Thefact is that we are not going to find a uniquely New Zealandlanguage

Thefact is that we are not going to find a uniquely New Zealandlanguage for our constitution. We are not going to Rosetta Stone software come upwith a one-out of-the-box polity like the Swiss. It isperilous to imitate alien models without understanding thepolitical anthropology that underlies them. We must use thewisdom of the ages, the best practice of kindred nations toexpress ourselves, whatever we decide. What intellectualsand academics are not contributing to our New Zealand debateis the rich lore of political thought that a great NewZealander like John Pocock has expounded at Johns Hopkinsfor decades now or Quentin Skinner has propounded atCambridge. The master-scripts and meta-narratives for NewZealand's identity won't come from the intellectualequivalent of tariff barriers and trade protection that shutout the wider civilisation we belong to. We are not makingan Iranian nuclear programme here. It is good to watchCoronation Street and its OK to read and talk about QuentinSkinner. A civilisation is the higher term of a nation-stateand all we are doing is affiliating to what we like in thewider Anglo-American world, and appropriating whats ourown. Republicans then have to improve their game. Iconsider that the monarchists had the advantage of a cogentlanguage which they all knew in depth. The problem withtheir language is that it is basically archaic andtautological, its premises predict its conclusions, and whatwe heard was an argument deployed round and round in afigurex2013,eight railway track in a series of non-sequiturs thatdeny real-time development in the future and ignorehistorical change altogether. If we are to believe them,the monarchy is so atemporal, so eternal and so sovereign asto be as unchanging as God himself is, while New Zealand iscast in such a flux of time that it requires an unmovedmover as a reference point. But Rosetta Stone Spain Spanish the monarchy too is subjectto profound historical change. It is changing at the rate ofknots compared with the Japanese Emperorship, the Papacy oreven the US Presidency. Even the New Zealand PrimeMinistership as an institution has changed less since theage of King Dick and King Edward VII. Both the monarchistand republican arguments were presented in classical termswith little reference apart from the Treaty to actual NewZealand life. The debate was couched in the language andconcepts of the late 19th century. Both monarchies andrepublics have moved on since then. For example, as Ihave said today, I trust the sovereign people I share my NewZealand citizenship with, and I dont require a circuitconnector in the form of a monarchy to protect me or anyother citizens rights from yourselves and from thesovereignty of the people. Along with the remedies thatthe Law provides, the best protection for the rights of anyminority in a democracy such as ours is the goodwill andsupport of the informed majoritarian community. This issomething we do very well and if our democracy isn'thealthy, then no amount of clever institutional checks andbalances will avail. I suggest that both the monarchistsand the republicans suffer from the sheer success of TheQueen. She may not be as eponymous as Queen Victoria or theEmperor Franz-Josef in summing up generations of human timefor whole nations, but she has been an exemplary Head ofState, the very benchmark of what a New Zealand Head ofState Rosetta Stone English should be. We owe her the respect we would give a NewZealand Head of State if and when that time comes. We arenot Americans or Australians with hang-ups about monarchy.