Paxman bemoans the lost sense of duty among the young and feels that were the Great War to have happened today, we would not have fought it. Yes. Good. Millions of lives saved. And this is a bad thing?
Arguing the idea of “duty” had now diminished in favour of “personal freedom”, he said exposure to war in an era of 24-hour, high definition news meant people would not put up with such a conflict.
Personal liberty is something we should strive for, although,the progressive leftist orthodoxy strikes me as precisely the opposite. Besides, was not liberty supposed to be one of the things these men died for? Surely, the freedom to say “no” and mean it?
“Forget the poems, forget Oh! What a Lovely War, forget Blackadder. Engage with the lives of those who took part in it and think, ‘What would I have done?’,” he said of how best to study the conflict.
I have always known what I would have done. Refused to fight. Yes, I would have gone to France if necessary in a non-combative role – probably as a medic – but I would never have lifted a rifle for “King and Country” for neither are worthy.
Did one have much choice with all the crude moral blackmailing going on (not forgetting those awful women with their white feathers)? From 1916 personal choice had nothing to do with it – one had to go, or else! Conscription is an evil thing.
It is evil. But people did refuse and some of them paid a heavy price. Personally, I wouldn’t have had a problem with wearing uniform, nor of serving in the medical corps. I guess, then, I am not an absolutist.
I do not, however, owe any duty to the state or the monarchy.
Of course not.
You have these fancy modern ideas because others have fought your battles in the past.
If the stukas were overhead right now then can you talk boldly.
I suspect the disintigration of Britain is down to the ‘I, me , my’ people that know their ‘rights’.
And I suspect the EU will change your mind in due course.
It’s precisely this kind of jingoistic nonsense that allows wars to flourish. There’s nothing “modern” about my thinking. A hundred years ago, people were cottoning on and refusing to fight. If more of them had done so, then the war would have become infeasible and millions would not have died.
No one has fought any battles for me – least of all before I was born. If – and it’s a damned big “if” – my home and my family were at direct risk from an invading force, then I would take up arms to defend our liberty – because liberty is the only thing worth defending. I would not lift a finger to defend the state or the monarchy and I would never agree to fight an expeditionary war, such as happened in 1914. Let them fight their own battles – let the politicians and the kings take up arms if they feel they are worth fighting and dying for.
The EU in this context is an irrelevance.
I wonder how many of those poor bloody marvellous young men turn in their graves at what the swine that have been in charge since have done to the countries and way of life they died to defend.
The bloody electorate is as guilty as the bastard leaders they willingly elected (plus the present unelected twerp) over the last 30 or more years, but especially since ’97, one bloody traitor after another trousering bloody millions whilst the country disappeared round the bloody U bend as they handed ever more power to the bloody EU masterstate without a bloody shot fired.
Not to mention the futile wars and regime changes still ongoing on in other shit holes where our good young people still die and are maimed, and for what.
The electorate is frequently misinformed and has limited choices, frankly, so I don’t blame them as a whole.
I don’t think that youngsters these days would queue up to fight for this country because the powers-that-be have done such a damned good job of eliminating any sense of national identity and pride, and I don’t think that applies to just the UK, either. I think you’d be hard pushed to find many young people across Europe prepared to fight the kind of wars that their forefathers did. With ideological (but, unfortunately, very influential) fools from the EU, through the national governments, right down to local council level bombarding them every day with rules, regulations and “messages” that encourage them to align themselves with pretty much all and any grouping except a national one, few would see any point in putting themselves at risk of dying horribly in some foreign field for the sake of the nation, and who can blame them?
It might prove to be one of the worst-case unforeseen consequences of these national-identity thieves that when push comes to shove and some genuinely threatening outside force starts rattling their sabres and making threatening gestures, then their usual “call to arms” for volunteer cannon-fodder to defend their selfish interests might well be met with an embarrassingly deafening silence. Good.
I’ve never felt any national pride and I am from an older generation. I had a taste of nationalism when I lived in Wales during the seventies. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now. I learned the hard way to detest Plaid Cymru. My nationality is merely an accident of birth. It does not give me any cause for pride or shame. It is what it is. Nationalism, unfortunately, is a useful leaver used by the unscrupulous for their own means. I have no beef with other people from other countries for they are the same as me – people. I have no cause to kill them because they wear different clothing and speak a different language or because their politicians are as venal, power-hungry and vile as ours.