You Choose

Spoiled for choice. Hobson’s choice. Choice cuts. The choices you make... the modern world is filled with more options than any person has had presented to them ever before in history. The least educated in society nevertheless have access, instant access, to a world of information the most educated didn’t have just two decades ago. You can hook up to advice on every subject you have the ability to name. No matter what other excuses you give yourself, “I didn’t know” is the one that carries the least credence.

You may not choose to be highly intelligent, but you can choose to gain knowledge. You may not choose to be unemployed but you can choose to go looking for work. You choose to be idle, to be fat, to be ignorant. You choose to follow the herd, or not. Except for very few among us, it is up to individuals what they make of what they’ve got. The expression ‘he’s got the whole world in his hand’ has never been truer and yet there is little evidence the world is growing any smarter. But still you get to choose; you may be stupid, but you can choose to keep that to yourself.

You can even choose what to feel, in no small measure. Your instinctive reaction to events, people, ideas and all may be revulsion, but you can choose not to be just timidly revolted and instead adopt a cooler, dispassionate response. And for those who are programmed to respond to the appeasing, progressive voices of our times, even you can look out from your warm blanket of wilful ignorance and at least wonder for a moment why they still want to kill us.

For, make no mistake, choices were made in Brussels. The Belgian bombers chose to follow islam – religion is always a choice – and they chose to hate their host country and all it represents. Did they choose to protest with banners and rallies, the method used by civilised people to make their voices heard? No, they coldly and deliberately and without compassion took away the choices of those they killed. Those who remain are now presented with a choice of how to respond to a threat that quite clearly is not going away.

This is nothing to do with ‘Middle Eastern Foreign Policy’. It has everything to do with a backwards religion and a martial political movement which will stop at nothing to achieve world domination – we’ve been here before. Will our leaders choose to deal wisely with this threat, or will they continue to choose to believe it has nothing to do with islam until the lights go out all over the world? How do you want the west to respond; what choices do we have?

Charles Dickens wrote:  “You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?" "I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.” We are wearing the chains of our own making; by electing governments who have chosen, against all the clear evidence of experience, to adopt the doctrines and dogma of multiculturalism and pursue white-guilt-driven policies of ignoring the hateful choices made by their adored chosen people.

They chose. Choose back...

But we still have our own choices to make; Jean-Paul Sartre said “We are our choices”. You can break free from your conditioning, loosen your chains and refuse to turn the other cheek yet again. Do you want to live in fear, in a society at war with itself and forever afraid of offending anybody – the one we have now? Or do you want a society where the threat from a barbarous invader is in the history books where it belongs? You choose.