Considering what the Tudors, et al, did to Ireland--and what the Hanoverians did to spread the "Empire" around the Globe, I pretty much hate the institution of the monarchy. I think England would be a much different place today if they'd let their kings die with Charles I and never have gone through a Restoration (course I blame Cromwell and his roundhead zealots for that). Although the US has much to answer for in re. its imperialism and exploitation of various peoples (not to mention the virtual genocide of the Native Americans), it pales in comparison to the global hegemony practiced by the Empire from the 17th to 20th Centuries. In fact, much of the world is still f***ed up (like the Middle East, Iraq, deliberately divided up by Churchill to be unstable) because of British rule. I guess you can't blame a monarchy for all those things, but those empty-headed twits represent the system. Bush's vacuity during Katrina is nothing compared to Victoria and the British response to the Irish potato famines in the 1840s. Victoria and her ministers allowed one million Irish die and essentially forced another million to immigrate (depopulating almost one fourth of the island). While it wasn't a systematic genocide like the Jewish holocaust under the Nazis, it makes George Bush look like Mother Teresa.
But I still love the Beatles (who had alot of Celtic blood in them), but Paul should never have written that silly song or accepted that silly knighthood, considering what the Empire did to his Irish forebears.