An Evening with John O’Sullivan

Next Quadrant dinner: Wednesday, April 1
Union, University and Schools Club, Sydney

 Guest speaker: John O’Sullivan, the new editor of Quadrant

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Australian columnists criticize PM Tony Abbott for giving a speech on national security in front of an array of Australian flags. A Labour front-bencher in the UK has to resign when she tweets a photograph of a white van parked outside a terrace house festooned with the St. George’s flag of England — van and flags being symbols among the elite for vulgar jingoism and the white working class respectively. Tory politicians and journalists in the UK start denouncing the vulgar jingoism of UKIP on the grounds that “we English don’t go in for that sort of thing.”

All these particular episodes — and they could multiplied many times over — suggest that patriotism and the flag are now contested issues in the national politics of the Anglosphere, the United States, and continental Europe. National and transnational elites and their allies in ethnic lobbies dislike traditional patriotism and strive in several ways to replace it with a new patriotism suitable to multicultural polities or multi-national global bodies. Young Muslims in the West feel that they lack an identity requiring pride and commitment and so are vulnerable to the appeal of a jihadist identity.

John O’Sullivan is a former advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and the author of The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister on how she, Ronald Reagan, and John Paul II brought down communism.

Venue: Union, University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney
Date and Time: Wednesday, April 1
Drinks 6pm–7pm; dinner from 7pm
Cost: $84 per person.
Dress: Jacket and tie

Payment: By cheque: Make cheques payable to Quadrant, and send to Quadrant Magazine, Locked Bag 1235, North Melbourne VIC 3051. By credit card: You can email, phone or fax credit card details – card brand, card number, name on card, expiry date, plus (important) your own phone number, but sorry no Amex – to quadrantmagazine@data.com.au, Phone (03) 8317 8147, Fax (03) 9320 9065