Tag: nationalism

Interesting responses on remembrance. I think that what disturbs me is this. Sacrifice is obviously a core Christian value. It is not absent from today’s [secular] society but it is counter-cultural – see the response to the Warwickshire firemen. The challenge of Remembrance Sunday is largely to do with how one honours sacrifice in war – while not getting drawn into honouring the very flawed sets of circumstances in which that sacrifice tends to be required. By that I mean the nationalisms – stretched between Horace’s ‘dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ quoted as ‘the old lie’ by Wilfred Owen – and the partial truths which sustain them: ‘They don’t love freedom the way we love freedom’ – George W Bush. And there is also what is plain to see – that sacrifice tends to be called for by older people and given by younger people. And what I saw plainly in Northern Ireland – that sacrifice tends to be made by working class people rather than by middle and upper class people.