Recently, we have been informed by Christian groups that wearing a white remembrance poppy is more ‘Christian’ than a red poppy, we’ve been urged to select it.
However, I’m going to be quite frank here. The white poppy is wrong. It has the noble intent of suggesting that no good comes of violence but in doing so, it trivializes the sacrifice of the millions who gave their lives during warfare.
I know that this is precisely the opposite of what the white poppy wearers claim and that they are very wary of any suggestion that they trivialize the deaths of our soldiers. Yet they do.
The white poppy is a recision of the belief that those soldiers died for a purpose. It is a direct attack upon the idea that freedom isn’t free, it stands against the notion that it must be paid for in a blood price. I say if there is one thing we have learned in the decades since the World Wars it is that the price of our freedom is dear and that it can be paid in no other way.
Millions died so that I could write this, Hitler wouldn’t have stopped at Poland, indeed he didn’t. Wearing a white poppy is not the mark of a man who is conscious of the human price of war, it is the symbol of a man who is naive at best and ungrateful at worst. Suggesting that wars fought for our freedom were unnecessary ignores the march of tyranny and oppression that would, if given the opportunity, cover the entire world even today.
They are free to wear their blanch, self-righteous affectation because of the sacrifice of millions. Thankful for nothing, cocooned in a world given to them by a bloodied generation.
I’ll wear my poppy with pride.
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at November 11, 2006 12:48 PM