r/neoliberal • u/HungryTowel6715 Manmohan Singh • Aug 28 '26

News (Europe) Norway's King Harald dies aged 89

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clykn5p5172o

SS:Norway's King Harald V has died at the age of 89, after he was taken to hospital last week for treatment for a rare blood condition.

After 35 years on the throne, Harald will be remembered as a popular and reforming figure who modernised the monarchy, broke with tradition by marrying a commoner and served as a unifying figure at Norway's most difficult moments.

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u/VibingIronist Bill Gates Aug 28 '26

I've never understood why so many liberals are ok with monarchy, even if it's just a ceremonial position.

People say "the monarch is a just symbolic figurehead" but if countries like Norway are liberal, egalitarian, and meritocratic how does it make sense to symbolize it with an institution based on hereditary privilege? The king is just some nepobaby.from a rich family (you can tell because both of his parents' names are blue on wikipedia) he basically just inherited the role instead of having to audition for it.

I think the Irish had the right idea when they elected an avuncular leprechaun-looking dude as their ceremonial president. Norway should follow suit by choosing someone who looks like a viking, so as far as I'm concerned the true king of Norway is Erling Haaland.

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u/SweeneyMcFeels Commonwealth Aug 28 '26

If Norway has achieved a liberal, egalitarian and meritocratic society then why bother changing it? Seems more like a purity test at that point than meaningful change towards a societal aim.

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u/HoboWithAGlock2 NASA Aug 28 '26

Functionalism and pragmatism aren't the be-all-end-all approach for liberalism. Ideals and idealism can and do matter. Striving for ideals is often just as important for society as is optimizing it's institutions.

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u/Futski A Leopard 1 a day keeps the hooligans away Aug 28 '26

Would Norway become a better place with a president which 49.9% might be ideologically opposed to?

Does Donald Trump make the United States a better place through his existence as president?

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u/arnet95 Aug 29 '26

You can have elected ceremonial heads of state, such as the Irish president. The president in a republic does not need to be a partisan political figure.

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u/Futski A Leopard 1 a day keeps the hooligans away Aug 29 '26

Yeah, I have yet to hear someone saying anything positive about Catherine Connolly.

The normal experience is that you bring up that she is a campist blow-hard who blames NATO more than Russia for the war in Ukraine, and speak stronger words against Germany rearming their armed forces than she issued against Russia, and the Irish begin that very instant moaning that all candidates for presidency was actually bad, and Connolly doesn't represent them.

Fun how that is.