal policy greatly benefits a small group of bankers 10) refuse to address the broken copyright and patent systems that have been changed to benefit a tiny number of large corporations at the expense of every member of society

While nothing you wrote (aside from the first half of #9) is wrong, per se, I'm not sure it really has much place in this particular discussion.

Modern English with a capital M.

I guess the closest thing we have would be a confederate flag button in the U.S. That flag still seems to be embraced by the area of the country that most wishes to seceed (part of South Carolina).

As for a U.S. "Republican" button, Google basically already has that of sorts in their news; it attempts to determines that you don't respond well to certain news and won't show those items. I don't read Google news much anymore though, because I feel like they intentionally or otherwise are influencing my world-view.

> confederate flag

That's comparing Apples and Cactuses and doesn't strike me as equivalent at all.

Thanks! Corrected. You're right that it isn't equivalent. There is no substantial effort afaik to only rid one of the branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial), so the secession movement is the closest I can think of to the UK's Republican party, which really isn't that close at all.

The UK's republican movement doesn’t want to get rid off a branch of government, but merely wants to change how the person to occupy a certain position is chosen. The actual effect of abolishing the UK monarchy on politics would be close to zero.

More or less...

The Queen still has extensive powers, that she does not use.

For example, all laws must be signed by the Queen, but the last time someone refused to sign a law was around the 1700s, but if she wants, she can still refuse to sign a law.

Also, the Queen can refuse a parliament election (resulting into having no parliament)

Also, she can sell whatever she wants that belongs to the state in a unilateral manner (but I do not know the last time a monarch used this power O.o)

Also she can kick out the prime minister (this power seemly was threatened to be used on Tony Blair when he got excessively trigger happy regarding US wars... seemly threats to use it, made him tone down a bit his hunger for blood).

if the Queen tried it on, she'd be deposed and paliament would select a new head of state.

OK, but 'republicanism' is just the ideal opposed to monarchy (or similar arbitrary or hereditary rule). It's not a peculiarity of UK usage (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretia).

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