Re: Who would have thought (Lone Ranger)

Further to your post, Roy, it really is laughable that "racism" is the depth of analysis attempted ABC journalists (and much of the mainstream media generally). The 2-3 million people that marched through Washington this week were protesting big government, socilaised health care and big brother, and were demanding freedom and the right to be left alone to live their lives. The libertarian movement is picking up steam for the first time in 100 years in the US, and the founders of the nation would thoroughly approve. This is a question of liberty - not race (why is the left so obsessed with race anyway?).

The tragedy from my perspective is that there is no such movement here. Let me quote from the 1909 Australia year book with regards to the Australian character:

The Australian at present is little other than a transplanted Briton, with the
essential characteristics of his British forbears, the desire for freedom from
restraint, however, being perhaps more strongly accentuated.

The key point is not the the Australian was thought to be like the Briton, but rather the emphasis on his (or her) dislike to restraint, of control. What happened in the intervening 100 years? From a freedom loving, independent people who were ashamed to take hand outs (ask your grandparents), we have become a nation of welfare dependent hand-out junkies, who seem to think that the "rich" should pay for our health care, schools, roads and everyhting else that Government does and probably should not. Where are the lovers of freedom? What happened to the independent Australian who supported himself and his family? What happened to the suspicion of big government? Where is our Washington? Where is our Ayn Rand?

This is how free people become enslaved.