Seriously?

Yes, as it happens, this is serious.

In case you hadn't heard, two rich people got married in England today. If you've had any awareness of the celebrity news, as carried by every goddamn publication in the world, you already know this, even if you don't know why you should give a rat's ass about it.

I find it particularly mystifying that anyone in the United States, or any other civilized country, would care, and I'm not just grousing about it.

You see, a couple of hundred years ago some brave Americans stood up to an English king (well, he was German, really, like the current occupants, but he was the king of England) and announced what was at the time a radical proposition:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

They view things differently over in England. They believe that a king or queen is entitled to rule by an accident of birth. Or, to be more specific, the English dogma is that the incumbent inbred king or queen, whoever he or she might be, is given authority by god to rule over the country.

When people, whether they be the yammering twits on the Today Show (Motto: "Just pretend you're watching the news") or the throngs of people lining the streets of England, celebrate or give any credence to the monarchy, they are saying that the Declaration of Independence is wrong. We're not all created equal, some lucky few families are inherently superior to everybody else in the world. They deserve everything they have because they, well, just because.

So if you see me scowl or grimace at every mention of one more undistinguished rich guy marrying one more conventionally attractive woman, or when you express similar feelings of disgust, that's standing up for American principles.

If the English are stupid enough to buy into their royalist ideology I can't stand in their way, but the world will be better off when nobody claims or recognizes any title of royalty.