Jay Kuten: Stop playing patriot games

THE FLAG: It is about the debt we owe but can never repay to those who gave their lives in defence of this country.

I had always promised myself, as the years crept by, that I would never become one of those classic old grumps, complaining of the deficiencies of the young.

Yes, youth is wasted on them and the wisdom of age as compensation is over-rated. So here goes another promise broken.

Timothy Rowe, a Youth MP who claims he is speaking on behalf of (all New Zealand) youth, writes that we need to choose a new flag over the current one in order that he and his fellows can express their patriotism, by waving that new flag as the All Blacks win once more (Chronicle, November 4).

Normally I wouldn't take issue with such a young person's errors as they are likely to be corrected by life experience. Except that a Youth MP is selected by the sitting elected MP and represents his views, and these views mirror those of Chester Borrows.

Mr Rowe thinks $25 million spent on the flag should end debate rather than create a need for accountability inherent in democracy. And no, the government is not doing enough to alleviate the poverty of 25 per cent of our children.

It is not just the content of the ideas - ideas I would charitably characterise as elitist and Tory - but the manner of argument. Young Mr Rowe thinks those who choose to retain the current flag do so out of anger with John Key, whose idea it was to distract us from real problems by offering a flag change. Not so.

Mr Rowe has a very narrow view of patriotism which he equates with flag waving.

Patriotism is not the waving of a banner and the cheering on of one's favorite team. It is certainly not the momentary buzz of beating the Aussies at rugby - especially if you remember and honour the valiant effort of our cricket lads who came in second to the chaps from that same Australia. Patriotism has a distant relationship to sports, if any.

Rather, patriotism isn't exultant at all. Not so much a cheer about winning, patriotism is better defined as a debt - a debt we all owe to the country and to our fellow citizens who work to maintain the privileges of peace and tranquillity that mark this land.

It is about the debt we all owe to our history, to honour those who came before us and their courage to come to a strange land and build the basis of its future. It is about acknowledging the debt owed to the earlier inhabitants of that strange land in the harms done in the name of European settlement and the accommodation they and we have made in order to create and build a future on solid ground of mutual acceptance.

It is about the debt we owe but can never repay to those who gave their lives in defence of this country in order that people of the young generation and all that follow can live in peace.

They did not fight under the present flag simply to allow attendance at the cricket or rugby. But their sacrifice, made under that flag, has ensured that young Mr Rowe and his generation will have the privileges of peaceful attendance that those men and women had to forego.

One important way we acknowledge their sacrifice is in honouring their memory, and the flag they fought and died under is an important part of that memory. It should not be discarded merely so that the present sitting prime minister is spared feelings of embarrassment at being seated before the Aussie flag - a matter easily resolved through protocol factotums.

In jokingly signalling his own ambition to become PM one day, Timothy appears to threaten those who support the present flag that unless they vote his way, he will (if and when elected) effect a flag change and spend millions more. Possibly the best way to organise a potential future opposition.

I agree that we need a flag that represents New Zealand. Isn't it great that we already have one?

-Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.