The Queen: A Constant Symbol of Tradition

As we mourn the Queen’s passing, we are also reminded of the importance of tradition in our culture.

The Queen is dead, long live the King. A traditional proclamation, just as “the King is dead, long live the King,” has echoed throughout the history of the British Monarchy. The monarchy lives on and passes on to the heir and successor immediately. It is a symbolic constant in today’s constitutional monarchy in Britain, the main thread in the fabric of their democracy.

Yesterday and over the coming days, the world will mourn the loss of Queen Elizabeth II. Her accomplishments and the tremendous story of her life are well known to all — she lived an amazing life in service to God and to her subjects. One of the few cultural and global constants in most of our lives in living memory, she stood as a reminder of the past with the vision of the future. She stood as the quintessence of grace, virtue, duty, honor, and tradition. 

Monarchy, particularly constitutional monarchy, provides a guiding source of tradition and power that transcends partisanship and politics. It provides a symbolic head — a chieftain, of which humans naturally crave, to look upon as a steady and visible sign of the nation state. It also reminds us of the mortal nature of ourselves, and that the power, liberties, and rights, of which our nations and governments are the custodians, comes from our Creator.

As a friend said today: “For the gift of monarchy lies in the fact that the monarch experiences that role as a calling — as a vocation from God… Monarchy is fundamentally an act of service. It acknowledges that true authority, real power, and actual dominion comes from God. Not from opinion polls or elections or referendums, important though they are; not from military might or economic strength, important though they are; but from God. And that power and authority are to be exercised for the good of the whole human family, created in God’s image.”

In America, we too have our traditions and constants in our republic. We have institutional traditions that the Founders envisioned for us in our three branches of government and in what the Framers laid for us as the cornerstone of our democracy, the Constitution.

For Great Britain, the Monarch is their constant, an institution which has experienced sober and measured changes over the decades, still affixed to tradition. For America, the Constitution is our constant. The brilliance of the Framers in writing the Constitution was providing the means in which to amend it. Our Constitution and our institutions should, just like the British Monarchy, experience progress and change with caution and prudence, as we risk tyranny and anarchy without a firm grasp on the traditional fabric which holds us together as a nation. 

Our traditions, institutional and constitutional, are vastly important to the functioning of our government and the stability of our culture.

There are those who think all tradition should be crumbled and tossed into the dustbin of history; a sort of libertine notion that everything old is bad and every new is good. Indeed, there are bad things both in the past and in the present. However, I cannot imagine a more despicable and dull world than one where tradition is thrown out whole-cloth. Tradition is immeasurably important, and while it should never hold us from reasonable progress, that progress should always be done soberly and with roots firmly affixed.

Many may ask why, as Americans, we too should mourn the loss of the Queen. Apart from the charity that one should demonstrate at the passing of a great and noble world leader, the Anglo-American tradition runs deep. It is a shared history, culturally and politically. Indeed, she is the descendant of the last monarch to rule over our own soil, as are her heirs and successors. She stood as Commander-in-Chief for the military forces of our closest ally, who have fought along side our brave US military forces for well over a century, defending democracy and the shared values which link our two nations. She has experienced first hand the turmoils of the the 20th and 21st centuries, offering a beacon of leadership and stability to the world, especially to the United States during some of our darkest hours.

For her people she was their Sovereign by right and law, for others of us she was our Sovereign in heart and spirit, and for all of us she was the epitome and archetype of duty, honor, service, and tradition.