"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.

A very interesting article, particularly the idea of replacing religion with the state. Like religion, nationalism seems only to serve to isolate people and compel one group to see itself as superior to another.

As an oldie who finished school at the age of 12 in 1934, could now reckon that - she’ll be right, mate - was originally part of our pride in our British Empire, when also -Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free - was still being played in country schools, even during the Great Depression when a few were beginning to have doubts.

Now we have the good old US of A to fall back on, though certainly having doubts with Texan two gun cowboy types mostly running the show over there, helped by ex-Israelis mostly with the Old Testament means to an end mentality, meaning that no matter how many Islamics you knock off as long it comes up trumps in the end.

Yep, could wonder these days about -she’ll be right mate - not only about the trigger-happiness of the Donald Rumsfeld types who don’t seem to be getting anywhere much these days, but also the the message from a top scientist last week at the Media midday invitation talk that by the end of the century global warming will have pushed up our sea levels two metres or more.

Don’t really know what is the most worrying - to have top scientists speak like that, or have some heads of our big Aussie American companies saying its all poppycock.

The point is right now, is there really the confidence around to declare a really honest to goodness - she’ll be right mate?

A solid third year essay. As an op-ed, however, it has an uneasy balance between proscription and description of nations, nationalism and Australiia.

Next Mercurius, you really need to read Duara's critique of Anderson in Rescuing History from the Nation, and Homi K. Bhabha's essay "DissemiNation: time, narrative, and the margins of the modem nation."

What a surprise and delight to be able to agree with every line of an OLO article.

>>"Declaration of She’ll Be Right", in which we Australians hold to be self-evident the truths that: everybody on the dole is a bludger; the Prime Minister is a bastard but he’s a better bastard than that other bastard; foreigners are alright but why don’t they speak English and why can’t they drive; this is the greatest country in the world; and I’m not racist but.<<

Bullseye!

And as a bonus, I find myself in complete agreement with Mr Sellick!

Good heavens. That makes ten consecutive comments on OLO that offer thoughtful and insightful criticisms, well-informed counter-points, and encouragement, devoid of rancour, personal attacks and vituperation.

Is this a record? Here I was braced for the usual rants from the usual suspects about how everything that's wrong with Australia is due to multiculturalism, migrants, cultural relativism, leftists, Marxists, academics, migrants, the ABC, overdevelopment, postmodernists and did I mention migrants?

Instead, a whole lot of usually-quiet readers with better things to do decided to comment. I am grateful.

mhar, I will take your comment about the article being a "solid third-year essay" as a compliment, since it's cobbled together from bits and pieces I wrote in second year.

Thanks also for the tip about Duara. I have been looking for a good critique of Anderson for some time, and I will be sure to check it out.

Sadly, I have tried and failed a number of times to get through Bhabha's essay and other works.

Yes, Bhabha's wordplay is dazzling. However I must make the obligatory reference to his over-use of jargon.

Furthermore, Bhabha's ideas come thick and fast as a blizzard, with about the same effect on visibility. As a communicator, Bhabha makes a great obscurantist.

Oh well, guess I'll have to try "Bhabha for Dummies" and go from there...

Here is the problem: its the last paragraph:

"I shall leave it to others to carry the cudgels of the thought police: if others wish to make declarations about what thoughts are permissible in our free and democratic society, then they must accept the label of totalitarians, else that term has no meaning whatsoever."

In our free democratic society we are free to tell others that they are, in our opinion, wrong. If anyone is the 'thought police' it is they who tell us that we are oppressing others when we insist that freedom in this democracy crosses cultural and religious lines. All are to be equal before the law, all are to be equal to exercise their own freedom as individuals.

For this to happen all must have the same rights - there are no second class citizens in this society: no one has the right to tell another that they are less than anyone else.

4 the record .... + 4 the sake of some mischief... [I edit ] how everything that's wrong with Australia .... is over regulated and partly under-developed... regardless of the cultural relativism's and a history of helping migrants?

I too agree with Peter Sellick, Mercurius.

It is a change to read such well written material ... and so good to see it so well received inside this forum.

Hope for US yet eh?

Nathan... replacing religion with the state... shudder...

and I suppose we will have gulags for the politically incorrect ?
The State only survives by force. Christianity survives by 'faith'.

The State should be not a 'replacement' for religion, but simply a carefully worked out system of managing people and economics for the betterment of all citizens. In the case of Christianity, it can never be an 'either or' because Christ did not seek to establish a system of government, other than that of God in our hearts.

The most we can legitimately expect is that our government will include Christians who will use their position in a democratic manner to promote that most fundamental of values "Do for others as you would have them do for you" which of course is the 2nd major part of the Hebrew Law along with "Love God with all your heart"...Christians cannot do things in government which 'legally' promote love for God, but they can certainly defend the general environment and freedom of opportunity to know of such a thing.

Rossco and Monash..... it would take an anthopologist to make a valid list of Australian values. They are there, but we all 'live' them rather than referring to a list of 'things to do next'. The simplest example is to look at 'social greetings', 'rites of passage' (Birth, marraige and death). Even the way we serve food... by and large, we have the dishes prepared and serve each person ? Many Asians have the dishes on the table and each person helps themselves a bit at a time.
We usually take as much as we think we will eat for the meal, and it looks 'greedy' to them :) They will continue to come and fill your cup, until you physically prevent them (with a smile).. we 'ask' "Would you like another up"... as I said.. 'They are there' :)

MERCURIOUS.. 'Thought Police' ? Impossible. 'Expressed' thought police -different story. The nature of democracy means that acceptable and unacceptable will rise and fall with the loudest most organized voices.

Boaz, I was not advocating the replacement of religion with the state, I was commenting on the similarity between dogmatic religion and the blind nationalism of 'my country right or wrong'. They are not mutually exclusive, and both limit their followers by demanding they think in a particular way rather than exercising their own intellect. Both have been used to gain political control over large groups in the past by breaking the world into 'us and them', and stating categorically that 'us' is better than 'them' (I have never heard of a religious or nationalist group believing in their inherent inferiority to a competing religion/nation).

Please do not see this as an attack on all religious beliefs nor rational love of country. Spirituality delivers a lot of value to many, and their are many good things in ones country which we can relate to and admire. My issue is with that rigid mode of thought that dictates an individuals values. I believe in the value of "Do for others as you would have them do for you", yet this is not derived from a set of beliefs with which I have been indoctrinated. There is no reason that this and other "Christian values" cannot be exercised by those in government, regardless of their religious beliefs (or otherwise).

Yes David

Christ did promote 'that most fundamental of values "Do for others as you would have them do for you" which of course is the 2nd major part of the Hebrew Law' and no he didn't 'seek to establish a system of government' that 'defend(ed) the general environment and freedom of opportunity'.

You should know he adhered to and accepted Hebrew Law and attempted to refine it in it's application ...notably during his Sermon on the Mount.

Now David the west moved on from the Fundamentalist traditions of the Hebrews. No we haven't entirely rejected them but we added something the Hebrews didn't have.

I'll tell you what that was... It was the analytical and scientific nature of the Greeks along with their view of democracy which we in the west refined and are still refining with the aim of 'defend(ing) the general environment and freedom of opportunity'. Note that was first prompted by the Greeks never by the Hebrews. And that 'defend(ing) the general environment and freedom of opportunity' is something that was and still is lacking in those who adhere only to the fundamentalist attitudes of those who professs adherence only the Judeo/Christian belief system. Note the recent examples, of fundamentalist intolerance which aimed to limit 'the general environment and freedom of opportunity', of the Israeli fundamentalists invasion and destruction of Lebanon and of our fundamentalist Liberal health minister in the matter of stem cell research...please.

pheeew. The miss-mash and highjacking of thought that you have expounded as a fundamentalist basic is breathtaking in it's arrogrance.

Benjamin.
I proffer a minor but significant correction to what might be seen as a "loaded" proposition that you surely unconsciously offer. It is actually the WEST launching "Jihad" against the oil-rich and strategically located Middle East and West Asia, which happens largely to be populated by a particular cultural strain of humanity; Arab and Aryan Moslems; Shia or
Sunni.
That's what you meant to say, wasn't it?
To suggest otherwise to resort to jingoism and black propaganda. They have the oil, the US and Western Europe want it and Israel wants a chunk of the land and to suggest otherwise is ludicrous.
That's the begining and the end of it. All that's required is a good excuse to justify the take over and help folk salve their consciences, along the lines of the situation suggested by Mercurious, re Australian indigenes. Hence ideology, belief and manipulated self-delusion against the backdrop of unfolding history, which is the basic subject of Mercurious' sensible article.
We have to decide, it seems nevertheless, what "Australian Values " are.
We have to decide whether these "values" are ethically and rationally determined, or sly apologetics for slimy attitudes and behaviours.
Do Australian Values relate to something like, say, the spontaneous outpouring of generosity that constituted the response of the Australian public to the Aceh Tsunami?
Or are they the warped mutation irresponsibly promoted for the basest of reasons by politicians like Howard and his tabloid media slimeball mates; the mean, dogmatic, bigoted, ignorance and fear-driven response that constituted the despicable Cronulla debacle and all that has followed?
Will we have an honest attempt at recognition and appreciation of reality, regardless of unpleasant realisations we make about ourselves and others? Or will be the increasing censorship and myth-formation be the only evidence remaining of the dumbed-down era of an increasingly lazy and cowardly remnant of a once-healthy culture, as it headed for self-inflicted obscurity?

Boaz, you said “it would take an anthropologist to make a valid list of Australian values. They are there, but we all 'live' them rather than referring to a list of 'things to do next'. The simplest example is…. (etc)”

From most of your posts you seem to be positing a particular set of exclusively Christian values and opposing the most objectionable “Muslim” values as expressed by Islamist extremists as somehow typical.

Come on, you’re avoiding the central point of Mercurius’ thesis, which as far as I can tell questions the idea of a uniquely “Australian” canon of values..

Here’s a random collection of “Australian” values, as I see them:

• Backing the underdog – justice and a fair go for all

• Treating the politically powerful, especially those who use religion to back their power, with suspicion

• Respecting genuine intellectual endeavour, especially when it results in observable good for people

• A good natured tolerance for cultural difference – which means both taking the piss and also respecting people’s humanness. A sensible balance between political correctness versus preciousness and paranoia.

I have never personally met any Australian Muslim who would see any of the above as antithecal to any of their beliefs. Nor have I ever come across anyone else from any respectable belief system or culture that would find the above objectionable

Jesus’ teaching of the Golden rule “Do unto others… etc” is similar to the core teaching of pretty much every other religious and non religious ethical system of the past couple of thousand years, including Islam and atheist secular humanism.

Boaz, I’m sure your values and morals are very respectable, but, mate, you’ve got to give up defining them in opposition to straw men of your own creation.

Snout,

Dhimmitude.

How does this fit into 'do unto others' equation, especially for women raped & forced into marriage with Islamists - all happening TODAY, this very moment to Copts in Egypt & 'reverts' in Malaysia?

Sorry, we cannot equate some teachings with others based in isolation of their Genesis, Leader & whole teaching.

That said, I feel shamed that this post is heading the way of all others... anyone want to say being a homosexual embryonic stem cell researcher is an 'Australian Value?'