ferdie
Sometimes it's the subtle things that betray a person's real perspective. You describe values that are "ours" (i.e. in your opinion, yours and those who identify as "Aussies") but then render Australians as an *other* it seeks to deny Australians *their* national heritage and idenbreasty (my emphasis).
If you're going to wallow in jingoism, you really ought at least to be consistent. I suspect you were copying and pasting again from some wanky reactionary pseudo-intellectual columnist (the "seeks to deny" and "seeks to convince" in one paragraph are a bit of a give away -- people putting on airs love that, but it's rather like putting a bow tie and tux on a gorilla -- amusing, but not convincing). You just forgot to change "their" to "our" to suit your post.
Your broader point is wrong too. While every community has a kind of cultural imagination which is played out in the ways they manage their lives, the mores and taboos they adopt and the preferences they try to enforce, and some of this refers back to events past, the reality is that this mix is in a constant state of reinvention and reinterpretation -- so much so that to speak of an "Aussie" culture or "Aussie Heritage" is fundamentally misleading.
Almost all contemporary culture is a melange -- and never more so than today when every cultural pattern or inflection is almost instantaneously available on a global scale, compelling every other cultural pattern with which it's in conflict to address itself to it. Some cultural preferences speak with more force than others of course -- and those emanating from the richest people in the world speak loudest of all -- at least to those who can mimic them.
Fran
