Kings and Taxes Blog 7

Europe is so beautiful, it seems like everywhere you turn there is an amazing cathedral or an ancient castle.  I've heard it said many times (and made the comment myself more than once) "Why don't we have anything this gorgeous in America!  America is so boring!"  I've thought about why we have nothing that rivals the Opera House in Paris or Notre Dame...do Americans really lack appreciation for art and creating beautiful things?  Then finally it hit me: there is nothing wrong with us Americans, the problem is: we haven't had any kings.  

What? I know what you are thinking, of course we haven't had any kings we are a free country!  Down with the monarchy, hooray for Republics, and the right to vote!  And I'm not proposing that monarchies are better than democracy, but after going on tours of a a whole lot of these amazing castle structures I've heard one phrase repeated over and over "and King so and so had this built in the blah blah century...to try to upstage the stuff his dad had built..."  So what I have realized is that Kings are the only people who ever decide to build cathedrals that take a hundred years of work and a million laborers.  And the people built them, because they didn't have a choice!  

Think about what would happen today if our President decided to use TAX PAYER MONEY to build something like that!  The people would revolt!  And that is exactly what happened in France, and now that they have a republic they aren't making any new cathedrals...I can still appreciate the beauty of these structures, I honestly love looking at them, but now I can also see the greed seeping through the walls like dirty mortar.  How dare those kings spend all their money on this kind of stuff when people were starving?  And these people paid for it and didn't even have the right to say that maybe the floor didn't need done in all gold mosaic because it would be more cost efficient!

So next time I start to complain about the lack of man-made beauty in America, I remind myself of the cost of the beauty here.  And I remember that as long as we are a free country, we will never see building like this in America, but I hope our taxes are being put to a better use.