It pretends to supply a criterion for the determination of the unit of population proper to enjoy a government exclusively its own, for the legitimate exercise of power in the state . . . It is indicative of the power of nationalism that it would take some time to sit down and identify the errors and dangers in what Kedourie so lucidly describes. In the meantime we are left with a world in which a universal moral order is at best problematic and subordinated to all sorts of 'desirable' and 'necessary ends'. Hostages are taken and killed. Civilians are subjected to terror.
Capitol punishment is used for 'national' and political ends.
There is no world religion that unites us, but competing revelations that use various state powers to contain cultural areas, and the sick reserve the right to end their own lives as being most expedient and dignified. Today, we remember today thousands of young Australian men who believed explicitly in the good of their cause, who were generous, and naively generous in their disposal of life and health, who held to an Empire that was morally accountable more than most, and who within the narrow confines of a disastrously conceived and callously maintained military exercise, were extraordinarily brave and courageous in the most extreme and horrendous circumstances imaginable. Amidst the waste and loss we remmber the gifts and opportunities of our own lives, nation and contemporary world.