Peter Hitchens, the conservative and devoutly Christian brother of Christopher, wrote something in his most recent
Daily Mail column that moved me deeply. He was commenting about how he and about 100 other people stand along the roadside with their hands over their hearts as the remains of Great Britain’s war dead pass by in Oxfordshire near the town of Oxford where he resides. Writing about those who gather to honor their country’s fallen, Hitchens avers: “We feel, in short, that a country where nobody could be bothered to stand by the roadside for its dead soldiers wouldn’t be worth living in.”
He lauds one Abdul Latif and his wife, immigrant Muslim citizens of the U.K., who also have begun standing and honoring those who gave the full measure. These people stand in contrast to Islamo-Fascist rabble rousers, at whom Pope Benedict XVI courageously took aim in his famous in
Regensburg address, many of whom express joy at the death of U.K. military members. Of those, like Mr. & Mrs. Latif, he writes they are as likely "as sick" as he is of Britain's "swear-word and sex culture, and that they understand that courage is the greatest of all the virtues – because none of the others is worth anything without it." Of their own courageous gesture, Hitchens rightly observes that it "is a reminder to us that there is an alternative to multiculturalism and decay." All of this is made more worthy of comment by the fact that Mr. Hitchens, as a conservative, opposes his country's on-going involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
