Meanderings on a John Stuart Mill Quote

Hello all,

I recently joined another major internet fad – Facebook. I dabbled in MySpace, but found it incomprehensible. Facebook is far easier for semi-tehcnoliterates like myself.

While fleshing out my profile, I came across a “favourite quotes” section. This intrigued me. Whilst the vast majority of Facebook denizens would doubtless post song lyrics, or snippets of pop-culture, I though that this would be a fantastic opportunity to let those who ended up on friends list get a glimpse at the real me by posting quotes that strike a cord with what I belive.

Needless to say, not one single comment has been made about my quotes list – which is kind of what I expected. However, I thought I would take this opportunity to wax a bit more lyrical on one particular quote.

The quote in question is from a seemingly unlikely source - a 19th century liberal philosopher, economist and MP named John Stuart Mill. Wiki him yourself – I don’t possess the skill of lazy linking yet (see plea for aid below).

The quote is as follows…

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

To me this quote is extremely pertinent to today’s Britain. Can anyone argue that we do not live in a society of “decayed and degraded moral and patriotic feeling?” Where the concepts of national pride and patriotism are equated with the goose stepping fanaticism of the 1930s and 1940s? Where British, and especially English, pride is reduced to tattoos of flag wearing bulldogs on the beer bellies of football fans?

It sometimes seems as if the Britain of today is a dichotomy. There are people willing to fight for what is morally right, and indeed to fight to keep others in their society free to spout their own nihilistic liberal drivel. Yet the most vocal segments of this society prefer to play the appeaser, the apologist, the placater, the “enlightened citizen of the world” convinced that everything will be ok if we just stop criticizing other cultures/religions and sit down and talk it all over.

I cannot bring myself to think that the majority of the British people fall into the latter camp. At worst the misguided children of the flawed philosophies of peace and love inherited from the 1960s and 1970s are a plurality, and even that thought turns my stomach.

We all know that war is an ugly thing, but I am sure that you will agree that the reluctance to wage a necessary war (specifically the War on Terror, which is in reality a war to preserve Western Civilization) to the full extent that it demands is short sighted foolishness of the first order.

I would like to think that this country possesses the spiritual, moral and patriotic strength that will be necessary to win the war of civilisations and cultures that will be waged for the foreseeable future – certainly for the rest of our lives and more than likely for those of our children and our grand children as well. I would like to think that a kernel of what made this small island great in the first place remains, but faced with the constant media bombardment of negativity and airtime for a vocal appeaser minority it is sometimes hard to believe that enough of the “blitz spirit” remains.

I hope it does.