Ring the bells that still can ring

…forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.

The word “hurt” does yeoman’s work in this article in our favourite woke legacy news source.

The national anthem of Australia needs to be amended to reduce the harm the current version is inflicting on certain Australian citizens, apparently.

The good news is only one word of the three verses need be changed; from “we are young” to the proposed “we are one”:

Verse one of the proposed new anthem is the traditional verse with one minimal change – adding the single word “one” to replace the outmoded, and for many Australians the exclusionary and hurtful word, “young”.

There’s quite a lot of accusations being made against what people may have previously thought was an anodyne five letter adjective indicating relative age or maturity.

“Outmoded”, “exclusionary” and “hurtful” to many Australians?

Okaaaaaay.

So, let’s say there’s a nationwide debate on the subject and the conclusion is everyone agrees to drop the “young” bit, acknowledging the Aboriginal population’s arrival here tens of thousands of years ago. Would that result in this “oneness” we are encouraging, would everyone suddenly find a love of the anthem that previously was missing?

Doubtful.

Bill’s Opinion

There is a subset of people who will never be happy with the lyrics of the Australian national anthem. I have no proof but it’s my suspicion this subset correlates greatly with the people who claim the word “young” is the cause of “hurt” and, if so, wouldn’t suddenly transform into flag-waving patriots cheering on the national sports teams or whatever other measure one chooses as a proxy of national pride.

Of course, people who are on the look out for the dog that isn’t barking, might wonder why these people are focusing on a single word of a song they’d never countenance singing while the infant mortality rate of indigenous children is double that of every other ethnic group in the country?

Show me on the doll where the word “young” hurt you….