Growing Up Fast in a Dangerous World

There is an old political saying, often attributed to Winston Churchill, though its origins are contested: if you are not a socialist at twenty, you have no heart; if you are not a conservative at forty, you have no brain. However imperfect the attribution, the sentiment has endured because it captures something real about human development. Youth is often generous, impatient, idealistic and morally certain. Maturity, if it comes, is slower, harder, more empirical and more conscious of consequences.

But that saying emerged in an unusually forgiving period of human history.
For much of the post-war Western world, young people could afford to be naïve. We grew up inside the shelter of the US-led rules-based order built after the Second World War. We inherited institutions, alliances, prosperity, energy security, industrial depth and deterrence created by others. Others before us — including the ANZACs we commemorated again on 25 April 2026 — did much of the heavy lifting. We are the beneficiaries of their sacrifice, discipline and foresight.

After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the most visible symbol of the Iron Curtain collapsed — and many in the West mistook a strategic holiday for a permanent condition.

That holiday ended, morally if not formally, on the evening of 6 October 2023.

The next morning, Hamas and allied terrorists unleashed an ancient hatred in modern form. Their violence was directed not just at the only Jewish state, but at some of the most peace-minded Jews in Israel: communities such as Kfar Aza, Be’eri, Nahal Oz and Nir Oz. These were not ideological hardliners. Many were what might fairly be described as peaceniks — Israelis who had spent years advocating coexistence, employing Palestinians, supporting cross-border initiatives and believing, deeply, that neighbourliness might yet prevail.