Quote: (01-25-2017 09:16 PM)Rocket75 Wrote:
Quote: (01-25-2017 02:56 PM)Conscious Pirate Wrote:
On the other hand, I remember a time when we had a National Identity and it was a wonderful place to be. For many years now I have found it difficult to identify exactly what that is or means anymore. I certainly don't feel kinship with the general populace these days.
Your post says everything I feel.
We will never have a national identity again. There are too many people with too many backgrounds with too many agenda's and it just goes on an on and on.
Celebrating our identity as a nation offends aborigines, muslims, anti-monarchists, gays who can't get married, vegans, uni students, JJJ faggots etc etc.
There's just not enough common ground. If people don't know how to come together as a country to begin with, it doesn't matter what date we change it to, or what name we call it, it will never be enough for some groups out there.
I don't know what any of them want anymore. Destroying everything we know and want as a civil society seems to be the only thing.
What National Identity is it that you speak of? Is it young Australians singing
God Save the Queen during school assembly as was
de rigueur until 1974? Was it ANZACs joining up in 1914 in the patriotic fervour of defending King and Country and fighting on behalf of British operations at Gallipoli or the Western Front? Or being deployed to Vietnam in 1965 to advance American ones on behalf of the ANZUS Treaty?
What is an Australian anyway? Do you have to have white skin that turns red in our radiant sunlight, have a name along the lines of Smith, Sullivan, MacRamsay, or Schneidereit, wear fluoro to work, drive a Holden V8, eat red meat meat everyday and vote the LNP or One Nation?
I don't have a drop of British, Irish, or German blood in me, and I wasn't born in Australia. I became one later one, have a job, pay my taxes, can relate to the national anthem and citizenship pledge (the lyrics and words which most Aussies don't know anyway), generally identify as an Australian to the hilt, have commemorated more than one Australia Day with poolside barbie with eh Triple J countdown*, vote, have worn a uniform with the Australian flag on the shoulder, and obey our laws. If Australia were ever under invaded, I wouldn't hesitate to defend it with my life, which is more than I can say for a "true blue" bogan Aussie who would jump on a boat to New Zealand. Does that make me Australian enough?
As much as the posters on this thread are in agreement that Australia is quintessentially a Western, and specifically
British country (a feeling that I concur with), I do consider Australia my home, and don't feel that there is any other I can "go back to".
So at the end of the day, I don't believe that not having any European blood whatsoever disqualifies me as being Australian, but if my residence here (along with the other 20% of non-white Australians) is sullying our "Great National Identity", let me know.
*
Which is the mostly apt way to celebrate our national day, a more fitting hallmark of the laid back nature of Aussies. When you consider that many other national days have their citizens coerced out to line the streets watching tanks and troops parading, I'd say we have it pretty damn chilled.