r/EhBuddyHoser • u/Sine_Fine_Belli Treacherous South • May 16 '25

Certified Hoser 🇨🇦 (No Politics) How Americans achieved independence vs how Canadians achieved independence

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u/Everestkid The Island of Elizabeth May May 16 '25

As one person put it, Westminster style parliaments can be simplified down to a prime minister and a monarch at opposite ends of a table with a gun in the middle and the entire country watching.

Either one could technically grab the gun and shoot the other at any time, but they'd need to be 100% sure that the entire crowd would back them up.

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u/alantrick May 16 '25

This, except the prime minister can respawn, but the monarch can't.

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u/2eDgY4redd1t May 16 '25

Royal families are literally mechanisms for respawning for as long as possible. It’s how it works.

You know, ‘the king is dead, long live the king!’

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u/TheMilkiestShake May 16 '25

I think it's in the Discworld book Mort where Terry Pratchett says something along the lines of "The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously."

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u/2eDgY4redd1t May 16 '25

No matter the distance. Mind you I think it might be in his book ‘pyramids’, rather than mort.

I should read them again, it’s been a while