Whatever we’re short of in this country, it’s not bleeding hearts.
They’re everywhere, emoting about how they “couldn’t press the button and kill innocent women and children”. Personally, I’m grateful that Clement Atlee had the courage to accept responsibility for the nuclear deterrent which has kept us free from nuclear war for seventy years. If no-one is willing to carry on accepting that responsibility, there will still be dead women and children but they may be your own.
Another area which brings on hand-wringing is the wave of desperate people trying to escape their war-torn countries.
Take a look at them. They are mainly the young and fit and those rich enough to pay the people smugglers. Left behind are the old, the handicapped and the poor. What is to become of them if we permanently absorb the active generation into Europe? While Benedict Cumberbatch, voice charged with emotion, urges the government to take in more, the island of Lesbos runs out of room to bury the drowned dead. In Germany, the open-door policy has led to a spate of anti-foreigner rallies, violence and arson attacks against refugees. Sympathy is already wearing thin and still they come.
So, what should we be doing? Bringing pressure to bear on the United Nations to step in and stop the carnage so that they can return to the countries they presumably love as much as I love mine! And setting up safe zones in the meantime so that people do not have to take to leaky boats.
Where are the raised voices demanding action from the body that was set up to oversee world peace? Giving succour is important as a temporary measure but caring is not enough, nor is ‘feeling’ the ultimate solution.
As Mark Twain said “We all do no end of feeling and we mistake it for thinking.”
