It is un-Australian to worship the Australian flag

I saw this obnoxious thing on someone's car at the local shopping centre recently. [Edit: I should add  that despite the date of this post, this is not an April Fools joke; sadly it is real.]

Flag-worship is un-Australian, as is ordering people around like a freaking Dalek.

 
I can understand why certain people have an attachment to the flag of their country.

Imagine you are a soldier fighting a battle. Suddenly a large number of armed men start coming towards you. They may be the enemy and you may be about to die. If the flag of your country suddenly appears over these soldiers, it will become the most beautiful thing in the world at the moment. If you have a flag of your own, you'll be waving it over your head frantically, since your life may literally depend on doing this.

By the end of the war, it is easy to imagine that this behaviour has embedded itself at a deep emotional level in a soldier's subconscious - even without the help of the ceremonies and other rituals they take part in. The attachment could be so deep that a person might get misty-eyed at the sight of their flag, or homicidal at the thought of someone "disrespecting" it.

In other words, flag-worship could be thought of as a pathological condition caused by a traumatic experience.

Edgar Rice Burroughs - the author of Tarzan - wrote a novel called The Red Hawk. Like most of his work, this was a simplistic, action-packed tale of goodies versus baddies and (apparently) not intended to be a social commentary. However it featured the interesting concept of "The Flag" (the Stars and Stripes; naturally enough) actually being worshipped as a deity in itself. Thus characters would say things to the effect of "When The Flag created the world..." and "The Flag will be angry if you do that". I found this much more amusing than it was probably intended to be.

The worshippers of The Flag were, naturally enough, a fierce warrior tribe engaged in a generations-long war. Although fictional, the scenario made sense; if a people have endured an invasion or a civil war, they may be traumatised in the same way as an individual soldier, and their resulting psychoses (including flag-worship) may become part of their national character.

So it would fair enough to say that a flag may have great importance to those on both the giving and receiving ends of militarism.

Australia, however, fits neither of these categories.

Consider ANZAC day; the primary military-related event on the Aussie calendar. It was originally to commemorate the Gallipoli landings. There is much (perfectly legitimate) talk about bravery and sacrifice and so forth, but no one can say that Gallipoli was being celebrated. It wasn't glorious and it wasn't a victory. It was basically a disaster. We lost and had to run away.

ANZAC day is also unusual (and possibly unique) as far as such events go in that it's about both Australians and New Zealanders. It's not a nationalistic thing.

Australia's military heritage consists pretty much entirely of getting dragged into other people's wars (and generally losing*). The only exception was defending against Japanese invasion in WW2, and that was forced on us.

[* = Not necessary because we're incompetent but generally because we get thrown into unwinnable conflicts. I'm not sure whether this makes it more or less humiliating.]

While there's a general belief that Australians punch above their weight in warfare (but don't all countries think that about themselves?), we don't glory in fighting. It isn't part of the national character to think that it's wonderful to go around invading other countries. We don't parade our missile carriers (do we even have any?) through the streets, followed by ranks of goose-stepping soldiers. We aren't militarists, and we haven't suffered invasion, civil war or revolution either. We don't need a flag to cling to, and we should be glad about this.

Now let us look at the flag itself: It is ugly, both visually, and symbolically.

First of all, the Union Jack in the corner is an irrelevant relic of a fairly unpleasant colonial past. Australia was a prison colony. It was taken from its original inhabitants by the British without even the pretence of a treaty. Nothing to be proud of. Moreover, the United Kingdom has very little relevance to modern day Australia (we play cricket, and that's about it).

The Southern Cross is hardly uniquely Australian either; it's visible in all parts of the Southern Hemisphere, and a little way into the Northern. It could equally well be used by perhaps half of the countries in the world.

Symbolically, the Union Jack consists of the crosses of St George, St Andrew, and St Patrick. The Australian flag adds the constellation of the Southern Cross. That is to say, four crucifixes on the one flag. According to a recent WIN-Gallup poll, Australia is one of the top 10 atheist countries in the world. Isn't a flag consisting almost entirely of crucifixes just a little bit inappropriate?

The construction of the flag is also awkward. Aesthetically, the Union Jack looks fine by itself, and the Southern Cross doesn't look bad either (although having stars on a blue background is arguably illogical; at least PNG chose a black background for their Southern Cross), but the two don't go together. By contrast, the Aboriginal Flag is simple, distinctive, and with a choice of colours that not only look good in themselves but also are symbolic of the country**.

[** = I'm not saying that we need to appropriate the Aboriginal Flag; I think that would be unacceptable to both black and white unless a lot more reconciliation takes place. I'm just saying we don't have to look very far afield to find a better flag.]

Don't get me wrong here: I'm not campaigning for a new flag. Our flag is ugly and stupid and in an ideal world we'd have something better, but this is so unimportant compared to all of the other problems we're currently facing that we might as well not bother. And if it's going to upset a few service-people, why create unnecessary pain for very little gain?

Nor am I saying someone shouldn't be allowed to bow down before their flag if they want to. Put a sticker on your car that says "I love this flag" and I won't complain.

But what does concern me is that this person - and there are more like him appearing all the time - feels he has to right to aggressively order me to join him in his psychotic beliefs, and apparently I must either obey him or get out. That is un-Australian.