You’d think this week, of all weeks, Britons would be bursting with national pride and gratitude for the role our veteranshave played in the last two wars and the hard-won freedoms they fought for.
But no, a new poll says more than half of weasly Britons wouldn’t be prepared to fight for their country under any circumstances.
Really? So the freedoms and the privileges our forefathers died for mean nothing to these people? They’re happy enough to avail themselves of those freedoms, but they’re not prepared to lift a finger to preserve them. How damn selfish and short sighted is that?
Are these people really saying that if a dictator illegally marched into this country, the kind of dictator like Vladimir Putin who jails, tortures and regularly kills dissidents and those who dare give an opinion on the government or anything else, they’d just sit back and let it happen? They’d sit back and do nothing while their democracy, their freedoms, their lives and their families were snatched from under their noses?
Are these people just stupid, selfish and cowardly, or is it because they’ve lived their pampered lives for so long in this democracy of ours that they really can’t imagine life any other way?
With half of Britons unwilling to fight for our hard-won freedoms, should we divvy them up? - Carole Malone
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But you just have to look to Ukraine to see that lives and countries can change in a heartbeat. Ukraine was a civilised, forward-thinking democracy until Putin sent in his tanks and turned this once beautiful country into a mass killing field. In the months following the invasion, whole towns and cities were raised, and three years on, people are still living without food, heating and electricity. The homes they’d spent a lifetime building – all reduced to rubble, their savings - all gone? And they live in constant fear of the mad dictator taking even more of their land and killing more of their people.
Worse than that, thousands of men, women and children have already been slaughtered. And all of that is with the Ukrainian people fighting like lions to save their country. Imagine what would have happened to them if they hadn’t.
Do these pacifists who wouldn’t fight for Britain think that it couldn’t happen here? And if it did would they really just sit back and do nothing?
For too long, too many people in this country have had it easy. And by easy, I mean they’ve had no real-life threatening challenges – no wars to face, they’re not living under the iron fist of a cruel dictator - however hellish they think life under Starmer might be. They might be short of money, but they don’t live in abject poverty like the people of Ukraine do. Their lives and their homes aren’t threatened on a daily basis.
The reasons many here cite for not wanting to fight for their country are that governments have let them down, so why should they fight for them? They must surely see that they wouldn’t be fighting for a bad Government, they’d be fighting for their country, their very lives, their freedoms. Do these people actually understand what it’s like not to be free – free to give an opinion, free to protest in the streets, free to vote, travel, to live how you want, where you want?
The biggest problem is that young people are being taught to hate this country. They’re being taught in schools that Britain is an imperialist, racist nation. And so they have no respect for it, no pride in it. Young people aren’t being taught our great national story or about our achievements or what this little island has done down the decades - only that it’s racist and we colonise other people’s countries. National pride is seen as nationalism; they are two entirely different things.
As Nigel Farage says: “We have poisoned the minds of our younger generation with constant anti-British messages.” It’s no wonder no one wants to serve.”
But do those who say they wouldn’t be prepared to fight and die for Britain understand that in a war situation, they’d be more likely to die if they didn’t fight?
Yes, I get that people are angry at this government – and past Governments - because they feel they’ve been failed by them. It’s why only 11 per cent of Gen Z say they’d fight for their country, while 41 per cent claim to be “absolute pacifists”. And while that’s all very well during peacetime, in the event of war, which we’re told is getting ever closer, are these pacifists (or are they lazy and frightened?) really going to sit on their hands doing nothing while the enemy marches into this country hell bent on killing them?
Does Gen Z understand what war actually means? I doubt it. Intolerable hardship for many of them is being cut off from their phones, their laptops and their friends for a few hours. More than that, they’d never want to join the army because it’s rough and tough, and they’d get told what to do, and we can’t have that!
Being interviewed for another recent poll one Gen Z’er said: “Yes, I’d be called a coward if I didn’t fight but what’s the use of being a hero if you’re dead.”
And there’s the naivety! Doesn’t he get that if we’re at war and he didn’t fight, he’d probably end up dead anyway?
Giving your life for your country is no longer a given. And the fact is, no one wants to fight or die in a war. But your reason for not fighting in one can't just be because you’re hacked off with the current government. After all, it hasn’t given you what you wanted. That’s a gutless, cowardly cop out!
If we believe in the values we’re supposed to hold dear – democracy, freedom of speech, actual freedom – then surely we have an obligation to defend that? And the woke snowflakes who say we don’tshouldn’t avail themselves of the privileges people braver than them died to give them!
