"For it is a totalitarian fantasy to insist upon certain values all Australians must hold in common".

For a start, isn't this a value? The writer says common values are fantasy yet says we should hold to the value that we shouldn't have values! Your argument is destroyed!

I believe the writer is also confusing customs with principles, morals, ethics.

They are not the same thing.

Peter Costello made it clear in February when he mentioned about three values. Only those who can't think would think it's an Australian value to go to the beach. One can't go to the beach though without problems unless one obeys those three values.

This is why there were so many problems at Cronulla. A minority from a culture who don't value those outside it's immediate group, in other words - totalitarian, everything apparently this writer is against, couldn't not sexually abuse women unveiled.

This is a value that needs to go, for the good of all in society.

It's the same with road rules. Only someone who hasn't really thought about it would think that driving reckless is being free on the road.

No.

Driving within the rules is freedom, the freedom to get where you're going without dying.

It seems like an error a child would make, yet this writer has confused ethics with customs

People, like this writer, get confused because western cultures are moving away from custom and getting towards humanity more. Westerners don't generally have dumb customs we obey because our forefathers did, we are beyond custom.

We question it.

The Islamic jihad against the west is good in the sense that it will push us closer to our roots, the values we attained during the enlightenment, because it seems that many truly don't know what the west stands for.

The 17th century alchemists were fond of adopting the name Mercurius because of the mystical connotations that that metal brought to mind. This Mercurius needs no mystical leanings, his arguments are well researched and accurately directed to produce a sizzling critique of nationalism. A great essay.
Peter Sellick

Seldom have I had so much to say, but am strugggggling to find the words.... *sigh*....

I find Mercurious basic premise that we cannot hold as precious a group of values which we call 'Australian' ANATHEMA.

The values which emerge in the history of a nation are unequivocally linked to and inseparable from the immediate history, ethnicity and culture of those who were primarily instrumental in that emerging history. You (the_different_newcomer) may come along and try telling them that their (the_many) culture doesn't count any more than yours, but you will pay the price.

Hence as the lowest common denominator we speak 'English'. We shake hands when we meet. etc, etc.

Sadly, there was a degree of importation of Irish and English history and ill feeling or 'them/us' existing even when I was at primary school when Catholics were called 'Cattle-Ticks' etc.

None of this alters the reality of the emergence of 'Australian' values. Many of our values are shared by other nation states. But one stark difference between Aussies and Yanks is that we will usually support the underdog, they- the 'winner'. Probably an oversimplification but basically seems true.

The most important value that ANY nation can hold is this:

"Do for your neighbour that which you would have him do for you"

That said. We still have cultural reference points which should not be transgressed by 'newcomers' unless they either want a bloody nose, a dose of Lambing Flat or civil war. The only reasons such things would occur are for the same reasons CRONULLA occurred. Encroachment and dictarorial behavior coupled with violence. (same as the Lambing Flat incidents... the Chinese were quite ready to FIGHT for what they saw as their rights)

Jingoistic Nationalism which never sees fault in the country will come undone eventually. As did the British Empire. It sowed, and reaped, and is still reaping....

Young Nations are complex, and will always involve some too-ing and fro-ing of cultural/historical momentum. But this does not invalidate an emerging consensus of values which should be protected and defended.
Because as we have witnessed..they WILL be attacked.

Mercurius Goldstein,

While his essay contrates on an examination of those literary works that define nationalism he overlooks the even broader concept of idealogy.

When he looks at Australian nationalism he ignores the great inherited body of works that define our basic inherited institutions. Those works that define us and our system of government. Our Liberal Democracy. He forgets or ignores our nationalism is founded upon those great traditions as are the other nations that comprise the western Liberal Democracies.

To be sure his argument has a degree of accuracy when he defines the differences within the body of western nations. But the nations he 'fingers' are all based on the works of the Hebrew (the Bible) and the Greeks(eg Socretes).
He concentrates on the shallow cultural values such as the 'she'll be right'.

Scratch any Australian and you'll find all sorts of adherents to a multitude of cultural fashions but stab them and you'll quickly find the great depth of understanding and desire for the great western democratic traditions... democracy, justice and a value best summed up in the words of Christ 'do unto others...'.
I think it fair those traditions be defined and accepted as the basis for the Australian Nation, as they are in all the great Western Nations. And they are defined by a great body of traditional literature just as the author indicates with the lesser cultural idiocies.

I am a fourth generation Australian and I don't know what constitutes "Australian values". I have never seen them documented and I deny any one to produce a document which encapsulates an agreed set of values we can all accept, unless it is so vacuous to be meaningless. I have been happily married for nearly 40 years but my wife and I strongly disagree on some "values" issues. How are you going to get 20 million Aussies to agree on a common set of values which are distinctly Australian?
I would have thought a fundamental Australian value would be tolerance but it is quite clear many of us are distinctly intolerant of anyone who looks a bit different or behaves in a way that we don't like.

I agree that it is difficult to identify 'Australian' values definitively. However, I believe we can idenfitify those values and attitudes that have no place in Australia. Australia's commitment to liberalism should not be a suicide pact. Some values and belief systems are corrosive to the greater society and can not be tolerated. Believing that your country should be something more than an empy vessell that accepts whatever is poured into it does not make you totalitarian.