Once upon a time, millions of young British men risked their lives for King and Country...

... I wonder  whether - had they known that a sizeable portion of a future generation of student snowflakes would find the sight of a red poppy memorialising their courage "distressing" - those young men and their families would have been quite so willing to make the supreme sacrifice. I suspect they would, because that generation understood the notion of doing one's duty. This, from the BBC News site today:

Red poppies 'distressing' says students union

Poppies are worn by millions of people in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday - they're sold by the Royal British Legion to raise money for ex-service personnel and their families. 

 But the students' union council at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich says it believes many people think the red poppy is a celebration of "atrocities" by the British Army, and can be "distressing".

This year only red poppies were available at the UEA Students' Union, but now the student council has voted in favour of making sure white poppies will be available on campus from next November.

Atrocities? ATROCITIES???

Give. Me. Fucking. Strength. 

What a bunch of ignorant, self-obsessed, virtue-signalling little tossers. (The problem is, I'm pretty sure that description would fit many of their lecturers.)

Whenever I hear about this sort of thing now, it reminds me of the American psychologist Jonathan Haidt's 2012 book, The Righteous Mind, whose core finding I summarised in the title of the post I wrote about it: "So now we know why liberals are strange – they don’t care about loyalty, authority or sanctity" (liberals being the American term for left-wingers, of course). The New Left doesn't really "do" loyalty, authority, sanctity, God, democracy, sacrifice, patriotism, respect etc - which is why there's really no point in arguing with them: we inhabit parallel moral universes.

I was getting myself into a bit of a state about all this - but then I recalled the reaction of the US Vice President Elect, Mike Pence, when, in an act which combined bad manners and arrogance, one of the cast members of the Broadway musical Hamilton gave him a classic, finger-wagging, left-wing ticking off from the stage:

“We, sir — we — are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights."

Pence, who was in the audience with his family, said he "...nudged my kids and reminded them, that's what freedom sounds like." Classy. And, of course, deeply conservative. (Brandon Dixon, the virtue-signalling black actor who lectured Pence about "upholding our American values" was later revealed to have posted misogynistic and racist tweets about "white chicks" and "ho's" - I trust Mike Pence won't be upholding Brandon's values).

Perhaps the University of East Anglia's social justice warriors could be persuaded to show their solidarity with those massacred in the "atrocities" supposedly carried out by utterly howwid British soldiers by agreeing to have their beloved white poppies attached directly to their chests with an industrial strength, heavy-duty staple gun.

One of our nieces attended UAE.  Corbyn supporter. Obviously.