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The Dominion Post on the national anthem
The Dominion Post argues in an editorial that our national anthem, God Defend New Zealand should be changed. On Thomas Bracken they say:
For a country where we tolerate the religious choices of individuals, that is unacceptable.
He was enthusiastic about New Zealand, the land he immigrated to in 1869, he was an enthusiastic propagator of egalitarian ideas and, unfortunately for the All Blacks, he was an enthusiastic scribbler of schoolboy rhymes.Personally I don't have a problem with God Defend New Zealand. It's our 'other' anthem - God Save the Queen - which grates with me. No, not just because it's about the Queen - because it's also a originally anti-Catholic tune. It was written when the Jacobites leader, Charles Edward Stewart (aka Bonnie Prince Charlie), landed in Scotland in 1745. In fact, one of the verses calls for us to "Confound their politics", originally "Confound their Popish [Catholic] tricks".
For a country where we tolerate the religious choices of individuals, that is unacceptable.
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Comments
Well that doesn't surprise
No comment on the United States' anthem.
Chair of the Republican Movement
You have no need to be so
I hope that you are even more appalled whenever the US national anthem is played, since, for a country which claims to have a "special relationship" with the UK, that it should continue (unlike God Save the Queen, which has been changed, after all) to tell so disdainfully of "the foul footsteps' pollution" of the King's men is, in this day and age, completely and utterly unacceptable...