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September 04, 2006
Have you noticed the way that the neocons are invoking World War II, the Cold War, and Fascists, Nazis and Communists to convince us that the war in the Middle East really is something that can be won by conventional military means? The enemy is "Islamofascism" and we are supposedly involved in an ideological struggle of freedom versus a totalitarian ideology---a Manichaean unilateralism of good against evil---says President Bush, prime minister Blair, Israeli spokesmen and John Howard. Anyone who does not support them, they suggest, is soft and permissive of Osama bin Laden, copy-cat gangs of violent fundamentalists and terrorists. The appeal is to a deep nationalism at home, with the rhetoric designed for the domestic polity.
Anatol Lieven, in an extract from his America Right or Wrong: an anatomy of American nationalism suggests that under the George W Bush administration the United States has driven towards empire, but the domestic political rhetoric was a wounded and vengeful nationalism. The Bush administration has been careful to package the shift to empire as something else:
on one hand, as part of a benevolent strategy of spreading American values of democracy and freedom; on the other, as an essential part of the defence not of an American empire, but of the American nation itself.
The nationalism is understood by Americans to be patriotism ---anti-war protestors are called unpatriotic---whilst people outside the U.S. who oppose American policies are labeled as anti-American. American nationalism is based on values rather than ethnicity or race: The first value is universalism, which says that Americans share the same moral ideals as the rest of humanity, including freedom, liberty and democracy. The second value is exceptionalism, which says that Americans have a right to pursue policies to preserve their national sovereignty, but other countries do not have a similar right. American sovereignty is to remain absolute and unqualified.
The rhetoric in Australia is mostly about the implosion of the Australian "civilisation" due to an "overdose of liberal tolerance", and the demands that Muslims integrate, accept Australian values, and treat women with equality.It is only Muslims who are defined as a threat to Australia's values and interests. What does it mean to be Australian? "It means accepting Australian values". Which are?
 An answer is given by Kevin Donnelly, who says that the cultural warriors of the Left argue for a kind of mushy multiculturalism, which holds that all cultures are equal, and there is nothing unique about the Australian experience. So what is unique about our culture? Australia is an outpost of Western civilisation that is characterised by an open and free society is the standard answer. Instead of celebrating Australia's Western tradition the left says that we have always been multicultural, that all cultures are of equal value, and we should feel guilty about the sins of the past.
There is nothing unique about these Australian values. The very liberal values of tolerance, compassion, openness and civility that are supposed to ensure Australia's continued peace and stability, are culturally specific and based on our Western heritage.They are shared by all modern western nations. When pushed conservatives begin to talk in terms of Australia's development as a nation and its legal, political institutions and language being Anglo-Celtic in origin and deeply influenced by our Judeo-Christian heritage.
That indicates the appeal is to the core population of Protestant Australia’s old conservative religious and cultural communities that are under threat from an unrestrained free-market global capitalism that threatens to dissolve those communities and undermine traditional family structures. Even though it is the workings of unanchored global capitalism that is eroding the world which the religious conservatives wish to defend, the religious right has allied itself solidly with the free-market forces in the Coalition. This contradiction is covered over by the cultural wars and the left supposedly dumping the western heritage.
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