"Having just returned to America after a year's absence, I'm pondering this question: Why is it that the United States, which has not suffered a major terrorist attack at home for more than four years, thinks it's at war, while the United Kingdom, which was hit by a major terrorist attack just a year ago, does not? [...] One of the 'select patriotic titles' in the Stanford University bookstore is Faith of my Fathers, a gripping memoir by John McCain, the current front-runner to be Republican presidential candidate in 2008. [...] On the last page, he recalls his father passing on what he remembered most from his own father's last message to him: 'Son, there is no greater thing than to die for the principles - for the country and the principles that you believe in.' [...] This is a heroic conception of warrior honour which one could have encountered in most European countries before 1914, but which has been little heard in any mainstream European discourse since 1945." - story
