It was late night in Heidelberg, Germany. We were warmed by the copious amounts of beer we had consumed at one of the local micro-breweries in altstadt, but were wisely clothed against the late night chill with leather jackets and beanies. We were unsure about which tram to catch but in a mix of beer fuddlement-courage we jumped on the tram we thought would lead us back to our hotel.

On the tram a young Greek fellow, about twenty-one, heard my Australian accent, my wife's American accent and our mates' Koblenz English as we tried to determine if we were going in the right direction. He told us in textbook English that we were getting off the same stop as him so we were alright. He also said he had come to Germany from Greece and next wanted to go to California to live and work.

"Go to Australia mate, work there, you'll love it", I said.

"No," he replied, "I want to go to California".

As we got off the tram we decided for a nightcap in a local Italian bar and restaurant. As we sat down I rhetorically asked, "In truth, why would that kid want to go to Australia? Why would he choose Australia over America?".

Living in America

Why am I living and working in America rather than Australia? Other than the reason I am married to an American woman there are other obvious tangible benefits; I earn far more and have more opportunities available to me in the US. In Australia I was in a funk, America gave me the opportunity to say I can do it - with the caveat that it was my head if the project failed - and to back up my personal faith in myself by taking to project to completion and success. I happened to thrive in that environment.

What other benefits do I see in the US over Australia? Not much more, housing wasn't completely unaffordable when I left Sydney eight years ago, I was in fact contemplating buying acreage in the Blue Mountains. I had started a webdesign business back then, and for $300 ozbucks had myself a nationally recognized business name. In Virginia it is 15 greenbacks, but neither country offers much in the way of barriers to entrepreneurs to start trading.

So again it comes down to salaries are higher in the US and the opportunities existing business offers. American industry has more companies and greater access to capital than Australian businesses do. In the area I live, there are numerous super-large software companies such as CSC, EDS, etc that I can knock on the doors of seeking opportunities. I came to the US during the telecommunication boom, every company was getting involved in it back then so there was huge opportunities for those that were prepared to say "I can do that project".

Talk About Pop Music

I liked to watch the SMS messaging on the German MTV channel as the German language being typed in there is simpler and easier to read. It is also repetitive so I can look a word up I don't know in the dictionary and then say it out loud when the SMS message rotates through again. Just before we left Germany, in a hotel in Nürnberg, I was going through the numerous "ich liebe dich" messages when German hard rockers "Rammstein" came on with the latest video, "Amerika". One of the lines from the song is;

We are all living in Amerika.

While they may mean that American Empire spans the globe and as a result we are all subject to its hegemony, the line is deeper than that in my opinion. The US Republic was the triumph of the enlightenment and we live in a post-enlightenment world that is dominated by the 18th Century American political rhetoric of freedom. It is a rhetoric that can trace it roots to the Scot David Hume, to the Englishman John Locke and finally in the writings of Thomas Jefferson.

The Post-Post-Enlightenment Rationality

The reality is, no other nation, no other people, has provided a competing, nor as compelling a screed of rhetoric on freedom, liberty and individual rights. The post-enlightenment world has been one dominated by the American embodiment of political liberty. Despite Europe and America going in different political and cultural directions since the cold-war, in today's Germany you can still see stickers of American flags on German cars. You can see images of bald eagles, of Harley Davidson's and even Confederate Flags.

America offers that image of individual freedom in an easily marketable bundles of red and white stripes with stars on a blue field. Australia will never be able to compete with America on this stage while we have the neat but convoluted imagery of a Union Jack on our flag. The "Boxing Matilda" flag is a far more identifiable image of Australian fighting spirit, but not rhetorical freedom.

The other truth is that no nation, nor people, will be able to compete America on the world stage of political rhetoric until a post-post-enlightenment philosophy is found and annunciated globally. There will be no competition to America's post-enlightenment system of political liberty until another nation adopts a competing system that is superior to the American Washington system (and the Swiss Canton system).

In the late 1990's I believed the only two nations that had the correct bubbling under-current of conditions, maturity, popular support and political will for such a global transformation were Australia and Iran. Australia has had such aspiration suppressed under the culture wars, while Iran has had its popular rising for individuals freedoms over-shadowed with the parking of the indomitable US military might next door in Iraq.

Who will take the step to re-invent our world into a post-post-enlightenment world? Can Australia still do it? Until Australia does; smart, young, educated and multi-lingual Greek kids will continue to choose California over Australia.

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