NorthOfNorth wrote on May 25^th, 2011 at 8:28pm:




Australia is the next golden state:
http://www.economist.com/node/18744197?story_id=18744197&fsrc=rss

Monarchism as a rule (pun intended) is the epitome of racism. It does matter what race of people have a constitutional monarchy - it is an exceptional example of a race of peoples establishing the "ideal" of their race. It's why you will find very few examples of inter-racial marriages either in existence now or in the past. (fill in space of desired race colour) prince marries (same colour) princess.

Remove monarchism as the head of the government and abolish hereditary title and you confirm that all are equal and no-one is born with more privilege or favour than another. Uphold monarchism and you are a racist by the very belief you hold dear - no matter whether you are British, Thai, Brunist, Scottish, German, Iranian, Japanese, Mongolian or Zulu.

Republicanism is the antithesis of monarchism - equality amongst all the citizens before the law of the land could never be applied to a form of governance where some have more "rights" than others.

However, republicanism can not truly exist without first enacting a bill of rights that ensures all laws written by the government have to conform to a framework where no citizen can have more "rights" than another.

Give me a Bill of Rights first then a Monarchist society can no longer exist. A Bill of Rights sucks the oxygen out of Monarchism. A Bill of Rights ensures that it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone who is a part of the society to be endowed through birth with more "rights" than anyone else.

Anyone who truly wishes for an egalitarian society through a republic first advocates and agitates for a Bill of Rights.


A Bill of Rights also has some other equally interesting properties such as

The rights of a legal entity could no longer override those of a human
All acknowledged privileges, titles, ceremonial orders and partnerships (including marriges) would have to be made available equally to all citizens irregardless of race creed colour, sexual orientation or religion.
The existent rights of our indigenous forebears would have to be in the whole acknowledged as existent prior to the establishment of the transient government of Monarchism - land rights would no longer have to be proven to exist, the reverse would be true.
Religious schools and institutions would no longer be able to demand government subsidy.
All religions would have to accepted as bona fide.
There are probably a whole raft of changes that would have to be repealed to formally comply with a "Bill of Rights" - however unless your one of the privileged few in this country your net worth will increase and your ability to determine how the government responds to societies needs through enacting of legislation to "benefit" us will be formally shaped through the structure of a regulatory framework that ensures no government or authority encroaches upon your rights without your explicit wholehearted agreement through the ballot box. For example - it would be impossible to enact Laws that were brought in by both successive labour and liberal governments under the guise of national security.


EOR

Prolly a few typos - sorry for that but I think I posted the gist of what I wanted to get across.

Grey wrote on Aug 5^th, 2011 at 3:03am:



Good to see that you argue against Australia having a codifed set of human rights like every other democratic country by ignoring everything except the one anomoulous 'right' in a single country's laws.

Now if you had formulated a valid and rational argument to show how Australia, alone in the western democracies, was  coreect and all others was wrong you might have had something.

BTW how do you know you have something if it isn't written down and is easily accessible?

I have yet to have any anti-codified rights advocates show me where our rights are, so far they 'just are'.

Australia is a land of obligations and priveledges that ebb and flow with the whims of our political masters; I personally would like something more than that.

What are you obliquely referring to when you stone made in stone /already there/just need to take it Ammad. Could you state explicitly what you are referring to please?

I'm definitely pro-republic. I love the UK, have a lot of family there and I've spent a lot of time there and feel very connected to it personally. But come on, the days of the empire are over. When you think about it it's completely ridiculous that we still have the Queen as our Head of State. And yes she is our head of state... it's not the GG, lol. Our constitution is completely retarded, the PM and C isn't even in it for god's sake, neither is local government and a whole crap load of other things. When people argue that we could have less rights and we need the safe guards that the queen gives us, that really makes me want to vomit. As though the people can't be trusted and we need some overarching unelected protector. I think people are seriously delusional about what rights they actually have now. Victoria has a bill of rights, but it's just ridiculous that the federal government doesn't. NT intervention anyone? Racial discrimination? Oh, nevermind, we'll just temporarily suspend that so we can go in and take a dump on peoples rights. The only thing that's stopping us from becoming a republic is that we can't settle on the model. I don't want a bloody American Republic, their congress is a complete joke. But people have this idea that we must have a directly elected president. And apparently we've decided that we'll just wait until the queen shuffles off, which could be god knows how long anyway. But I think it's pretty inevitable that we'll become a republic eventually.

I think that the notion that Australians are insecure is a rubbish argument.

We know exactly who we are where we are and what we do and are in general very happy and comfortable with our current position.

No need to change one meaningless tag for another in order to resolve a problem which does not exist.

Dnarever wrote on Aug 6^th, 2011 at 7:23pm:

There's not much doubt that we Australians are insecure about our place in the world... As observed by many outsiders (oh to see ourselves as other people do eh!) and made more obvious by our voracious appetite for another country's culture (currently American) which includes following them (rightly or wrongly - because, really, when you're in someone's pocket it's the pocket owner who's doing the walking) into nearly every war the US has fought since WW2.

We Australians are secure in the way drunk sailors are secure on a ship in calm waters... Until it hits a reef...