Another Kind Word for the House of Windsor??

What's happening to the world? In the span of 4 days, I've had two nice things to say for members of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Windsor (the other). These people are my inveterate enemies! Usurpers! Oppressors! Etc, etc.

Anyway: I agree wholeheartely both with Prince Charles' comments:

"What is wrong with people these days?" the prince responded with evident exasperation in a memo written in 2002 and made public Wednesday at the tribunal. "Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far above their capabilities?

"This is all to do with the learning culture in schools," it added. "It is a consequence of child-centered education system which admits no failure. People seem to think they can all be pop stars, high court judges or brilliant TV presenters or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having the natural ability."

and Mickey Kaus' argument in favor of those comments:

Technically Charles would appear to be off the hook--he doesn't say in his memo that no secretary can ever aspire to other achievements. He merely seems to be saying 1) this secretary doesn't have the chops, and 2) too many people think they can do things for which they don't have the chops. The first is a judgment non-feudal, fluid meritocracies have to make of everyone at some point (when they've done "the very best they possibly can"). The second is a complaint anybody who has to run such a meritocracy (and constantly tell people "no") might have, and isn't incompatible with believing that people who actually have ability and put in the effort should rise. (Issue 2 is ventilated in The Incredibles, which takes Charles' side. How'd Tierney miss that angle?)

Meritocracy, it's often noted, is the most vicious of hierarchies because it tells people not only that they have wound up at a certain level but that they deserve to be at that level. It may say something about the unwillingness of putative meritocrats (like Clarke) to face the harshness of their own system that they need to accuse people like Charles, who make those harsh judgments explicit, of not being meritocrats but of really being aristos who don't want people to "rise above their station." ... P.S.: It's entirely possible, of course, that Charles is an inveterate feudal bigot in private. (If not him, who?) And it's too bad he didn't cut the condescending line in yesterday's self-defense that declared, "In my view it is just as great an achievement to be a plumber or a bricklayer as it is to be a lawyer or a doctor." Does anyone think he really thinks that?

Of course, I suppose these are easy ideas for a prince, or a successful journalist, or a lawyer-in-training, to have. But I still think it's basically true.