The English aristocrats are not famous for being gentle, loving and caring
people.

Here is an article published in an English newspaper that I think
illustrates that?

I think it is a good example of the difference between the approaches of
the head and the heart; the mind and the intuition.

(I used to know someone who went to school with Prince Charles.
He described him as caring person.)

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This seemed a brutal observation from a kindly and temperate man, but he
went on to justify it: ‘We spend our lives here educating a new
–generation to understand that rational behaviour requires us to reach
conclusions and make –decisions by examining evidence.

‘Yet now we have the heir to the throne demanding — not in a –throwaway
remark, but in an entire book to which he has just put his name — that we
should reject science and evidence in favour of following our instincts.
This is surely disturbing.’

The Prince’s new book Harmony is indeed a startling piece of work. He
begins it by writing: ‘This is a call to revolution. “Revolution” is a
strong word, and I use it deliberately. For more than 30 years I have been
–working to identify the best solutions to the array of deeply entrenched
problems we face.

The Queen: She has never said a word to raise a hackle for almost 60 years

‘Having considered these questions long and hard, my view is that our
outlook in the Westernised world has become far too firmly framed by a
mechanistic approach to science.’

He continues: ‘This approach is entirely based upon the gathering of the
results that come from subjecting physical phenomena to scientific
experiment.’

Though the Prince says he does not dismiss all science as bosh, his book
is a call to arms against ‘the great juggernaut of industrialisation’
which he deplores.

Some of his phrases are –messianic: ‘I would be failing in my duty to
future generations and to the Earth itself if I did not attempt to point
this out and indicate possible ways we can heal the world.’

Obsessively convinced of his own rightness, he views his –critics with the
weary –resignation of an early Christian martyr: ‘It is probably
–inevitable that if you challenge the –traditions of conventional thinking
you will find yourself accused of naivety.’
Now, you may say it’s a fine thing we have an heir to the throne who cares
passionately about the planet and is determined to do something about it.
But what if his prescriptions are wrong?

At the heart of the Queen’s brilliant success for almost 60 years is that
we have been denied the slightest clue as to what she thinks about
anything but dogs and horses. Her passivity has been inspired, because her
subjects can then attribute any –sentiments they choose to her. She has
never said a word to raise a hackle.

Prince Charles, by contrast, wears his heart on his sleeve. He outraged
the medical –profession by bullying the last government into providing NHS
funding for his cherished homeopathic –medicine. This, doctors pointed
out, meant transferring tax–payers’ money from proven remedies to quackery
— panaceas for which there is no scientific evidence at all.
A leading breast cancer –specialist, Professor Michael Baum, wrote an open
letter to the British Medical Journal after the Prince suggested drinking
carrot juice and taking coffee bean enemas might help to –combat cancer.
The Professor furiously wrote that his own 40 years of study and 25 years’
involvement in cancer research might be thought to offer at least as solid
a basis for addressing this issue as the Prince’s ‘power and authority,
which rest on an –accident of birth’.

Charles makes many enemies with his views and his influence on government
decisions
The Government is –committed to trialling genetically modified crops,
which many agriculturalists think offer the best hope of feeding the
people of the world. But the Prince repeatedly –condemns GM as the devil’s
work — just as he opposes nuclear power and much –modern architecture.

Constitutionally, it’s –irrelevant whether his views are right or wrong:
by wading into –high-–profile controversies and using his status to
influence government decisions, he may please green enthusiasts, but he
also makes many enemies — some of them much more clever –people than
himself, who reject his ideas about how to better humanity.
In this way, he compromises the Royal Family.

A courtier recently said to me: ‘You shouldn’t worry about this. Charles
knows that from the day he becomes King, he must keep his mouth shut.’ But
in the same week, one of the Prince’s –intimate circle privately said:
‘The nation is ready for a –visionary monarchy.’
I believe that if the Prince and those around him think any such thing,
Charles would hit trouble as fast and hard as a truck –crashing into a
wall when he’s the occupant of the throne.
Nobody doubts that he is an honourable man who wants to do good. His
Prince’s Trust has made a remarkable contribution to helping the young get
started in trades and businesses.

Kate and Prince William: Polls want him to be the next king, bypassing his
father
But Charles insists upon addressing a range of issues wider and deeper
than any –mortal man — unless he has a mind of genius, as the Prince
certainly does not — can sensibly encompass. Some of his book reads like
the ravings of a Buddhist mystic.
I once incurred princely wrath by suggesting to him that he would be
judged by what he is rather than by what he does — that being heir to the
throne is not a government office.

Jeremy Paxman makes the same point in his book on –royalty: ‘The Prince
had –consistently misunderstood or ignored a basic truth at the heart of
the relationship between –royalty and the people.
‘He seemed to believe his significance lay in what he believed and did.
The truth was simply that his significance lay in who he was.’
An acquaintance of the Prince argued to me recently that we should not
worry about his behaviour because anybody who spends time with him quickly
sees that he is potty, and thus harmless.
I would agree — if his –eccentricities were confined to collecting
matchboxes or –dressing up as Napoleon.
But he is so set in his ways, so accustomed to not being contradicted —
because those who argue with him are swiftly expelled from his counsels —
that I am convinced that if he becomes King he will persist in trying to
save the world, and thus precipitate a crisis.
He craves the return of what he thinks was a happier, –simpler, more
‘natural’ world — for instance, he deplores inter–ference with primitive
tribes.

A person who knows him well says: ‘I used to think Camilla could sort him
out, but it’s too late. He’s a spoilt baby.’
He writes: ‘If we continue to engineer the extinction of the last
remaining indigenous, –traditional societies, we –eliminate one of the
last remaining sources of wisdom.’

He does not stop to ask what happens if the peoples of those indigenous
societies want TVs and mobile phones, or even medicines to save them from
some of the horrible diseases to which primitive man fell victim.
Rural grandees such as –himself may have enjoyed times past, but peasants
certainly did not.

The industrial growth which he hates has brought huge benefits to mankind.
He seems oblivious to the –tension between his grand vision about how
others should live and his personal financial profligacy; his enthusiasm
for using helicopters and keeping every light blazing in Clarence House at
all hours.
Now, he is not a bad man, but I think he is a very dangerous one for the
monarchy, if allowed to ascend the throne.

I remain apprehensive that his eagerness to become King derives from hopes
of using the position to promote his dotty causes. A person who knows him
well says: ‘I used to think Camilla could sort him out, but it’s too late.
He’s a spoilt baby.’
The Queen’s triumph — and that of Prince Philip, whose achievement is
often –underrated — has been rooted in a –discipline that Charles utterly
lacks.
For they recognise that being royal, far from allowing crowned heads to do
as they choose, makes it essential to exercise iron control over one’s
–every word and deed.
Prince Philip has occasionally committed indiscretions, but these are
trifling in a lifetime as consort. Some unkind things are said about the
royal –couple’s failure as parents. Yet their –contribution to our nation
far outweighs any domestic shortcomings.
The argument in royal circles now –concerns whether the Queen’s passive
style of monarchy will suffice for a new age.
When she ascended to the throne in 1952, Britain was a homogeneous white
country with a culture symbolised by beer, country churches, cricket, the
Radio Times and Miss Marple. Today, however, the ethnic and cultural
make-up of the nation is changing fast.

According to one projection, by 2051 the ‘white British’ –proportion of
the population will fall to 67 per cent, then decline to only 50 per cent
by the end of the century. A significant proportion of the children of
minorities will, meanwhile, become assimilated and adopt our traditional
values, perhaps including respect for the monarchy.

But it seems rash to expect too much, when the ‘white British’ are
diminishingly confident about what our values are.

They are scarcely churchgoing Christians. Even the Church of England is
racked with doubts about its own beliefs. That other great British
institution, the BBC, often seems more concerned with providing a platform
for minorities than with articulating the views of the majority.
If I was advising Prince –William and Kate Middleton, I would urge they
confine their public remarks to politeness and platitudes.
 
Even fish and chips are history. Tea is not the national opiate it once
was — if you asked for a ‘cuppa char’ in many fast-food places, the Polish
girl staring blankly across the –counter might think you were making an
indecent suggestion.
Some younger courtiers argue that a ‘more relevant’ monarchy will be
necessary, to engage with the new Britain. I suggest that they are wrong.
The best hope for the future is to maintain the Queen’s great tradition,
of being all things to all her subjects by remaining a smiling, but
silent, monarch.

In the days when royal –advisers occasionally sought my –opinions as a
newspaper editor, my –counsel was always the same: ‘Say nothing, say
nothing, say nothing.’ I thought the various– confessional interviews by
the Prince and Princess of Wales were –suicidal. Charles’ book –Harmony
can promote only disharmony around the throne.

If I was advising Prince –William and Kate Middleton, I would urge they
confine their public remarks to politeness and platitudes.

At all costs, I would –forswear interviews and documentaries designed to
reveal ‘the real William’ and ‘the real Kate’. For our sakes, as well as
theirs, we should not go there.
Modern kings and queens must remain distant symbols of glamour, beauty and
decency — or they become nothing. In the mid-21st century, as ever, once
the public knows too much, the magic will be gone.

Happily for us all, there is every reason to suppose that the Queen will
reign on for at least another decade. By then, it should be obvious that
it would be madness to allow a quirky, stubbornly opinionated and
contentious old man to assume the throne — that the best hope for
Britain’s –monarchy lies with William and Kate.
The most important task, meanwhile, is to prevent the media’s obsession
with the young royals from tarnishing or destroying the couple.
I remain optimistic that the monarchy will survive. While many British
people are indifferent to it today, few are actively hostile — a state of
affairs which reflects the Queen’s achievement.
But anyone who reads the Prince of Wales’ new book will have little doubt
that the chief peril to our royal institution in the decades ahead lies
within his well-meaning, muddled, woolly head.