“…why this haste to encourage schoolchildren to be proud of that which is not of their making?”

“And perhaps one day when our children feel genuine pride in themselves, they will be better able to appraise and admire the greatness of others…”

More woolgathering by academia. Just where do we get them from? Is their a factory in the ‘burbs which turns them out?

Why on earth should a child feel any pride in anything he or she does? If it were not for the act of coitus, an act not of their making, none of them would be here. So to extend the position of Mercurius Goldstein children who have no say in their making should have no feelings of pride in any of their achievements. The credit should go to their makers, i.e., their parents

I think you'll find that most people have pride in their country as opposed to the people who made it. I admire the great people who built and sacrificed to make this country the best in the world and I’m very proud of the result. Have you ever heard even one person say they are proud of Captain Cook, or Bob Hawke, or Ita Buttrose? No, me neither, but I’m proud of what their efforts contributed to this country.

If we can’t even be proud of our country then what should we be proud of? If it’s wrong to feel that we belong to something bigger than ourselves then where or how do we find a complete identity? The left have tried their hardest to destroy family life and a love of country and tradition, so how is one to find stability and identity? Probably in “The Revolution” or the “Great Leader” or “The Party”. Sorry, that was tried and failed.

The author obviously has not thought about this in any depth at all. He has let an imagined intellectual superiority interfere with his reasoning process. It’s absolutely horrifying to think that this is the tripe of the future to be forced down our kids’ throats.

Seems like a lickspittles attempt to brand patriots as backward hillbillies, or maybe just practicing some brainwashing techniques for the future.

Oh!Goodness and I thought the old cringing,politically correct,apologists for Australia had died a long, lingering death of inertia.
I was wrong. Sorry old bean but for all the years you and your lot ran us ,our country, our pioneers,our diggers,every thing Australian in fact, into a black abyss of critizism for not being what you wanted, the perfect 'sorry' multiculturalland of nonentities . You sir are a first class dill.
This is a wonderful country, built by blood and sweat [not yours ]in just over two hundred years we have built a modern ,prospering ,humane nation from nothing.
We have much to be proud of,except perhaps in the breeding of people like you and your fellows
Still , nothing is perfect.

Hi mercurius,

It's funny that you don't admire europeans. what about islamic, pagan conquerors? Do you feel the same?

You know, each and every country was occupied by war.

If Pride is a SlideShow, then feeling ashamed/anti-patritotism a ScreenSaver?

Anil, I provided a long list of Europeans I admire. What’s your point?

Bozzie, you refer to “the country” and “the people” as though they are two separate things. They are not. If you take away the people, where is the country?

Bozzie asks “what should we be proud of?” I believe I answered that in my article. You should be proud of yourself. You should admire the great deeds of others. The ethics of it were clearly set out it in the article.

I didn’t say it’s “wrong to feel that we belong to something bigger than ourselves”, nor do I believe it. I said nothing about patriots or hillbillies, revolutions or a “Great Leader” or “The Party”. Please don’t put words in my mouth.

I’m sorry you find all this so “horrifying”. When I’m as horrified as you claim to be, I do something about it, instead of sitting around being shocked and appalled. No, you can relax, I won’t be forcing these ideas down anybody’s throat. Kids will form their own views.

Well, since you believe that I have “not thought about this in any depth at all”, why not read the work of someone who has? Here’s a nice, safe, vaguely right-wing speech for you to start with and since it dates from 1882, it is uncontaminated by Leninism or postmodernism: Ernst Renan, 1882, ‘What is a nation?’ (tran: Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?). www.cooper.edu/humanities/core/hss3/e_renan.html

Meanwhile, Sage’s attempted rebuttal was so bewildered that it managed to affirm my argument. I located the source of a child’s pride in their own actions, not antecedents. So Sage redundantly pointed out that since children had nothing to do with their birth or its circumstances, thus they are not entitled to any pride (or shame) in it. As I said “how well we play the hand we are dealt is a greater cause for pride than the hand itself”. I made it quite clear that children can take pride in their own actions, not the actions of others. Nothing Sage said contradicts this in logic or in concrete terms.