Tania Plibersek, Andrew Bolt, David Flint, and time for a new pond pledge ...

(Above: First Dog, always with a cartoon to suit every occasion, click to enlarge, or find here).

I love God and my country;
I honour the flag;
I'll serve the Queen;
and cheerfully obey my parents, teachers and the law.

Or some such thing.

Yep, each day we marched out, got into line, and saluted as the flag was raised on the flagpole (one week I was the flag monitor, oh the glory), then marched into school, quickstep, single line - stay in line Dorothy, stop lagging - knowing we'd done our duty for the day.

Say what?

I'll love an invisible friend? I'll love a land which confuses Andrew Bolt with free speech? I'll honour the flag? Well maybe that one they flew at the Eureka Stockade, if we can detach it from the fascists and the Maoists. Is that indigenous flag still on offer? You know, the one without the British flag in the corner, as if we're still part of the Empire. It's bad enough being part of the Commonwealth ...

I'll serve the Queen? Maybe, when hell warms up, not with Irish and German genes coursing through the veins (or wherever they course). Oh okay the house of Windsor is a fiendish Germanic institution intent on creating a new world government, so there's your CLC message for the day.

And how about cheerfully obeying the parents? If they ever manage to get things right, especially when it comes to the joys of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll.

As for teachers, ditto. And as for the law, except in relation to speeding, illegal parking, and the odd bit of naughtiness if I don't think anyone is watching or I won't get caught, I promise to do the right thing, but heck asking for it to be done cheerfully? That's a bridge too far.

And so on and so forth.

Ah, as Barbara might say, memories of long lost empire, and goslings lined up in a row, all quacking in cheerful symmetry.

These days we have an even more perfect goose, and it's Tanya Plibersek doing her best to sound like a rampant John Howard in Love of Australia is about more than lifestyle.

Just reading her column turned me instantly into a raging anarcho-syndicalist libertarian, as she proposes that every Australian child should learn the new fangled pledge by heart and say it regularly at school. It seems we must emulate the United States:

American kids pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and all that it represents; so should Australian children know and understand our nation's citizenship pledge.

Oh dear absent lord, another flag waving patriot, as if the prominent, in your face display of the flag in the United States on everything and anything isn't one of the more brazen exercises in faux loyalty and offensive one-upmanship (womanship if you will).

Yep, once upon a time it was the conservatives who were into social engineering of a kind most likely to produce rebelliousness but these days it's the Labor party given to baleful cliches and mind numbing tosh ...

How about this one for a pledge:

From this time forward

I'll learn to think and reason for myself

and not swallow the spin produced on a daily basis by politicians and the media

And with a bit of luck, I'll retain the right and the liberty to think for myself

rather than turning into a blind automaton reciting like a parrot

the nonsense that politicians and the commentariat want to force feed the innocent young.

Or some such thing. Even worse, the Plibersek carry on about the pledge revived long repressed memories of the catechism classes we endured in the Catholic school system.

Dear sweet absent lord, you can even find it on the intertubes:

1. Who made you?
God made me.

2. Why did God make you?
God made me to know him, love him and serve him in this world, and to be happy with him for ever in the next.

And so on and so forth. Well it's the English version, available here under the tag the 'penny catechism' - a really bad penny - but it's close enough, and reading it brought the whole spiritual pledge routine back, including the nightmarish vision of my heart covered in evil specks of carbon, so dark and blackened it resembled a slab of meat at a really bad barbeque, while reciting this kind of tosh:

64. What do you mean by Limbo?
By Limbo I mean a place of rest, where the souls of the just who died before Christ were detained.

65. Why were the souls of the just detained in Limbo?
The souls of the just were detained in Limbo because they could not go up to the kingdom of heaven till Christ had opened it for them.

These days limbo is a little more theologically suspect - it turns out, if you read limbo's wiki - that it's all in a suggestive state of theological ambiguity and uncertainty, rather like limbo itself - but back in the day we learnt about it by rote, along with other theological absurdities, and had the whole bloody book off by heart.

Bah humbug, and bah humbug to Tanya Plibersek and her talk of pledges, and take me back to the days of the laconic men and women in the bush, who never wore their patriotism on their sleeve, or on the aerial of a ute Hansonite style, or in the flag draped around them while being as pissed as a parrot and in your face incoherently offensive on the beach to boot ...

Meanwhile, the weighty business of wrapping Andrew Bolt in the Australian flag of righteousness and truth and the integrity of the nation as begun in earnest in the Murdoch media, and no one expresses it more perfectly than Chris Merritt, legal affairs editor for the lizard Oz in The Andrew Bolt decision means all of us have a problem.

On the basis of Merritt's header, I'm guessing that "all of us" who have a problem are ranting bloggers, who use Google to do a cursory fact check, and who then produce an error-laden, offensive rant targeting people with white skin and a black heritage, especially if they're in the business of naming names and making offensive insinuations about the motivations of people for identifying as aboriginal ...

No, no, I see by Merritt that everyone around the country has a problem, and it could well change the shape and direction of Australia utterly and forever:

If the Federal Court's ruling in the Bolt case has correctly applied the law, the entire community has a problem.

The court's "Bolt principle" will encourage Australians to see themselves as a nation of tribes - a collection of protected species who are too fragile to cope with robust public discourse.

Unless this is overturned on appeal, it will divide the nation.

Quick Tanya, get out that pledge, it might be the only way we can re-unite the nation, and re-join the tribes into a nation, or else we'll be hopelessly divided.

Unless of course Merritt is in a condition of hysterical over-reaction, or suffering from delusions of grandeur and megalomania and comprehensive self-regard, in his view that the fate of Bolt is somehow intricately wrapped up with the fate of the nation. It's almost Boltian in its vainglorious boastful pridefulness ...

Of course News Ltd could look to its ranting bloggers, and embark on some fact checking and some actual reporting and even - when intending to assault people in print - check on the veracity of what they propose to say, but that would be to assume that 'is your News Limited' is dedicated to quality journalism.

And there's the rub. No one can actually defend the offensive tripe that Bolt scribbled, so they must resort to all manner of high flown, high blown rhetoric, including a nation of tribes and a nation divided.

The question then is what to do if self-regulation has failed and the law a blunt weapon, and yet someone scribbles something that's deeply, profoundly offensive to you? In the past, with News Limited in particular, the response is most likely to be "talk to the hand".

Roll on that media inquiry, and the case for enabling mechanisms that make the media more responsible for what they write. As for the implications, let the head of the relatively neutered and powerless Australian Press Council, Julian Disney have a say:

The chairman of the Australian Press Council (Julian Disney) says the media is still allowed to discuss racial identification issues, and even challenge the genuineness of the identification of a group of people, but only if it is done responsibly and with due care and attention to facts. (Bolt fallout: race reporting 'not a no-go area')

Done responsibly and with due care and attention to facts? No wonder the minions of Murdoch are bleating.

Naturally the anonymous editor at The Australian is also on the case, and naturally he or she thinks we should all be outraged, as the header tells us, Assault on free speech should be offensive to all.

Actually Andrew Bolt continuing to rant and rage from his perch in the Murdoch empire without let, hindrance or correction is offensive to some, so kindly leave some out of the all who should be offended.

Again you won't find any suggestion from the anon edit that Bolt was in error and his journalistic methods as inept as his remarks were intended to be offensive. Instead you'll find idle chatter about "anecdotal evidence".

Would you like triple sliced google reporting with your humbuggery?

But perhaps the most splendid remark came from Bill Rowlings punching on at the tipsy Punch in Bolt case shows need for more free speech:

Free speech allows fools and bigots, and commentators like Bolt, to out themselves and put objectionable views in the public space where they can be appropriately debated, rebutted and/or ignored.

Uh huh. Well there you go. Fools and bigots and commentators like Bolt ...

Who knows what la la land it is wherein Bill Rowlings resides, but Bolt routinely boasts of three million unique browsers a month, spreading toxic fumes throughout the known universe that is the full to overflowing intertubes, and for the life of me, I've searched high and low, and even googled it, and buggered if I can find where he's appropriately debated, rebutted, and ignored within the world of Murdoch. Or find the simple corrections or 'we got it wrong' notes being run in a prominent place whenever Bolt gets it wrong. For that you have to turn to fearless intrepid Bolt watchers, like Pure Poison, but life is short ... (not that I'm saying that there's anything wrong with a life spent correcting Bolt, just saying there's so much in the Augean stables, it would challenge Heracles).

The short and the long of it? Bolt and the Murdoch empire got themselves into the mess, so let them get themselves out of it. When it comes to talk of how all of us must be outraged, or how all of us must stand up and speak, or how we all must be concerned and shocked and horrified, please count the pond out. Come back when you have someone with something sensible to say, even if it happens to be outrageous or offensive ...

Which sadly doesn't happen to include Tania Plibersek. Daniel Piotrowski bobs up in the rum Punch to ask Should we have a pledge of allegiance at schools? And raises the dreadful spectre of David Flint:

“We have an oath of allegiance which [Plibersek] pledged, swore and affirmed…The oath of allegiance to the Crown,” says Flint. “It should refer to the Queen and it should also refer to the flag.”

He says a pledge of allegiance shouldn’t just be to the monarchy, but to Australia’s fundamental institutions. And he makes it very clear what he thinks shouldn’t be included in a pledge.

“I don’t think it should refer to our indigenous heritage which has its place but it’s not central to the Commonwealth. It’s not one of the institutions of Australia.

“It should not be filled with the current fashion – multiculturalism is a current fashion – I think you just have to have a simple one,” he says.

There you go Plibersek. See the loonacy you've launched on the world. So now it's time for that revised pledge:

I love my God, who might or might not return some day, and my country, right or wrong;
I honour the flag, especially the one with the crossbones and skull;
I'll serve the Queen, or even that talking tampon Prince Charles;

but bugger the blacks, because they've got bugger all to do with the commonwealth

and bugger the multiculturalists, who are just a passing fad,

and I affirm this isn't a return to the White Australia policy

and I acknowledge that the fate of Andrew Bolt and the Murdoch empire are of

deep concern to all Australians
and I promise to do all I can to speak out on their behalf,

and god save professor Flint, who is very emeritus, and John Howard and Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt,

but I hate elites

Oh and I'll obey my parents, provided they stop drinking lattes, and my teachers, if only they stop swallowing chardonnay, and the law, even when it's an ass and especially when it's a Victorian copper armed with a Glock, even if I sometimes sound a little sulky,

and if I die a tad early, please make sure I don't end up in limbo.

(Below: Professor Flint emeritus begins working on his pledge).