Wednesday, December 17, 2008

A nasty piece of vandalism

In an article at On Line Opinion, Australian-born Chinese Jieh-Yung Lo, a Policy/Project Officer of the Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria and Executive Member of Chinese Culture Monthly, demands that Australia dump the monarchy and become a republic in order to reflect "an ever-changing multicultural Australia."

He writes:

I believe a further commitment by our elected parliamentary representatives is needed to change the identity and face of our nation to ensure that our national identity is clear and addressed.

The article itself is of terrible quality. But some of the reader responses are worth re-posting here.

One poster writes:

Changing the “identity and face of our nation” sounds like a nasty piece of vandalism – no more than an attack on the history and achievements of the people who forged our identity and nation. It is an insult by the multi-culties who have lobbed here and, having accepted our hospitality and protection, now want to change Australia to something suiting them. What people like this author, and some fifth column Australians, are suggesting is that we give up our history and culture to foreigners let in by wet, immigration-mad governments.

The idea that we are bound to Britain and the Monarchy now in anything but history and culture is stupid and ignorant. The existing link is important to our history, but we are have been our own boss, our own country, for a long time. We have “absolute independence”.

This author, admitting that there is a mere 15.8% “…of Australians coming from more than 200 countries and ancestries and speaking a language other than English at home” has the cheek to suggest that Australia should change for just for that piddling number of people who should not have come here if they wanted the country to change for them – if, indeed, they do want that.

The Queen is a figure head. She has no say whatsoever in what happens in Australia. She ‘approves’ our Government’s choice of GG ceremoniously because she has absolutely no authority in the appointment, which itself is a little bit of historical ceremony having no affect on our identity or who actually runs the country.

Some people thinks it’s OK for latecomers to hang onto their heritage, but not OK for Australian descendants of the original settlers to hang onto theirs.

Another chimes in:

I agree.

When immigrants move into our country and then demand that Australia's historic national identity be dismantled in order to better suit them, I feel nothing but a deep revulsion and a sense of personal insult - as if we have invited invaders, rather than immigrants, into our midst.

Imagine if an immigrant in some relatively sane country - say Japan or Germany or pre-1970s Australia - who, shortly after his arrival, announces to the host population: "Oh, by the way, you people must - in order to make me feel more comfortable - surrender everything that has constituted the historic identity of your nation. But don't worry! You shouldn't see this as a loss!"

Like most imperialists, Mr. Lo seems intent on erasing the heritage of the nation he and his fellow immigrants seek to dominate. Mr. Lo would have us believe that the entire history of the Australian nation from colonial times up until the mid 20th Century, during which Australia drew its people and its culture almost exclusively from the British Isles, no longer has any bearing whatsoever on our contemporary national identity.

This is, of course, utterly absurd and highly insulting to many Australians. The truth is that Australia remains a British-based society, even if decades of multiculturalist propaganda has left many younger Australians believing that their nation adds up to nothing more than an amorphous cloud of 'diversity.'

Why do Australians allow recently-arrived ethnic minorities to dictate what our national identity and culture should be?

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