Kaltros
Well, what's the point of even calling it Australia if you don't have any way to tell what is Australian and what isn't? If the cultural-nationalistic structure isn't at least a little rigid, you have no culture and no nation. Just a chaotic group of different gangs. A replay of the Tower of Babel.
Well, a cynic would tell you we don't have much of a culture anyway. In terms of age we are a fairly modern and young nation and our cultural and national identity is a bit over the place because modern politics has tried to play with that football to often in it's young life span.
Like there are 3 main elements:
- Egalitarianism, which was part of the foundation of our society of Economic Criminals who were sent here under the oversight of Rich British landowners. We has a stint is a fairly socialist country and even now have a fairly strong Labor movement, of which one our party's is meant to represent.
- Anzacs, which is a cultural identity that branches off the first one due to the nature of the Anzac story.
- A whole bunch of seemingly random commercialized 80s bullshit that the rest of the world associates with Australia that stems from the idealized working class pass time, like AFL, meat pies and Australian cars.
In fact as of recently there has been a bit of questioning, in the media and intellectual circles about defining what it means to be Australian. There has been a trend away from commercialized national icons and back into Egalitarianism, which is why the governments "hard cuts" budget got received so harshly. But it went to show that not even natives have a good grasp of what it means to be Australian, so it seems dumb to try and push ideals of bullshit 80s icons on migrants when such things are barely relevant.
Most migrants try to pick up the idea of egalitarianism simply by the nature of being migrants and wanting a "fair go". In fact the only ones who don't seem to assimilate to that very well are the few American migrants we get, which is actually a little funny.
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The difference here being that assimilation benefits the common people, who gain things like social cohesion, higher levels of social trust, and so forth. Modern societies require high levels of social trust to function.
I'll be honest, I trust it less than I value that social cohesion, to an extant. It would be nice if our country had a cohesive idea about a national principle of egalitarianism and it reflected politically, but past that I can easily imagining telling young adults and children to conform and assimilate into the borg collective of respectable suburbia and gated communities, an action which seems contrary to our current culture and quite repulsive.
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Maybe things are different in Australia, but in America I find that many Liberals demand that I conform to their progressive ideas. If I deviate from their ideas at all I'm basically outcast, beyond the pale, etc. Which is kind of amusing since they keep telling me they're the party of inclusion and tolerance. Well, they give a good talk anyway!
People higher up than me have gotten the ax for not following the progressive party line. Brendan Eich was forced to step down, and on and on. There are far too many examples of liberals demanding total adherence to their orthodoxy. And then making it personal and going after your daily bread if you don't obey.
I sure hope things are different in Australia, but I'm skeptical.
We don't really have "Liberals" in that sense because our politics is split historically down Economic lines. There is something of a collective shun of bigots and bigotry, but we don't have any one group or party that has really successfully represented the Social Progressive movement with any significance. Our parties tend to pick up movements as they become important and relevant and push them through and then drop them once they're done.
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If Australia follows America's lead, soon it will be unacceptable even to ask them to conform to the local language. "How dare we force our language on them! Instead we have to hire interpreters so they can keep speaking their own language. And if you suggest that's maybe an expensive and bad idea, well, you're racist."
Well, I don't think you need to speak English here. But either way those people exist, and they aren't that huge enough burden on the country. They're usually self conscience about their own difficulties adapting and fitting in.
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