As a radical Democrat of a Jeffersonian persuasion, I’m no fan of hereditary privilege. But if anyone could make a monarchist of me, it would be Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, aka Queen Elizabeth II.
Her death at 96 today ends an extraordinary, epoch-spanning reign of 70 years. She was a teenaged princess during the Blitz, when Great Britain stood alone against the merciless Nazi war machine. On turning 16, she donned a uniform and served as a truck mechanic until the allied victory over Germany in 1945.
She ascended to the throne in 1952, in time to reign over the dissolution of the British Empire and its eclipse by the superpowers. On her watch came the long, pinched years of post-war deprivation, the nerve-wracking tensions of the Cold War and nuclear brinkmanship, and the outbreak of sectarian terrorism in Northern Ireland.
Of course, it wasn’t all trail and tribulation. The 1960s brought a tremendous explosion of art, comedy, theater, and music that produced the Beatles and the British Invasion and made “swinging London” a global capital of popular culture.
Margaret Thatcher, the end of the Cold War, Tony Blair and the Third Way, Brexit — through all the ups and downs and social churn, Queen Elizabeth was the constant, the sturdy embodiment of constitutional and cultural continuity. Hers was a reassuring role, and she played it bravely, intelligently, and with the old-fashioned virtue of grace.
My sympathies to her family and subjects. Elizabeth wasn’t America’s queen — but some of us will miss her, too.