As usual, right on cue, the nation-hating Invasion Day crowd are up in arms again, hijacking a national holiday to complain about everything about the country they live in.

In what has become an annual whinge-fest for the likes of Peter FitzSimmons, Anthony Mundine and other C-grade attention seekers desperate to stay relevant in the public eye, they are once again up on their high-horses belittling the same country that has allowed them to flourish in various pursuits.

Head over to the ABC News website and you’ll find endless articles preaching the “woe is me, all the bad people are white” rhetoric from the woke and indigenous alike. Grab a bucket because it is nauseating.

While some arguments surrounding the date Australia Day is held and the wording of the national anthem hold genuine merit, these messages are always lost within the hysterical bleating of the lefty do-gooders who climb aboard the protest train. Usually white and middle-class from wanker suburbs like Brunswick, they then proceed to claim they understand the plight of indigenous Australians.

Yeah, right. Tell me tales of your own personal persecution, ye olde hipster dickhead.

If it’s not them then it’s the other component of the mass protest community: the rent-a-mob tossers whose lives are so empty they actually find fulfilment in marching down a road, blocking traffic while waving a sign and smashing a few shop windows for good measure. Because let’s face it, nothing gets your message across better than some pointless vandalism.

The most frustrating part is the insistence on portraying the “First Nations people” as completely innocent victims. Clearly most of their supporters know nothing of history and have never left their inner city cafe strip to actually discover what aboriginals were doing before the big bad white man arrived.

I’ll tell you what they were doing: pretty much the same things every other culture in the world does. They were friendly and peaceful with some other tribes, they were violent and murderous with others. Take a trip through central Australia and visit as many sacred sites as you can. You’ll find many of them are scenes of bloodshed and war. I know this because I’ve been there myself.

The people who protest Australia Day generally want everything in black and white, pardon the pun. White man bad, black man good. Never mind that the first settlers often had very good relationships with the indigenous locals. Genocide was not the policy of the Europeans and it certainly was not the catalyst for their journeys to colonise Australia.

Across the world, history has almost always been written by the winners, for better or worse.

Obviously there were many instances where the two peoples clashed. Unfortunately the new arrivals were better armed hence why they were victorious more often than not. And let’s not deny the existence of those who went out of their way to cause harm. The first settlers were neither totally innocent or totally guilty. History is never that straightforward.

So why is the white man so bad? Because he had guns and the black man didn’t? Across the world history has almost always been written by the winners, for better or worse.

Now we have a culture of left-wing snowflakes who want to rewrite history. As if doing so will actually change what happened.

It’s been going on for years. Then-prime minister Kevin Rudd issued an apology to indigenous Australians for the treatment of the stolen generation. Did that apology actually improve anyone’s lives? Did it undo the actions of the past?

And why is it that the current generation of Australians had to apologise for the actions of previous generations? Why should anybody take responsibility for things that happened before they were born? Empathy is one thing, responsibility is something else entirely.

Do we demand present-day Germans to apologise for the atrocities of the Nazi’s? Do we ask Putin to say sorry for the millions of Russian civilians that died because of Stalin?

Or do we grow a spine and simply try to do better in future instead of dwelling on the past?

Personally, I’m not against changing the date for Australia Day or changing the national anthem. Neither is steeped in centuries-old tradition and many of the arguments that neither represents modern Australian values or the actual history of this continent are absolutely valid.

But I do hope we change these things for the right reasons, not simply to appease a group of attention-seeking revisionists. The fact is that humans are a violent and greedy species and our history reflects that. It is not a phenomenon exclusive to Australia. It is certainly not exclusive to white people. It is not something that must be apologised for to be acknowledged. It is simply a cold, hard fact that people often do the wrong thing. Usually they do so with the best intentions, truly believing they are in the right.

History shows us this is not true. Revising or denying history is a sure way to ensure these lessons from the past are forgotten instead of learned from.

Australia Day should be a day for all who call Australia home to celebrate the nation we are and be proud of where we are heading together. Because for those of us who are proud to be Australian despite the mistakes and misdeeds of our predecessors, the annual hijacking of Australia Day is becoming an unbearable insult to the things that we should be proud of and thankful for.

There’s plenty of worse places to live than Australia. We’d do well to remember that.

To do so requires unity, something we currently don’t have. Look at current Australia Day celebrations and protests alike. Look at many community centres, police stations, town halls and government buildings. You’ll see the Australian flag, the aboriginal flag, the Torres Strait Islander flag. Three different flags hardly symbolises a unified nation

Neither do protesters carrying signs reading “Always Was, Always Will Be” and “Abolish Australia.” To a patriot, such phrases almost amount to treason. At the very least, all they do is promote division. Calling January 26 “invasion day” is hardly a call for unification. It’s combative and negative and it solves nothing, widening divides instead of narrowing them.

So, protesters of Australia, do us all a favour. Put away your placards and chants and offer some solutions instead. Maybe our leaders can also pull their heads out of their arses, take an honest appraisal of the situation and lead us to common ground and a unified future.

Until then, it’s Australia Day on January 26. Celebrating it doesn’t make me a genocide sympathiser, it just makes me a patriot. Which, last I checked, isn’t a crime. Yet.

I’m not joining the white guilt brigade just because it’s the trendy thing to do. I haven’t persecuted anyone and I’m not going to feel guilty for something that happened before my time. I can empathise, but nothing more.

Maybe when we all stop bitching about the past we can sort out the future. Until then, I’m taking the day off, having a barbie and some beers, waving my Australian flag and no guilt-riddled lefty do-gooder is going to make me feel bad about it.

Happy Australia Day.