The best thing George Washington ever did was to refuse to become a King. We Americans, well, the US version of them, tend to be obsessed with nobility, most especially British (though it bears noting that our North American neighbors to the North have a Queen--the Queen of Canada, by the way, as well as Great Britain and our North American neighbors to the South, in Mexico, once had a Hapsburg Emperor.)
Now, we don't have "Titles" (though as a Kentucky Colonel, I have one: "The Honourable", the same kind of title I'd have as a junior son of a British peer but in my case, and in the case of hundreds of thousands of other Colonels like Oprah Winfrey and Ronald Reagan, the "title" was bestowed by an act of a directly elected legislature and Governor--in my case, Democratic Gov. Steven Beshear and is not hereditary) but we certainly have our own kind of pseudo-aristocracy: Bushes, Clintons and Kennedys come to mind.
However, our cousins across the Pond have hereditary peers, though much of that has been severely limited in terms of who can sit in the House of Lords in recent years--Even Lord Christopher Haden- Guest, the great actor and fifth Baron Haden-Guest, was forced out of the Lords in the late 90's.
Well, I opened up the New Yorker of December the Ninth the other day, and discovered that there is a feminist movement afoot amongst British Aristocracy demanding that first born daughters of aristocrats should inherit titles. More over the divider-doodle...
Lauren Collins, of The New Yorker has an interesting article about the efforts of Lady Liza Campbell, the second daughter of Hugh Campbell, 6th Earl Cawdor who doesn't even use her title. But she's got the Lords all a-twitter on this issue. She thinks the eldest daughters of peers should inherit titles, especially in families where there are no boys, and she's making quite a stink.
In the article, she's quoted as saying that another noble suggested that her quest is a "social suicide-note" and that "In their minds, I'm some shouty lesbian madwoman".
I think it's not a coincidence that she's a Scot, but she and her cohort seems determined. But in so doing, she also demonstrates the great blessing bestowed upon this country by the rejection of Britian and monarchy as expressed by one of her compatriots, Lady Victoria Lambert:
"It goes all the way through society--to farmers, to everyone. It isn't just confined to aristocrats. And, until we do this, it will go on, because the influence goes through society from the top down (emphasis mine.)
Britain and the United States are becoming more alike every day.