This was published 11 years ago
Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather whether we have become too soft
By Sam de Brito
Ancient Greek historian Plutarch tells a story of a Spartan mother whose five sons have gone off to war and who waits anxiously for news of their fate outside the city.
She asks an approaching servant how fares the battle. ''Your five sons are slain,'' he replies. ''Vile slave, was that what I asked thee?''
Jacques Rousseau.
''We have won the victory,'' he responds and the mother rushes to a temple to thank the gods for her people's good fortune.
''That is a citizen,'' wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau when recounting this tale in his 1762 book Emile.
It makes me wonder whether he or Plutarch would even recognise the soft-bellied citizens of modern Greece or Australia.
Many in this country consider it twee or naive to assume we owe our nation anything other than income tax (at the lowest-possible rate) and to stand and shut up for 15 seconds while the ode is recited at the RSL.
Duty, however? Thrift? Your life? I mean, really, what's Australia done for me lately?
As we endure the never-ending election campaign, try to imagine Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott on the news delivering John F. Kennedy's line: ''Ask not what your country can do for you but rather what you can do for your country.''
Huh? WTF? You want something from me? Imagine how that'd go down with the majority of today's citizens, sorry, voters. There are a lot of dirty words in politics but one all parties will steer clear of this election is ''sacrifice''.
People don't want to hear it. We want cheap bread, cheap milk, cheap petrol, free healthcare, free wi-fi, free-to-air footy, low unemployment, low interest rates, no traffic jams, cold beer and unmetered beach parking - otherwise I'm voting for the other lot.
The idea we might owe our country something in return for all that? You serious? The notion we might owe future Australians a debt for the luxury we enjoy in the present? Are you having sex with trees, you leftie weirdo?
We're a country that can complain about the hot weather and the carbon tax in the same breath with not a smidge of irony.
There's a saying, ''tough times make tough people'', but do good times - and these are good times - produce soft people?
American political commentator Dan Carlin poses this scenario in one of his fabulous Hardcore History podcasts, asking listeners to imagine being at war with a country very similar to their own.
''There's only one difference between this country and us … the other country is made up of our grandparents,'' Carlin says. And not your gramps in a wheelchair: in their prime, fighting wars and surviving depressions and washing their undies in the sink.
It's easy to tell ourselves we're evolving as a race: we're faster, better and stronger. However, if there's a constant in history, it's the softer and more indulgent a society becomes, the closer it moves to collapse or conquest by a harder, nastier, power.
Voltaire said: ''History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.'' I wonder what sound your eight pairs of designer sneakers make on those steps?