PATRIOTISM

Posted at 7:45 a.m. ET

It is Veterans Day.  Sad to say, for too many of our countrymen Veterans Day is a time for good store sales.  It is especially upsetting when young people, some of whose peers are on fighting fronts today, have little notion of the meaning of the day.

I looked for something appropriate to quote, and, ironically, found it in a British newspaper, the Daily Express.  Consider, and contemplate:

The question was put to me with stark simplicity. “What was it all for?” asked the elderly lady, a wistful look in her eyes.

“The country that they died for has gone,” she continued, glancing down at the red poppy on her lapel.

Do we not sometimes have that same feeling here?

She explained that she had lost close relatives in both World Wars and as a teenager had endured the horrors of the Blitz. Mixed with her admiration for family heroes who had lost their lives in conflict, she also felt utter despair at the state of Britain and a profound sense of betrayal.

That is what happens when things we used to call "constant values" stop being constant.

Her insistent question – “What was it all for?” – has also been echoing through my mind as I research a book about Bomber Command during the Second World War. It mounted perhaps the most bloody and dangerous British offensive of the conflict, as crews of the heavy bombers flew night after night over Germany through vicious flak from the ground and from Luftwaffe fighters.

Long-term chances of survival were minimal. More than half of all men who served in air crews were killed in action.

But...

They died for their nation but that nation barely exists any more. It has been destroyed by the politicians, its sovereignty handed over to an unelected continental bureaucracy, its economy sold off to foreign interests, its heritage traduced or ignored...

This is a warning to us, isn't it?

...what is largely missing today is a respect for that instinctive devotion to Britain which inspired so many millions to take up arms in defence of our country. Patriotism is now a dirty word in too many of our civic institutions, where the Union flag is seen as an offensive symbol of xenophobia and the national anthem is hopelessly uncool.

And...

It is precisely because the political elite has lost all grasp of British patriotism that our nation is now so fragmented and purposeless, a place without a soul, our once green and pleasant land swallowed up by mass development, our justice system left in tatters by the imported human-rights culture.

And the "human-rights culture" often has little to do with real human rights.

During my research, the most moving passages I uncovered were the memories of bomber pilots who flew back British POWs from Germany just after VE day.

All of them said that, as the planes approached the white cliffs of Dover, the ex-prisoners would alternately cheer or weep.

Today, in a nation that has lost its history, the white cliffs have no such resonance. 

The American nation, last week, turned its back on a former POW who has served his country with distinction.  We understand the reasons, and we accept the outcome.  But I find it disturbing that so few commentators were gracious enough, at the moment of his defeat, to pay some small tribute to what John McCain and his family have given to this country.  We make that mistake at our peril, and the peril for this nation and its heritage is growing day by day.

November 11, 2008.