Pride goes before a fall

Pride is a important thing to have, hold and treasure,  but so is humility .
We are so unworthy of claims to either that the mere mention of it , by anyone,  is scary.



Presumably because we want to believe more in ourselves than we warrant ,its tempting , especially for leaders to jockey up the people with talk of things we can be proud of . The tempataion when parties hold office on a knife edge is huge . Ultimately though the peope and the politics must reject the talk and face the deeper truth


This distortion of reality seems to be worse when there are heaps of thing we can't be proud of .  (eg The well being of one generation of Aussies and the poverty of the next )
Politicians and even our public broadcaster , use the talk to distract us and make us feel better about ourselves -Cynical positivists
Malcolm Turnbull like many progressives ,has been doing a bit of that talk too .
Modern leaders would do well to think of leaders who pass the test of working towards true commonwealth Like Queen Victoria - who held the tension  that we all have to do in our families - keep a balance between noise and real need.

Leaders like her whose "defiant humility lay at the heart of her empire" GK Chesterton .