Proud Australian patriotism not a cause for shame

Because of their basic dislike of the society in which they live, Leftists are anti-patriotic.  So to condemn patriotism as racist comes easily to them.  The fact of the matter, however, is that patriotism and racism are essentially unrelated.  See  here,  here and  here.  Some other research that is not online is listed here



PATRIOTISM has been declared racist. Just when we must insist Australia is worth defending, we’re told only scum would say so.

Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt was outraged this week that two Woolworths outlets sold singlets printed with the Australian flag and “If you don’t love it leave”.

Bandt reposted a tweet blasting these “racist singlets”, fanning the fury of the Twitter Left.

Woolworths took instant fright, declaring the patriotic slogan “totally unacceptable” and promising to never again sell such a wicked thing.

But exactly how is the singlet racist? Which “race” does it attack? Which “race” does Bandt think hates Australia so much that they are the obvious target?

No, the haters of the singlet are not trying to protect some Australia-hating “race” they cannot even identify and would insult if they tried.

They are instead offended by patriotism. They are instead vilifying proud Australians who cannot understand why people who openly shout they loathe this land don’t try their luck somewhere else in a world full of options.

Yet it was only nine years ago that this sentiment was still acceptable enough for even Australia’s longest-serving treasurer, Peter Costello, to voice it. Costello was puzzled why some extremist Muslims, especially immigrants, were demanding sharia law — extremists such as Hizb ut-Tahrir leader Ismael al-Wahwah, who wants Australia under a caliphate in which “those who are guilty of apostasy ... from Islam are to be executed”, according to his party’s website.

Said Costello: “Our laws are made by the Australian Parliament. If those are not your values, if you want a country which has sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you.”

Or as the Woolies singlet sums up, if you don’t love us, leave. But now the invitation Costello offered is “totally unacceptable”.

What’s helped to change the climate is the media coverage of the 2005 Cronulla riot. That was mischaracterised as a racist uprising by flag-waving white Australians, rather than an ugly reaction to a minority of ethnic Lebanese youths throwing their weight around.

Now the flag, flown from a house or car, is seen as the summonsing to a racist riot.

Adding to the angst is that mass immigration and the Age of Terror have left us with more ethnic tensions than ever since Federation. The Left particularly seems to fear that peace is now so fragile that just showing the flag is like showing a red rag to a paddock of foreign bulls.

And yes, some Australians do indeed now feel threatened by what immigration and multiculturalism have wrought. The backlash one day could be ugly.

But the trashing of patriotism goes far beyond this often exaggerated fear of bogans carrying flags. Take the campaign even by schools to promote a retribalising of Australia, symbolised by the flying of the Aboriginal flag alongside the Australian one.

Add also extreme multiculturalism, which most rewards the ethnic groups that most keep their distance.

Then add the constant preaching of a largely invented history of genocide, “stolen generations”, racism and environmental devastation until Australia seems faintly disgusting.

So it’s not surprising that Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s appeal for a “Team Australia” was widely mocked by the Left, even though I’m sure most voters backed it.

In fact, the very idea of such a nation state is starting to strike “progressives” and the “alienated” as so last century.

LAST weekend, the ABC’s Encounter program explored what life would be like under a caliphate instead.

“If you’re not a Muslim, it might seem all rather in-house and speculative,” presenter David Rutledge conceded.

“But if you consider that the nation state — like many other products of secular modernity — is beginning to look like a concept whose time could be drawing to a close, then suddenly the caliphate seems less like a medieval fantasy and more like, well, the future.”

It may be crude and even provocative, but “if you don’t love it leave” begins to sound like Socrates against this exhausted toying with totalitarianism.  It is also more likely to be just what we need.

Powerful forces today threaten to tear Australians apart, with calls for jihad, sharia law, treaties with the “First Australians”, new racist divisions in the constitution and more mass immigration of the kind that now looks like colonisation.

No society can survive such threats without prizing its past and its symbols and without insisting what members have in common is far greater than what divides them.

Sure, we must stay open to criticism, to make a great country greater.  But don’t love it? Then, please, feel free to leave.

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Muslim exploitation of Australia's welfare system

There are no fewer than 16 influential Islamic organisations in Australia, including Hizb ut-Tahrir, and there are countless thriving sub Islamic groups in business for some very odd reasons and with some very questionable motives. All receive Government funding.

All Islamic schools also receive Government funding which somehow finds its way into the coffers of the “Australian Federation of Islamic Councils”.

The AFIC is the purse holder and governing body for all things Islamic in Australia.

Since 2010 at least seven major Islamic schools have had their funds temporarily frozen because of “serious irregularities” in financial accounting. Many more are under ASIC investigation where millions in taxpayer funds have simply gone missing without record.

Sydney's largest Muslim school, Malek Fahd, was found to have funnelled back into the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils almost $9 million in school funding. This “accounting” fraud appears to be a common practice in Islamic schools across the country involving hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Government has in most cases decided not to lay charges but merely requests that Islamic leaders promise the defrauded amounts will be repaid in future and in return the funds are immediately unfrozen.

If the Government does decide to continue freezing the funds Muslim leaders challenge the decision in court where orders are made to unfreeze the funds until the matter is determined. This allows the Muslim fraudsters time to cover their tracks.

Eighty seven percent of Muslims are unemployed (in the UK the figure is 85% although it's difficult to assess if that figure includes the unemployable... aged and young Muslims) most are in receipt of disability pensions.

Others are rorting the “carer” system where one Muslim parent agrees to foster-care the other “incapacitated” parent’s children using a government handout of $200 per week per child.

The original Muslim parent then claims she is unable to cope and her children are then foster-cared out to another Muslim parent and on and on it goes in a billion dollar roundabout.

Of course the children all remain with their own parents and in their own homes without any checks because the Government wants no talk of Islamophobia. It is desperate for Islamic “inclusiveness” and fears the screams of victimisation from Islamic lobby groups which will be well aired by the ABC and Fairfax.

If you add to that the halal tax extortion racket that costs Australian shoppers many more millions it becomes clear just how much Islam itself is costing the average Aussie.

More of a worry is where all this hard-earned Aussie money actually goes to. It goes overseas somewhere and you’re entitled to shudder to think where.

Now you’d reckon these guests of ours would be appreciative of this limitless well of milk and honey we provide for them without question.

Well, not really, because many want to cut our heads off, change our legal system and create a Sharia State and the so called Islamic “moderates” don’t whimper a word of protest.

But it doesn’t end there... the forty Aussie lives lost trying to get Muslims a better life in their homelands are vilified as hell-bound infidels who deserved to die.

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Dick Smith in dire straits: Aussie household brand faces closure

I have bought quite a lot of his stuff but his brands can be 4 times dearer than a generic and that does make you ask if you are spending wisely -- JR

After 15 years on supermarket shelves, Dick Smith Foods has passed its use by date.  “It’s a disaster, it's really sad, because we have the best food,” Smith said.  “People stop me in the street all the time and say ‘Dick, we love your foods, we support you’ but most don't.”

At its peak, Dick Smith Foods had a turnover of $80 million per year. Today the range has halved and profits are shot.

Often cheeky but always upfront, Dick now concedes he can't compete because he pays Aussie wages and supports Aussie farmers.

“He can't continue to not make profits, so he has to close,” radio host Alan Jones said.

“If the consumers chooses not to buy that and it's a little bit extra because it's Australian then there is no future and it's very sad.”

The reality is Australians aren't supporting Dick Smith Foods. Dick says only one in 25 shoppers buy one of his products and that is no longer enough to keep the brand alive.  “Virtually no one supports us because it's 30 cents dearer,” he said.

Independent senator Nick Xenaphon has thrown his support behind the Australian icon.  “I'd like to see consumers rally behind Dick Smith, I'm going to go and buy a few dick smith products tonight,” he said.

“It's really sad but you get to the point where you can't even employ our staff and employ the people in the factories that means it will be closed down,” Smith said.

Dick Smith has previously donated more than $6 million in profits to charity.

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Let their warped words be heard

THIS was going to be an open letter to the young radicals who run Hizb ut-Tahrir. To men such as Wassim Doureihi, who fronted ABC’s Lateline last week, whose extremist group is committed to imposing an Islamic caliphate in Australia. Go your hardest, Wassim. Keep talking. Write up your twisted beliefs. Organise your Friday night tirades.

I, and many others, want to know what’s in your head and your heart. We need to see and hear the immorality of a man who will not condemn the barbarity of Islamic State terrorists who behead aid workers and journalists, enslave women and take photos of children holding up severed heads.

But let’s be honest, you are playing evil games. You’re clever enough to know when to hold back publicly, evading every question from Lateline host Emma Alberici. Wassim, why did you say to her, off camera, if you really want answers to those questions, you have my number? Was it a clumsy pick-up line? If so, dream on. Women such as Alberici are not in your league.

In your warped world, women wouldn’t host a television show, dress as she does, challenge and unsettle you as she did with truths that revealed the barbarity and stupidity of your ideas. Your world can only work when women are treated as chattels.

Or was your remark a sly reminder that what you say in private is different to your on-camera remarks? You may be clever, but not clever enough to defeat those of us committed to freedom. Here’s why.

Our ideas are better than yours. We believe in a society based on respect, dignity, equality, the rule of law, freedom of association (so even men like you can meet and plan a caliphate), freedom of religion (so even men like you can use religion as a reason for revolution), free speech (so men like you can try to spread your hate-filled ideology).

However, the moment you incite violence, you commit a crime against the very fabric of our society. Short of that, we will meet and defeat your words and ideas with ours.

On reflection, there’s little point trying to win over, or even explain, our values to these extremists. Their minds are closed, lost to dark dreams of an Islamic caliphate where men rule and sharia law triumphs over human rights.

So this letter is for the rest of us. A reminder of the inherent virtues of our society, where free speech and other human rights allow even abhorrent ideas to be aired. A reminder, too, that we need to defend these values with vigilance. We could shut down extremists. But that’s too easy. That’s what an Islamic caliphate would do. In any case, shutting down words won’t work. It will only drive people underground, allow them to make martyrs of themselves, attracting more attention from the misguided and the aggrieved.

Alternatively, we can let men such as Doureihi speak freely. But free speech means more than ­offering up a platform to extremists who love attention and controversy. That’s too easy too. Free speech is worth doing only if we do it right. It works as a mechanism of progress only when it operates as the marketplace of ideas. This requires grit and courage. Just as Alberici challenged Doureihi’s incoherent, evasive, reprehensible words, so must we.

Yet, for too long, too many people have taken the intellectually lazy route.

They have given the extremists a platform as if they are a harmless form of freak-show entertainment. That’s not the real deal with free speech. It improves our world only when it becomes the instrument for debate, where good ideas win out by proving the error and evil of bad ideas.

Some say we in the West are too tolerant of the intolerant. So let’s not be so tolerant. For starters, let’s get rid of that deliberately slippery word, multiculturalism, which hints at a moral relativism where all cultures are equal. Our Australian culture, with its intrinsic value of free speech, does not mean tolerating an ideology that would take us back to the dark ages. It means exposing the ideology for what it is: retrograde, repellent and espoused by men threatened by educated, confident women.

But for those whose commitment to free speech kicks in at politically convenient points, here’s the other deal with free speech. It’s not a part-time value. Either condemn free speech equally or support it equally. If the intellectual milksops on the Left must spend thousands of hyperbolic words condemning a conservative such as Andrew Bolt as too offensive to be protected by free speech, it’s only fair and right that you condemn men such as Doureihi. His words are far worse than insulting and offensive. Give us a clue, how long will we be waiting? And here’s an incentive: remember that come the caliphate revolution, the first people up against the wall will be the woolly headed progressives, the homosexuals, the feisty women, the minorities.

And to the faint hearts in the Liberal Party, running the country, wasn’t free speech meant to be part of your political DNA? Didn’t you promise to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act on the basis that it allows a judge to strike down an opinion because he doesn’t like its tone? What happened? The Prime Minister dropped the free speech ball because he said social cohesion was more important. But rolling over to a group of hysterical and hypercritical critics of free speech is not social inclusion, it’s appeasement that allows minority groups to dictate the limits of free speech.

It’s up to all of us, in the media, the pub, schools and universities, politics, the Muslim community, to keep challenging men such as Doureihi. What will a caliphate look like? Given that voters won’t choose it, does that mean a violent revolution? If we keep asking questions of the extremists in our midst, we will defeat them. Along the way we will bolster our commitment to free speech.

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