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The Forum > Article Comments > On the beach: selling Australia as a land or as a people > Comments

On the beach: selling Australia as a land or as a people : Comments

By Andrew Jakubowicz, published 11/6/2010

Neither the ALP nor the Coalition show much stomach for doing anything but beating up on cultural minority groups.

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Yep, I'm all for hybrid vigour and beautiful children (ie. interracial mixing) but ferrets and rabbits cannot be caged together, as a rule!
Remember that we have had culture for many thousands of years, but only in the last 100 or so did we get "modern civilisation" which is largely based on discipline: maths begot science begot technology begot power and the ability to escape the historical norms of periodical starvation and perpetual fear.
So yes we *do* have the right to judge a cultural practice "primitive", "backwards" or even "barbaric" and exclude it from our country. This is not being a red-neck, it is maintaining standards. When we want to go to their countries then they will have the same option to judge us (as may occur in Asia soon!). So long as they want to join our party they should play by our rules...
Now the tricky bit: Who's rules? The Moral Minority that likes to pretend they are a majority? The loudest, most easily annoyed? the minority lobby groups? Should their instead be principles involved to avoid case by case arguments?
I guess what I'm getting at is: Who decides what common culture actually is? I believe the degree of cynicism on display from our politicians has made Australia a much more divisive and un-trusting place generally. This has not been helped by the "culture wars" and attempts to re-write history, nor a cynical and manipulative media owned by too few interests. How can we tell minority culture from lobbying?
Posted by Ozandy, Tuesday, 15 June 2010 3:31:47 PM
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