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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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The cultural distance between a 21st century British aristocrat and a Pakistani cab driver in Lahore, is less than the cultural distance between a 21st century British aristocrat and a 19th century British aristocrat. For starters, 19th century British aristocrats didn't go to Wimbledon. Also, they believed in a religion that no longer exists in the 21st century.

I don't think that religion has ceased to exist to the extent you are suggesting - my experience is that actual aristocrats in England are disproportionately either trad-Catholic (like Jacob Rees Mogg, but less unhinged) or old-time Anglicans whose faith would have been perfectly comprehensible to the high-Church Victorians. The late Queen was mildly exceptional in being a more evangelical kind of Anglican, but the royals were always slightly declasse compared to the established English noble families. (Note that even Victorian high-Church Anglicanism was something American evangelicals would have considered cucked).

One area where the old-time religion has largely ceased to exist (at least for Protestants and American Catholics) is that even the more conservative branches of Christianity struggle to condemn divorce and take it seriously. The British Aristocracy divorce less than American elites (particularly Red Tribe elites), but often enough for it to be embarrassing.

Chins do love to joke about the royal family being upper-middle class, although I don’t know how seriously they actually take that line of argument.

The version I am more familiar is that they are parvenus, having come over from Hanover in the 18th century. This is only partially fair - the late Queen comes from old-established Scottish aristocracy on her mother's side, and of course the Prince of Wales comes from bona fide English upper class stock through the Spencers.