I enjoy studying the US Civil War, but not as something to be lauded, more as an avoidable conflict that was born not in the spirit of the US Declaration of Independence or the letter of the US Constitution. Lincoln soaked the US in blood to preserve a Union, the Emancipation Proclamation was a pragmatic one for the purpose of quelling the rebels, and since the Union forces were unable to enforce it, largely a propaganda excercise. The Civil War and its causes flies in the face of self-determination and federalism.

The breakdown of federalism in Australia is something to regret, but I cannot see it descending into civil war as the Americans ignobly did. Australia never had a solid federal system, Chapter IV (finance and trade) of the constitution saw to that, giving the Commonwealth taxation powers and control over state finances. Why a nation like Australia needed a strong central government is beyond me, when we had 6 colonial governments of good standing and little need for continental defence. The only thing we needed was freedom of trade and labour movement between the colonies and legal methods to resolve cross-border issues such as extradition of suspected felons and escaped prisoners.

Nations turning inward is vague enough to refer to anything, but I take it to mean that governments are less inclined to trust in diplomacy and build mutilateral institutions. It’s also more commonplace for politicians and intellectuals to disparage other cultures than thirty years ago. And there’s also more hostility to refugees and illegal immigrants. Also, foreign interventions are increasingly tailored for domestic political consumption. All this applies more to the US than Australia, but it has its echoes here.

If you restore Jones’s actual words in place of ‘blah-blah’, your last question is miraculously answered. Rejecting rationality obviously is a reference to religious fundamentalists.

I notice you didn’t object to the bit about torture and executions.

In any case, Tony is dead right.

Crikey runs a competition, and this cheapens the whole process. This is not speech-making at a moment of crisis, nor speech-making by wordsmiths who are necessarily any good at their craft: it’s a competition designed to appeal to the pompous asses who spend their time writing bad poems and sending them in to newspapers.

No wonder the results are so bad!

The point is that great national speeches come from great national tragedies. Our only really big national tragedy - the genocide (albeit largely unintentional) of the Aborigines - has left its victims mute.

But Canada did this in 1867 with the British North America Act, albeit that other provinces joined progressively thereafter. Of course, Canada was just a federated union of colonies in 1867, but that’s exactly what Australia was in the years after 1901. And there had been war in Canada long before federation (i.e. war with the French). But there had been war in Australia (with the Aborigines) long before federation too. Moreover, Canada adopted the Statute of Westminster (which was the key step in sovereign independence) well before Australia did so. Like much of what David Flint says and writes, this piece is fairly heavy on pompous bluster. But even that is better than the self-flagellating nonsense of Barry Jones.