Kris_man said:
hrundi, what you're saying makes sense, and you;ve caused me to rethink what i said. but what happens when these foreigners become the majority? the nation as we know it will cease to exist, it'll just be a bunch of random people living in the same place. i'm not saying that these people will become the majority, but it does worry me that Australia might lose its cultural identity.
We have been receiving immigrants/refugees for the last 50 years (well for 216 years really) and I don't feel as though we've lost any of our identity. Situations occur which seem inappropriate but these are usually as a result of political correctness going too far.
For example, having a Christmas nativity scene at school banned because it supposedly offended non-christians. It is still obvious to me that the majority of the population has a problem with that, so ultimately the status quo remains.
A nation is defined by it's population, and if that population consists of many "non-traditional" Australians, then that's just the way it goes.
I agree with the sentiment that I'd prefer we didn't lose our national identity (whatever that is exactly), but rather than losing it I think it just changes, and it usually does so over a long period of time.
The Australia of today is very different from the Australia of 1954, as it will be in 2054. This is evolution. You have to remember that the input from "new" Australians CAN make this country even better than it already is (witness the Greeks and Italians working on the Kosciusko scheme for example).
this is the only part of what you said that i couldn't really agree on:
hrundi99 said:
Having said that, the ideal type of multi-culturalism (or society in general) should be one where each person's differences are respected and appreciated within the greater society which reflects the traditional AND current beliefs/tenets of the country.
I actually believe that this happens for the most part. There are always unfortunate exceptions.
There's no way it should be obligatory for someone to love their country as there may be legitimate reasons not to in some people's minds
it should be somewhat obligatory to love your country, to be proud of it, and to want to defend it if necessary. there might be legitimate reasons not to like how the country is run, but i don't see how that affects someone's national pride.
But how does one define the love of one's country? How can it be measured?
To quote a bit of a left-wing cliche (and I'm not a lefty or a righty), I like the fact that Australians have the freedom to express themselves, to get pissed off with this country and to aspire to want it to be the best it possibly can be.
I know that we live in a great country but I also understand that other people have different perspectives. Some are irrational, but some are rational.
to make an analogy, i love the Raiders. i don't always agree on how they're run, and sometimes i despise our boring tactics, but i still love the Raiders. to me, it should work in a similar way for our country. taken to the extreme, if no-one thought like that like that, then our nation would become weak and eventually become dominated in one way or another by a more powerful country.
But I don't see any danger of that happening at all. We still get a big turn out on Anzac day, our main sports are heavily supported, Aussie tv shows are very popular (Blue Heelers, McLeods Daughters, etc), and we've just re-elected a conservative, "traditional" government.