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COMMENTARY
August 27, 2011
Queen & country
Various people have weighed in, on the restoration of the old "royal" names of our armed forces, with easy sarcasm from those of the republican propensity. Those in favour (a good majority so far as I can see from silly Internet polls) have said little. I, perhaps, wrote the most lurid defence of the Harper government's decision, for I was writing consciously on behalf not only of many serving in our armed forces today, but also in memory of veterans who went to their graves somewhat heartbroken at what I called "the bureaucratic takedown of their battle standards"; my father and grandfather among them.As I wrote, the attempt to obviate Canada's monarchy began with the "Pearson pennant." It announced a campaign to replace the traditional symbolic order of our country with a new one, designed by marketing professionals around the red maple logo. The Canadian identity remains, however, bound up in our system of Crown-in-Parliament. In substance, that, and that alone, distinguishes us from the Other Americans in the great republic to our south. The surviving, pre-revolutionary Catholic order of French Canada enhanced this distinction, but for all practical purposes it is gone, and the chauvinists in contemporary Quebec can adduce only language. But Spanish is nearly as prevalent in the U.S. as French in Canada, and McDonald's franchises can adapt perfectly well to any language. That French, from its own more Latinate genus, offers potentially greater precision in the framing of laws, is an advantage we never seized upon. Our laws were mostly English before French translation; more recently "bilingual" with all the slurring that implies. They should have been drafted in French, with translations in English. Other parts of the government service would operate more efficiently in English; with some traditionary functions in Latin, and some native Indian and Inuit expressions for pure flourish. Suffice to say, we passed over the possibilities of lanuage from the beginning, so it canot be an issue now. Our system of government is different from those in the other North American polities, and to my view is much superior to them. An essentially unicameral legislature, with prime minister and cabinet answering directly to a formal opposition, has the capacity to move quickly and decisively in times of pressing need. It is not a cat's cradle of mutually sabotaging checks and balances. Yet it had two important checks: the Senate, and the Monarchy. These were not accidental provisions of the British North America Act, included only for reasons of sentiment, or in the hope of retaining Imperial military protection. No solid history is taught in our schools, or Canadians today would be more aware that our Fathers of Confederation were meeting in the shadow of the American Civil War, in full review of the fate of what we might reasonably call "the First American Republic." They therefore carefully considered the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. Constitution. In particular, the retention of the Monarchy, and the provision of an appointive and not elected Senate, were done in direct response to what our own founders considered errors of judgment by the U.S. founders. They produced a Hamiltonian constitution, free of bombast, concerned even more with the preservation of liberty, and even less with the extension of democracy. As Alexander Hamilton put it: "If government is in the hands of the few, they will tyrannize over the many; if in the hands of the many, they will tyrannize over the few." The task was to prevent the rise of demagogues and dictators, while retaining unity. And as Gouverneur Morris, the learned "penman of the [U.S.] constitution," put it: "If the legislative authority be not restrained, there can be neither liberty nor stability. However the legislative power may be formed, it will, if disposed, be able to ruin the country." Our Senate was conceived as a brake on demagoguery in the House of Commons. Not as a way to block the public will, but to delay it sometimes, for "sober second thought." And our Monarch, acting locally through the governor general, was placed to referee any contest of wills. Constitutional limitations on the Crown were incidentally not an invention of the British, acting upon some (imaginary) long history of absolute monarchs. "Divine right" kings were an unfortunate innovation of the Reformation period, tarted up with false precedents; behind that lies a thousand years of medieval trial-and-error, consistently assuming limits on the monarch, and always seeking ways to represent the broad diversity of class, ethnic, and other interests within each state, to prevent one group from tyrannizing another. Even the right of rebellion was recognized, when tyrants emerged. Hamilton, again, famously supported an hereditary monarch for the United States. His argument was that a head of state politically selected, will have too much power. Yet that king should have power enough that he has something to lose by over-reaching. For as Lord Acton added, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Our Monarchy, and our Senate, are there for reasons. They are not merely ghosts from some barbaric past. They are instead ghosts from a more civilized past, in need of restoration. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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