Dear Queen Liz (if I may be so presumptuous),
I write with a simple purpose -- to plead with you to reverse more than two centuries of history and bring your former colonies back into the fold.
This request doubtlessly comes as something of a shocker, but my reasoning is simple. Present goings-on prove that we cannot sensibly manage our own affairs.
Turn the clock back to the reign of George III, your great-great-great-great-great-etc. grandfather. In 1776, when the 13 colonies declared their independence, many of those living here believed this action to be precipitous and foolish. During the first years of the new republic, some leading figures in the Federalist Party argued that independence was a mistake. They pined for monarchy as the only way to restore stability in a country they judged as immature. The 1794 Jay Treaty, which gave England much of what it wanted in order to avoid another war, revealed the depth of the party's attachment to the home country.
While it has taken us a long time to realize it, those Federalists knew what they were talking about. What was seen as the great American experiment-the belief that we could form the first democracy in modern times -- turns out to be a failure.
Two hundred forty years ago, a band of disgruntled colonials dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston harbor. That tea party became an iconic event in our history, a tale told to every American schoolchild. Today's Tea Party, which counts scores of federal officeholders as members, sees itself as the righteous heir to that movement. But while the colonists were at least partly in the right (you and I, Liz, can debate that point at another time), today's Tea Party is nothing more than a gang of extortionists who are holding the country for ransom.
Am I exaggerating how bad things are? Hardly. Consider what the inmates are doing in the nation's capital. There, the Republican snollygosters and ultracrepidarians -- that's fancy language for Ted Cruz and his blind-sheep followers -- are running the show. The fact that barely one American in five approves of the GOP doesn't faze these radicals. They have simply shut shop -- what's even worse, they agitate against raising the debt ceiling. When a Florida Congressman Ted Yoho, a large-animal veterinarian with a name worthy of a Dickens character, insists that not paying our bills will "bring stability to the world markets," you begin to sense how truly wretched is the state of our politics.
There is contemporary precedent for the measure I propose. In 1975, your representative in Australia dismissed the Prime Minister and appointed the leader of the opposition party in his stead. While some Australians howled -- they were irate that ultimate power over their affairs resided not with them but in Buckingham Palace -- that decision stuck.
In light of our present crisis, I urge you to go a step further: revoke the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which secured our independence, and bring this madness to an end by restoring a rule of sanity. Perhaps a few years of life in David Cameron's brave new Britain will bring us to our senses, and we will be fit to govern ourselves once again. But until then, Queen Liz, we beseech you to take us back.
Signed,
Your faithful servant, Publius
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post indicated that the Declaration of Independence took place during the reign of George II. It took place during the reign of George III.