bigotry

My website: www.somethingfunnygoingon.com ~ My Book: Agent Provocateur: the backlash against the anti-smoking campaign ~ is concerned with Civil Rights, Over Population & Pollution

Origins and explanation of illustration [1]
Just so we understand one and other, I have some (not all!) - definitions of the words Patriot; Traitorous, and Bigot; they are derived from a thesaurus, and as such, become somewhat diluted as one progresses through the synonyms, however, I believe that essentially, the following words are best described as follows:

The thesaurus definition & synonyms of a patriot are: devoted; dedicated, dutiful, faithful, fervid, jingoistic, loyal, nationalistic, statesmanlike, zealous.

The antonyms of patriot are: antisocial, misanthropic, traitorous.

The Thesaurus definition of traitorous are: unpatriotic; double-crossing, double-dealing, ,betraying,

Outside legal spheres, the word "traitor" may also be used to describe a person who betrays (or is accused of betraying) their own political party, nation, family, friends, ethnic group, team, religion, social class, or other group to which they may belong.

The main definition of a racist is bigot: and a bigot is describes as being an intolerant, prejudiced person.

... And so, I would like to reiterate what many of us quite well understand, and that is, that further populating of Australia by means of Immigrants is unsustainable.

I hope not to be 'read' as a bigot, but rather as a patriot, wanting to preserve for current and future (made in Australia) - generations, a sustainable Australia.

From http://www.biosensitivefutures.org.au/overviews/overviews-1/major-ecological-issues-in-australia-today

- I have understood this:

All sustainability of our community requires adequate, clean water and housing. Neither of these requirements is commensurate with burgeoning populations who require more than an adequate supply of water.

Equally devastating to sustainability is the increasing requirement to find land suitable for housing (using arable land) and infrastructure, within the newly built ‘communities’, to enable them to function as a robust, productive society.

None of us wants to see our quality of life reduced – we all want to be able to use water when we want to, and a comfortable, affordable home – and jobs to fund our standard of living.

None of what I am saying is news ~ but I put forward the notion that it is patriotic to feel this way, and not a bigoted, antisocial motivation that drives me to write here, in this blog.

Further more, it should be noted that there is unlikely to be a reciprocity in the countries from whence our immigrants arrive; i.e. I would almost be certain that amongst other nations there would be a legal instrument to prevent advantage being taken of the nationals of those countries by international arrivals, intending to 'set up house'.

I believe that, as expected of us, we would fight, as patriots, for our Country - if we were at war ~ why are we not expected to feel the same way to keep our standard of living - to keep the peace? .. to maintain and keep our way of life, our valuable resources?

I believe that all Australians have a right to keep Australia safe, viable, and sustainable.

... Singapore has to buy water from its neighbor - Malaysia... do Australians want to... be in the same boat?

By the way, hands up those of you who feel betrayed by successive governments who have 'sold us out' to an unsustainable 'ideology' of populate or perish? I, at least feel, that successive governments in Australia have been treasonous - have been traitorous - to the Great Australian Dream.

Notes

Candobetter Editor:

Nation and Citizenship

Agent Provocateur has hit the nail on the head in defense of patriotism. There have been attempts recently to massage 'Nationalism' into a politically incorrect term. Whilst nationalism can get out of hand, as in National Socialism, and whilst Marx made good points about international workers' rights, the location of human rights and rights of citizens has always resided in the concept of the nation - first in Roman law, and later in French law. (To contrast: in Ancient Rome about 2% of people were citizens with full rights (women could be citizens but did not have full rights. ). By the end of the Roman Empire about 9% of people were citizens. A theory is that the rulers began to sell citizenship in order to increase their tax-base. [Sources: It has been estimated by William Scheidel, "Population & Demography" (Princeton-Stanford Working Papers in Classics, 2006, that, towards the end of the empire, about 9% of the Roman Empire of about 70 million were citizens. This was after the rules of citizenship had been considerably relaxed. Bruce Bartlett, “How Excessive government killed the Roman economy, The Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cjv14n2-7.html. David Mattingly, An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, 2006, pp 166]

Nationhood and citizenship within it was the basis of the French revolution, which substituted a code of rights to property, shelter and self-government (i.e. the rights of 'free'-men for feudal subjection where only a very limited number of people in a polity had the right to own property and their own persons. If we abandon the concept of citizenship and the rights of citizens we abandon our rights to self-government. Then we risk becoming plastic entities in small power-bases where rights must constantly be negotiated. This was the situation during the medieval era in Europe. Because of the very poorly defined rights of citizens in most anglophone government systems, this constant renegotiation is a feature of our struggle to control national assets and resources.

[1] Origins and Explanation of Illustration. The illustration is of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, dated 1789, and the chief document of the first democratic French Parliament, 1789. Called a 'revolutionary' parliament, it was actually a legal parliament, formed with the King's consent, and based on legal rights of subjects which were carried principally by representatives of the low clergy and the ordinary people of Britanny, who were soon joined by people from all over France. The first violent act of the Revolution was when the king, in an attempt to rescind his authorisation of this document, surrounded Paris with royal troops under his command, with the intention of intimidating the people there. This prompted the famous 'storming of the Bastille', which has often been severely misinterpreted by anglophone sources as a strange attempt to liberate a few disreputable nobles from a debtors' prison by ignorant and misguided 'commoners'. The Bastille was, in fact, broken into by the frightened people of Paris in order to obtain gunpowder and weapons to defend themselves against the King's army.

The king backed down on this occasion, but monarchists in Europe constantly attempted to give him support to bring down the revolution. The French revolution did not end until 1846, and there were three restorations of monarchy. Napoleon's role was very interesting and important and represented France's war against a coalition of European monarchies, plus fascinating trade wars with England using this coalition. I

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens 26 August 1789was passed by the Assembly on 26 August 1789.

Passed by the National Constituent Assembly.

"All men are created and remain free and have equal rights.
That the natural rights of man are liberty, property, safety and resistance against oppression.
That the principle of sovereignty resides in the nation.
That the law is an expression of the general will and that all are equal before it.
That every man has the right to be presumed innocent.
That everyone has the right to liberty of expression and that no-one may be harassed because of their opinions, including religious ones.
That the Constitution rests on the separation of powers.
That Property is an inviolable and inalienable right."

Under the Roman Law structure of French (and most European government) which Napoleon reinforced, it is difficult for private individuals to control more property and power than the state. The key to democracy here is citizens' rights as members of the state. In British law it is more easy for private individuals to gain control of property and power, which we seen in the rise of massive international corporations, which began in the era of coal-and iron based colonialism from Britain. The interpretation of the inviolability of property within the british structure of US government has had a problematic and undemocratic outcome in the US system. The Australian system also lends itself to this distortion, whereby it is possible to aggregate enormous amounts of land and resources under private ownership. Then the owners can form a private power-base, such as we see in The Property Council of Australia. Such a base has the power to influence government well beyond democratic control and there is always the danger that Government will merge with such power bases, which has happened in Australia.

Right to Vote

In France and Britain, women did not acquire full citizenship with voting rights until the 20th century. (British women 1928, with some property restrictions, and French women in 1944, with no property restrictions) However, France was way ahead of Britain and the rest of the world, in granting qualified (i.e. with exceptions) ‘universal’ male suffrage in 1792. Although this suffrage excluded women, the clergy, soldiers and Algerian French, it did not exclude the poor and landless (as long as they were men, of course). Universal male suffrage in Britain did not occur until 1918. Prior to the granting of universal male suffrage in France and Britain, voting rights depended on the possession of landed estate.