TOUGH times breed tough people.
That’s why history swings like a pendulum. Tough people solve problems and make lives easy for their children.
Their children then become soft people, who let things slip.
Then tough times arrive again, breeding more tough people.
I have said before that my generation is a soft one.
While my parents survived world wars and depressions, my guys invented the celebrity chef.
The only depression my colleagues know is one that can be eased by Prozac.
That’s about to change – and change radically.
If it doesn’t, the West will not survive. If we do not get tough, there will be no Western civilisation.
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Many may think that’s a good thing, but it is happening without the people it most affects being consulted.
That’s why I think historians will look at the Manchester bombings last week where 22 people, mainly teenage girls, were massacred and at least 119 permanently maimed, as a pivot in the clash of civilisations.
The murderer was a British-born Libyan called Salman Abedi. His parents came to Britain to escape the horrors of Colonel Gaddafi.
His father and brother are among the suspects arrested. That is how the Abedi family repaid British hospitality.
Terror attacks are now deja ju in the West. It’s same-oh, same-oh on the streets of Paris, Brussels and Nice. The stations of London and Madrid have been bombed.
Every time it happens, politicians ‘defiantly’ have the same-oh response – which is to defy reality.
We must stand together, they thunder. We must not let terror divide us, they froth. We must hold hands and sing ‘All you need is love’, they urge.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, went further. He said terror attacks are ‘part and parcel’ of living in a big city. So suck it up.
For the past decade the browbeaten masses, terrified of being called racists or (insert ‘ist’ here) did what Mr Khan ordered. They sucked it up.
Candlelit sing-along warriors
As French cartoonists were slaughtered in their office, as croissant-munchers were machine gunned in Paris cafés, as commuters were bombed on London’s
Underground, they believed candlelight vigils and taking selfies singing ‘Imagine’ would make the horror go away.
Indeed, The Independent’s headline the day after the Manchester massacre urged Brits to defy terror by ‘carrying on as before’.
Except ‘before’ is now another country. Today there are soldiers patrolling the streets of UK cities, seldom seen ‘before’.
Today there are far fewer gay bars in Amsterdam than ‘before’.
Today, women in Molenbeek, Belgium, cannot go out after dark as they could ‘before’.
Today there are no-go areas in Paris that were peaceful communities ‘before’.
So here’s the thing… Manchester has shown that Europe cannot go on as ‘before’.
The horror butchery of innocent teenagers has exposed the feeble underbelly of a soft society that can’t even protect little girls.
Public anger is palpable. You feel it everywhere. And it is directed squarely at the ruling class, the top of the soft generation’s food chain.
They – and they alone – transformed the face of Europe without considering the consequences, except maybe the benefits of cheaper au pairs and more exotic restaurants.
And if more proof is needed that the liberal West shelters hate-filled enemies set on destroying its way of life, it happened last week.
The next generation of Brits will be tougher than the legacy-hippies of today.
I see it in my kids; working at a butchery for pocket money to get them through university.
Now that one has a job, he puts in a 10-hour day because that’s what it takes to hit target.
The other is writing law exams. It’s almost impossible to get hold of him as he’s in the library where cellphones are not permitted. Their friends are the same.
Forget about what you read of old people stealing the future of youngsters. The youngsters have seen the future. It happened in Manchester last week.
It doesn’t have to be that way, of course. But only a tough generation will prevent it.
The wretched hand-wringing liberal elites have failed the most basic test of any government; to keep their citizens safe. They must go.
