One of Our Boys

Well, here's a thing: an upstanding member of Gordon's white working class has been rather quietly jailed for manufacturing explosives, including nail bombs and booby-traps, and for possessing a dozen firearms. He also kept notebooks in which the most reportable sentiment seems to have been: "The patriot must always be ready to defend his country against enemies and their governments". Of course, no respectable mainstream politician would ever identify itself with such irresponsible rhetoric; in the civilised world, the patriot must always be ready to send other people against enemies and their governments. The culprit in this business is, in fact, a former soldier; and it is doubtless the probability that he might have fought back, rather than his lack of a beard, a bulky jacket, a student visa or any of the other common attributes of the terroristically-oriented, which accounts for his not being shot and the apparent fact that no further civil liberties are to be abolished on the strength of his case.