Fred Gunner
AH elite
In a war, 38 per cent of Americans would pile their SUVs high and join tailbacks for Canada or Mexico
For many of us war voyeurs watching the news with a glass of sherry, admiration of the little-engine-that-could Ukrainian fighters is underwritten by unease. As families escape to safety, plenty of feisty Ukrainians are remaining behind to battle a far more powerful aggressor, and they’re not all men, either. The question nags, then: in the same circumstances, would we stick around to defend our homelands, or would we cut our losses and get out?
Earlier this month, that’s precisely what a Quinnipiac poll asked Americans. Some 7 per cent answered ‘Don’t know’. But an astonishing 52 per cent of Democrats predicted that they’d skedaddle. Among Republicans, a full quarter would carpool with the hightailing ‘to hell with this!’ Democrats, while 68 per cent would stand their ground – or think they would. Among all respondents, 55 per cent would stay and fight, while 38 per cent would flee. Scaled up, that would be 125 million Yanks storming from the Land of the No Longer Free and the Home of the Not Especially Brave all at once. Quite a stampede.
As Matthew Hennessey observed in the Wall Street Journal, these answers are especially surprising because nothing compelled these folks to tell the truth. People often deceive pollsters, especially when an honest reply seems socially unacceptable. That’s why Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 caught pollsters so unawares: many Trump supporters kept their ostensibly odious voting intentions to themselves. Those Quinnipiac respondents confronted only a pencil-pushing pollster, not a Russian tank crashing through their living room. Surely they’d have been tempted to lie to please – or to show a shred of self-respect. Jesus, they might at least have lied to themselves – imagining that, under duress, they’d rise to the occasion, even if this assumption entailed unwarranted optimism about the extent of their physical courage.
www.spectator.co.uk
In last autumn’s The Dying Citizen, Victor Davis Hanson proposed that the western concept of citizenship, with its balance of rights and obligations, had been steadily eroded. Globalisation, mass unassimilated immigration and the left’s cultivation of self-disgust have steadily turned us into mere residents, with no fervent commitment to a shared culture and past. For plain old residents, country is a matter of convenience or accident. Nationality may confer a greater or lesser advantage, but it hardly calls up a passionate attachment or sense of duty. Our jet-setting elites are dedicated not to nations but to ideologies, whose promotion is all talk. While Putin has been brainwashing Russians into a mindless patriotism, our disavowal of patriotism has been equally mindless. We’re demoting our countries to mere coordinates, mere patches on a map. We westerners’ dry, shrugging, uninvested relationships to our own countries may be the perceived weakness that most emboldens Putin.
Extreme circumstances are prone to reveal things about character that are impossible to access in calmer times. The invasion of your home is apt to stir the primitive, animal emotions conspicuously on display in Ukraine. There’s no more ferocious a motivator than hatred – and there is such a thing; it bears little resemblance to whatever feeling underlies the mild verbal faux pas that’s currently prosecuted as ‘hate speech’. Ukrainians repeatedly testify to journalists that they’re not frightened but angry.
For many of us war voyeurs watching the news with a glass of sherry, admiration of the little-engine-that-could Ukrainian fighters is underwritten by unease. As families escape to safety, plenty of feisty Ukrainians are remaining behind to battle a far more powerful aggressor, and they’re not all men, either. The question nags, then: in the same circumstances, would we stick around to defend our homelands, or would we cut our losses and get out?
Earlier this month, that’s precisely what a Quinnipiac poll asked Americans. Some 7 per cent answered ‘Don’t know’. But an astonishing 52 per cent of Democrats predicted that they’d skedaddle. Among Republicans, a full quarter would carpool with the hightailing ‘to hell with this!’ Democrats, while 68 per cent would stand their ground – or think they would. Among all respondents, 55 per cent would stay and fight, while 38 per cent would flee. Scaled up, that would be 125 million Yanks storming from the Land of the No Longer Free and the Home of the Not Especially Brave all at once. Quite a stampede.
As Matthew Hennessey observed in the Wall Street Journal, these answers are especially surprising because nothing compelled these folks to tell the truth. People often deceive pollsters, especially when an honest reply seems socially unacceptable. That’s why Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 caught pollsters so unawares: many Trump supporters kept their ostensibly odious voting intentions to themselves. Those Quinnipiac respondents confronted only a pencil-pushing pollster, not a Russian tank crashing through their living room. Surely they’d have been tempted to lie to please – or to show a shred of self-respect. Jesus, they might at least have lied to themselves – imagining that, under duress, they’d rise to the occasion, even if this assumption entailed unwarranted optimism about the extent of their physical courage.
Why are so few Americans willing to defend their country?
For many of us war voyeurs watching the news with a glass of sherry, admiration of the little-engine-that-could Ukrainian fighters is underwritten by unease. As families escape to safety, plenty of feisty Ukrainians are remaining behind to battle a far more powerful aggressor, and they’re not...
www.spectator.co.uk
In last autumn’s The Dying Citizen, Victor Davis Hanson proposed that the western concept of citizenship, with its balance of rights and obligations, had been steadily eroded. Globalisation, mass unassimilated immigration and the left’s cultivation of self-disgust have steadily turned us into mere residents, with no fervent commitment to a shared culture and past. For plain old residents, country is a matter of convenience or accident. Nationality may confer a greater or lesser advantage, but it hardly calls up a passionate attachment or sense of duty. Our jet-setting elites are dedicated not to nations but to ideologies, whose promotion is all talk. While Putin has been brainwashing Russians into a mindless patriotism, our disavowal of patriotism has been equally mindless. We’re demoting our countries to mere coordinates, mere patches on a map. We westerners’ dry, shrugging, uninvested relationships to our own countries may be the perceived weakness that most emboldens Putin.
Extreme circumstances are prone to reveal things about character that are impossible to access in calmer times. The invasion of your home is apt to stir the primitive, animal emotions conspicuously on display in Ukraine. There’s no more ferocious a motivator than hatred – and there is such a thing; it bears little resemblance to whatever feeling underlies the mild verbal faux pas that’s currently prosecuted as ‘hate speech’. Ukrainians repeatedly testify to journalists that they’re not frightened but angry.
