Quite a while ago I read an article by James Valentine belittling the idea of “Australian values”, I can’t remember whether I read it in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age or The Australian but it was probably the latter because I did buy that paper weekly at the time. I did make a little effort to find it but was unable to and I apologise if I have got any critical details wrong. This was an opinion piece from as long as a decade ago though and I’m really just looking at the “vibe” of the thing.
The main point as I recall was that the things we call “values” aren’t exactly unique to Australians. Things like believing people should have a “fair go” or the idea of “mateship”. As well as Australians liking to have a drink with our “mates”. These are not in any sense unique to Australia and Australian culture in general. I could see his point immediately though I still wanted to reject what he was saying instinctively out of a sense of national pride. But try as I might, I couldn’t escape the truth of what he was saying. This observation has only become more true as I’ve gotten older.
It is something of a modern tradition leading up to Australia Day each year for there to be a string of anti-British, anti-White and therefore: anti-Australian articles published in newspapers and now online. These are always by the usual left-wing gadflies and have only become more hostile as the years progress. As pointed out in Quadrant recently, these attacks have started becoming more than verbal with certain councils cancelling Australia Day celebrations and Triple J moving their Hottest 100 countdown to a different day from this year. As should be clear, I am not one of these people and the criticisms I have in this post do not mean I am on side with our modern vandals. I am thoroughly hostile to them and I want their poison ejected from the body politic. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a tiny bit of wisdom to be found in their hostility to modern Australian culture though.
In the latter part of John Howard’s prime-ministership there was something of a reaction against this anti-Australian hostility which mostly manifest itself in a lot of flag waving. This could perhaps be traced back to around 2005 with a famous ad campaign involving Sam Kekovich instructing Australians to eat lamb on Australia Day. It was refreshingly direct, funny and clearly struck a nerve with leftists. It was also just advertising for Australian lamb. Generally speaking, it was a reaction against these attacks and not exactly a genuine expression of our culture. This fight has ebbed and flowed since but is still going steadily in the left’s favour.
And this is where we come back to James Valentine’s opinion piece. Since the time I read that, the idea of our culture being about having a fair go, mateship and getting drunk has come to include calling your mates a “c**t” and strangers “mate”, as the meme goes. The “smoko” now seems to be considered a “right” as well. My interpretation is that Australian culture now seems to be about not taking anything too seriously and treating absolutely nothing as sacred; freeing everyone to be drunken louts. With this considered our “culture”, is it really a surprise that the anti-Colonial message is the one slowly winning?
Most public figures on the right are abject cowards when it comes to articulating Australian culture. They limit themselves to discussing what our current cultural leaders have allowed in polite society. We get the usual platitudes about the “fair go” and
mateship.” We also hear “Judeo-Christian” values mentioned despite the “Judeo” part being no more than a number after a decimal point in our demography. And true Christianity remains only in a rapidly vanishing remnant of the population. Mentioning the Aboriginals in a positive light is also pretty much mandatory if you want the left to at least pretend that they don’t think you’re a racist. We also often hear the forced inclusion of “multiculturalism” or at least a positive spin on immigration despite our country being well established by people from a very specific geographic location, well before those from elsewhere came to benefit from it. All of this is ultimately feeble and the left senses this weakness even though they’re not necessarily conscious they do.
So what is Australian culture? Well, it has been eroded to the point where the now common dismissal of the very idea of any white/European culture as non-existent has become self-fulfilling. When you take a step back and look at Australia, you have a shirtless, drunk, tattooed guy draped in an Australian flag and a skinny, pot-bellied, pierced, purple-haired twink screaming at each other. It is hard not to wish for a plague on both their houses.
Although this was more or less the society I was born into, I know that this isn’t Australia as it once existed. And when I interact with my countrymen of either stripe, I often wonder what is to become of it. I know that we should celebrate Australia Day because it marks the day that civilisation was brought to this continent by ancestors of what is still the majority population. The aboriginal people were certainly not civilised in any sense that even the increasingly feral inhabitants of Australia can recognise. I don’t see much point in being nice about this as all the white people claiming to be against this settlement, still objectively prefer what was established here on that day to what little existed before.
The previous paragraph seems mild by my standards but even a far less direct statement of the obvious can get you in trouble. And what is the incentive to defend it anyway? We’re slowly but steadily throwing this inheritance away and we have been since before I was born. I don’t want to end this on a depressing note though. Australia is still my home and my family still has a future here.
The first and most important thing seems to be to just be better. Recognise the problem, point it out but don’t complain about it. Go against it. Treat is as a problem that has to be solved and better yet, consider it your fault that it is the way it is. Don’t play into the vulgar form of patriotism as it exists today, practice what is good and let others see it. Don’t fall into the empty hole that considers our culture nothing but vulgarity and drunkenness. It isn’t what we were, it’s just what we’ve become and it doesn’t have to stay that way. I’m speaking as someone who was once like that too.
Keep in mind is that leftists really do hate Australia. It doesn’t matter that not “literally” every one does because at best, they’re just helping to destroy what they claim to care about. Following from this, it is also critical to remember that the left really does not care about immigrants and especially not aboriginals so ignore their attempts to guilt you with them. It is fair to say that Australia was invaded because it was. The aboriginals had no chance, even against three convict ships and they lost quickly and soundly. They shouldn’t be happy about this but they might be just a little thankful that it wasn’t the French or Spanish. Such is the story of every other nation on the earth. This doesn’t mean that we therefore have to allow ourselves to be destroyed as some vile form of penance through mass immigration and wealth redistribution. The left just wants the power and uses these groups as a vehicle and continue to be successful doing so.
Celebrate Australia Day with family and friends openly and without apology.
Australia belongs to us.
Happy Australia Day!