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The Forum > Article Comments > Pride is a sideshow > Comments

Pride is a sideshow : Comments

By Mercurius Goldstein, published 4/8/2006

The renewed political push to take pride in our national history is misguided.

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Excellent piece I'm sure your going to make a fine teacher that will take pride in the work your doing.
Posted by Kenny, Friday, 4 August 2006 9:07:40 AM
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Good take on a topic that will be spun to within an inch of its life around the time the summit hits town. I like the distinction he makes.

We can now settle down to the argument over which bits of history do we admire - and which bits we consider to be less admirable.
Posted by sneekeepete, Friday, 4 August 2006 9:45:10 AM
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An excellent antidote to both Howard's ignoring of the reality of white settlement, and also those who invite us to feel nothing but guilt and shame about the country we were born into.

David Jackmanson
http://www.letstakeover.blogspot.com

What is the pseudo-left?
http://www.lastsuperpower.net/disc/members/568578247191
Posted by David Jackmanson, Friday, 4 August 2006 10:18:51 AM
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Yep. That about sums it up.

Pride leads to blind patriotism - (note the term 'blind' here) which in turn leads to a culture of accepting the actions of leaders who use empty rhetoric to justify dubious decisions.

On a more common level, people with too much civic pride act like idiots. I don't mean to sound tall poppy here, but who cringed at the sight of the rednecks draped in the Australian flag during the Cronulla riots? That's the last place the flag should be taken.

I can't believe the US have been considering a law making it an offence to burn a flag.

A flag is just a symbol, whereas the freedom to burn it is a key part of western ideals.
Somewhere along the way, priorities have been warped. I'm not saying I want to burn flags, but I'd like to know I could if the urge struck.
I certainly hope we don't consider that kind of thing here.
Posted by TurnRightThenLeft, Friday, 4 August 2006 10:25:39 AM
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It seems that Mercurius still feels guilty about having 'tortured' the language on behalf of the advertising industry.

He is right, of course, but most people know the difference between pride and admiration even though both words are generally accepted as doing the same job.

As usual, just who uses certain words affects what people think. For instance, some recoil from the word 'pride' when John Howard uses it, seeing it to represent American-style flag waving and razamatazz. If Kim Beazley, or Bob Brown used the very same word, the same people are likely to accept pride as a 'good' word. Vice versa, of course, for us dreaful right wingers.

Semantics aside, Mercurius is right: except for his 'black armband' intolerance. There is a world of difference between what otherwise decent people did in the days of early settlement and what we do now.

We should not admire the treatment handed out to aborigines by some early settlers, but nor should we condemn it because none of us knows how we would have acted 200 years ago.

Mercurious doesn't know that he would be able to act as the Anzacs did at Gallopoli. Neither does he or anyone else know how we would have acted 200 years ago if we felt threatened by aborigines and with an entirely different outlook from the modern one. We must not judge the behaviour of people from 200 years ago using today's morals and attitudes.
Posted by Leigh, Friday, 4 August 2006 1:26:49 PM
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Interesting thought Leigh - I must admit, it is much easier to judge the past by the present morals, and not necessarily correct.

On the other hand, as we are discussing it in the present, our only real point of reference is today's morals - in the absence of a time machine, I suppose we can only judge by our morals or discard morals altogether... though we can give lip service to previous trains of thought, though that isn't really the same as what would happen if we did have the aforementioned time machine and were faced with it in person...
Posted by TurnRightThenLeft, Friday, 4 August 2006 1:58:27 PM
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