This Australia Day will be celebrated by a divided and demoralised community. Inflation and bracket creep have eaten into the living standards of millions of Australians, with many suffering financial distress. Anti-Semitism is rife in our cities, and in many of our leading institutions, threatening the Jewish community and dismaying the silent majority. The divisive Voice referendum is fresh in our minds. The psychological hangover from punitive Covid lockdowns has not abated. Each of these, on its own, would test community cohesion and morale. Together, they threaten to do permanent damage to our social fabric.

At times like this, the things we cherish in common assume a greater-than-usual importance: our shared nationality in all its diversity; the distinctive Australian values and characteristics in which we take pride – our egalitarianism, our lack of respect for pretension, even our familiar, typically Australian greetings to each other; the national symbols and touchstones to which we instinctively respond including the success of sportsmen and women who represent us; and yes, our national rituals, including Australia Day.

These patriotic attachments vary from person to person but have the same emotional destination. They are a common patrimony passed down to us by earlier generations, but reside separately and severally in our hearts and minds. Many seek to manipulate them, whether for commercial or ideological purposes, but they retain a life and integrity of their own, an innocence, if you will, which is why our children so easily embrace them.

Others, as we know, deride these things, including frustrated intellectuals who mistake second-hand Marxist sociology for profound thought, inner-urban snobs desperate to distance themselves from their suburban roots, and those who have never grown out of their adolescent country-hating stage.

Instinctive patriotism is a stabilising force for communities. It takes attention away, even if for a moment, from our separate identities and interests, reminding us of what we share. It softens and minimises our class distinctions, humanising the well-off, and lifting up those of modest means. And for those who respond emotionally to it, it is a source of consolation and inspiration.

The ritual attacks on Australia Day, which we will no doubt hear again this year, are not really about the choice of date or even how we celebrate it. They are part of a much wider campaign to undermine patriotism in all its forms.

As we know, at its core is the claim that the British settlement of Australia was an unpardonable historical crime against its initial indigenous occupants; a form of original sin, but one which cannot be forgiven. Condemnation is not confined to the particular individuals, practices, and laws which, undoubtedly, cost indigenous lives and land, and were destructive of their culture, but is applied to the very idea of the country itself; a moral stain which taints everything about it.

Our history, when viewed in this way, is reduced to a record of unmitigated shame, a case study in colonialism, differing only in degree from the worst instances of this phenomenon in 19th-century Africa. Our ancestors are regarded as bigoted, ignorant, and limited. Those who fail, or are alleged to have failed, the test of current-day morality must be expunged from history.

Present-day Australians (and presumably those yet to be born) do not escape censure. They bear a collective historical guilt, regardless of what they think, feel, say, and do. Indeed, by upholding our institutions and loving their country, they are sanctioning the ‘structural racism’ that, according to this view, explains indigenous disadvantage today.

So we must, we are told, reject, or radically recast our entire patriotic inheritance: our institutions, including our constitution, our commemoration of great historical events, like Anzac Day, and our national symbols, ceremonies, and rituals.

This project is ideological rather than historical, with facts cited only to confirm pre-determined moral judgments. It is reductionist and static, removing all colour, nuance, and growth from our story. It is demoralising, robbing us of the inspiring figures and legends which a more rounded perspective affords. Above all, it seeks to return us to a kind of cultural and social ground zero where, freed of all traditional affections and attachments, Australians can be re-engineered. The goal: a brave new progressive world.

Until relatively recently, this destructive movement was a fringe phenomenon, the work of cranks and fanatics. It is now mainstream, featuring prominently in school curricula, large parts of our media, the bureaucracy, and the boardrooms of the country.

If we rightly reject this view of the nation, we need not fall into the opposite trap of jingoism. As G.K. Chesterton recognised, there is an enormous difference between what he called nationalism and patriotism. The former, he pointed out, is triumphalist, aggressive, and crudely populist. The latter is grounded in a genuine and spontaneous affection for the country, an affection that is not blind to its flaws and defects, and an affection prepared to embrace reform to better realise the nation’s ideals. This is the patriotism that actuated Martin Luther King, and it’s the patriotism of the millions of Australians who want to end indigenous disadvantage, but who voted against the Voice.

Australia’s history undoubtedly has its dark chapters, some of which – like the anti-Semitism we see today – are yet to be written. But it also includes its share of miracles. After all, we were a convict colony that became a successful test case for Enlightenment values as freed convicts, granted full rights and able to accumulate property, thrived in our classless, meritocratic society. In the late 19th century, we fashioned a constitution (influenced, to be sure, by those of the US and Britain) which proved its worth last year, more than a century later. And in the post-second world war decades, we left White Australia behind to embrace the immigrant society we live in today. Along with the US and Israel, we are arguably the most successful immigrant nation in human history.

It is fashionable for critics to decry Australia Day, but they pay little attention to the way Australians observe it. There is no breast-beating nationalism, no military parades, no denialism about our past, or insensitivity towards indigenous Australians. Instead, we gather in small groups across the land to enjoy each other’s company, not in separate ghettos or enclaves, but together, side-by-side in our parks and beaches. Diverse and different to be sure, but sharing something in common, something unstated, perhaps, but nonetheless real and tangible, our common Australian sensibility.

Our ancestors were wise enough to see this as a national asset, a great unifying force in troubled times; an insight that seems beyond many of today’s leaders.

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