It's A Class-Culture Thing.
The indispensable Alan Johnson:
"In my experience, there is a dividing line marked by class and culture when it comes to war-talk. While liberal middle-class professionals such as Canon Fraser talk breezily about it being 'better to die than to kill,' some of my working-class students—often the sisters or girlfriends of the soldiers who actually do the dying—speak quietly, stoically, and with genuine expertise as sturdy Augustinian realists about the morality of the rigorous rules of engagement under which their loved ones fight (and die) in an anti-fascist war in Afghanistan."
The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. - George Orwell, Pacifism and the War, Partisan Review, August-September, 1942.
"In my experience, there is a dividing line marked by class and culture when it comes to war-talk. While liberal middle-class professionals such as Canon Fraser talk breezily about it being 'better to die than to kill,' some of my working-class students—often the sisters or girlfriends of the soldiers who actually do the dying—speak quietly, stoically, and with genuine expertise as sturdy Augustinian realists about the morality of the rigorous rules of engagement under which their loved ones fight (and die) in an anti-fascist war in Afghanistan."
The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. - George Orwell, Pacifism and the War, Partisan Review, August-September, 1942.
posted by Terry Glavin at 10:06 AM
2 Comments:
Very true and astute terry.
(Incidentally -- and please accept this comment in the spirit it's given -- I think you should stop the moderation. I think it's the reason there are so few comments on your site now. Nothing like taking down a weak argument to get the juices flowing.)
Vildechaye: I rarely blog these days too busy. if there's a drop in comments, I suspect that's why. I've deleted only a handful, mostly spam, since I started moderating.
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