Which of your children would take up arms if need be to defend their country

we are bailing on our collective responsibility to work toward unbreaking it.

what do you suggest they do?

@treesfalling I said: I really believe that irrespective of our immigrant status, 'buy-in' to nationhood, community and the understanding that the defense of the liberties we enjoy in our adopted homeland is a shared responsibility, irrespective of how much of a stake one feels one has in society.
You responded: I think many young people would feel different regardless if they are indigenous or not. A lot feel the social contract has been broken.
Thank you for bringing up social contract theory. These days, as its usage in common discourse widens, it's usually suffixed with the descriptor 'broken'. This irritates me. As an electorate, we really do get the governance we deserve (although, under an electoral system such as first past the post, this comes with some caveats, unless, of course, electoral reform itself is also included in my initial assertion). As such, I think that when we sit back and survey Britain or indeed 'the social contract' and declare them "broken...", with no resolve to snap into constructive action, we are bailing on our collective responsibility to work toward unbreaking it.

It absolutely has been broken. I’m in the rare position - for my cohort - of owning a house (mortgaged) and being able to have a child. I did okay academically, got a degree, worked reasonably hard and now I have a cheap home in a northern city and can afford one child. Two people working full-time. Eight year old second hand car. It’s not much, but we’ve managed it.

The thing is, that’s because we’ve been a couple since we were teenagers. We’ve been able to align our goals and split everything. Most of my peers didn’t meet their future spouse aged 15. And it still took us until 30 to get here.

Lots of my peers did the right thing, decent degrees, smart career choices, and have still ended up in their parents box bedroom with no prospect of moving out. They’ve started emigrating en masse. I’ve got two friends gone to Australia, one to Germany, one to Poland, one to Ireland in the last 18 months. Not only are they peak working age and were net contributors to the economy but they feel little if any loyalty to the UK. It basically sent them packing because the opportunities to get on in life aren’t here.

This idea that we just should be loyal in some way to this country is for the birds. There’s little for us here.

I live in Finland, which used to be part of the Russian Empire, the Empire Putin wants to recreate. This is a real threat.

My niece is a conscientious objector but she's just come back from Palestine where she was operating on children and her risking life and limbs.

Love this - I have 3 granddaughters & I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of the youngest (aged 9) - she's her own woman & is very happy to say what she thinks. DH & me often say that she will make sure that if any idiot takes her or her older sister for a fool he will know about it!😍

I really believe that irrespective of our immigrant status, 'buy-in' to nationhood, community and the understanding that the defense of the liberties we enjoy in our adopted homeland is a shared responsibility, irrespective of how much of a stake one feels one has in society.

I think many young people would feel different regardless if they are indigenous or not. A lot feel the social contract has been broken.

Both of mine have mild disabilities so wouldn't pass an army medical, so neither.

Seems that some posters don't think the British way of life is worth defending, and would have been happy learning to speak German (and accept Nazism as a way of life) in the 1930's and 1940's.

I have simply asked if it's worth defending. We don't exactly have a track record of looking after soldiers who have served do we?
Also I'm not sure why you have extrapolated capitulation over death to mean one is happy about it? Everyone will have their own boundary about what the lesser evil is. I don't think that's a radical opinion.

We have no protected borders and the country is being flooded by strong, healthy, intelligent young males everyday.
So what exactly would we be fighting to protect?
2 Tier Kier is just manufacturing conflict to detract from his hopeless leadership.

Have you read Daphne du Maurier's novel 'Rule Britannia' - about this scenario? A good read.

Of course it's bad, but as far as anybody knows, Putin has no interest in kidnapping your kids to make them into Russians. He's kidnapping Ukrainian kids because he thinks they are already Russians. He's not trying to make Russians out of you and me, provided we're not from former Soviet countries. His atrocities are appalling, but they aren't currently a direct threat to our way of life.

@treesfalling Living under occupation could look very differently depending on who's invading where; I've imagined a US 'soft' invasion of Greenland this week, for instance, trying to extrapolate how it would impact the region. But it'll never be anybody's first choice, irrespective of who or where. I'm more thinking of posters who imagine they'll blithely whip out their EU passports and hop overseas, or wait to see which others send their DC before volunteering, or just sit by and expect 'the Forces to deal with it'.
I'm first generation immigrant in the UK, and the child of an immigrant in my country of birth. I really believe that irrespective of our immigrant status, 'buy-in' to nationhood, community and the understanding that the defense of the liberties we enjoy in our adopted homeland is a shared responsibility, irrespective of how much of a stake one feels one has in society. My immigrant parent committed 100% to the upholding and promotion of democracy and collectivism in my birth country, because their own parents' human rights had been under threat in their country of origin.

I've been re-reading Ann Frank's diary.

Last night DH & me were talking about if were living in Germany or occupied territories, if we'd have been brave enough to hide Jewish children or supported the Resistance & then to what extent would we have supported them? Would we have carried arms & messages? Would we have blown up railway lines? Helped Allied Airmen get home? Our biggest concern would be that, in taking part in resistance activities, we would put our families at risk - our GC could have been taken into concentration camps & murdered. But then, the fact that their fathers would be fighting would put them at risk.

My late mother worked with and became good friends with someone who worked for the French Resistance. Francis Cammaerts - Wikipedia Apparently Francis was a very unassuming & rather shy man and mum only found out about his career in the resistance after many years of friendship. I'm not so sure that I would be brave enough to do what he did.

Seems that some posters don't think the British way of life is worth defending, and would have been happy learning to speak German (and accept Nazism as a way of life) in the 1930's and 1940's.

Anyway it's more likely that our freedom of way of life would be impacted than people (apart from some minorities) being killed. They'd be given a choice of converting beforehand. Your children growing up being forced to be veiled, no freedom of religion, no music festivals and pubs and clubs and all the things we take for granted. And it won't look like a land invasion, it is more likely to be the slow incremental creep of the Muslim Brotherhood, banned as a terrorist organisation in much of the middle east such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, but thriving in Europe.
And I bet this comment gets reported for being Islamophobic.

For the record, I am not prejudiced against Muslims, people are free to follow whatever religion, or none, that makes them happy as long as they give others the same freedom. I am against any extremism and have legitimate concerns about a political movement that has clear anti-Western aims, is so extreme that Saudi and UAE with their very strict interpretation of Islam have banned it, and it is being allowed to flourish, invest and money launder in the UK. And nobody is allowed to mention it.

We are all busy looking at Russia but that's not as big a threat, in the UK and western Europe at least.

What about if your children’s lives are under threat? It’s a bloody good thing my dad and his generation thought there were ideals and morals worth fighting for.

Far right nationalism is alive and thriving in Europe. It is just more topical in our locale.

I am not sure why folks seem to think all the under 30’s have a hammer and sickle flag in their bedroom.

I asked because so far some posters have said they’d fight against the far right but there hasn’t been mention of the far left.
There used to be plenty of pro Soviet opinion right up until the empire ceased in 1991 - I remember a slogan used by those in favour of unilateral disarmament, ‘Better Red than Dead’.

Mine is 7 so I have no idea. DH would, if they wanted slightly out of shape 44 year olds.

If Stalin was crossing the North Sea then I can confirm I would be motivated to fight that off.

I am not sure why folks seem to think all the under 30’s have a hammer and sickle flag in their bedroom.

That's what I mean -there's this weird exceptionalism on this thread "Well, I'd just x, y or z." As if any of those options would remain available.

Plenty of people have lived under occupation throughout wars though, it's not like it isn't an option.

My parents are immigrants so it's certainly not exceptionalism shaping my opinions 😆

I think it suited some interested parties in some countries, certainly the UK - e.g. some politicians, some academic institutions, some in the arms industry to talk up "cyber" and "tech" and ignore the unavoidably grim side of war fighting.

I also don't think many outlets outside of Ukraine really cover the ground war at all well.. I've been reading some grim reports in the last week that have not in the MSM...the MSM seems to concentrate almost entirely on the attacks on the civilian population these days.

i want to say none of them - but you never know what people actually might do until they’re faced with that situation. It is quite hard to imagine them wanting to voluntarily.

Being stolen from your family, taken thousands of miles away to live with strangers (and no idea how they might treat the children) isn't so bad then?

That's what I mean -there's this weird exceptionalism on this thread "Well, I'd just x, y or z." As if any of those options would remain available.
I often wonder about the sense of collective ownership of our shared security, democracy and nationhood, of a sense of 'the common good' in the UK, an awareness which is much more prevalent in my country of birth. I'd not really encountered what is referred to as an "I'm alright, Jack" attitude until I got to the UK, and it was a bit of a shock to see this kind of individualistic centering. People appear to feel this is an expression of autonomy or free will, but in my experience, we're only as free as the society we jointly contribute and commit to. Collectivism in general can be problematic in the UK with its colonial history and the lasting effects thereof on institutions and societal structures, but most of the 'I'm alright Jack' proponents I've encountered are not 'sitting out' because of any historic beef with Empire.