SHE SOUNDED OFF ABOUT THE WRONG LEGACIES.

The Internet might be the closest thing on earth to St. Peter's Permanent Record that the nuns at St. Gregory the Great warned their charges of.  Apparently, a younger Liz Truss, now Tory prime minister of Great Britain, was once upon a time a firebrand for Britain's Liberal Democrats.

'We Liberal Democrats believe in opportunity for all.

'I was being interviewed by Newsnight earlier this afternoon and we were filmed asking members of the public what they thought about the Monarchy.

'We came across a group of three people. I'd say they were around 50, 60 [years of age]. [They] looked fairly middle class, rather smart and in fact rather reactionary to be perfectly frank.

'We asked them they're opinion of the Monarch, do you know what they said? They said: 'Abolish them. We've had enough'.'

She also went on to say during the same speech that she agreed with former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown on the Monarchy.

'I agree with Paddy Ashdown when he said: 'Everybody in Britain should have the chance to be a somebody,' she said in Brighton.

'But only one family can provide the head of the state. We Liberal Democrats believe in opportunity for all. We do not believe people are born to rule.

'We believe in referenda on major constitutional issues; we do not believe people should be born to rule, or that they should put up and shut up about decisions which affect their everyday lives.'

Asked when she realised she did not want to scrap the monarchy, she told reporters in Peterborough today: 'Almost immediately after I'd made that speech.

I lose track of what the lesser British political parties are, although it's possible that when "Labour" means "Socialist," "Liberal Democrat" might introduce some Scottish Enlightenment leavening into what otherwise might be the Hubert Humphrey position.  Moreover, inasmuch as Head of State is more ceremonial than substantive, why not make it hereditary?

Subsequently, she grew up.

When she was quizzed by the BBC's Nick Robinson on her former wish to abolish the Monarchy, she said: 'I think it's fair to say that when I was in my youth I was a professional controversialist and I liked exploring ideas and stirring things up.

'And I came from a left-wing background as I said my mother was in the campaign for nuclear disarmament.

'There are very few people at my school or who I met on a regular basis in fact, I could count them on one hand who you'd describe as right-wing.

'So I thought at the time, this is a totally different way of life, it doesn't represent the type of society I want to live in.

'And I began to understand more about why Britain is successful and part of our success is the constitutional monarchy that supports a free democracy.'

Britons have difficulties understanding U. S. politics, in part because there is no libertarian tradition as we understand it there.  What they have in common with the United States is too much confidence in credentialed elites.  Funnily, though, the credentialed elites don't like being called out on it.

Republicans have a “longstanding contempt for knowledge and expertise” in fields that include “history, public health, climate change, or ecology.” While writing her essay calling for denunciation of half of the country, [Michigan comparative literature professor Silke-Maria] Weineck argued that “colleges are not, in fact, left-wing institutions.”

“Rather, they are hierarchical operations largely dedicated to reproducing a social order that benefits the upper-middle class, liberals and conservatives alike,” she wrote.

She wrote that Republicans are “ready to wage open war with colleges, intent on confiscating the social capital they wield” and this “is a moment of considerable peril.”

Perhaps because universities are failing at their mission, but I digress.  Do the hundred or so institutions that claim to be in the U. S. News top 20 stand in opposition to the social order, or are they complicit in it?

The point of social hierarchy and aristocracy is to sustain a class system that makes the rest of us feel inferior. Those at the top of the social hierarchy hand out tokens for loyal service, including the Order of the British Empire (OBE). The monarchy is the bedrock of hereditary rule and inherited wealth. This caste system filters down from the Nazi-loving House of Windsor to the organs of state security and the military. It regiments society and keeps people, especially the poor and the working class, in their “proper” place.

The British ruling class clings to the mystique of royalty and fading cultural icons as James Bond, the Beatles and the BBC, along with television shows such as “Downton Abbey” — where in one episode the aristocrats and servants are convulsed in fevered anticipation when King George V and Queen Mary schedule a visit — to project a global presence. Winston Churchill’s bust remains on loan to the White House.

Funnily, author Chris Hedges uses his own credentials to suggest a tablemate at an Oxford event would otherwise have treated him badly.

I sat next to a former MP who asked me two questions I had never been asked before in succession. “When did your family come to America?” he said, followed by “What schools did you attend?” My ancestors, on both sides of my family, arrived from England in the 1630s. My graduate degree is from Harvard. If I had failed to meet his litmus test, he would have acted as if I did not exist.

That might say more about Mr Hedges than about his dinner companion.  Never mind that the Credentialed Intelligentsia have made a hash of public policy, and would have done so no matter whether the United Kingdom had a monarchy or not.

Meanwhile, new prime minister Truss is not off to the best policy start. "With each household and business able to offload its cost of high energy consumption on to taxpayers, each household and business will be shielded from the reality of energy scarcity."  Liberal Democrats (in the sense of Hubert Humphrey) would likely approve, though, of stipends to people confronting high fuel prices.