Tea at Trianon: Flagging the Debate

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, October 23, 2015

Flagging the Debate

They want to change the New Zealand flag. Here is a discussion from a fabulous new blog, Reid's Reader:

Facebook and other social media in New Zealand are awash with the debate about changing the flag. To my shame, I have a couple of times added my own hasty and ill-considered comments to all the other hasty and ill-considered comments with which New Zealand’s cyberspace is almost choked. The time is long overdue for a more reasoned consideration of the matter.

First, let’s set aside speculation on whether the whole thing has been cooked up opportunistically by the prime minister, in order to distract us from more weighty matters. While this may be a reasonable speculation, it’s no more than saying that politicians act to their electoral advantage, which is kind of inevitable. Complaints about the cost of the exercise have some weight, but the best counter-argument to seeking designs for a new flag is the fact that there has not yet been a referendum to discover whether there is a solid majority for change in the first place. This should have been the first step in any flag-changing process.

Having said this, though, and realising that the project is now underway willy-nilly, I express my approval for changing the flag.

I used to argue that we should change the constitution before we change the flag. My own preference is for a New Zealand republic. But as long as the Queen of England is also the Queen of New Zealand, and hence our head of state, then it seemed to me that having the Union Jack on the flag actually meant something. It points to a continuing constitutional reality. My argument was that the Union Jack should be removed only when it no longer had any relationship with New Zealand’s political identity. But it was pointed out to me, correctly, that Canada changed its old flag with great success fifty years ago, and yet it still has the Queen as its head of state. So, much as I dislike our current constitutional arrangement, I accept that the flag can be changed for reasons of national identity, regardless of our ongoing subservient constitutional status.

Besides, there is the glaringly obvious fact that most of the world cannot tell the difference between the New Zealand flag and the Australian flag, even though New Zealand declined to become part of the Australian federation over a century ago. (Read more.)