Australian values that might contradict Australian values
September 22nd 2006 00:34
Again, this is quite obvious, but I just want to make it explicit:
1. It might well be the case that Australians have certain beliefs and attitudes (like personal integrity, freedom of conscience, revulsion towards force, a liking of diversity, openness towards plurality and change, tolerance, larrikinism, cynicism towards power, skepticism towards authority, etc) that might be incommensurable with politics of division, marginalisation, xenophobia, with impositions of values, with attempts to homogenize the population, and with signing one's name to exclusionary manifestos.
2. And it might well be that Australians have values like "cosmopolitanism" that are incommensurable with parochial nationalism. That is, they might think of themselves as world citizens, and might believe they should have care for anyone in the world, regardless of country of affiliation or origin.
There is, after all, a sense in which, for most moral systems, national border (and physical distance?) are morally irrelevant boundaries. Why should I care less about you simply because you live a few metres away on the other side of some imaginary line?
Similarly, if liberal democracies are based around equality, justice, liberty, it's natural (so it has been argued) for their sphere of concern to extend globally.
1. It might well be the case that Australians have certain beliefs and attitudes (like personal integrity, freedom of conscience, revulsion towards force, a liking of diversity, openness towards plurality and change, tolerance, larrikinism, cynicism towards power, skepticism towards authority, etc) that might be incommensurable with politics of division, marginalisation, xenophobia, with impositions of values, with attempts to homogenize the population, and with signing one's name to exclusionary manifestos.
2. And it might well be that Australians have values like "cosmopolitanism" that are incommensurable with parochial nationalism. That is, they might think of themselves as world citizens, and might believe they should have care for anyone in the world, regardless of country of affiliation or origin.
There is, after all, a sense in which, for most moral systems, national border (and physical distance?) are morally irrelevant boundaries. Why should I care less about you simply because you live a few metres away on the other side of some imaginary line?
Similarly, if liberal democracies are based around equality, justice, liberty, it's natural (so it has been argued) for their sphere of concern to extend globally.
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