What We Are Fighting For - 16 of 17

Click image to enlargify
From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 38-39

The German mother who still wants to live her own life and look after her own home, has a Block Warden to supervise what friends she meets, what hobbies she has, what radio stations she listens to. Her children are compulsorily enrolled in the Hitler Youth, alienated from her, even incited against her. Her grown-up sons and daughters are enlisted into the army or in various labour camps. As one German mother has remarked: "As long as I've got my baby in the pram, he belongs to me -- but not much longer."

This, then, is something of what Nazi means to the ordinary men and women of Germany. Here, quite deliberately, we have not dealt with those well-known and sensational aspects of German life -- the role of the Gestapo, the position of the Jews, the persecution of the intellectuals. Nor have we touched upon the the opposition to National Socialism. Here we have been concerned with the ordinary Little Man and his Wife, with people economically too hard-pressed to understand clearly what was happening, who gave freely of their enthusiasm and their ideals, and who, in return, had seen the country brought to a state of slavery and the world plunged into war.

-- A.L Lloyd

Jay's thoughts:  What you have just have just read over the previous sixteen posts is a masterpiece of pro-British / anti-Nazi propaganda. You would be wise to remember some of it. To use it against Public Health. To be inspired by it. To take action. To do anything but except the status quo that is modern-day Britain in the thrall of living forever if only you don't smoke, or drink, or eat the wrong foods.

And while the comparisons between Nazi Germany of the 1930s and Britain of the 2010s are sometimes indirect and tenuous, we must admit that there are far too many striking similarities to present-day Britain and the threat of Nazi socialist rule to be ignored.

Have no illusions that the people who want to save you from yourself are little different than the Führers of Nazi Germany. The socialists all had a dream back then, as do those in Public Health now.  It's not the dream that matters, however ... it's the lies, propaganda, and more important the acts (or inaction) of people to achieve those dreams that matter. Are we willing to accept that some members of society are better people simply for whether they don't smoke or don't drink or don't eat too much?  Are we truly ready to say that smokers are a such a burden on society that we should denormalise them and isolate them from their friends and family?

The better questions may be:

"Who are we?"

"Are we Nazi Germany?"

"Or are we truly a tolerant Britain, a  country of the greenest pastures, of the most beautiful cities, a place where each person can choose his or her own life, as each sees fit for themselves?"

"Does the dream of Public Health outweigh the hopes and aspirations of all Britons -- of all Americans -- or all Australians -- of all people all over the world?"

What are your answers to those questions? What questions of your own do you have? What kind of world do you wish to live in?

I know what world I want to live in. It's not the world we see today through the rose-tinted lenses of Public Health, the Tobacco Control Industry, the Alcohol Prohibitionists and the Food Snobs.