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A member of the British monarchy stands stripped of his ruling titles for the first time since World War I, and the scandalous circumstances leading to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s humiliation, as well as the substance of the king’s response, are worth the attention of all Americans.

King Charles III issued a terse statement last month that initiated the formal process of removing  “the Style, Titles and Honours” of royalty from the disgraced Prince Andrew. Additionally, Andrew will be evicted from the Royal Lodge he has occupied essentially for free for two decades.

The king is responding to more than a decade of sex-abuse allegations lodged against his younger brother. Earlier this year, Andrew’s primary accuser, Virginia Giuffre, took her own life. Her memoir, published posthumously this fall, included new details concerning the connection between Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein, and many believe it was the final impetus for King Charles’ action. 

The weight of the king’s decision is indisputably grave, for it places the entire person and legacy of Andrew into the company of the most reviled men in English culture: those who have betrayed their fatherland. The last time a royal was stripped of his titles was in 1919, when King George V dethroned Prince Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, for conspiring with Germany during World War I. Removing the titles from a member of the royal family is a punishment reserved for those few men who not only betray their country and its creed but do so for their own self-interest.
John of Salisbury, the medieval theologian who gave us the idea of the body politic, writes in his “Policraticus” that “To be cast down from honor is to be cast out from the body politic, as a limb severed from its place.” Andrew’s punishment and eviction is a societal amputation, a reminder that transgression of public morality demands a heavy price. 

Charles’ treatment of Andrew underscores a lesson that too many American leaders have either forgotten or are afraid to teach. To maintain a healthy social order, we must laud the virtuous actions that benefit the common good, and simultaneously, firmly and publicly condemn evil actions. As a body of organic communities, every country must by necessity uphold a clearly defined morality, for like any body,  it must be governed and judged according to some criteria of moral certainty.

Charles’ actions remind us that no social order can exist without a mechanism for not just carrying out public punishment, but public disgrace on moral grounds. The burden of initiating such opprobriums weighs upon every government to rule in our imperfect world. To enact such a public reproach, as Charles has done, is not a matter of arbitrary choice — it is one of sacred duty.

In America, given the alarming revelations from the Nov. 14 Epstein correspondence cache, we ought to examine our national conscience accordingly.  Like England, we have prominent public figures — American royalty, if you will — whose personal actions mirror the hideous deeds of the disgraced former prince. Unlike England, we don’t have a monarchy with titles and palaces that can be stripped away with the swift motion of a royal pen. But we have other reproaches we can enact, both in the private and public sphere. Whether or not we take action will, for good or for ill, etch a moral character on the slate of American life and public morality which cannot be easily scrubbed away. 

America isn’t England. But justice and her demands transcend national identities and contexts. Charles has taken a momentous step towards the reassertion of public morality and civic dignity in the United Kingdom. Will our country follow suit? 

Frederick Woodward is a junior studying political economy.