A 100-year-old Royal Navy veteran named Alec Penstone recently spoke some powerful words that left UK TV hosts speechless. He said the friends he buried in World War II gave their lives “for what?” — pointing out that today’s Britain has lost the freedom they fought for.
The clip tells you everything you need to know about how far the UK has fallen recently. Penstone went on Good Morning Britain and said something that everyone, including Americans, needs to hear.
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The hosts of Good Morning Britain asked him, “What does Remembrance Sunday mean for you? What is your message?”
He replied, “My message is, I can see in my mind’s eye, there was rows and rows of white stones of all the hundreds of my friends and everybody else that gave their lives for what? The country of today. No, I’m sorry. The sacrifice wasn’t worth the result that it is now. What we fought for was our freedom. We fought for it even now. It’s a downside worse than what it was when I fought for it.”
That’s not bitterness talking. You can hear the heartbreak in his voice. This is a man who watched his friends die for a nation to promise to uphold freedoms, and now he’s wondering if that freedom even exists anymore. It’s really sad to watch and he’s not wrong to ask.
In the UK today, as we’ve reported here at CBN many times, the freedoms that he and his comrades had bled for, they’re starting to disappear.
We’ve seen Christians being arrested simply for praying silently outside abortion clinics. These are thought crimes happening, and it’s not only just a thought crime, it’s about prayer.
We’ve seen street preachers again and again, men peacefully sharing the gospel, handcuffed in public squares and hauled off and taken away. We’ve seen it again and again.
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And it’s not just speech in the streets, it’s speech online. Police have literally shown up at people’s homes over things that they tweeted. One British man was arrested in the middle of the night at his home. They busted into his home and took him away because he posted an anti-Hamas meme. This is a terror organization and you’re getting arrested for posting anti-Hamas memes.
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Reprinted with permission from cbn.com. Copyright © 2025 The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc. All rights reserved.
