Boaz, you still, even after my most assiduous coaching, fail to see the inherent contradiction in your proposed Australian Master Race.

>>Why is there 'pride' in ones ethnicity?
"pride" (when connected to a race) is a synonym for 'racism'
ONE NATION, ONE CULTURE ONE RACE.. is my long sounded catch cry.<<

Let's have another go.

Q: Do you have pride in being Australian?

Boaz: Yes, of course. That's what this is all about, isn't it?

Q: Does that not make you racist, using your own definition of pride being a synonym for racism?

Boaz: Ah, no, you can't catch me that way. I very specifically said "pride, when connected to a race"

Q: So, when you say "ONE NATION, ONE CULTURE ONE RACE", what do you actually mean by the "race" part?

Boaz: Australian, obviously, once we are all intermarried and coffee-coloured and all mixed up together, we'll all be happy Australians.

Q: So our "race" would effectively be... Australian?

Boaz: You've got it! Absolutely! And we'd be proud of it!

Q: We'd be proud of our race, then? But isn't pride, when connected to race, synonymous with racism...?

Bzzzzzt.

There once was a gardener who loved his garden. But then it rained so he went into his house to keep warm & safe and dry. Well the Garden plants went crazy with rage. "He is a racist and prefers his house to us plants", went the cry. So the plants all talked of ridding themselves of the gardener once and for all and plotted to overthrow him.
But then the sun came out and the gardener returned with compassion and caring hands and averted disaster.
Meanwhile the plants still harboured resentment and slowly plotted .... for their day.

The moral of the story?

If you stop your immigration program because overpopulation & extra carbon footprints are destroying your environment, sapping your social services and metropolitan infrastructures and lowering the standard of living of your existing citizens to a ratrace, it doesn't necessarily follow that you are a racist. The only ones who would tout that line are people with vested interests in political power, votes, market share and GST revenues of 10% on everything the extra carbon footprints spend.

When there's an end to Peakoil-recession, climate change and metropolitan gridlock then a caring leader will reinstate our immigration program. An absolute greed-bound fool of course, like our Federal gardener poncing around in the rain, will continue the immigration to collect virtually worthless post peakoil GST dollars. He will also invest this country's windfall profits in complicated American Ponzi scheme instruments little knowing he's blown our dosh, while his deputy gardener, in total oblivion comes on and does the most exquisite impersonation of the ex-Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf.

Hi Pericles.

If.... the end result of the blending of Australian diversity into 'one' was SO that we can be 'proud' of our newly developed 'race'..then your criticism would be valid.

But alternatively, IF.. the objective is simply to reduce tension, potential trouble, ethnic rivalry and an unchoesive society..then you are incorrect.

and I hasten to say..that IS the objective.

I confine it to our borders for the sake of discussion, but this should not imply anything about any racial posturing or pride toward any neighbouring people..it's purely a 'cultural management' exercise.

I'm hoping Kev Rudd will read this :) I'm rather warming to him these days.. a hard worker.. a keen interest in infrastructure..and education and health, didn't 'slash and burn' the established order...
just selective harvesting... didn't cave in much to the gay lobby, if he gets immigration on track in terms of social, cultural and political compatability.. I might even vote for him next time :)

I don't hold out much hope for you to ever agree with the simple common sense proposition that 'difference' whether it be a footy team, or a cultural club.. always brings 'rivalry' and competition in the end... and worse still, in the event of a shortage.. becomes very Tribal and violent (Kenya)

It's true, you won't, Boaz.

>>I don't hold out much hope for you to ever agree with the simple common sense proposition that 'difference' whether it be a footy team, or a cultural club.. always brings 'rivalry' and competition in the end<<

For you, diversity can only mean friction, trouble and therefore danger.

To me, diversity - and competition, for that matter - is an essential component of human existence.

Instead of friction, trouble and danger, I see that they bring interest, vitality and awareness.

I am absolutely certain that I have as little chance to shift you from your pessimistic, fear-laden, doomsday thought processes, as you have to move me from my optimistic, trusting and open-minded ones.

Where you see doom, gloom and disaster, I see opportunity, growth and dynamism.

To be constricted by a narrowness of vision such as yours would, I have to confess, be a living death for me.

It staggers me to think of the sheer number of opportunities that you let slip past; opportunities to be surprised and delighted by new thoughts, new ideas, new experiences as you travel through the most exciting thing that will ever happen to you: living.

Compared to 90% of the world's population, you live in the lap of luxury - family, car, food on the table, beard, possibly even friends - yet you continue to insist that the world is going to come to a sticky end real soon now, simply because not everyone believes the same stuff that you do.

If you weren't such a smug, self-righteous and condescending old b*gger, I'd probably feel sorry for you.

Hi, I was not tolerant enough of differences of opinion myself to get far through reading all before me in this thread, but perhaps only because my own opinion is far neater in this complex issue.

First we need to know that focussing on diversity brings our similarities to the fore, while focussing on our similarities amplifies our differences. Therefore it is normally the best anti-racist move, to focus on what the real differences are.

Second, those real differences have been discovered by geneticists to be able to be traced into a set of seven genetic markers which we each many have as few as one of, and as many as seven of; however, it is the combination of cultural belief, often defined by religious dogma, within each individual's genetic capacity, that defines the nature of human diversity.

Then we have to get into the questions about how far environment may or may not be causal to culture; and whether language is causal to culture, or an effect of culture.

One too many cooks might spoil the broth of the simplest issue that there is in this matter: it is wrong to define any life sustaining biological characteristic as criminal. When we can remember that, we are swimming around happily together in the soup of human bio-diversity. That is, if we can readily define what crime is.

ps It was a while back now, that John Pilger wrote in his book "The Secret Country", that we Australians are actually managing our ethnic diversity more peacefully than any other nation with the same level of diversity; but what he wrote still holds good.