Monarchism is, fundamentally, an ‘infantile disorder’. Lenin might have put that phrase to the anarchists, but I think it is equally as incisive about the worshippers of the Crown.
This peacock fluffing about ‘constitutional monarchy’ is mere Empiricism about how political structures are formed. I have said this elsewhere: it amounts to saying, ‘just because this is where we have arrived, this is where we should stay’.
Hume’s muddling continues to loom large over the thinking of the British. Isn’t it fundamental to being British to love the Crown?
Australians, stand up and say:
‘I am not your British slave! I was sacrificed at the altar of Gallipoli, by the hand of Churchill! I was slaughtered–the flower of my generation!’
Indeed! I do not count myself as British. Honestly, do you? Do the British inspire you so?
Let us dream bigger: Why not the socialist republic? The self-action of the masses in their workplaces and communities! Why don’t we look deep inside ourselves and say:
‘We should go to the assemblies! We should seek that socialist Democracy that is lasting; edifying; fulfilling!’
Let’s reach into the future, instead. Our leaders: gormless, muttering, they shuffle this-way-and-that. Are they usurpers–would they be king?–Or are they slaves themselves–Hands tied to the rack?
Who can tell? And really, does it matter?
No-one in Australia pays much mind to Indonesia, that mighty Republic borne of slavery and struggle.
We fought on their side against the Dutch, and then promptly forgot about them. No-one in australia knows about Sukarno’s Pancasila. No-one much cares about Indonesia–I’ve been to Bali too! Ha!
The five principles of Pancasila are the touchstone of the Indonesian people, who, you may be totally unconcerned to know, continue to flourish. Indonesians are known as the ‘smiling people’. They greet each other by placing their hands on their hearts. I believe this only happens every four years by that klepocrat, the new President of the United States of America. On a podium, to an obsequious clapping crowd.
Anyway, let us state them. Like all beautiful systems, it is able to be enumerated:
(Belief in the one and only God)
(Just and civilized humanity)
(The unity of Indonesia)
(Democracy guided by the inner wisdom in the unanimity arising out of deliberations among representatives)
(Social justice for the whole of the people of Indonesia)
I place each translation below these beautiful ideas not in a reckless attempt to let the English have the final say in the expression of their sense. I place them below the endlessly lyrical Bahasa Indonesia.
Isn’t Indonesia a Republic? I ask this in the same sense as one would rebuke an interlocutor: And it has not yet fallen!
Don’t the people here, who are taught to know and love these ideas, exhault a unity-in-diversity completely missing beneath the boot of British imperialism?
By contrast, dour, like Victorian Businessman, doesn’t the Australian Constitution state with staggering ineloquence:
WHEREAS the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established:
And whereas it is expedient to provide for the admission into the Commonwealth of other Australasian Colonies and possessions of the Queen:
Be it therefore enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:
&c. &c.
What servile, puny minds we Australians have. Where do we even refer to ourselves as masters of our own destinies? It is a sad thing Henry Parkes did not live a little longer. Perhaps the Australian Constitution might have had a single word–the tiniest ink-jot–of romance in it.
No. I am not British.
Down with the Monarchy!
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Call me a Sukarnite if you must. But, if you do, know I place you among the Indonesian people as a sun bleached brained Australian Tourist.