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Australia has been under a totalitarian thumb throughout the Covid pandemic. It’s shocking for us in the States to see an its citizens living in a police state. Yet a conservative columnist flippantly says, “Australia is a mess, but who cares?”
Derek Hunter, who writes at Townhall.com, continues with:
“People assume places like Australia are very similar to the United States because we share a language, like the same movies, and so on. But Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, anywhere else, is nothing like the United States.”
He points out that none of these nations have a Constitution like ours in which citizens gain their rights under natural law. However, it’s the governments in the aforementioned countries that grant citizens their rights. Hunter is correct there, and that is a major difference indeed.
But then he also says that the Aussies voted in their own leaders, so it’s their fault that they’re living under such draconian restrictions:
“You can sit there and be shocked by how Australia and these other countries are acting, how they’re treating their citizens, but you have to remember that the people in these countries elected these politicians.”
Shorter Derek Hunter: Serves you right, Aussies! Sucks to be you!
Aussies, however, are getting fed up. Street protests have been popping up, like this one in Melbourne on Saturday against vaccine mandates.
Then there’s the Novak Djokovic kerfuffle, which I wrote about earlier this month. I’m far from the only voice supporting Djokovic’s resistance to vaccine mandates, however. Stacey Rudin, a New Jersey attorney, applauded Djokovic for standing up to the Australian government:
“If Novak openly rejects this vaccine, they can too, without shame. His very public deportation will hopefully get many people thinking about his approach to health, which if widely understood and adopted, will finally burn the Covid Regime to the ground — once and for all.”
However, here’s what Derek Hunter said about Djokovic:
“Honestly, I don’t really care because I’m not Australian, nor do I like or watch tennis.”
And that is the basic premise of Hunter’s argument: It doesn’t bother me, so who cares?
Derek Hunter’s bio at Townhall says that he’s a political strategist and writer based in Washington, DC. He’s also a founder of the conservative Daily Caller.
What Hunter is not, however, is a student of history.
Australia has been an ally of ours on the battlefield for the past 100 years. Aussies first fought alongside Yanks in 1918 in France, starting what they call “100 Years of Mateship.” Early in World War II, Australian Prime Minister John Curtin called on America for protection from the Japanese, and US troops began to arrive in 1942. By 1943, 250,000 Americans were stationed in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane.
Making friends with Koalas. Credit: State Library Victoria Collection/flickr/CC BY-NC 2.0.
Then, in 1951, Australia and the United States formalized their alliance through the ANZUS Treaty, and the partnership continues to this day. My son-in-law, a US Navy Commander, has participated with the Australian Navy in submarine exercises Down Under. And recently, Australia spent $3.5 billion to purchase tanks from us as their tensions with China have increased.
But we shouldn’t care about Australia, according to Derek Hunter.
Throughout his op-ed, Hunter points out that our Constitution and our system of government is better than their system of government. Fair point, our Constitution does guarantee greater freedoms for us. But to view a longtime ally with contempt because their leaders are oppressive is an overreach. Yes, Australia needs us for protection against China. But they support us, too, just as they did in every conflict for the past century. And when Aussies protest in the streets against fascistic Covid policy, we should cheer — not sneer at — our mates in the Land Down Under.
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Featured image: Sydney Opera House. Hai Linh Truong/flickr/cropped/CC BY 2.0.
Joan says: As a consertative Australian, I have to say you are reading Australia wrong.
First of all, lockdowns are imposed at State level and only one state – Victoria, with a hard leftist Government – went overboard to the point they got a strog pushback. But, you know, it was worse, but little worse than that of the worst US states.
The most populated State – NSW – adopted a policy of ‘as little as we need to do’; but did occassional do so.
Other States by closing their borders, basically kept COVID out, with short sharp lockdowns imposed when an outbreak occurred.
There are a range of views as to who got it right or wrong and no little annoyance with thiose States that adopted ridiculously hard borders – sometimes with almost inhuman consqueences (again on the whole, the leftist leaning governments butt protecting public servants left to excersise discretions where ‘no’ was always the job safest answer).
But we are coming out of it now with a death and ICU rate from COVID which is the tiniest fraction (even on per capita terms) of that in the US.
Most individuals broadly support what has happened, even though there is no shortage of sniping across political lines.
[…] post Australia! Who Cares? Says Writer. Well, We Should appeared first on Victory Girls […]
they would do well to get about re-writing that constitution of theirs. Probably a very long term project but I think this has “awakened” them to what can happen with very subtle differences in an otherwise similar framework of laws
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George says: So the US has a constitution. With the permanent bureaucracy completely ignoring it, that hardly matters.
Geoff Patch says: Someone who lives in a country run by Joe Biden, of all people, is criticising the leaders of other countries while espousing the virtues of his political system.
Now that’s really funny. I’ll just add, AOC. No, wait, I can’t help myself, Ilhan Omar. Somebody stop me.
I am SO OLD, that I remember when The Untied States used to put sanctions on countries who ran authoritarian rules AGAINST their own citizens! Tiananmen Square got China sanctions.
Iran ran afoul many times.
Now the Chinese commies and Iran and the taliban are our “allies”?
I wish for the good old days when America STOOD UP FOR FREEDOM AROUND THE WORLD.
BUT after reading “Joans” post (above) from Australia, I tend to side with Derek Hunter?!
If that is their attitude, they deserve what they are allowing.
BUT ONLY AFTER READING HER POST.
Joan says: It’s hard to know how much to let these things slide. In part because I’m not sure what news you’re getting which is flaming these attitudes.
If you are conflating what happened in the State of Victoria with Australia as a whole, then that might explain your attitudes but not forgive the ignorance of the news reports upon which it was based. My personal view is the premier of that state is a control freak and tyrant and if they don’t vote him out at the election at the end of this year, they deserve what they get. Unfortunately the center right opposition is weak and in disarray, so the result is far from a foregone conclusion. But goodness, there would be some US States about which the same observation might be made.
The rest of Australia, as noted above, has done a reasonable job on a reasonable basis of keeping COVID deaths low to a degree that should embarrass the US.
The irony is that most Australians believe the world is a better place with a stronger America but are completely appalled at your present political weakness and, since Constitutions were raised above, that your constitution is a mess.
Your three arms of Government (parliment, president and Supreme Court) seem to be constantly in a three way battle designed to make sure nothing ever gets done. Our is based on real power residing with a bicameral Parliment (House of Reps and senate – much like yours). The head of state is a figurehead with limited reserve powers and the High Court is much less political and rarely called upon to solve highly political disputes (because our constitution was never designed to give unelected judges that role).
Your voting system seems to be designed to be corrupt. Ours is is designed to and is regarded as having a high level of intregrity and a low level of gerrymander. Scruitners from both sides have full access to all counting processes. I know it will appall you, but we have compulsory voting. That reduces corruption because parties don’t need to raise funds and proform (corruption allowing) tasks to ‘get out the vote’. Australians on the whole accept this because they put some degree of civic obligation ahead of unfettered freedom as the price of a functioning society.
Australians almost universally accept our tight gun laws and like the relatively very low rates of violent crime (of all sorts) that we enjoy.
It is those to the right in Australia who resist US style Bill of Rights because they recognise it puts final say in what can at any time become an unelected politicised court. Plus that any attempt these days to draft on is likely to be so full of wokeness imported from the US as to do more harm than good. It might have been nice to have a simple, unfettered, right to freedom of speech, but there is now way that is how it would be worded today (in the US or Australia) is someone put one forwarded. Your own freedom of speech is being eroded by cancel culture the politicisation of the media in a way that makes the constitutional right almost meaningless.
And that’s just a start.
Now all of this is expressed as a lament, not a critizism. As I said, Australians wish the US would overcome its problems and become a stronger country again. It’s just that some people in glass houses haveben throwing stones.
Scott says: “Australians almost universally accept our tight gun laws “.. Sorry Joan, you lost me right there. That is EXACTLY what will allow tyranny to flourish. Without arms, you are not citizens, you are subjects, to be treated however the sovereigns feel… There has not been a dictatorship in history that didn’t begin by restricting the private ownership of firearms.
SDN says: After the known shenanigans in 2020 and earlier, the claim that any government was actually elected by the citizens should be viewed with skepticism.
GWB says: based in Washington, DC
That right there explains much.
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