Given the overtly unattractive nature of the admission, we’re therefore obliged to regard the substantial proportion of the American citizenry who say they would not fight to defend their country in the event of a military invasion by a foreign power as an expression of sincere self-knowledge. Ergo, under attack, 38 per cent of Americans would pile their SUVs high and join foreshortening tailbacks headed for Canada or Mexico, while wealthier families would clamber onto private jets and zoom off to bunkers well stocked with tinned paté in New Zealand.

With big-picture peace having prevailed for more than 70 years, most of us westerners have never been forced to decide whether to put our lives and bodily wellbeing on the line for our countries and compatriots. Recent immigrants are sometimes ardent converts to their adoptive lands, but the relationship to nation among the West’s native-born tends to be passive and transactional. (For many immigrants, the relationship is also more materially self-interested than emotional.) Most of us figure vaguely that where we live is OK; the country provides us with more or less what we need. Our primary contribution to the collective national interest is money, which we hardly donate out of niceness, and which even in quantity can’t compare to sacrificing a left leg. As for American Democrats, for years a goodly number have denounced their country as an irredeemable cesspit of ‘systemic racism’. Why would you risk a cut finger for such an awful place, much less a hole in the chest?