Alas, Patriotism Cannot Be Easily Taught!

17.11.2018 LISTEN

During the Second World War, some members of a few of Britain’s best-respected families – the Royal family [former King Edward The Eighth in particular] the Mitfords and a few others – were suspected of being Nazi sympathisers.

Yes! They wanted the ranting Corporal to become their nation’s leader!

Sir repeat Sir Oswald Mosley, a Knight of the Realm, was the founder of a movement that wanted to instal fascism in Britain. A fellow called William Joyce betrayed his aristocratic pretensions by styling himself “Lord” Haw-haw and going to Berlin to use Hitler’s radio to broadcast vitriolic propaganda urging British soldiers to lay down their arms and allow Hitler’s storm-troopers to march over and capture Whitehall.

And during the Cold War, great harm was done to British intelligence by a small, five-man group of respected graduates of the super-posh University of Cambridge. They supplied vital information from the British Foreign Office to the Soviet KGB. Among them was Sir repeat Sir Anthony Blunt (who was Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures and Director of Sothebys) and the “infamous three” foreign office “double agents” Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby.

Why do such privileged people sell their country to a foreign power? The motive of such people is often mixed. Their treachery usually stems from ideological disenchantment, but they can also be influenced by money. Sometimes, they suffer from a psychological need to “put one over” their employers or the /social circles in which they move.

Treachery against one’s own country can be extremely harmful and is always contemptible. What it does, is to produce individuals who are sad representatives of their society. I personally experienced their venom in the 1960s, when I was viciously attacked in the Ashanti Pioneer newspaper by a fellow journalist called A K Adu. His beef? That I had published an article in Drum Magazine that was not complimentary to the Soviet Union. When I ran into him among a group of journalists, I asked him, “Adu, you wrote that I had engaged in ‘slatternly’ behaviour. But I’ve never heard that word before! What does it mean?”

He didn’t know, either!

In fact, the word had been translated from Russian into English by someone whose knowledge of English was both literal and outdated. That word had ceased to be used in English long ago, but Adu’s paymasters in the Soviet Embassy in Accra were not aware of it! Adu looked like a complete idiot when my question proved that he had published under his own name, an article provided by a foreign embassy that contained words that he did not even understand. Unfortunately, the practice of local journalists taking money to “push” a line on behalf of foreign embassies continues to this day.

But it is not only journalists who cannot determine, or who (for money’s sake) ignore the “national interests” of their own country. Politicians and businessmen also do it – in exchange for calculated gains.

These ignoramuses are, like my antagonist of the 1960s, quite incapable of realising that others would detect the treachery they carry out against their own country on behalf of a foreign nation. In countries with good “counter-espionage” systems, the media are thoroughly scrutinised to find clues that lead the authorities to conclude that one of its citizens is engaging in conducts that show he/she is not aware that nations do not have “permanent friends”, but “permanent interests”.

What are a nation’s “permanent interests”? The first element of that is, of course, national security or national survival. Compare a map of the world produced in 1946 to one produced in 2016 and you will be amazed at the changes that have taken place in world Geo-politics. Countries that have disappeared include “Yugoslavia”, once so strong that it could play the Eastern bloc of nations against the Western bloc. Many once-independent nations have been swallowed up all over the place.

I want to warn Ghanaian politicians that they urgently need to adopt a united front against galamsey. The NDC presidential aspirant, Mr John Mahama, in particular, should please remember galamsey is relentlessly destroying our rivers and more important, underground water-tables. Mr Mahama of all people should treasure water.

I recommend to all those who have forgotten what a lack of water can do to a populace to do a SEARCH on their computers/phones at www.youtube.com for California+ Paradise+fire+damage.

Such scenes as those in the videos should convince every Ghanaian to do his or her utmost to persuade the galamseyers that their current mode of “earning a living” is unacceptable and should be abandoned. And the efforts of the current government – re-training small-scale miners to adopt techniques that enable gold to be dug without ruining water-bodies and poisoning the landscape, should be embraced wholeheartedly as a matter of patriotic duty. For when the water is gone, it will be gone for ever.

Which patriot can look on unconcerned as mercury and other chemicals are used to poison not only the water but also the land in which we grow food? Who can excuse the unleashing of deadly cancers upon our populace, just because other citizens “want to earn a living”?

Alas, patriotism cannot be taught – only advocated. That’s what Owura Ephraim Amu did when he told us in his song 'Yen Ara Asaase Ni' that:

This land is our very own!

It is of incalculable value to us;

Blood it was that was shed

By our ancestors

To gain and preserve it for us;

It’s now my turn and your turn

To continue what they did;

For whether the Nation will thrive

Or whether the Nation will decompose

It is an undeniable fact

That the character