The weight of blame for the flouting of the current Covid restrictions seems to be falling on the broad shoulders of young men. Eager interviewees are keen to present them as being totally devoid of personal responsibility and unwilling to submit to impositions on their freedom.

Young men are an easy target of course and they do feature to a higher degree in the stats concerning car accidents, crime, drug use and other forms of mischief. They are also at a time in their lives when they have been released from the strictures of childhood, free from the harassment of teacher's (and their elders in general) and thrust into a world of responsibility, one which they have not been prepared for.

And yet if a war were to occur, they would bear the brunt of recruitment for the armed forces in those areas that are most dangerous. They would die in disproportionate numbers to other cohorts but they would be celebrated every Anzac Day for their sacrifice. You can see the problem. They lack the sufficient maturity for proper risk assessment and yet they will be thrown into the heat of the fray.

It can only be a matter of time before someone on the TV opines that what young men need "is a good war." And then the repetition of the "old lie", dulce et decorum est pro patria mori will play again to packed houses.