Op-Ed: America’s Royal Wedding Obsession

Sometimes I wonder why we went to the bother of separating from England in 1776. Two hundred and thirty-five years later, we are still obsessed with the British royalty and their marriages, births, deaths, and peccadilloes. We don’t seem to care about other European royal families, but when English princes impersonate Nazis or imagine themselves as tampons, it is national news in the United States.

Expect life as we know it to stop on Friday, April 29, when William will marry Kate. (They might even bump Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan off the cable stations for a few hours.) Some analysts estimate that 35% of the world’s population will tune in to the wedding, many of them using gadgets that were unheard of when Prince Charles married Diana. CNN apparently will have 150 staffers covering the event, compared to only 50 covering the disaster in Japan.

While millions of Americans will be toasting the royal couple, I will be raising my glass to an English corset-maker named Thomas Paine, who immigrated to America in 1775, just in time to understand that Americans were disgusted with Parliament and with taxes that they deemed to be unfair, but were nevertheless hesitant to separate from England, and especially, from the English monarchy. He wrote a brilliant pamphlet called Common Sense, which persuaded thousands of influential people in the Thirteen Colonies to consider the many benefits of separating from England. Common Sense was a tipping point; the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War followed soon after the pamphlet’s publication.

Thomas Paine

I don’t know where Thomas Paine learned to write, but long passages of his pamphlet are still quoted today. My favorite passages have to do with monarchy: “In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places….A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshiped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians who ever lived.”

Of course, the British monarch no longer makes war or gives away places, but he or she makes even more money now that there is nothing substantial to do and the duties are primarily symbolic.

Thomas Jefferson picked up on Paine’s ideas when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Most Americans probably think of the beginning of the Declaration, if they think of it at all (and if we are to believe the folks Jay Leno meets when he goes Jay Walking, a lot of Americans are more than a little confused about our founding document). They like the parts about pursuing happiness and being created equal, especially at Fourth of July celebrations. It is easy to forget, though, that much of theDeclaration of Independence is simply a long list of grievances against the king.

After independence, when the very men who had declared it and fought for it had to actually govern, some wanted to create a monarchy in America. George Washington, to his everlasting credit, nixed that idea, and we have had elected presidents, rather than hereditary monarchs ever since although there is a famous old student blooper that claims, “The difference between a king and a president is that a king is the son of his father but a president isn’t.”

Every four years, when we elect a president, we should remember Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and James Madison and the others who gave us a republic. Our election system is flawed and expensive and tiresome, but since 1789  we have been going to the polls and peacefully electing a president. The one exception was with the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, which led to secession and Civil War. The peaceful transfer of power from one leader to another is probably why monarchies were invented in the first place. Americans have shown the world that there is another, better way. It is one of the most important accomplishments of our civilization.

On April 29, after I raise my glass to Thomas Paine and the Revolutionaries who rejected the English monarchy, I will raise another glass to William and Kate. They seem like a nice couple and it must be tough to be royalty in the 21st Century.

Wendy Costa is the education coordinator at Mount Harmon Plantation, a part-time boat captain, and owner of Sassafras Sailing Excursions & Lessons. She is also a tutor in writing at Cecil College. Costa has lived in Georgetown full-time since 2004 and has spent every summer here since 1969.