liberte egalite fraternite

I have largely stayed my tounge about the attacks on Paris. I have done so out of respect. However my topic today is the topic of freedom and it felt appropriate to say that I am one of the many backing the campaign for intervention in Syria, not out of a desire for revenge for Paris but because of the very principles of liberty, equality and fraternity that the French national motto espouses. To quote Andrew Neil: ISIS, or IS or ISIL or whatever they call themselves are 'a death cult of barbarity that would shame the Middle Ages’.

Now.

Freedom.

The Oxford Dictionary defines freedom as "The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants". In this day and age we take freedom for granted in the western world but it was not always the case that we were free to act, speak or think the way we wanted. This is not just true of history bt as we all know there was a very real movement in the 1930s and 40s which threatened to dominate the world if we did not stand against it and fight for the survival of our very way of life.

Since that time however, when the British lion roared so loud that the Nazi hoards were halted, we have to my mind at least shyed away from fighting for freedom. In his book Costas Douzinas talks about the failures of our world to truly embrace human rights as a concept. Yes it isn't a very Tory book but it is very insightful and I encourage people to read it for the unique perspective it offers to the debate.

We have continued to see throughout the so-era of human rights a progressive shift away from them. People are left to suffer at the hands of tyrants and murderers while we pay only lip service to the idea that life is sacred and needs to be protected.

I'm not suggesting by any means that we should go around the world and enforce our views on others. Different cultures after all have different interpretations of what freedom means and we need to respect that but... Where the suffering of our fellow humans is so great that they are literally putting themselves on planks of wood to escape from the terror they face in the their own country then my friends it is not time to be placid. It is time to take arms and defend freedom for all it is worth.

Winston Churchill, our greatest leader and himself a veteran of wars around the world once said: "One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!"

These words are very wise and should encourage us today to go out and fight for freedom rather then run to protect our own because in the end by facing the Syrian Death Cult which has the nerve to call itself an Islamic State we will be doing the cause of freedom a favour which will be repaid a thousand times over in future generations.