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NZCPR CAMPAIGNS
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Bruce Logan
National sovereignty remains a vexed issue across the world. In the contemporary climate sympathetic to the ambiguity which gives rise to such a contradictory notion as the international community the very notion of national sovereignty is ironic.
I can't resist something from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: "liberty plucks justice by the nose; The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart Goes all decorum."
It's not always a good idea to base an argument on personal experience but I will risk it. In 1989, just before the abolition of corporal punishment in schools, I was a member of the PPTA executive and invited to appear on a TV programme with Russell Marshall, the then Minister of Education. I commented that I was not convinced the majority of teachers were in favour of abolition.
It was Samuel Johnson who said; "poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult." Johnson, as he frequently does, gets to the heart of the matter. Virtue and freedom are necessary partners; one cannot exist without the other.
