Remembering the Last Lion

By Victor Davis Hanson

Fifty years ago this Saturday, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill died at age 90. Churchill is remembered for his multiple nonstop careers as a statesman, cabinet minister, politician, journalist, Nobel laureate historian, and combat veteran. He began his career serving the British military as a Victorian-era mounted lancer and ended it as custodian of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. But he is most renowned for an astounding five-year-tenure as Britain’s wartime prime minister from May 10, 1940, to June 26, 1945, when he was voted out of office not long after the surrender of Nazi Germany.

Churchill took over the day Hitler invaded Western Europe. Within six weeks, an isolated Great Britain was left alone facing the Third Reich. What is now the European Union was then either under Nazi occupation, allied with Germany or ostensibly neutral while favoring Hitler.....Some of the British elite wished to cut a peace deal with Hitler to save their empire and keep Britain from being bombed or invaded. They understandably argued that Britain could hardly hold out when Poland, Denmark, Norway the Netherlands, Belgium and France all had not. Yet Churchill voiced defiance and vowed to keep on fighting. In comparison to such later huge human and material sacrifices, the original, critical British role in winning World War II is often forgotten. But Britain was the only major power on either side of the war to fight continuously the entire six years, from September 3, 1939, to September 2, 1945.......After the end of World War II, the lone voice of Churchill cautioned the West that its former wartime ally, the Soviet Union, was creating an “Iron Curtain” and was as ruthless as Hitler’s Germany had been. Again, he was branded a paranoid who unfairly demonized communists....... To Read More....

-Also-

Fifty Years Since Winston’s Death

Whatever the great man’s flaws and mistakes, the Churchill Doctrine remains indispensable.

Daniel Mandel

Churchill was guided by a few elementary ideas: that Britain and the Anglosphere more generally was a force for good; that its division and vacillation invited destructive forces to fill the vacuum; and that “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Together, they might even be called the Churchill Doctrine. Today the Churchill Doctrine is denigrated or even despised in various polities, especially in Europe, but also here. …..Here, the Democrat éminence grise Clark Clifford denigrated Reagan as an “amiable dunce.”….What would Churchill counsel today for America if it had to stand alone? Here, we do not need to hypothesize. In 1938, at a dinner party, the American ambassador in London, Joseph Kennedy, an appeaser through and through, predicted to Churchill that England would go under in a fight. It drew from Churchill an impromptu oration that included these words:

"It will then be for you, for the Americans, to preserve and maintain the great heritage of the English-speaking peoples. It will be for you to think imperially, which means to think always of something higher and more vast than one's own national interests."….To Read More….

My Take - There are a lot of people who find serious fault with many of the things Churchill did in the course of his life. And rightly so! Historians tout how many times he was wrong in his predictions and ideas, and that should rightly be presented. However, since he had a ton of opinions, and he had the nerve to stand up and tell the world what he actually thought I think it's incumbent on us to ask - if every politician would have the courage to stand up and tell the world exactly what they think, and exactly what they believe - would any of them have fared any better?

Irrespective as to how anyone may come down on that part of the Churchill saga we absolutely know two things about Churchill. He knew who his enemies were and he knew that appeasing them only increases their appetites. As a result England isn't speaking German today and Mein Kampf isn't Holy Writ in all of Europe. For those who haven't read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" - Hitler ordered the churches in Germany to take the Holy Bible off the alters of German churches and replace it with Mein Kampf.  His reasoning was (remembering Hitler was an atheist so think about this for a while as it has many legs) since the most important people in the world to God was the German people, and the most important book in the world to the German people was Mein Kampf, therefore the most important book in the world to God was Mein Kampf. 

And people thought Hitler was crazy….imagine that!  And this was the man the British elite wanted to surrender to.  One more thing is also clear.  The elitists never change.  Only the times, places and characters change.  History really is the fountainhead of truth.

Vigilance, diligence and courage.