The concept that many major questions need a yes and no answer can hardly survive in an environment in which three word slogans and invented narrarive are substituted for reasoned discussion and analysis.
Nationalism
What does Australia Day mean for the ‘iPod generation’?
Most of my peers don’t buy into the pageantry of Australia Day. They might enjoy their day off, get drunk on Aussie beer and wine and eat lamb, pavlova and lamingtons, but they’re uncomfortable with conspicuous nationalism.
The annual Anzac Day debate misses the point. Again.
Every year as April 25 approaches, the nation descends into squabbling over the significance of Anzac Day. But re-read your history books, says Erdem Koc: it was an empire-led invasion that had very little to do with us as a nation or the freedoms we enjoy today.
Penberthy: Australia Day is a load of rubbish
Australia Day is about getting pissed, eating burnt snags — and very little else, says David Penberthy. Its time to finally kill off this poor excuse for a national holiday to find something really worth celebrating.
If the boat people did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them
Maybe Australia’s propensity to beat up on small numbers of helpless refugees has nothing to do with the refugees themselves, but is simply the result of any more significant target for nationalist anger.
I survived Marysville for an orgy of ocker self-love
My emotions, and the way I’ve been talking about them in order to deal with them, have been hijacked by the emotions of “the nation” and its faithful organ, the press, writes Peter Chambers.
Britt Lapthorne and ugly Australian nationalism
We’re not too strong at consistency in Australia, particularly when we’re feeling nationalistic, writes Bernard Keane.
Bahnisch: The return of aspirational nationalism
We haven’t heard anything about aspirational nationalism in this campaign. If you cast your mind back to August, it was John Howard’s new big philosophical idea. Boldly going where no nonsensical phrase had gone before – back to the future, and all that. writes Mark Bahnisch.
