Proud Australian patriotism not a cause for shame
Andrew Bolt
Herald Sun
October 15, 2014 9:00PM
‘It may be crude and even provocative, but “if you don’t love it leave” begins to sound like Socrates against this exhausted toying with totalitarianism,’ writes Andrew Bolt.
PATRIOTISM has been declared racist. Just when we must insist Australia is worth defending, we’re told only scum would say so.
Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt was outraged this week that two Woolworths outlets sold singlets printed with the Australian flag and “If you don’t love it leave”.
Bandt reposted a tweet blasting these “racist singlets”, fanning the fury of the Twitter Left.
Woolworths took instant fright, declaring the patriotic slogan “totally unacceptable” and promising to never again sell such a wicked thing.
But exactly how is the singlet racist? Which “race” does it attack? Which “race” does Bandt think hates Australia so much that they are the obvious target?
No, the haters of the singlet are not trying to protect some Australia-hating “race” they cannot even identify and would insult if they tried.
They are instead offended by patriotism. They are instead vilifying proud Australians who cannot understand why people who openly shout they loathe this land don’t try their luck somewhere else in a world full of options.
Yet it was only nine years ago that this sentiment was still acceptable enough for even Australia’s longest-serving treasurer, Peter Costello, to voice it. Costello was puzzled why some extremist Muslims, especially immigrants, were demanding sharia law — extremists such as Hizb ut-Tahrir leader Ismael al-Wahwah, who wants Australia under a caliphate in which “those who are guilty of apostasy ... from Islam are to be executed”, according to his party’s website.
Said Costello: “Our laws are made by the Australian Parliament. If those are not your values, if you want a country which has sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you.”
Or as the Woolies singlet sums up, if you don’t love us, leave. But now the invitation Costello offered is “totally unacceptable”.
What’s helped to change the climate is the media coverage of the 2005 Cronulla riot. That was mischaracterised as a racist uprising by flag-waving white Australians, rather than an ugly reaction to a minority of ethnic Lebanese youths throwing their weight around.
Now the flag, flown from a house or car, is seen as the summonsing to a racist riot.
Adding to the angst is that mass immigration and the Age of Terror have left us with more ethnic tensions than ever since Federation. The Left particularly seems to fear that peace is now so fragile that just showing the flag is like showing a red rag to a paddock of foreign bulls.
And yes, some Australians do indeed now feel threatened by what immigration and multiculturalism have wrought. The backlash one day could be ugly.
But the trashing of patriotism goes far beyond this often exaggerated fear of bogans carrying flags. Take the campaign even by schools to promote a retribalising of Australia, symbolised by the flying of the Aboriginal flag alongside the Australian one.
Add also extreme multiculturalism, which most rewards the ethnic groups that most keep their distance.
Then add the constant preaching of a largely invented history of genocide, “stolen generations”, racism and environmental devastation until Australia seems faintly disgusting.
So it’s not surprising that Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s appeal for a “Team Australia” was widely mocked by the Left, even though I’m sure most voters backed it.
In fact, the very idea of such a nation state is starting to strike “progressives” and the “alienated” as so last century.
LAST weekend, the ABC’s Encounter program explored what life would be like under a caliphate instead.
“If you’re not a Muslim, it might seem all rather in-house and speculative,” presenter David Rutledge conceded.
“But if you consider that the nation state — like many other products of secular modernity — is beginning to look like a concept whose time could be drawing to a close, then suddenly the caliphate seems less like a medieval fantasy and more like, well, the future.”
It may be crude and even provocative, but “if you don’t love it leave” begins to sound like Socrates against this exhausted toying with totalitarianism.
It is also more likely to be just what we need.
Powerful forces today threaten to tear Australians apart, with calls for jihad, sharia law, treaties with the “First Australians”, new racist divisions in the constitution and more mass immigration of the kind that now looks like colonisation.
No society can survive such threats without prizing its past and its symbols and without insisting what members have in common is far greater than what divides them.
Sure, we must stay open to criticism, to make a great country greater.
But don’t love it? Then, please, feel free to leave.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/proud-australian-patriotism-not-a-cause-for-shame/story-fni0ffxg-1227091615244Edited by Joffa: 15/10/2014 10:59:53 PM