Australian Loyalty

I had been asked why is it that I strike out my commitment for Australian heritage; it’s not a question asked too often in the sea of curiosity that might surround understanding the heart of a nativist. My thinking about the subject brought up many important concepts which I do not believe have been done justice in writing, in recent times anyway.

My family, through many generations has lived on this soil, I am a product of families that are Australian through-and-through – parents, grand-parents, great great grandparents and onward had been born to this ground, fed and sustained by it. These ancestors of mine fought drought, fire, flood, Japs and Barons to make for themselves in this land a life worth living. I myself have been given a life by this land, handed a heritage from our nations founders and the great movements of the past that had in their focus the benefit of the Australian workingman.

There is no hope it is often said; and if this is true or not has no bearing upon my behaviour; as Spengler said ‘Optimism is cowardice.’ Holding fast to principles and practice regardless of the odds or the likelihood of national revival is the test of where our hearts rest: Do we cower and seek to follow the trends of the day, abandon our national and familial heritage because all hope is lost? no – to be like the last Roman soldier at Pompeii who was found buried underneath volcanic ash because nobody relieved him of his post :-  A glorious life and death is one of the very few things that cannot be taken from a man, and this is how I would seek to live and die honouring and sustaining the heritage conferred upon us.

M. Grant