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Comment by qiskit | Hacker News Reader

> "Queen’s enemies."

I can't believe people still fight for royalty. Ants fight their queen's enemies. Free human being should fight for themselves, their families, etc.

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It's not meant literally. Even in Australia our armed forces are still "Royal" but this is just a vestige of the past. i.e our ships are designated Her Majesty's Australian Ship (HMAS).

What is means in practice is they fight for their country and its allies, just like any other military. While technically the Queen's representative in Australia (the Governor-General) is the chief of Australias armed forces (as defined in the constitution) this has never been used in practice (and would probably be ignored at this point).

Then don't say it period. Also, isn't the british queen still the head of state of australia? Every time I bring this up, it's always australians, canadians, british, etc making excuses.

What do you mean excuses? It's just history. It's said for the same reason, because history.

I'm sorry it offends you but nobody in Australia is overly motivated to change something that has no practical impact and given you don't seem to be from a Commonwealth country I don't think you are entitled to complain about it either.

Symbolism matters.

It's why some people freak out when someone "disrespects" their flag, why judges wear special clothes and why courthouses/government buildings are so frequently built to look impressive.

Such symbols perpetuate attitudes of deference and subservience to what the symbols represent... not for everyone, but they are effective on a lot of people, which is why they're still being used.

> Every time I bring this up, it's always australians, canadians, british, etc making excuses.

Or, Australians, Canadians, British etc _explaining_ the nuance to you, because they understand it?

Isn't using the literal meaning of that oath similar to claiming that an American oath [0] is to a sheet of paper? It's indicative of either ignorance [1] or lacking good faith.

0. https://history.army.mil/html/faq/oaths.html

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_the_United_Kingdom

Sure if you take the most hardcore literal interpretation. It's just short hand for "the enemies of the state" or "whoever my duly elected leadership consider to be the bad guys". Yes, people still willingly give up their independence for what they consider to be the greater good. Consider the entire united states armes forces and almost all government employees (in particular the folks who work for 3 letter agencies).

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