Big Dave wrote on Oct 7^th, 2012 at 10:22am:

Are we not democrats?

I don't remember past governments asking if australia wanted multiculturalism at all. They just did it. Australia has never been a true democracy, so my answer is that we never have been democrats. We just suck on whatever they want done.

freediver wrote on Oct 7^th, 2012 at 10:32am:

Can you name one that has? All dogmas quickly split and are infused with local cultural sensibilities that ultimately are at odds to varying degrees with its parent.

freediver wrote on Oct 7^th, 2012 at 10:32am:

Hardly making excuses for them... The reasons for the rise of an Empire are vastly complex, but they all at least require the elements of novelty and promise... Those that have gone before lack those crucial elements.

Big Dave wrote on Oct 7^th, 2012 at 10:22am:


You're such a stooge. Our government could tell you anything and you'd believe it. There has never been a single terrorist plot in Australia that wasn't hatched by the government itself. In each case, we find the only ones in these so called plots who actually did anything were the government plants. Some gullible Muslims just went along with them. So no such sentiments exist in the Muslim community, but the government is indeed working hard to implant them, to justify their longer reaching arm into the affairs of the people.

Quote:


Plenty have conquered what they considered the 'known world'. Islam is one. Others have come close to actually conquering the whole world in recent history. The scale of the Islamic empire compared to the ability they had to actually control it was massive. Controlling the entire world today would be easier, not harder.

This is a pretty poor argument North. Even if it had not happened in the past does not mean it can never happen. Politics is highly non-linear.

freediver wrote on Oct 7^th, 2012 at 10:44am:

The 'known world' (quite rightly in quotes) implies as its corollary 'the rest of the world', i.e. those lands that were not conquered.

freediver wrote on Oct 7^th, 2012 at 10:44am:

While the element of surprise is on the imperialist side, its dogma may ascend, but then it will quickly split. It is a natural human sensibility to honour that which is in some way mysterious - appears to have a metaphysical quality to it - That need for the mysterious also infects our belief in political systems. Its not for no reason that even we democrats often imbue our rhetoric, when extolling the virtues of democracy, with metaphysical (even quasi-religious, and sometimes frankly religious) terms.

"...one Nation under God..."

freediver wrote on Oct 7^th, 2012 at 12:20pm:

And what a closet anti-democrat he was!

Born into aristocracy, an admirer of Stalin, contemptuous of 'inferior races' (as he perceived people of colour) who did all he could to obstruct Australia's right to defend itself with its own troops and to prevent the dissolution of the empire.

Still, as a believer in democracy myself, I'd have to agree with him on that quip.