ozbiggles, re your post on page 1, I had a similar experience (without the fisticuffs) back in the 60's when all things (anti)Vietnam were the flavour of the month with the mothers and fathers of today's 'land rights for ethnic refugee gay whales' push.
I was at a party on Sydney's upper North Shore where every male but me was sporting tresses about two feet long. My short back and sides led to my being assailed by an outspoken (aren't they all?) peace loving member of Awstraya's intelligentsia, who proceeded to tell me, after first calling me a baby killer, that if everyone refused to fight, there'd be no more war. I agreed with him, but pointed out that such utopian ideals tended to fall by the wayside when the other bloke didn't abide by them. He shot my argument full of holes with all sorts of erudite platitudes that would have gone down a treat in a Sydney Uni Arts Degree tute, so I hypothesised: I pointed to the fellow's attractive, kaftan-wearing wife who was only a few feet away, asking him what he'd do if a group of bikies crashed the party and began gang raping her.
"Oh, that's different." was his rather illuminating reply – and the saddest thing was that he couldn't see any parallel to that and his views on war.
I really hope Helen and her advisors aren't as wrong on this particular point as I fear they are. To my rather simple mind, gutting a Defence Force to the degree they've just done smacks of a Town Council scrapping the town Fire Service because there hasn't been a fire in the town for thirty years.
If Helen and her advisors think they can predict what’s going to happen over the next thirty years, they should be investing in the bloody stock market rather than running a country. Then they’ll only lose their money if they get it wrong.