Cultural refugees: something Australia may soon face - or has it done so for a long, long time?

Here

and here one sees an excellent description of how Uwe Romeike, a German father trained as a pianist, has been exiled to Tennessee because of the mandatory school attendance laws enforced in Germany. My personal learning experience makes me more supportive of homeschooling than most of my family would like me to be. As John Holt pointed out, school does not do as much as teachers would believe to help people learn. Indeed, my most efficient learning has generally been self-taught, though my mother and brother have always criticised me for using sources they consider dubious.

Equally importantly, in an age when material conditions encourage cultures in Europe and Asia to view empathy and emotional ties as dangerous, even sinful, families like those of Uwe Romeike could easily show that this is wrong and that deep feelings have a place in a healthy society.

My previous post discussed what will happen if the US becomes more like Europe, Canada and New Zealand: Australia will become the sole refuge for those seeking the values of traditional Western Civilisation. Most conservatives in the US argue that homeschooling is necessary to preserve these because the public school system indoctrinates people with atheistic humanism. That would mean that if Obama is doing what Mark Steyn says he is, then people like Uwe Romeike will automatically seek unused land (or land no longer able to support those species it was dedicated to protect) in a desertified southern Australia to set up conservative homeschooling families.

However, what I do wonder is whether Australia being a conservative refuge is at all new. Many of Australia's present outer suburbs were originally settled during the 1950s by refugees from Eastern bloc Stalinism. Even earlier, there is agreat likelihood that many migrants, given that the social conservatism of Australia is not new, were forced out of Europe by political upheaval as well as the intolerance of governments closely tied to religions (that depend on small government for effective functioning). So even if you agree with me that future conservatives will go in larger numbers to empty desertified land in Australia, you could still see how far from being new this occurrence is.