Be honest: you want a revolution

There’s a problem with the idle debates on the Canadian monarchy that pop up from time to time: “Getting rid of it would be really difficult” is not actually a position on the monarchy. I’m in favour of us continuing to have one, but it seems really dangerous for those in my camp to depend upon constitutional inertia and say “Nyah nyah, you’re never going to have a republic anyway, losers.” I mean, yes, they are losers, but we are not entitled to make that a basis for argument.

We should all treat the question as though we did have a totally free choice immediately. You have a red button on your desk: if you leave it alone, things go on as they are, with Canada relatively prosperous, nonviolent, diverse, and happy. If you whack the button, you get the republican constitution of your choice. No guarantees about the other stuff, though! It’s like going back in time to dinosaur days and killing a butterfly!

I admit that the “don’t tamper with a machine that mostly works” has slightly diminished force with Parliament half in abeyance and a federal ministry spending scientific-notation quantities of money without much detailed oversight. My point here is simply that our constitutional monarchy should have an active defence from its supporters. “Don’t tamper with the machine” is not the same argument as “We can’t touch the machine.”

We probably can, if it came to that, figure out a way of altering it without going through the constitutional amending procedure — one whose legitimacy, after all, depends heavily on the fact that the Queen (ugh! Ew!) signed off on it.

The way in which an Oprah interview has overwritten memories of recent events in our neighbouring republic is a little astonishing. Our approach to the pandemic seems, in general, to contrast well with that of the neighbouring republic whose institutions we already imitate impulsively. And we have never witnessed a descent on Parliament by a mob that was passively encouraged to terrorize legislators by an elected president.

The events on Capitol Hill in January will diminish in importance over time, as the 1932 conflict over the “Bonus Army” has, but Americans very clearly did get a glimpse of the grotesque abyss which their paper constitution manages to cover up most of the time. The police response to a fairly modest gang of poorly-armed loonies was badly compromised by the American style of separating political powers.

President Trump was able to make a great deal of trouble mostly by sitting in a comfy chair on the day of the riot and doing nothing, having conjured an army without much effort. Everybody suddenly became terribly aware that the forces available to congressional and municipal authorities wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds against the ones available to a half-serious authoritarian.

That was January: this is March, and one finds oneself surrounded by Canadians who complain that we don’t have a “democratically legitimate” head of state independent of the legislature in the way the president of the United States is. They allege that our prime minister, who can be deposed in an afternoon by the House or his own caucus, is overmighty compared with the U.S. president, who cannot be removed from office and deprived of his nuclear football except by a prolonged political trial (this method has never worked) or a bullet (this one has).

Of course some republicans — more sensible ones, who like typical Canadians hate anything that savours of revolution — say they don’t want an elected Canadian president. They object mainly to the colonial trappings of our monarchy, as if Canada’s origin as a cluster of British colonies was an embarrassing secret to be suppressed, and they claim to want a passive, mostly powerless head of state exactly like the governor general.

I’ve actually heard it said that this person could be called “regent,” because ... that’s obviously way less humiliating and colonial than a “governor general”? But most of these schemes reflect an unapologetic craving for the mystical word

DRAWN FROM THE BRITISH WELL OF IDEALS CONTINUALLY.

“president,” a concept whose American pedigree cannot reasonably be challenged. It’s a choice of imperialisms.

I don’t think Canada’s British origins are anything to be ashamed of. The permanent political, ethical and cultural ideals that motivate and bind most of us are products of Britain, no matter how few Canadians can be personally described that way. We have drawn from the British well of ideals continually, not having bricked it up in 1776, which is one reason we have, to take an obvious example, the British invention called “socialized medicine.”

I have never heard any Canadian suggest that this is an imperialist relic of which we ought to be ashamed, and whose abandonment is a moral imperative. Republicans prefer to heckle the Queen’s family and dwell on various crimes committed in the past by our monarchs’ various British ministers.

But are we to believe that getting rid of the Queen, perhaps by some extraconstitutional subterfuge, would actually cleanse Canada of the inexcusable taint of Britishness? Would we all fall into a dreamless sleep on day one of Year Zero and awaken in a country with no establishment, no past, no mental habits, no established political language, no Coronation Street on the telly or scones in the breadbox or soccer in the park? What these particular people want is a revolution, or something that would require one: the least they could do is admit it.