An Honour System for the USA

Which, if any POTUS, could brought in an honour system? I not talking about making someone a Lord or Duke, but more along the lines of an MBE/OBE or Knighthood. Would it be more likely before or after 1900 and if so who's the most likely and why?
As always, over to you.
 
Which, if any POTUS, could brought in an honour system? I not talking about making someone a Lord or Duke, but more along the lines of an MBE/OBE or Knighthood. Would it be more likely before or after 1900 and if so who's the most likely and why?
As always, over to you.

It sounds doubtful, particularly if you use a conservative interpretation of Article I Section 9 of the Constitution. Part of the reason the nobility clause was added was to prevent "foreign influence", so "original intent" types will not be fond of this. Using a constitutional convention POD would pretty much be cheating, so maybe we need a closet Anglophile president for this to work. If the POD is too late, the current system of stuff like the Medal of Honor is already in place.

This is a difficult challenge. :eek:

I don't want to scream "Alien Space Bats!" like too many of our posters here, so let's find out. A variant John Adams presidency maybe could work? He suggested "His Highness" as a title for the president. . .

In 1810, however, a proposed amendment would have stripped citizenship from anyone receiving a foreign title. They did NOT want their republic to have any trappings of monarchy.

*Has thoroughly ransacked Wikipedia for information*
 
It sounds doubtful, particularly if you use a conservative interpretation of Article I Section 9 of the Constitution. Part of the reason the nobility clause was added was to prevent "foreign influence", so "original intent" types will not be fond of this. Using a constitutional convention POD would pretty much be cheating, so maybe we need a closet Anglophile president for this to work. If the POD is too late, the current system of stuff like the Medal of Honor is already in place.

This is a difficult challenge. :eek:

I don't want to scream "Alien Space Bats!" like too many of our posters here, so let's find out. A variant John Adams presidency maybe could work? He suggested "His Highness" as a title for the president. . .

In 1810, however, a proposed amendment would have stripped citizenship from anyone receiving a foreign title. They did NOT want their republic to have any trappings of monarchy.

*Has thoroughly ransacked Wikipedia for information*

The whole thing is I am not saying anything like 'Your Highness' just the 'everyday' honours. The POTUS could become a knight or someone like Bill gates could become Sir Bill because of his work outside of Microsoft.
 
Which, if any POTUS, could brought in an honour system? I not talking about making someone a Lord or Duke, but more along the lines of an MBE/OBE or Knighthood.

An obvious model is the French Legion d'Honneur. Though of monarchical origin (founded by Napoleon, continued by the restored Bourbons and Napoleon III), it was continued by the Second and Third Republics. Thus it is compatible with "republican values". Anyone who was anybody in France got "decorated".

Would it be more likely before or after 1900 and if so who's the most likely and why?

Teddy Roosevelt seems the most likely, although he was more of a Germanophile than a Francophile. But having a means for the formal, organized, systematic, official recognition of "civic merit" seems very much to fit with "Progressive" thinking in its more authoritarian flavor.
 
There are presently several civilian awards and decorations. Most have only been around since the middle of the last century. I think that it would take a POD in which Independence from GB is achieved amicably and peacefully for a UK-like honor system to evolve here. Even then, there probably would never be an order of chivalry established here. How does the Canadian system of orders, decorations, and medals compare to the British honour system?

From Wikipedia:
Awards and decorations of the United States government are civilian awards of the U.S. federal government which are typically issued for sustained meritorious service, in a civilian capacity, while serving in the U.S. federal government. Certain U.S. government awards may also be issued to military personnel of the United States Armed Forces and be worn in conjunction with awards and decorations of the United States military. In order of precedence, those U.S. non-military awards and decorations authorized for wear, are worn after U.S. military personal decorations and unit awards and before U.S. military campaign and service awards.

The following is a selection of civilian awards which are presently issued by the U.S. government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awards_and_decorations_of_the_United_States_government
 
A few US state have a bit of an honors system IOTL. Kentucky Colonels are the best-known example (started out as honorary rank in the state militia and evolved into something very like a modern knighthood in the UK), and then there's the more tongue-in-cheek honor of Nebraska Admiral.
 
The USA still isn't really centralized enough to make a national honours system make sense; as has already been pointed out, we DO give national medals, decorations and memberships, and by and large the public neither knows nor cares about any of them. Arguably, the USA is too big for ordinary people to really care about the nation as a whole, and for the holders of these awards to actually get national privileges (tax exemption, security exemption, what have you) would require a national government as powerful and complex and capricious as the far right wing imagines it to be.

On a state level, though, I can imagine it. Washington, Jefferson and company hand out the Order of Virginia to deserving soldiers etc of the Revolution, and determined not to be outdone, New York and Massachusetts do similarly while the Carolinas start actually calling people knights...a true national hero would have a dozen states' highest honors, thus, and special legal privileges in those states. Perhaps some of the southern ones get disbanded during Reconstruction, so that Virginia and New York become the only two worth noting after a while? (I assume an order started by Washington himself would be left alone even when Virginia rebels).
 
You did have private organizations like the Society of the Cincinnati that popped up after the war (and Wikipedia claims that they caused a minor furor over accusations that they were an attempt to create a new hereditary nobility). Possibly do something with that?
 
Which, if any POTUS, could brought in an honour system? I not talking about making someone a Lord or Duke, but more along the lines of an MBE/OBE or Knighthood. Would it be more likely before or after 1900 and if so who's the most likely and why?
As always, over to you.

I think it would have to be Republican titles. Consul or stuff like that.

A related thread you may want to check out:

www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=281712
 
Top