Propwash wrote:JAFO wrote: I think the Swiss do quite well. . . . . {snip}
no war in a couple of hundred years or so.
But has profited very nicely from other people's wars.
Well, given the option of living in a nation that made a few quid from the idiocy of others over living in one that routinely sent its youth off to be slaughtered or mutilated in defence of a story, I know which I'd choose.
I didn't always think that way, I guess that I didn't think at all, I just accepted the story. I have changed my mind quite significantly over the years; or, perhaps, I've started to use it.
I believed the story of Queen and country and the glorious dead for a long time, signed up to be part of it, pledged to do my duty and I did. Then, over the years, as friends and acquaintances died or had their lives shattered, I realised that much of what they'd been fighting for was a fairy story; there are no glorious dead, just the dead.
Nations have to build fairy stories that a lot of people believe in quite fervently if they are going to get away with wars. I stopped believing and part of that was no longer believing in the divine right of a person to rule. They're just people like you and me who put their pants on one leg at a time and bowing and proclaiming their majesty is medieval nonsense.
I'm sure that Auntie Betty does a marvellous job, I'm sure that many of the alternatives are worse and that, given the opportunity to build a republic, we could do a worse job of it than just about anywhere. I just refuse to believe that they are anything special any more.
Twenty years ago, I would have been horrified to think that someone thought that way but there it is.