Love for the Aussies

Charles Krauthammer:

In the Australian House of Representatives last month, opposition member Julia Gillard interrupted a speech by the minister of health thusly: "I move that that sniveling grub over there be not further heard."

For that, the good woman was ordered removed from the House, if only for a day. She might have escaped that little time-out if she had responded to the speaker's demand for an apology with something other than "If I have offended grubs, I withdraw unconditionally."

God, I love Australia. Where else do you have a shadow health minister with such, er, starch? Of course I'm prejudiced, having married an Australian, but how not to like a country, in this age of sniveling grubs worldwide, whose treasurer suggests to any person who "wants to live under sharia law" to try Saudi Arabia and Iran, "but not Australia." He was elaborating on an earlier suggestion that "people who . . . don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off." Contrast this with Canada, historically and culturally Australia's commonwealth twin, where last year Ontario actually gave serious consideration to allowing its Muslims to live under sharia.

...

It is surely the only place where you hear officials speaking plainly in defense of action. What other foreign minister but Australia's would see through "multilateralism," the fetish of every sniveling foreign policy grub from the Quai d'Orsay to Foggy Bottom, calling it correctly "a synonym for an ineffective and unfocused policy involving internationalism of the lowest common denominator"?

...

That is true wisdom of the grubby kind. I like the folds from Oz too. They are the closest to Texans that you will find outside the borders of this former republic. John Howard, the Prime Minister has an uncommon clarity of thought, These guys are not like their wimpy Kiwi cousins over in NZ who have fallen victim to the ills of socialism.