Charles Stuart

(fm the BC thread "Pentup-gram")

Sertorius,
Interesting theory but I think that you do an injustice to Charles.
He genuinely loved his kingdom and was sincere in his efforts to protect what he believed to be the Englishman's Liberties which had been entrusted to him. At his death he proclaimed, "I Am the Martyr of the People." He took the integrity of the justice system seriously and would have agreed with Francis Bacon that his judges were "lions under the throne." Cromwell himself treated the King with deference and was treated with courtesy. The failures that lead to his death 361 years and 9 days ago and the death of many others are real and your indictment of him on that score stands but I think that Charles Stuart himself was capable of recognizing and regretting those errors in a way that Barack Obama never could.

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Sertorius,
Concur with your position. It is possible that Charles was actually more in tune with the spirit of the age, just not with the spirit of his location. Cromwell has been described as a Tudor Grandee writ large and painfully out of place with an age of absolute monarchs and international intrigue supported by faceless bureaucrats. By force of personality he came from nowhere to take power, as did his distant cousin Henry Tudor who became Henry VII. He probably spared England the Europeanization that would otherwise have happened or at least postponed it a few hundred years. In a reversal of roles the heirs of the Whigs are now the Labour Europhiles. Obama is the would be absolute Prince, without any of Charles' personal virtues, whose supporters prefer the sophisticated Metropole to their rustic neighbors.

Habu,
Would that include Jomini, Sun Tzu, etc…
I can read all those foreigners in phonetics as well as anyone, I just don't know what they mean.

Jomini is an under used treasure. Most just read a 3 page excerpt from Clausewitz and think they are scholars.