Responding to automatic rejections of republicanism

Some people will politely accept your arguments if you carefully talk through the two reasons for a republic I discussed in my recent post, independence and democracy. You may well not have convinced them, but hopefully they've made a mental note to pay more attention to the republican issue, next time they see it in the media. I reckon that what we need is enough NZers to start doing that.

Not everyone will politely accept your arguments, though. In my humble experience, once the issues of independence and democracy have been explained, it's reasonably common for listeners to offer one or more reasons why they would never consider a republic. For the purposes of this post, I label these reasons as "automatic rejections" of republicanism. Automatic rejections include statements like, "We could never do that because of the Treaty" or "If we did that, we'd have to leave the Commonwealth."

For quite some time, I've pondered people's motivations for giving automatic rejections. I really don't think they're meant harshly - my own sister gave me one, the first time I talked to her about republicanism. Instead, I reckon they should be seen as rejections of the idea that the country has a problem that can or should be solved by us becoming a republic. It's like telling someone they have a problem with the way they dress: their immediate response is likely to something along the lines of, "Bugger off, no I don't!"

I reckon automatic rejections fall into two groups:

• positive rejections, which basically say we don't actually have a problem with our current political structure, or
• negative rejections, which admit that we might have a problem, but deny that republicanism's the best solution for it.

Common positive rejections include, "... but the monarchy provides a cheap form of government for New Zealand" and "... but the Queen has no influence in NZ". Negative rejections, which I believe are more common, include things like the examples about the Treaty and the Commonwealth that I gave above. There are many other examples, though: one of my favourites is "... but that would make NZ more like the United States and I don't want that for us".

Whether they're positive or negative, I believe making the right response to automatic rejections is critical to making a better argument for a New Zealand republic. If we want people to listen, I see absolutely no alternative to making another careful and polite argument as to why those automatic rejections aren't appropriate. For example, in response to the Commonwealth automatic rejection, one might say, "No, we wouldn't need to leave it. The majority of members of the Commonwealth are already republics." I'll shortly write further posts looking at good responses to common automatic rejections. Please look out for them.

At the end of day, I think we should regard it as a success if we convince people to take republican arguments more seriously, next time they see them. This is the goal I believe we should have in mind, next time we get into a discussion about republicanism.

Cheers,
Mike