The news of 35 souls extinguished in a gun attack at an airport in Niger, with the British Embassy scrambling to coordinate with allies, should send a shiver down the spine of every right-thinking Briton. But will it? In our age of intellectual decadence, we prefer to tut at the news on our phones and then return to our trivial concerns.
We have forgotten that history is a cycle, not a line. The Fall of Rome was not a single event but a protracted collapse: a slow erosion of civic virtue, a reliance on mercenary forces, and a loss of the will to defend oneself. Look at modern Britain: we have disarmed our citizens, outsourced our defence to a professional military that is itself underfunded, and we treat the idea of personal security as a relic of a bygone era.
The attack in Niger is a skirmish in a larger war, not just a local tragedy. It is a symptom of a global disorder: the collapse of state authority in vast swathes of the world, the rise of non-state actors who are more ruthless and better armed than many national armies. And what do we do?
We wring our hands. We issue statements. We coordinate with allies, as the British Embassy in Niger is doing.
But these are the gestures of a civilisation that has lost its nerve. We no longer understand that peace is not a natural state; it is the product of strength, of credible deterrence, of a population that is willing and able to defend itself. The Victorians understood this.
They built an empire not on moral superiority but on gunboats and drilled infantry. They were not sentimental about the nature of man. They knew that the beast is always there, underneath the thin veneer of civilisation.
We, on the other hand, preach tolerance and multiculturalism while our own streets become no-go zones for the police. We dismantle our armed forces and then express surprise when a dozen gunmen can slaughter 35 people in an airport. The attack in Niger is a mirror held up to our own impotence.
It shows us what happens when a society loses its martial spirit. It shows us what happens when we believe that diplomacy and good intentions are a substitute for the sword. We must learn the lesson before it is taught to us on our own soil.
We must rearm our citizenry, restore our national pride, and remember that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Otherwise, the next 35 could be British.
