The British tabloids are saturated with stories of how Michelle Obama broke with protocol by putting her arms and hand around Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth  II.  Did Michelle have BO or something? Were her hands contaminated? Exactly what is so special about Elizabeth that makes it permissible to touch her hand but not shake it? Seeing the Obamas standing stiffly and apart from her made me wonder about plain commoners versus blue-blooded royalty.  Does this woman have a greater share in humanity than the rest of us? What’s the real rationale behind all these protocols that seem to suggest that, standing beside this woman, we have unequal intrinsic moral worth and value in relation to her. I immediately think of the caste system in India.


Nowhere is the tarnishment of the self more evident than in the notion of Untouchability. The Untouchable (Dalit) in the Hindu caste system, identifiable by his community, is not only thought to be physically unclean. Indeed, the elaborate rituals that Untouchables undergo—sweeping behind them as they walk so that no higher caste will tread the same dust as they, assigned to specific occupational roles associated with contamination—could easily be remedied by attending to the hygiene of an Untouchable. But this is not the case. Not even a cleansing bath could erase his contamination and impurity.


There is some intrinsic feature that the Untouchable harbors by nature of his existence—it cannot be located anywhere, a smelly armpit, an unwashed crotch, uncombed and dirty hair, for example. This impurity that he harbors is not even the residual stains of a sinful life. If such were the case, then Untouchability might at least have the dignity of playing a redemptive role in social life. The Untouchable would atone for his sins by being scorned; his apartness would be punitive and rehabilitative. To be so set apart from the rest of humanity would restore in him an understanding of the importance of human sociability. But the Untouchable is robbed of any such rehabilitative possibility. He functions for others like a different species-being.


In a post-enlightenment age, in the age of liberal democracies, the idea of hereditary monarchy and hereditary chosennes seems downright illiberal and archaic.

Had Princess Diana married Dodi Al Fayed, her racially vague and somewhat androgynous pretty boy heartthrob, the future king of England would have had a "commoner" and a North African as a stepfather, which should make those of us who suffer from principled sickness of the notion of royalty and blue blood righteously pleased. We fail to understand how people can respect lineage more than individual moral character. Make no mistake, in an era in which the equal moral worth of all human beings regardless of background has become the staple of progressive moral and political thought, the British monarch -- indeed, the very idea of monarchy -- embodies the worst social ills that deplete any hope for civilized society: racism; sexism; ethnocentrism; and religious preference.


In a Vanity Fair article, Christopher Hitchens pointed out just how racist, sexist and ethnocentric the British criteria for becoming head of government are. The specifications are set forth in the 1701 Act of Settlement that stipulates that one has to be able to number oneself among the descendents of: "The Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess dowager of Hanover, daughter of the late Queen of Bohemia, daughter of King James the First, to inherit after the King and the Princess Anne, in default of issue of the said princess and his Majesty, respectively; and the heirs of her body, being Protestants."


Hitchens' article makes clear what is meant by the term "heirs of her body." It is dependent on the notion of primogeniture, which gives preference to sons over daughters, as well as the children of sons over the progeny of daughters. Therefore, Prince William is second in line to the throne while Princess Anne, his aunt and the Queen's second child, is tenth. To be head of state one must also be Protestant and a member of the Church of England. One must descend in the male line, and listen to this: One has to be ethnically German as far as possible. Ethnocracy, the genesis of so much destruction, is institutionally guaranteed longevity via the veins of the blue-blooded royals.


This is offensive because it is just plain backward. It is Germany that emerged as one of the most savagely tribal states of the 20th century. Until recent years, all those who aspired to German citizenship had to demonstrate German lineage as fully as possible. This ought to offend the moral sensibilities of all Americans who relish the idea of a civic as opposed to an ethnic form of nationalism. Ethnic Turks born and raised in Germany and schooled in the language and culture had less claim of citizenship than ethnic Germans born and raised in Russia and whose ancestors have lived in Russia for over 200 years. That such individuals can't speak a word of German is irrelevant. German laws are changing slowly and a residency of eight years is now required for naturalized citizenship.


Blood, that human body fluid most revered by a tribally minded people, is imbued with magical powers. Possession of a certain type guarantees the possession of all sorts of traits that are normally achieved by the rest of us through discipline and courage. (Similarly tyrannical and oppressive is the "one-drop rule" which identifies as black anyone with a shred of African ancestry, and that still holds sway in America.)
Perhaps I have a bias here. I am a product of a postcolonial island nation in the Caribbean. I've never lived under colonial rule and know little of its formal indignities. I continue to witness, however, the ghastly spectacle of a people who continue to see Her Majesty and all her progeny and their progeny as somehow representing a model of humanity that is innately better in some ineffable way. What is really sad is the failure to fully grasp the contradiction in the ideas of equality and human dignity that they hold dear and the values of monarchial lineage.


There is a conflict between the principles people rely on to make sense of their lives as creatures of inherent dignity and the ways in which their veneration or silence about an institution that is deeply at odds with such principles renders them cognitively immobile. Thomas Paine said, "The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; as absurd as an hereditary Poet Laureate."


The truth is that those who fail to abide by this fail to see how rotten to the core the idea of monarchy is today. Its corruption lies in the fact that it assumes a fundamental difference between the humanity we commoners possess and the humanity of a blue blood. The sorry thing about this, like the Catch 22 of original sin, is that most of us are accorded this share of a blighted inferior humanity before we have even a chance to achieve our humanity, let alone voluntarily corrupt it. No, we just have to be born. That's all. And so do they.