The lack of protection for the Shire happened a long time before any real threat emerged; and the emergence of the threat was arguably only due to Bilbo's poking around.
It was only a matter of time before something would come for them, the entire War of the Ring revolved around a distant conflict happening that the Shire was indirectly a hostage to. If it wasn't that it would have been something else, just as the Battle of Greenfields was in their past where they fought against orcs that found their way into their little bubble.
That doesn't change the fact that the Shire was an unrealistically idealistic society. It's rather telling that Tolkien needed outside intervention to defeat it.
And that's where the contrast comes in, and in more ways than one.
The first bit is it's use in the heroes journey and its relation to age. The hobbits leave the Shire effectively as children, and through their experiences abroad are matured and do so through what tests them in each of their own ways. They then come back changed and see the Shire differently, they know better to see the bubble they lived in, but given the horror they witness, they are also able to appreciate the good and the innocent bits, even if the days of those things are past for both them and the Shire as well.
That ties into how many children, especially those born in late 19th Century Britain, viewed the society they grew up in. We all deal with that to some extent until the larger world intrudes and we realize the safe little world of our childhood wasn't real and it never was history demolishes that fact once you really start to dig into that.
There's a much deeper one though, and that relates to British society and how they viewed war before and after WWI. Before then they looked upon it as an adventure. Sure you might die or be injured, but it would be glorious, the usual outcome was experience a lot of interesting things, seeing a lot of interesting places, fighting a lot of interesting people and coming back home with a real neat life story and maybe a bit of loot that you were able to come across.
Then young British boys went into WWI and were wiped out by the hundreds of thousands in a war that really wasn't fun at all.
Whats the contrast with that in Tolkien work? Look at the Hobbit and how kiddie the drama is. In world, Frodo got to hear of the neat adventure Bilbo went on where he did interesting things, saw interesting places, fought interesting people, even met a dragon, heck it turned out he came out of it with a bit of loot in a neat ring!
Frodo then goes out on his own adventure and once outside the Shire the grimdark sets in immediately and his adventure just isn't fun at all, worse it's fucking with him and he's suffering, really suffering, but he keeps going because of what is at stake. At the end he comes back a broken person while the other three come back wounded in their own ways, with Sam trying his best to be a father and husband despite what he witnessed with Frodo, while the other two largely live the life of the post-WWI adventure Brits aimed for, but they're still quiet about it and not enthusiastically eager to go on about what happened.
Coupled with that they also see the toll Bilbo's adventure actually had on him and how the Ring was screwing with him, but the end of LOTR he's not the same person he is, heck he's not all that much by the time they meet him in Rivendell.
Now, going into Tolkien's own life, he was raised on straight faced Harry Flashman novels essentially and went into WWI thinking it was going to be fun and games like he was told the Napoleonic War was, only to meet hell and then to realize that it must have taken its toll on soldiers in times past as well, just like Bilbo's adventure eventually revealed its demons.
To me that is both a condemnation of the Little England he grew up in as well as one that tragically acknowledges the good that was in it, but that that good has no place in the world, that it's time in Britain and the rest of the West is over, but people still must strive to find a way to make good in the world despite that realization.
The main reason why this is pointed out is that there is a sizable contingent of people who think that the British Empire did nothing wrong.
But those people have almost no influence over Britain and haven't for quite some time. My worry is the fact that those in the opposite camp aren't simply in power, but have entrenched themselves so deeply they might not be able to be rooted out before the British kill their society from self-loathing.
This is not some sort of new and unprecedented development. Most societies in history have found themselves at a want for purpose, since not everyone is lucky enough to be empire-builders. There are societies that have it far worse off than Britain, but the classic British pessimism makes this unable to be seen.
Except that "classic" British pessimism is part of the self-loathing that overtook and is crushing the honest self-deprecation. It's what I call flinty eyed optimism.
It's what makes a movie like Zulu so fucking funny when much of it has nothing historical in it. It's simply to show the essence of that in the British to honestly admit how dire a situation is and their chances of survival and then go on to not give a fuck because they're still going to try to live through it and many manage to do so despite the odds.
That is still a apart of them and they can restore it to its former place, but it won't long as this cultural malaise continues. That's the positive thing in Brexit, even if many voted for it out of spite, the British are still British enough for spite to influence their actions enough that the rest might still be salvageable.
The thing is, you see more of that Anglo-Saxon optimism in America these days. They're annoying, whiny and make a big deal about everything, but keep trying to do better no matter how much the way they go about it grates against everyone's nerves.
I would not call the Commonwealth a failure. Britain is actually still quite influential, but the British themselves don't realise it.
It's not, but compared to what it was originally intended to be it is. Britain re-purposed it for cultural influence when it really was intended to maintain something of the Empire through the use of some really soft power.
The majority of the British population didn't do anything about slavery. England has plenty to be proud of, but the abolition of slavery was not representative of British culture. Pride needs to be justified, not just a vacant look at your past accomplishments.
The majority of humanity has done shit to make the world a better place. Again, need to focus on the rare things societies do differently and when it comes to slavery people in the future might very well look on modern Western civilization as an aberration and will become a human universal once again in time.
And it is justified that at least some in their society fought to work it out of their nation and in doing so, helped start working it out fo Western Civilization as a whole. All the more so with America given that America has never done anything with its people lock step with everyone else, everything that would cause a controversy today if it was done caused one at the time from their War of Independence, to their Civil War, to the war with Spain, against the Indians, even the World Wars.
Compare that to WWII era Germany where the big figures of admiration are a handful of school kids that were murdered for speaking out against the Nazi's and what few military officers tried to get rid of Hitler, but only after it was clear that the Nazi's had lost the war for Germany. That is a vacant look at ones past accomplishments and trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear.