[EDLING:2303] Australia: flag issue fails to fly

[Francis M Hult]

Via lgpolicy...

> Flag issue fails to fly
> By Piers Akerman
> 
> January 28, 2007 12:00
> 
> TO the utter chagrin of self-described progressives, Australia Day was
> celebrated uneventfully around the nation. At ceremonies and festive
> gatherings in towns and cities, on beaches and in parks from the coast,
> the Australian flag was flown and flapped flagrantly without provoking
> riots or orgies of nationalistic mayhem. Given the advance warnings of the
> catalytic effect the flag can have on savage youths issued by the
> politically correct, ranging from Green politicians to Ken West, the
> organiser of Sydney's Big Day Out concert, this was a near improbability.
> Tolerance of the flag was equated to tolerating gang colours.
> 
> But on digging a little deeper, it was not so much the stars of the
> Southern Cross that were likely to cause the picnicking mob to explode, it
> was the presence of the Union Jack in the corner that was of real concern.
> The attacks on the flag were really thinly disguised arguments against one
> of the symbols of modern Australia's undeniable heritage, its early
> beginnings as a British colony and its rich debt to British law, language
> and civility. Australia is, however, a distinctly different nation from
> Britain and most Australians are mature enough to understand that.
> Australia is also a nation which, until recent times, has a history of
> successfully integrating migrants (more akin to the United States
> experience than Britain), though some Australians are still doing their
> determined best to rip apart the fabric that unites its people and foster
> separate cultural identities in the name of multiculturalism.
> 
> NSW Opposition leader Peter Debnam upset Premier Morris Iemma and petty
> Liberal pecksniff David Redmond, the mayor of Sutherland, when he defied
> the council's ban on mentioning multiculturalism in the course of his
> address at an Australia Day citizenship ceremony. Debnam was cheered when
> he told his audience that becoming an Australian citizen did not mean that
> people could recreate their old country in the new. He outlined a plan to
> introduce an Australian Values and Civics Test for Year 6 students based
> on the federal Government's new test for new citizens and said the
> existing "English as a Second Language'' program would be renamed
> "Teaching English as First Language''.
> 
> Given the hysterical inability of the notorious Lakemba-based Mufti Sheik
> Taj Eldeen Alhilaly to speak English or find a translator who doesn't
> reduce his poetical Arabic into virulent hate speech in praise of suicide
> bombers and opposed to Western culture, this should be welcomed. Debnam
> also proposed a new free civics and citizenship course to be run through
> community colleges, which should be a winner with the former students of
> Granville Boys High School responsible for making the disgustingly violent
> video posted recently on YouTube. Reclaiming multiculturalism for
> mainstream Australians who believe that it should be a policy for
> inclusion, not exclusion, is straightforward enough.
> 
> Multiculturalism must be a policy for integration not separation. As
> Debnam said, it must be a policy that shows respect for our different
> cultural backgrounds, including indigenous Australians, but focuses on
> Australian values and an Australian way of life that we share as a first
> priority. His commonsense suggestions were, however, opposed by Iemma, who
> said it was "ill-advised'' to make such comments on Australia Day, and the
> Federal Liberal MP for Cook, Bruce Baird, who distanced himself from
> Debnam, saying: "They were his words, you ask him about them. I certainly
> know in this community we appreciate the various countries people come
> from and we celebrate that.'' The notion that all cultures are equal and
> have a place in Australia is sheer humbug. Subscribers to this belief
> should ask the doctors and nurses treating women who have suffered genital
> mutilation for cultural reasons whether they agree.
> 
> Writing for the signandsight website, Pascal Bruckner recently called
> multiculturalism the "racism of the anti-racists''. He illustrated his
> argument by noting that Job Cohen, the mayor of Amsterdam, had demanded
> that the Dutch accept "the conscious discrimination of women by certain
> groups of orthodox Muslims'' on the basis that a "new glue'' was needed to
> "hold society together''. "In the name of social cohesion, we are invited
> to give our roaring applause for the intolerance that these groups show
> for our laws,'' he wrote. He could have been writing about Australia's
> politically correct politicians who defend the ghettoisation of
> (principally Muslim) migrants on the grounds that their culture demands
> their women remain segregated by clothing and custom from the mainstream.
> 
> There may be some irony in the fact that the so-called progressives who
> want to see archaic and barbaric customs perpetuated in the name of
> tolerance and multiculturalism also hopefully predicted that a display of
> national pride would lead to intolerance and violence. The reality is that
> their misguided calls for tolerance are only providing platforms to be
> exploited by the purveyors of hate.
> 
> http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,,21127177-5001031,00.html#