I remember a comment from someone who was complaining that Australia was being held hostage to political correctness and we couldn’t say “Merry Christmas” or sing “God Save The Queen” at the start of events…
I did point out that it may have been the change in the national anthem to “Advance Australia Fair” in 1984 which had led to nobody starting events with “God Save The Queen”. I wondered if he was actually making the comment or just copying something he’d read about the United Kingdom.
Well, the other day somebody posted this on Facebook:
Mm, that sort of rang a bell.
I mean, I did remember standing in primary school and reciting something about God and my country and cheerfully obeying my parents, teachers and the law, as the free milk soured in the sun.
Anyway I looked up exactly what was said and it went:
“I love God and my country, I honour the flag, I will serve the Queen, and cheerfully obey my parents, teachers and the law”.
So we didn’t do anything apart from “loving” our country and “honouring” the flag. The pledge was to serve the Queen and to be cheerfully obedient to the forces who would oppress us. We didn’t do it every day; we only did it once a week (on Monday), and it wasn’t the Australian “anthem”. We didn’t have an anthem until 1984 apart from “God Save The Queen”. Neither did we put our hands on our hearts. And the word “indivisible” was familiar, but…
Indivisible…
Ah yes, “One nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all”!
Yes, it seems that this Australian Superman is fighting for Truth, Justice and the American way!
It didn’t take long to find the original on the Internet:
Now I’m not sure at what point one can say that something is plagiarism, but I think you’ll agree that there’s only two possibilities here: Large chunks were copied, or there’s strong evidence for the collective unconscious.
So as I understand it, the writer of the Australian version (or plagiarist, if you feel there’s too little original material to refer to him as a writer) seems to be saying that unless you re-post something which is largely borrowed from the United States, then one isn’t truly patriotic. Yes, we need to go back to the days that we remember from watching “Leave It To Beaver” that “Father Knows Best” and we were one nation under God with equal rights for anyone no matter which part of the bus you were on. Where our kids happily pledged allegiance to whomsoever we told them to, when we were one nation under God and where we weren’t to our proms with our hearts held high because we knew that this nation was truly great and we asked not what it could do for us, but what we could do for America!
Of course, even the American version of the demand to re-post is a bit strange given I can find no record of any state ceasing the pledge of allegiance in their schools, but hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good rant. Just like the rest of that anti-PC bandwagon which is totally outraged that people are outraged by what they say and they never stop complaining about people who complain, we remember a time when difference wasn’t tolerated and we don’t like this time where people tell us that not to say things that are offensive. We want to go back to the days when everyone had good manners, including teenagers and everyone knew their place. Honestly, as Mark Latham told us, it’s got so you can’t beat your wife in the street without someone trying to make you feel bad about it or lower your self-esteem.
Well, as 26th January approaches, I’m continuing my campaign to have the name changed to Rum Rebellion Day. For those of you whose knowledge of history is sketchy: the Rum Rebellion was the day that Governor Bligh was overthrown for being too sure of himself, and it just happens to be January 26th. I think that any day that the people rise up is much more worthy of celebration than the anniversary of a lot of unwanted boat people landing in Sydney.
By the way, did you know that Turnbull’s middle name is “Bligh”? Just a bit of trivia, I’m not suggesting that we try to overthrow him, because that could be considered sedition!
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