Yet Charles hit all the right notes to reassure a people shocked by their sovereign’s sudden demise. His tone, pace and modulation were somber and serious yet empathetic, sharing in grief without excessive display. His reference to setting aside both the charities he served and the issues he advocated signaled a commitment to rise above politics. But most of all, he emphasized duty, sacrifice, loyalty, tradition, preservation of institutions and the constitutional, social and religious role of the monarchy as the glue that holds British society together. He presented Elizabeth as a model of virtue in governing he would emulate.
The loss of virtue as the basis of government, more than any other factor, has upended society and weakened its bonds, not only in America but, despite the queen’s own example, also in Britain. Of which Charles is now the living symbol and which he must help hold together in a time of great economic, political and social peril, for the monarchy as well as the nation.
Given the choice between protecting freedom and preserving and promoting virtue — which the queen understood is often embodied in tradition — this commentator will take the latter every time. Because without the stanchion and bulwark of virtue, freedom becomes destabilizing and destructive license.
And a government that insists on moral license as the new normal can only do so by imposing it via coercion, thereby curtailing freedom. On that score, allow us to contrast Charles’ measured masterpiece introducing himself as the father of a nation with Uncle Joe’s ugly, bone-chilling diatribe of the previous week.
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