Alan Atkinson in Muddle-Headed Republic rails against the postmodern nature of the republican movement in the 1990s. In particular Don Watson's view of plurality.

The book was written in 1994 and during the extended run-up to the 1999 referendum. Atkinson writes:

The new republicanism is a campaign against the core culture. It aims to promote among us (as Don Watson puts it) a love of "tolerance rather than conformity, difference rather than uniformity". Variety will replace unity, superficiality will flourish instead of depth.

I don't know how he determines that superficiality is the inevitable outcome. Atkinson later writes that the 'emptiness' of republicanism is 'its charm'.

Atkinson is opposing pluralism which is the natural outcome of liberty. Pluralism is central to modern liberalism as it maximises individual autonomy. For instance on the issue of culture, a liberal and republican viewpoint is that an individual has the liberty to pursue their cultural interests without interference or discrimination from the state or violence from the population.

That viewpoint is probably repugnant to Atkinson who appears to take the conservative view that a state is incomplete without a unitary culture to maintain the links between one generation and another. Republicanism recognises the importance of culture but defines it as an emergent property of a people in maximum liberty, rather than an intrinsic property, or a necessity to the existence, of the state.

Atkinson continues with:

[i]n Australia the Crown has always symbolised the moral purpose of government. Since moral purpose is no longer important, except incidentally, the Crown is also not important.

That is a deep mis-understanding of the importance of political equity to Liberalism and Republicanism, as well as a mis-statement of the moral legitimacy of the state which comes from the people. Not the executive. Dan Deniehy and Charles Harpur argued that the moral capability of an individual and people was limited by tyranny - of which political inequality is a leading contributor.

In republicanism a monarchy limits the moral capabilities of a people, and hence the state. Rather than a symbol of moral purpose, the crown becomes a symbol of moral limitation - or in other words, monarchy is an immoral political structure.

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More Reading on Republicanism

• Republicanism
• Alan Atkinson
• Crown
• The Individualist Streak in Australian Republicanism
• John Boston's Pig
• Political Rationalism
• Australian Republican Identity Politics
• Quotification
• Universalism in Australian Republicanism
• Liberalism, Civic Nationalism and Republicanism
• James Madison on War
• Is Australian Republicanism Radical?
• Copernican paradigm