He says not to "rant against monarcy". Criticism of elizabeth is fair game I think, although still early for that. We ll see a lot of criticism of her and monarchy in general in the next months.
Personally i can see why brits may have feelings for her, but i dont consider her remarkable. Her legacy is basically that she lived in 96 of the most impactful years in human history and oversaw (from a distance) the end of the british empire. None of that was her making, she merely stood there as a prop. Her greatest achievement was that she led a conservative life, married only once, never participated in anything progressive, meshing well with the anachronistic rituals of monarchy.
There is a difference between criticizing monarchy in a civilized manner and flamebating. A civilized discussion is 90% of the value of hn compared to, say, reddit.
> this ever more fascist government from undermining fundamental aspects of our supposed democracy.
this seems like quite a contradictory position to take. royalty is undemocratic, but you lost respect for them when they chose not to use their unearned power to interfere with the actions of democratically elected officials?
are there not better reasons to not respect the monarchy?
They have a veto, they didn't exercise it to protect democracy, and the only person with power to prorogue parliament was the Queen so she became actively involved in the subversion of our democracy. Keeping parliament open would have been more democratic, and was the default line. There are other reasons, but that was what pushed me over the edge personally to accepting they may be a useful aspect of our pseudo-constitutional monarchy to considering that they genuinely only want to maintain their positions, to feed at the trough.
this doesn’t justify the contradiction in terms of disliking them for being undemocratic, but losing all respect for them because they refused to use their undemocratic veto
whether proroguing parliament was right or not - it wasn’t - it would absolutely have been worse if they had interfered. one is a temporary political tactic by an elected official to push through legislation - or lack thereof - the other would have completely and unreservedly undermined our democratic institutions as they have worked for over 200 years
I think you slightly misunderstand the role of the royals in this country. they are not consciously acting figures who take an active role in politics. they’re more like the chair that the speaker sits in, or some of the pretty furnishings in the houses of parliament. they’re an aesthetic and we put up with them for that reason and that reason only. you wouldn’t expect the paper that a law is written on to make sure the law itself is democratic and for the same reason you shouldn’t expect the current regent to do the same. they’re a part of the machinery, not a person working it
HN would be a complete shit show without dang. What you call "heavy handedness" is what I call the most appropriate, fair minded guidance to keep threads from turning into flamewars.
I've been warned by dang before, and when I was, after I took a minute to cool down from what I was responding to, I realized he was exactly correct. I'd encourage y'all to do the same - the parent's comment that there is "a requirement that we do not speak ill of that monarchy" is a gross, and honestly annoyingly incorrect, mischaracterization of what dang said.
There are many places where you can get light moderation and get to say what you want. Reddit comes to mind. HN is different largely because of that moderation; it's a feature not a bug.
Engagement and return visits aren't the primary goals of this community. Indeed, "As a rule, a community site that becomes popular will decline in quality" (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)
The site's goal is to encourage deeply interesting content, in terms of both posts and comments.
