A quote from Leinad:
“Part of the reason why africa is such a mess is because borders between states were drawn by multiple colonial powers without regard to the tribal/ethnic/religious makeup of the resident population, essentially mashing togerther different groups with different languages and customs together and saying ‘hey you guys are a nation now‚Äô.”

Are you suggesting, Leinad, that the tribal/ethnic/religious makeup of a population is actually important to nation-building? That, the forcing together of different tribal/ethnic/religious groups is responsible, inter alia, for the current mess that many African states now endure? Can you draw any parallels between the African example and Western multiculturalism, which brings together people with far greater differences in tribal/ethnic/makeup than those that exist between neighbouring tribes in Africa?

If Australia’s immigration policy should essentially be blind to matters of race, culture, religion and custom then are we not “essentially mashing different groups with different languages and customs together and saying ‘hey you guys are a nation now‚Äô”? Although in the multicultural West, instead of starting with an ethnically heterogeneous population and forcing them under single government (ala Yugoslavia), we start with a relatively ethnically homogenous population and force new people of different languages, customs and races into the group and then say “hey you guys are a nation now”. Isn’t there something we can we learn from the experiences of other ethnically diverse countries?

Perhaps multiculturalism and mass immigration in Western societies is punishment for being collectively responsible for so many of these poorly and artificially constructed post-colonial/post-war nations at the hands of the British. The destruction of our own societies/ethno-nations seems fitting - Karma’s a bitch.

I figured that you only have to look at the historical examples - such as “disbeliever” - and it would tell you an awful lot MORE about the people who used such terms than it did about the witches and heretics who had to wear it.

But what?

At one stage, I’m also sure Darwin said he wasn’t a Darwinist.

I also have a vague recollection of Jesus saying he wasn’t a Christian (well, he wasn’t - he was a Jew, but I don’t mean that: this was in a context where it was sort of ‘well if they’re Christians or what not, than I’m not’). Perhaps some of the religious types about these parts might know better.

Someone fixed him by writing “Goethe is a fink” on the blackboard. It was only fun but it really upset him.

Doing education in the 70s and early 80s, yep, there were heaps of lefties. There was one definite Marxist - Red Ted D’Urso.

I’ve got broadband, and I find this site painfully slow. I blame the gravatars.

Can’t really recall any Marxists. I think in my department about a third of the full-time staff was involved in the NTEU. Not exactly a hotbed of Marxist ideology.

No. LP’s server is powered by a smacked out hamster in a rusty wheel. Everyone’s having problems with it. Hear that Mark and Robert? EVERYONE! SLOW! HAMSTER!

There’s not much difference between Germany in the 1930s and China now. Strong relationship between govt and business, preference for homogenuity, both killers. I guess the quote has got it right.

PS Does the live comment preview slow these pages down or has everyone got broadband ‘cept me?

I can’t recall being taught by anyone who declared themself a Marxist, although a couple may have embraced that term when they were younger. The academics I came across included anarchists (one Asian Studies lecturer and one Politics lecturer), classical liberals (eg. my Honours supervisor), social democrats, democratic socialists, a couple of Labourites and at least a couple of historians who most likely voted Liberal. In History, most teenagers or early twenties students would have struggled to tell someone’s exact political preferences unless you directly approached them about it. In postgrad seminars, academics were often too busy asking the same question no matter what the topic was. It struck me that most of them were quite conservative and quite removed from any political engagement.

In Information Studies, the most political things got was a caution against censorship and a commitment to trying to keep information as free as possible.

Anyway I submit that this thread cannot move on until he apologises for having ancestors from the country that invented fascism.

‘Would you like some Canapes, Jack?’

‘By your offerings you shall know them indeed! While supposedly disdaining elitist haute-cuisine those paragons of revolutionary vanguardism, the Hoxha-ist Economics professors of the Sydney-Syndicalist Bloc were spied by myself, the Scarlet Strochernel snaffling fresh canapes served to them by petite arts undergrads at many a campus party. Why the abject hypocrisy of gulping down titbits while across the sea Pol Pot’s dire legions of totalitarian brutality were enslaving whole villages blahblahblha…”

There is an enormous amount of straw hysteria about the politicisation of universities.

And Jackerstrocchi is more hysterical than most. I can’t resist pasting in this quote:

Now some harmless old crank suffering a mid-life crisis dashs out a poorly researched and politically incorrect counter-blast to the conventional wisdom.

Oh, the irony.

There wree a few communist profs at Melbourne when I was there in the 70s and 80s. One of them, whose name I have conveniently forgotten, managed to write a whole book about the Soviet political system without mentioning the KGB even once.

That was probably Lloyd Churchward. And he was one of the more decent scholarly ones. Apparently things were worse in the red-brick unis.

From the tone of comments on this thead it seems that the history of those years has been conveniently flushed down a memory hole.