A crowned king to limit politicians
By J.K. Baltzersen
web posted June 1, 2026
Preface
A version of this opinion piece appeared originally in The Washington Times on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It is now republished in slightly modified form in the centenary year of the late Queen’s birth – and the semiquincentennial year of the United States Declaration of Independence – on the eve of the 73rd anniversary of her coronation, and on the third anniversary of the original publication.
While we reflect on the effects of democratization upon liberty, we also celebrate the subtle limitations on modern power.
The original time references remain unchanged.
A Crowned King to Limit Politicians
A dozen score and seven years ago, revolutionaries met in Independence Hall in Philadelphia to sever ties with the British Crown. No more was a crowned head to rule over America. A declaration proclaimed the King a tyrant. That said tyranny was to go. No royal family. No nobility. A republic came to be.
Loyalists, fearing popular government, supported the Crown.
The American Founding Fathers were well schooled in Greek and Roman antiquity. Socrates was sentenced to death for opposing Athenian democracy, referring in his defense speech to the dramatist Aristophanes. Aristophanes of Athens wrote the comedy Assemblywomen, in which wives dress up as men in their husbands’ clothes and take over the popular assembly of Athens. They collectivize everything. The play portrays servility towards the laws passed by the popular assembly.
Aristophanes was prophetic. We know so well how people nowadays bow down to edicts of democratic authorities merely because they are the will of the majority.
The American Framers knew very well the vices of democracy, known among philosophers and political thinkers since antiquity. They established no direct democracy, deeming it unsuitable for any area much larger than a city-state. They also put limits on government reach.
A well-known critique of democracy holds that it is inefficient, as many people take part in the decision-making – one of the main reasons that pure direct democracy is suitable only for small city-states. About half a century into the life of the American Republic, the French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville came to America, and he observed the democratic culture that by then had developed.
Like Aristophanes, Tocqueville was prophetic. He tells us that democracy is not weak, as many of his contemporaries and forerunners have maintained, but that it is indeed a strong form of government, exactly because its basis of power is the whole people. Several thinkers have since confirmed this concept. We lower our guard against the government because we feel it is less necessary when “we are the government.”
The Austrian economist F.A. von Hayek had such thoughts. In the essay Why I Am Not a Conservative, he tells us that unlimited government came about because checks on power were seen as unnecessary when the entire people controls the government.
Even Montesquieu, the father of modern checks and balances, noted that in democracies the power of the people is confused with their liberty.
In the spirit of the Churchill dictum that democracy is the least bad of all tried forms of government, the recently crowned King is all but a rubber stamp. The representative democracy of Westminster and the sovereignty of Parliament are to secure liberty. The British King is not, as they say, above politics, but beyond politics.
The powerlessness of the throne has made the politicos in Parliament and its executive committee, the Cabinet, all but absolute in their power. They may get kicked out in the next election, but that merely replaces the gang in power with another one that will have the same nearly absolute power. This has prompted Bill Emmott, former editor-in-chief of The Economist, to advocate abolishing the monarchy in favor of a new system of checks and balances. It might be a bit naive to believe that politicos will put in place effective checks on their own power.
The days when Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary told a European-touring Nobel Peace laureate Theodore Roosevelt that the point of monarchy was for the monarch to protect his peoples against their governments may be long gone. But as Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson said on the day of Queen Elizabeth II’s passing, it may be good psychologically to have a system where the prime minister — who probably has monarchical ambitions — has to go to this monarch regularly and confess, and even be intimidated. If it is to change, we might need more of it, not less.
The United States may have their checks and balances, which at least in theory are to limit government. Government reach grows nonetheless, and all branches of government are controlled by the political parties — even, in a sense, the judicial one. It is far beyond that of the government of King George III. Tocqueville’s prophecy has come true, even for America. Sadly!
The British monarchy is outside of politics in a way that not even the American judiciary is. The monarchy may limit the ambitions of politicians.
That is cause for celebration in this season of a coronation, the late Queen’s 70th coronation anniversary, and the new King’s first official birthday. 
J.K. Baltzersen is a Norwegian author and political commentator. He has edited and co-written a book on constitution, democracy, and liberty.
