As someone said, the problem with Australia is not that its culture is descended from convicts but that its culture is descended from jailers.
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
321 points (98.5% liked)
A Comm for Historymemes
3162 readers
848 users here now
A place to share history memes!
Rules:
-
No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, assorted bigotry, etc.
-
No fascism, atrocity denial, etc.
-
Tag NSFW pics as NSFW.
-
Follow all Lemmy.world rules.
Banner courtesy of @setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
People forget that America was a penal colony before Australia.
“All men are created equal. Also those men will remain my slaves.”
Some founding father: By men we mean WASP landowners of English/French/German heritage, right?
Jefferson probably: it's so obvious it goes without saying
+only land owners may vote…
I never quite got the Americans obsession with the constitution, was it not largely based on british law and changed like 30 times?
- No
- Revisions don’t change the fact that it’s the nation’s charter of rights. They still teach the Magna Carta, don’t they?
Yes1? “…the U.S. Bill of Rights, which are the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, were heavily influenced by British law, particularly the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Many of the rights and protections outlined in the U.S. Bill of Rights have roots in British legal traditions and historical documents like Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights…” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States)
Yes2? “…The U.S. Constitution has been amended 27 times…” (https://archivesfoundation.org/amendments-u-s-constitution/
-There is no borderline religius infatuation with the magna carta, nor ant other charter of rights
You're telling me you don't have magna carta bathing suits?
I am not British, but of course I do! I just don’t wank it in every time
That's like having a supercar and never taking it to the tracks smh
Australian for father's were also racist.
I mean... being a criminal is wayyyy cooler than being racist
I mean, they were racist too. I don't think that there's anything native Americans endured that Australian Aborigines didn't have just as bad. Iirc the Aborigines were legally considered "flora and fauna" or something like that.
I definitely agree, the two aren't mutually exclusive and I'm sure a majority were racist, but one is objectively cooler than the other when all else is equal
Yet the Australian people are not much better at reckoning with the fact they live in a settler colonial state than the USians.
Is that a Ned Kelly reference? I'm not Austrian.
I’m not Austrian.
I saw what you did there...
Also not an Aussie; but yes it is.
Huh. Imagine that. 20 years ago my school gave me the book True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey as a graduation present and I pulled that knowledge from the deep depths of my memory. Cool.
They were limited by the ignorance of their time. …….Or whatever Tony Starks dad said.
Yeah. That's bull shit. I don't know why people like to pretend that there were not massive amounts of the population that saw slavery as immoral and cruel.
Hell, they literally had to invent "whiteness and blackness" as racial constructs to justify continuing to enslave the African slaves that converted to Christianity. Suddenly their rules in place about not enslaving other Christians needed a workaround written into them.
These were not "moral for their time" people in any sense of the word.
Edit: I don't know if you were actually making this point or just saying that quote. So sorry if this came out hostile.
Hell, they literally had to invent "whiteness and blackness" as racial constructs to justify continuing to enslave the African slaves that converted to Christianity.
That move is a lot older than the colonisation of Americas. There's a reason why westerners don't consider Slavs white, and it's connected to the etymology of the word "slave".