One other thing about weirdness - most Australians would not mind being called wierd. It part of our cultural heritage and isn't necessarily a negative. From an Australian perspective, Baird's great affection for the US underlines this piece. "And yet there remains something exhilarating and provocative about the fact that America was founded on an idea. That in 1776 a group of commoners would dare to declare the overwhelming importance of freedom and democracy in civil society, and consider it self-evident that all men (just white men at first, but later women, and blacks) were created equal, and so entitled to specific and inalienable rights. They fought for eight years to free themselves from the rule of a monarch. It is shocking that Australians not only have never fought for this, but rejected it when it was handed to us."
And "Australians mock patriotism as jingoistic, self-serving and cliched. Here it is frequently inspiring... it harks back to a compelling and powerful idea." http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-cult...

The context for this piece is Baird writing to an Australian audience which is currently in the midst of an uninspiring federal election, where voting is compulsory and you are fined if you are enrolled and do not vote. So we are coerced into engagement in the democratic process. How's that for a contradiction. Where the candidates never talk about democracy or freedom or hope or what we can do but about moving forward and action contracts. Corporate weasel words. The elected Prime Minister (who is not the Head of State) is often determined by a handful of voters in marginal seats. When she describes US democracy as exhilarating, provocative and inspiring in the text from the original below, she speaks for so many Australians who find our version of democracy wanting.