If that's what your country's founded on, that's what it's founded on, man.
Just like ours.
Hey now, give us some credit - as TexasGurl said, we largely avoided Slavery.
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My issue isn't the past, it is was it is, and it's good that it gets addressed. My issue is more that we choose this day out of the whole year to be our national celebration. There is almost no worse open in terms of causing divisiveness on a day that is supposed to be about unity. Plus what are white, Anglo-Celtic Australians like myself even meant to be celebrating? The arrival of ships full of convicts who largely starved for months and months before resorting to cannibalism? Or, more neutrally, 'The foundation of the Sydney colony'? Sydney's a sh**thole anyway.
Indigenous Australians see it as offensive, non-Anglo-Celtic Australians have no link to the history behind it, and Anglo-Celtic Australians only have a link through the convicts and their guards. And even then, most of us come from entirely free-settling stock.
I'm proud of the nation that Australia has become, especially after such a difficult start, but my pride doesn't extend to celebrating the anniversary of January 26 1788, and I don't understand why anyone would. As a political geek, my preference would be either the 9th of May (opening of parliament in 1901 in Melbourne, 1927 at Old Parliament House in Canberra, and 1988 at New Parliament House) or maybe the 3rd of December (Eureka Stockade and the birth of a true Australian identity), but even if we just went with the 25th of January I'd be happy.
