As 1995 winds to a close, many Americans have the unsettling feeling that our society is self- destructing. While children are committing murders at an increasing rate, and America earns the dubious honor of having more of its own nationals in prison than any other country on Earth; and the politicians ruin the last vestige of trust placed in them by the American people, it might appear that our civilization is passing "the point of no return."

As the society's leaders betray the most essential values of American culture, leaving the nation morally, spiritually and financially bankrupt, it begins to sink in that what worked in the past just doesn't seem to work any longer. The crisis of confidence taking place has to do with the faith of the American people in the institutions of society, and as the level of competence and sincerity within these institutions has dropped, the confidence of the American people in these institutions has, also, dwindled.

The political and religious leaders believe that the social breakdown is occuring because the American people are weak-willed and subject to uncontrolled passions. That is why their answer to every social problem is punitive: they are building more prisons as you read this. They do not want to be bothered by the cold-blooded nature of their operations, because they do not intend to change anything. They have decided that all the problems derive from the people; they certainly do not believe that they are responsible for any of the bad trends that are causing the dissolution of the social fabric.

The truth, however, is that the political system is parasitic and predatory. The very way we are taught our nation's history, starts and ends with the idea that we live under the best system of government in the world. This does not leave any room for examining the government, to see if maybe it actually is not the best system in the world. The first thing we learn, as to the reason why this country came into existence, is that it derived from a conflict between the American and English nations. This reflects the fact that the Republic had its genesis in the process of engineering public opinion, because in 1776, there were no Americans. There were only Englishmen, seeking their traditional English liberties.

In designing a system of government that had to protect private property, and promote commerce, the Founding Fathers were very careful to avoid any democratic tendencies, that might have the effect of subjecting their vast estates and wealth to the caprices of the "people." The party system, with its old smoke-filled rooms, was designed to minimize if not cancel out any feedback or input from the population. The Electoral College also served as a buffer, enabling the landed gentry to control the electoral process while maintaining a facade of free elections.

Times of social dissolution are good for re-evaluation of root values and customs, in order to stabilize the social fabric, as well as pursue an ideal vision for the future of the human race. It is a time when we can commit ourselves again to the virtues, and to civilization, by exhuming the very essence and core of Anglo-American civilization. The bottom line is that the American experiment with a republican form of government is a dismal failure. The only way the overall picture has been made palatable to the American public, has been to lie to them as to the real business of the Federal Republic. We have generated a morally-ambivalent "secular" society, that prizes wealth and celebrity over and above decent morals and sound judgment. While insofar as this "secular" society is disassociated from the unyielding, dogmatic and materialistic churches that claim to have a monopoly on morality, there is some positive value in it; but the lack of any spiritual or humanitarian focus as an anchor, connecting the government to what is important in human life, has left the society adrift.

Tradition and customs form the foundation of the definitions of virtue and morality, and when tradition and custom are mindlessly ignored, and even ridiculed, it shows how far we have strayed as an enlightened and progressive society. One tradition we have dispensed with glibbly, thinking it doesn't really matter -- even though there is two thousand years of history to prove that it does matter -- is the institution of the Monarchy. Today we have a president clothed with the powers of a dictator, yet most Americans believe that a monarch -- a king or a queen -- is nothing more than a dictator. The truth is that a kingship is not only the only genuinely legal system of government, it is also the only one that is not vulnerable to the partisan infighting that has plagued the New World.

Law is not based on what certain individuals say it is, who are able to control it because they have control of the government. Law is not a club to beat the opposition over the head. Law is a scholastic discipline, founded around the basic pursuit of truth. What we call justice is completely tied into the legal system, and if it ever fails to deliver the truth, especially if that truth is widely obvious, it will destroy the authority of the government. The custom is, and has been, that the Crown is the ballast for the government and the society. The king has no need to dissemble or justify impractical or stupid government policies; he does not have to pander to the crowd. He can take the time he needs to give the people deeper insights than is possible from a political hack who has to spend most of his presidential term campaigning for re-election. As an example, in the United Kingdom it is the members of the royal family who are expressing concern for the well-being of the poor, and the preservation of an unpolluted environment. These are long-term values, that if addressed, can provide long-term stability. In the United States, on the other hand, there is no one with enough independent prestige, to focus attention on the social problems looming on the horizon that must be reconciled.

Unlike the Republic, Monarchy is not "just" a political system. It is a social system as well, with a foundation of spirituality and conscious human life. The Crown represents a standard of public service that epitomizes sacrifice and genuine concern for national interests with no promise of compensation. Under the Republic, no one is willing to do anything for their country if they are not going to be paid. Under the Monarchy, the payment that is made is in HONOR. That is why the nobility exists: Among its ranks number those who came to the rescue of their homeland in its hour of need, and the members of those families carry forever the badge of that courage and sacrifice.

The truth is that America has the ancient constitution of the kingdom -- the unwritten English constitution -- laying dormant, just beneath the surface of the Federal Republic, and the written Constitution of 1787. The kingdom is so integral to the legal rights of individuals to political freedom, that it was deliberately submerged under the Republic, so as to create a police state with such functions as returning fugitive slaves to their owners. The constitution of the kingdom is so far superior to the Constitution of 1787, that it is almost impossible to explain each and every advantage, but by far the most valuable is the fact that it includes every fragment of knowledge and wisdom ever discovered during the course of the running of the state. It embraces all the knowledge of every person, because it is not bound to uphold the dictates of a few unethical cronies, whose only claim to authority is the fact that they won a lottery.

THE ANCIENT CONSTITUTION

The following is excerpted from the Encyclopedia Brittanica (1971) Vol. 6, from the article on Constitution and Constitutional Law, having to do with the English constitution. As a result of history and tradition, this unwritten English constitution also happens to be the unwritten constitution of the United States of America. Even though some of the ideas are alien to the American national, (largely because educational standards in the United States are designed to mold and manipulate the American people, rather than prepare them through education to take their place in the world), this explanation of the Ancient Constitution is vital in that it fills in gaps and holes that are otherwise simply neglected.

In England there is no one document or fundamental body of law that can be described as a "constitution." The absence of any such document or of any distinction between public and private law has led to the suggestion (perhaps first made by A. C. de Tocqueville) that there is in England no constitution. Certainly the English constitution has no existence apart from the ordinary law; it is indeed part of that very law. Magna Carta, the Petition of Right act, the Habeas Corpus act, the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement are the leading enactments, but they are in no sense a constitutional code, and without a host of judicial decisions, scores of other statutes of much less importance and a mass of custom and convention, these statutes would be unworkable. The sources of English constitutional law are diffuse -- statutes, judicial precedent, textbooks, lawbooks, the writings of historians and political theorists, the biographies and autobiographies of statesmen, the columns of every serious newspaper, the volumes of Hansard, the minutiae of every type of government record and publication. This is what is mean't by saying the English constitution is "unwritten"; it is not formally enacted; its rules have to be sought out in a dozen fields, not in any one code. Similarly, it is flexible, and here the contrast is with a rigid constitution. There are no special safeguards for constitutional rules; constitutional law can be changed, amended, abolished just like any rule of private law; there is no field in which parliament is forbidden to legislate; there are no fundamental or unalterable "norms" and no procedures to prescribe delay or extra processes for constitutional change. Thus an act passed through all its stages in both houses and received the royal assent all in one day (May 22nd, 1940); it is true that the nation was gravely menaced at the time, but the measure, the Emergency Powers (Defence) act, 1940, required persons to place "themselves, their services and their property at the disposal of His Majesty." Earlier, in Dec. 1936, the Abdication act had the same rapid passage into law; it is doubtful if the institutions of any written constitution would permit of such far-reaching changes with so little formality and fuss. Moreover, since parliament is fully sovereign, it is not open to the courts to declare that an act of parliament is unconstitutional or void; all the courts can do is to interpret acts and enforce them (though it must be added that the process of interpretation can produce results that have on occasion largely stultified the purpose of the act). In Lee v. Bude and Torrington Junction Railway Co. (1871), a great judge said: "I would observe, as to these Acts of Parliaments, that they are the law of the land, and we do not sit here as a court of appeal from Parliament." The function of the courts is much more limited than in a country where judicial review is a recognized check on legislative activity.

So much, then, for the unwritten, flexible English constitution; why it developed in this way can be answered only by dipping into constitutional history. In the middle ages a strong centralized monarchy slowly and painfully emerged from the remains of the feudal kingdom; it was not perhaps until the time of Henry VII that the monarchy really came into its own. But at the same time the kings had called for and fostered the institution now known as parliament -- a development from the feudal great council reinforced by "popular" elements from the counties and boroughs -- and the institution in its time was to challenge the crown. By the end of the Stuart period the victory of parliament was assured; the crown lost its more objectionable powers; parliament established its legislative and financial supremacy; and the houses of Orange and Hanover were called in to provide rulers who would accept the new situation. A logical people would have formally transferred the powers of the crown to parliament or to some new organ. In fact the crown was left with most of its prerogatives and was expected to carry on the routine of government; yet for money and legislation, without which it could not govern, it depended on parliament. To fill the gap between the legal "sovereignty" of the crown and the political fact of parliament's supremacy, a new institution, the cabinet, was called into being. The cabinet consists of the leading members of the party that has a majority in the house of commons and thus can command the support of parliament for its policies. At first, attempts were made to control cabinets in the royal interest but soon the convention of ministerial responsibility grew; this means, in brief, that the sovereign never exercises any of his or her powers without the advice of a minister nor refuses to exercise these powers when a minister advises him to do so. This is well recognized, and thus responsibility for any royal act is always laid at the door of the minister who advised it, not that of the sovereign in whose name it was done. With the doctrine of ministerial responsibility there also developed the parallel doctrine of collective responsibility of the cabinet: it speaks with one voice; each member is fully responsible for the acts of all the others; any member who disagrees with the majority's policy must hold his peace or resign.

In the 19th century the franchise was gradually extended until , in 1928, every man and woman was potentially entitled to vote at 21. At the same time each of the great political parties acquired an organization, a discipline and a policy that enabled its leaders to count on the unquestioned support of their followers in the house of commons. So long as the cabinet can command its own supporters it enjoys a virtual monopoly of legislative and executive powers, since the royal prerogatives and the parliamentary timetable are at its disposal. It is for this reason that the large legal powers of the crown are tolerable in a political democracy; they are in effect the sinews of party government; and it was this that A.V. Dicey had in mind when he said that the prerogatives of the crown had become the privileges of the people. Since, too, parliament has by and large controlled the crown for 150 years and, more recently, the party has controlled parliament, there has never been any urge to impose limitations or restrictions on the crown's powers. Naturally enough, parliament has not felt moved to put fetters on itself. Hence the absence of the limitation on these legally wide and discretionary powers; public opinion, party feeling, the ballot box are the real safeguards in modern Britain.

It remains to describe in outline the leading institutions of the British constitution and to show their relations one to another:

THE CROWN

Title to the crown is now statutory; parliament has changed the succession from time to time, and the British royal house derives its title from the Act of Settlement which limited the crown to the descendants of Sophia, electress of Hanover, being Protestants. (Note: See the Crown of America for more information on the restoration process now taking place. The American crown, due to the unique circumstances that prevail in the United States, will not be associated with any state church, or religious denomination, Editor). Coronation is a religious and civic ceremony but it has no legal significance today. The new sovereign's reign begins from the death of his predecessor; in the words of the law "the king never dies." Similarly the king at law was never an infant, and where there was a minority ad hoc arrangements were made. Nowadays the minority, incapacity or absence from the country of the sovereign is provided for by the Regency acts of 1937-53, which allow for the appointment of a regent in the case of minority (which ends at 18) or of counselors of state if the sovereign is ill or abroad. The regent or the counselors exercise, with important limitations, the power of the crown.

In theory and in law the powers of the crown -- called the prerogatives -- are very wide. Walter Bagehot, writing in 1860, startled his contemporaries by enumerating the things that the queen could legally do of her own motion and without anybody's consent. In fact the prerogatives are the sinews of government and have been allowed to survive, substantially undiminished, because the doctrine of ministerial responsibility has made them available to the government of the day, and thus it was convenient, as well as acceptable to a conservatively minded people, to leave them where they were.

Socially and politically, however, the more important functions of the monarchy are those that have a popular appeal. The sovereign, and other members of the royal family, frequently pay visits, open hospitals, attend sporting and other entertainments and inaugurate or patronize with their presence a host of national, municipal and local activities. The royal family is the focus of good will in the community; every religious, social or charitable movement can count on its support. In no sphere is this more marked than in relations with countries of the commonwealth. Since the Statute of Westminster, 1931, the legal links between the United Kingdom and the self-governing members of the commonwealth have been practically non-existent. Each self-governing member is independent of the United Kingdom both internally and internationally; yet all are united by a common allegiance to the crown, and it is the crown as a symbol of a common allegiance that binds the countries of the commonwealth together more closely and more effectively than any formal or legal ties. When India and Pakistan adopted republican forms of constitution, they continued to recognize the queen as head of the commonwealth, membership of which they retained.

The crown is the formal legal institution; in it and through it all the prerogatives are exercised; it is an essential part of parliament; it is the executive ("her majesty's ministers," "her majesty's civil service," "her majesty's prisons," "the Royal Navy" are not empty phrases but correctly describe the legal status of the bodies or institutions to which they refer); the courts are the sovereign's courts, and justice is administered in her name by her judges. Yet the monarchy is something real and personal to every citizen, and the activities of the royal family are followed with interest, affection and often enthusiasm throughout the English-speaking world and beyond.

THE LEGISLATURE

The legislature or, more properly, the king or queen in parliament consists of the sovereign, the house of lords and the house of commons. The sovereign's part is today largely formal and normally undertaken wholly on ministerial advice. The royal proclamation dissolves one parliament and summons another. The sovereign can, and often does, open the new session in person by reading the royal speech. This sets out the government's proposals and policy, but it is in the first person and reads as if the proposals and policies were the sovereign's. The royal assent is necessary to every bill before it becomes a statute and so achieves the force of law. This is usually given by commissioners specially appointed by the queen to assent in her name, but there is no reason why a sovereign should not assent in person, and George VI did give his assent personally to various Canadian statutes on the royal visit to Canada in 1939.

Finally, in addition to legislation and finance, the commons, and to a lesser extent, the lords, are important because they provide means whereby public opinion can be focused and pressure brought to bear on the government. A debate in either house, a motion on the adjournment, a series of questions can have important results in modifying or even changing government policy. Members of parliament constantly visit their constituencies; their ears are to the ground; they are the targets of all sorts of "pressure groups" and organized interests. By these means they can and do reflect the state of feeling and opinion in the country, and they, in their turn, get this across to the government. A seemingly inconsequential debate, in which member after member said the same thing, or a question, ostensibly repeated in slightly different forms time and again, are far more important than the casual observor would suppose. It is in these ways that public opinion makes itself felt and the workings of government are kept, in some sort, in harmony with democratic processes.

THE EXECUTIVE

The king or queen in council is the head of the executive. Some functions of the crown can be exercised orally; others require a formal legal document, such as an order in council, letters patent or the fixation of the great seal. These formal matters are considered in the privy council, a body of great antiquity and descended, in some sense, from the witan of the Saxon kings. Historically it has always been the duty of the crown to seek counsel, and of the great in church and state to tender it. Under the Normans the king's council consisted of the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls and barons and also a number of officials, clerks and royal officers, all of whom owed their place to the king and who, following him on the various royal progresses through his possessions, constituted his household. Soon a struggle developed between the feudal element (the baronage) and the "familial" element or officials. While the claim of the baronage to attend the council was never formally abandoned (and today the house of lords has aspects that show its origin as a council), the kings soon established their right to summon whomever they pleased to the council, which became a small body of great officials and royal favourites in constant attendance on the king. When English terms came into use, this body became known as the privy (or private) council to distinguish it from the great council (now the house of lords), which met in public. It remains, legally, the source of all formal royal acts; but since the evolution of the cabinet, its political functions have declined, and it is no longer an advisory body. Policy decisions are taken in the cabinet; the formal steps necessary to carry such decisions into effect are taken in the privy council.

Today membership is regarded as a great honour and is conferred on statesmen (from the commonwealth as well as from the United Kingdom) and on judges and other high officials. The body consists of between 200 and 300 members, but in practice the full council never meets, and only the two or three members particularly concerned with the business to be transacted attend. The sovereign is always present and the lord president of the council; and if, for example, foreign and colonial affairs are in issue, the foreign and colonial secretaries will also be there. All cabinet ministers are sworn members of the privy council.

From the council all the great historic offices of state are descended. The office of lord high chancellor, the treasury and the admiralty go back in an unbroken line to the middle ages. The secretaryship of state and the lord president of the council date from the Tudor period; they were the instruments through which the Tudor monarchs modernized the medieval system of government. The board of trade and the ministries of education and agriculture were originally committees of the privy council that grew in importance and became separate departments. Most of the other departments, now called ministries, are of more recent origin and depend for their creation and function on a statute. The cabinet is the mainspring of all governmental activity and is one of the great contributions of Great Britain to political institutions. It is presided over by the prime minister, who is the head of the administration.

THE JUDICIARY

Constitutionally the importance of the judiciary lies in its independence so that it can act as an impartial mediator between the citizen and the state. Judges of the high court enjoy office during good behaviour and are only dismissible on an address voted by both houses of parliament; no judge has ever been removed under this procedure. Their salaries are paid out of the Consolidated fund and are not subject to ordinary executive control. They cannot be criticized in parliament unless a member is prepared to go to the length of putting down a substantive motion. They enjoy a wide immunity from actions in respect of words spoken by them or things done on their orders in the course of their duties. Similar, though not quite so extensive, immunities are enjoyed by the judges of the lesser courts.

All this has created a tradition and a climate of opinion in which the independence of the judges is regarded as almost a fundamental dogma. Any attempt to interfere with any judicial process or to hinder a judge in the execution of his duties would cause a tremendous outburst of popular indignation. Perhaps the most important aspect of this tradition today is that, taken by British judges to the overseas possessions of the crown, it has helped to implant high standards and to impart a feeling of confidence and impartiality in lands where British justice is an alien importation.

PLEASE NOTE: The English constitution is the foundation of the American kingdom, which has been in the process of restoration since 11 April, 1993. The nature of the unwritten American constitution is that while it can be "informed" by British experience, it will develop a particularly American character, based on the American national temperament.

CROWN OF AMERICA