A few years ago, much was made of Tom Brokaw’s book, The Greatest Generation. We also had the Saving Private Ryan mini-series. Both reminded us of the tremendous character and strengths of the people who fought and won WW2.
In time, those GIs were cashiered and resumed civilian lives.
If you want some eye-opening responses, the next time you are at some public event where asking a crowd some questions would be possible, ask something like this:
“You recall that the generation that came home from WW2 was called the Greatest Generation because they defeated totalitarian governments of the Imperial Japanese and the German Nazis. Would you like to be as free as those soldiers were when they came back to civilian life?”
When I have done this and every time I most often get the most puzzled looks. People frequently hesitate and then say no. When asked why, they often say, “because someone might do something”, by which I speculate that “something” is something they might not approve of.
For greater effect, cast this question as: would you like to be as free as the generation of soldiers who came home from the Civil War.
The hidden issue here is that the further you go back in time to draw the line, the smaller the role of government in suppressing liberty. But a lot of people are not so familiar with the history of the Welfare State and this is an end run around their reflexive defense of that intrusion in private lives and in the expansion of government.
Most don't know what the WW2 was about and think the CW was fought with Canada. Your questions will get blank stares from anyone under 40.
“The hidden issue here is that the further you go back in time to draw the line, the smaller the role of government in suppressing liberty.”
At the turn of the twentieth century Britain ruled the greatest empire the world had ever seen or would see again. About a quarter of the world’s population was under British rule of some kind or another.
At that time however it was said that the only government official a British person was likely to have any business with the course of an average day was the post man who delivered his mail.
At that time British people were free to smoke or imbibe what they liked and own whatever firearms they felt like, oh and policemen were armed with nothing more powerful than a foot long wooden truncheon and a whistle.
Isn’t greater government control a marvellous thing?