17 January

My own history is a father who grew up under the extreme nationalism of the Nazis. So I've never found any national days much chop to be honest, patriotism can be a very dangerous thing. Being proud of your country is fine, patriotism though is telling other people how to be proud of their country. How to be an Australian. Let people work that out for themselves, there's more than one way, it's like a grown-up version of fighting over toys. People can be proud of their country without having to be told how that should look. This article deals nicely with some of the usual claims, like "it's in the past move on", and makes the very valid point - if that's true, why don't we say the same thing about Anzac Day? And "this all happened long before I was born, I'm not responsible". A classic misunderstanding of how history works, the Magna Carta happened in the past too and we all enjoy the freedoms that came from that, like fair trials and democracy. So we can't just cherry pick the bits of history we want to keep, and the bits we don't. I don't have a strong view about changing the date, which is the title of the article, I'm more interested in national days and patriotism more generally. But there is a clear argument for changing the date too, which should be THOUGHT about rather than people just wetting their pants and going off on predictable rants. I'm a big fan of people pausing to think.