Susan North
This
article was first published one year ago today but it is a message that bears
repeating. Churchill was not perfect,
but he was a role model for us today in so many ways. While we needed his type of leadership and
courage one year ago, today we are more desperate than ever for it. Who would have thought four years ago, that
things would get worse, that our leadership would be so lacking in the necessary
courage and tenacity to think big, bold and to be uncompromising in the face of
tyranny. We need another Churchill, we
need someone who will not only give us fine words but will live by them. But we
also need men and women who willing to do battle on all fronts on behalf of
liberty. Will you join the battle? Or
will you instead invest your time and energies in trivial pursuits?
What
can one man do you ask? Ask that of Lech Walesa. Ask that of Ronald Reagan. Ask
that of Churchill.
In 1941 (and remember the war began for the British in 1939) Churchill spoke
these words at Harrow School:
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in
nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of
honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming
might of the enemy.
NEVER GIVE UP – NEVER SURRENDER
Winston Churchill, American’s Favorite
Son
Susan
North
Today we celebrate the birth, November 30, 1874, of Winston Churchill (d.1965),
America’s favorite son. His English father and connections, along with his own
personal abilities and ambition, made it possible for him to become the Prime
Minister of Great Britain in her darkest hour.
According
to the law of the day, he could not inherit his American mother’s citizenship.
Instead, thanks to his own achievements, he was the first person to ever become
an honorary citizen of the United States. President Kennedy, upon confirming
American citizenship on Churchill, said:
We
meet to honor a man whose honor requires no meeting - for he is the most
honored and honorable man to walk the stage of human history in the time in
which we live. Whenever and wherever tyranny threatened, he has always
championed liberty. Facing firmly toward the future, he has never forgotten the
past.
Churchill
well understood the value of history and tradition, as he told the House of
Commons in 1944, “A love of tradition has never weakened a nation; indeed it
has strengthened nations in their hour of peril, but the new view must come,
the world must roll forward ... Let us have no fear of the future.” He also, at
one point, advised his listeners to “Study history, study history. In history
lies all the secrets of statecraft.”
Churchill
understood two things, that “The farther backward you can look, the farther
forward you can see,” and that “Our past is the key to our future, which I
firmly trust and believe will be no less fertile and glorious.” He knew
history, he made history, and he was a historian; hence he, more than most, was
able to see into the future, and in the 1930s he recognized the dangers
emanating from Germany and the potential of war, while his political opponents
chose to ignore this possibility. Or, as he so eloquently put it when
addressing Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the House of Commons after the
1938 Munich Accords, “Britain and France had to choose between war and
dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war.”
It
was only many years after the war that his definition of an appeaser as “one
who feeds a crocodile — hoping it will eat him last” was coined. No doubt he
had Chamberlain in mind when he said it. Many of his best known sayings were
similar to this one, short and focused on principles that are as invaluable in
private life as they are in the political arena. Below is a brief selection:
*
Once in a while you will stumble upon the truth but most of us manage to pick
ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing had happened.
*
The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it,
but in the end; there it is.
*
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the
opportunity in every difficulty.
*
It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.
In
a shocking display of ingratitude, the British voters rejected Churchill after
he had so successfully led them fearlessly through war. In part, this was a
result of sheer fatigue, after so many years of war (for the British it began
in 1939 and only ended in 1945). Churchill’s electoral defeat was in part a
result of the siren song of the Labour Party’s promises – promises that
handcuffed the British economy from the end of the war until today, with only a
measure of relief coming in the 1980s; promises that Churchill understood and
clearly recognized as detrimental. His insights into the forms of government,
the economy, and law were accurate and to the point:*
*
Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin
and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has
been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other
forms that have been tried from time to time.
*
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the
inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
*
Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel
of envy.
*
Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others
look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse,
pulling a sturdy wagon.
*
If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.
*
There is no such thing as a good tax.
*
Will the shutting out of foreign goods increase the total amount of wealth in
this country? Can foreign nations grow rich at our expense by selling us goods
under cost price? Can a people tax themselves into prosperity? Can a man stand
in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle?
Churchill frequently spoke on the subjects of liberty, freedom, and tyranny (he
was, after all, a wartime president). In fact he seems to have had an opinion
on almost everything, including some of his allies (France and America), and in
particular America and the Americans of whom he said that:
*
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried
everything else.
*
I want no criticism of America at my table. The Americans criticize themselves
more than enough.
He
would have understood many of the issues we face today, including the clash
between the West and the Islamic world, and he did not hesitate to voice his
observations about Islam. Churchill had observed it first hand, and wrote about
it in his 1899 book, The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest
of the Soudan:
How
dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the
fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there
is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries.
Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of
commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the
Prophet rule or live. . . . The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must
belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a
concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam
has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual
Moslems may show splendid qualities. . . No stronger retrograde force exists in
the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and
proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising
fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered
in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly
struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the
civilization of ancient Rome.
Winston
Churchill was a man ahead of his times, a man much needed in our time, a man
who wrote and spoke much about tyranny. He understood, “Tyranny is our foe
whatever trappings or disguise it wears, whatever language it speaks, be it
external or internal, we must forever be on our guard, ever mobilized, ever
vigilant, always ready to spring at its throat.” These words were as relevant
then as they are today.
Happy Birthday Winston Churchill.
The author would like to thank Stanley Zir, of www.neveragainisnow.net, for his
encouragement in writing this article.
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