On this day, on the 8th of May 1945, the War in Europe was officially over after the signing of the unconditional surrender by the provisional German Government. This day marks the end of fascist regimes in Europe after 6 years of atrocious fighting.
More than 80 years ago, a man, who was appointed the Prime Minister of the UK with “nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears an d sweat”, refused to submit his Country to Hitler’s requests, he knew that the future of the world was at stake. He was carrying on his back the responsibility to choose how life would be in Europe in the following years: a life either characterized by fascist regimes or by democratic societies.
Luckily for us, he chose “to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might”, and was well aware that “if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age”. This man, who I’m referring to, is the legend, the myth, Winston Churchill: a man that was able “to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny” and was able to achieve for us a free world.
After the end of World War 2 that date has been officially and internationally, proclaimed as “Victory in Europe Day” and has been observed, particularly, in the United Kingdom since 1945, without missing a single anniversary, even during the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020 regular commemorations were held.
So you would probably be wondering: how that date, and the decision made by this man in the past, could have affected my everyday life?
In fact, it’s thanks to this day that we live our everyday life as we have known since we were born. If we can think, speak, live, and more in general express ourselves freely, we owe this possibility to all those men who put a “higher good” in front of their very life.
Currently, we live in a society which guarantees freedom and equality to all the people who lives in it, having said that, is it for real like that? In fact, no.
I’ll make an example, are we free to say everything we want whenever we want? True. Accordingly to what I just exposed; can I say something totally normal from my point of view even if it may sound offensive to somebody else? False. That’s my point, isn’t this technically a limitation of my freedom of expression? Definitely not. So, here comes the paradox of our society, when does my freedom to express begin, and, when does it end?
Most of the time, we forget that our society is made by a majority of people who express the same idea in the same way, and, a minority of people that may express a totally different idea or the same idea of the majority in different ways. We all have our own lives, marked by our emotions and sensations, and, most importantly, we all are sensible or insensible regarding something. Cleared this aspect, we must always remember that everyone of us counts as one and everybody is free to say anything they want, provided that he won’t interfere with the right of somebody else
Nowadays we are facing the hardest time for our western society: we are bound to make a decision that will certainly have an impact on our future. Just as 80 years ago, we shall allow everybody to express themselves freely without any prevarication or any suppression of any means. We can do it in one possible way: we must “let’s go forward together with our united strength”, remembering that we are all citizens of the same world and that we should straight up defend the existence of minorities with laws and with social campaign guaranteeing the right of expression for everyone.
On the other hand, if we do not understand the ever simple concept that we are all human beings, everybody different and perfect with its imperfection from one another, we will be forced, in order to defend minorities to censor some words, some common expressions and, eventually, our society will be no different from the repressive societies of the past.
I hope that we will be able to overcome this critical issue and, in the end, I hope that we will find the right balance between mutual freedom and, if our society will “last for a thousand years, men will still say: this was their finest hour.”