“Don’t take away my everyday life.” ….SSsooo… that means, that you’re not getting on with weapons and self-defence training, I take it…

Buzzfeed, being Buzzfeed, has a series of photos of people in Paris holding up signs telling briefly how they feel now. Because feelings are important…So we’re told.

One of the great puzzles of the 21st century is why the freedom-loving Europeans have been so supine in the face of the influx of Dark Ages savages into their countries. There could have been no doubt among those who lived closely with these people what they could expect from them. They knew it was coming. But they did nothing.

And as things got worse and worse, they did no more than cringe and grovel in hopes the savages would eat them last.

Everyone who grew up around the neighbourhood bullies knows acts of aggressive intimidation when they see them.

Watch the greying bespectacled man to the right. What is he thinking? “Oh please Oh please, just let me get off this train before these goat-_____ers blow it up. I just want to go home and carry on pretending it isn’t happening.”

OK, maybe not the goat-____ers part. But yeah, the rest.

How have westerners become such cowards? This book proposes that it is not only because of their addiction to comfort and convenience, but because of the loss of their deep identity. This, of course, would necessarily mean their Catholic identity.

**“The effort to weaken identity has taken a profound toll on many aspects of democratic life, and the struggle to advance human rights is no exception. If there is no real distinction ebtween places that recognize human rights and those that do not, there is no sense of justification to risk your life to defend one way of life over another. Sombody living in a hotel, suddenly finding it uncomfortable, will not proest and struggle to change the conditions. He will move to another hotel.

“Author Oscar Van den Boogaard, asked why Europe did not resist the attacks by fundamentalists, said in self-mockery: ‘I am not a warrior, but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.’

“If individuals are not bound by a commitment to history and tradition, if the connection between generations is broken and destroyed, there will be no passion and depth of emotion. If all identity is seen as fluid, if nationality is merely political and not cultural, if it is seen as imaginary and therefore deluded, the mystic connections in time and space – what Abraham Lincoln called the mystic chords of memory – are lost.

“…Without a strong identity, without a commitment to a particular way of life, without a feeling of connection to the generations who came before and to those who will come after, there can be enjoyment of life but not the strength to defend that life when it is endangered. In fact, a negative side effect of the good life available in democratic societies is that it can often weaken the very strength to fight for it. It may lead to a willingness to pay any price in an attempt to rescue and safeguard a life not connected to anything beyond the self. But this insatiable desire for the safety of the self can become the greatest danger to the safety of all, including ourselves. “ Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy

By Andrew A. Rooney, Natan Sharansky