I'm right there supporting sporting personalities including Richard Hadlee and Colin Meads who would like to see the New Zealand flag changed for something a little more recognisable to non-Kiwis, and agree that The Flag is far too similar to any number of flags world-wide. But it does kind of make you wonder though what this guy would say if he cornered either sporting great in the pub.
Frankly, it’s apt that Mr. Howard should wade into the fray at this small juncture in New Zealand’s ongoing nationalistic debate. With the mounting ruckus over what is and is not mainstream, it’s good to see reactionary old monarchists getting wheeled out for their opinion too. Here’s a gem:
When we see the Union Jack on a flag we can make certain assumptions about that country: that English will be spoken, that there will be parliamentary democracy with a free press and freedom of religion, that there will be a strong Christian tradition of tolerance and charity, that the rule of law will apply including habeas corpus, that ideals of public service and loyal opposition will be fundamental political concepts.
The fact that there’s no Union Jack on the Canadian flag seems to have escaped Mr. Howard, but there’s little reason for me to be pedantic, and we get the point.
What the use of ‘the mainstream’ seems to represent is a particular type of political liberalism that wants to equate good politics with sameness, the sameness you get when the greater number of citizens are all more or less culturally centred on a limited and mutually acceptable number of factors. Factors like whiteness, Christianity and heterosexuality.
And that’s pretty much what Mr. Howard has provided us with. Further to the same idea, Mr. Howard states:
Critics of our flag claim that it is too similar to that of Australia - but that is no bad thing. Australia and New Zealand have much in common and our similarities and fellow-feeling are often cause for celebration. And although the flags are similar, anybody interested in this part of the world who cannot distinguish our flag from Australia's is clearly intellectually challenged.
One of my favourite moments from TV in Oz was on a show called CNNNN, where they did a vox pop on changing the flag, but waved ours to the punters. People on the streets of Sydney were kissing it, cheering for it, etc etc. Almost as good as the Americans in LA who thought their government should ‘nuke Iraq’. Of course, the map they were being shown and were jeering at was either Australia or the UK with ‘I-RAQ’ printed on it in big black letters, but you get the picture.
The mainstreaming debate seems to be much the same. People are being presented with a manufactured image they’re expected to associate with, and going ballistic because they think opposition to this image is some kind of personal attack on their identity. Or worse, they think that the image they’ve been given is the only way for New Zealand to become.
That’s the catch you see. Nationalism is not always about what a nation is now, it’s more about ‘becoming’, or what you personally think your nation should be like in the future. Mr. Howard, with his adherence to the old traditions of the Monarchy and/or Westminster Democracy, or the Union Jack on our flag, is all about making our future more directly comparable to our past.
But on another level, nationalism is also about indicating who gets to share in pushing the nation into the future, and who doesn’t. Who gets to be the voice we hear on the radio. Who gets to play on the national team. Who gets to be normal, and who gets pushed to the back of the line when government funding rolls round.
These things are all unnoticed parts of the fabric of our nation-building. And it’s a fabric that has more colours than red, white and blue, and more fibres than just canvass (whatever the hell canvass is made of).
But liberal equalitarianism of ‘the mainstream’ variety deliberately overlooks difference in favour of a utopian future of sameness. Sameness to the past. One that tries to boil all difference down into simple red and blue divisions (for example), and suffocates anything too square to fit into the round hole or ‘normality’.
Even worse, it also overlooks that things are already geared for the majority, because our entire system is designed and intended to uncover and deliver what the majority wants. Specifying exemptions for minorities is really just giving them a little breathing room and stops them being shouted down by the powerful.