What Would Winston Churchill Think of Obama?
Having read Churchill’s The Gathering Storm for the third or fourth time, it strikes me as frighteningly inauspicious, and not only for the United States today. Churchill was a leading proponent of stopping Hitler before stopping him would involve the massive devastation inflicted on much of the world when World War II eventually came. He noted:
We must regard as deeply blameworthy before history … [all British parties] during this fatal period. Delight in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success irrespective of the vital interests of the State, genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation … the strong and violent pacifism which at this time dominated the Labour-Socialist Party, the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality … constituted a picture of British fatuity and fecklessness which, though devoid of guile, was not devoid of guilt, and, though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries which even so far as they have unfolded, are already beyond comparison in human experience.
Far worse horrors and miseries are now, decades later, easily possible. The world has changed dramatically and we are now in an exponential age. Now, we have little more than “Churchillian resolution in the face of untrammeled cow flatulence” and the horrors of global warming; this seems a misplaced priority. History remains important — perhaps to a greater extent than ever before.
There are those who dilute the conception of what happened in and was done by Nazi Germany by drawing analogies to far less malign events. Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles recently said the following in reference to Arizona’s new immigration law: “I can’t imagine Arizonans now reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques.” Ironically, he went on to say, “Let’s not allow fearful and ill-informed rhetoric to shape public policy.” We have also declared war on obesity and possibly acne.
One petty example of the problem facing England was the 1933 Oxford resolution, which stated that “this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.” This attitude (perhaps understandable not very many years following the end of World War I) and its all too adequate representation of the pacifist mood then pervasive in the country caused Churchill to write:
Mussolini, like Hitler, regarded Britannia as a frightened, flabby old woman, who at worst would only bluster and was, anyhow, incapable of making war.
Britain and France were both weary and reluctant to do much of anything about Hitler until too long after he had conquered territory which, had there been any showing of willingness to use force against his depredations, he would not have attempted. At the Nuremberg trials:
Colonel Eger, representing Czechoslovakia, asked [German] Marshal Keitel: “Would the Reich have attacked Czechoslovakia in 1938 if the Western Powers had stood by Prague?
Marshal Keitel answered: “Certainly not. We were not strong enough militarily. The object of Munich [i.e., reaching an agreement at Munich] was to get Russia out of Europe, to gain time, and to complete the German armaments.”
The Treaty of Versailles imposed grave and unreasonable burdens on a defeated Germany, and Hitler rose to power at least in part due to German resentment and his genius in taking full advantage of it. President Wilson’s League of Nations was toothless and impotent, and its objections to such things as Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia had no effect except, perhaps, to make it the butt of jokes. Would things have been different had the United States joined the League of Nations? I doubt it, but it is impossible to know. Churchill observed:
[T]he Americans merely shrugged their shoulders, so that in a few years they had to pour out the blood and treasures of the New World to save themselves from mortal danger.
My guess is that he would have a puff on his cigar and let loose one of those viciously quotable one-liners he was famous for.
To paraphrase one of Churchill’s many insults directed at Clement Atlee: “An empty cab arrived . . . and when the door was opened, [Obama] got out.”
In the history books, Obama will become synonymous with Chamberlain, and a new term will be coined – Obama-Chamberlain.
While the US has become a laughingstock to rogue dictators world over, Israel has finally realized that going along with Washington can cost it dearly.To be sure, acting in concert with Washington is important, but ONLY when Israel’s self interest is served and preserved. However, acting as its lackey can be lethal to our existence.
Obama is a clear and present danger to free people all over the world, mainly because his mindset is twinned with third world dictators.Alas, didn’t he place that on full display BEFORE his nomination, while he campaigned in Kenya for his thuggish cousin Odinga? What more did the US electorate need to prove how dangerous he would be if elected, even BEFORE his alliances with Ayers, Wright, Khalidi, Farakhan were exposed?
From 6,000 miles away in Israel I knew what Obama’s proclivities were, and the consequent dangers he presented. Therefore, ignorance is not an excuse to be offered by US citizens, as they wake up shcoked, ! shocked ! to the dangers posed by Obama!
I tried in vain to warn people about Obama before the elections. I was utterly shocked that a man like Obama was actually being considered for President by Americans especially coming from nowhere into the spot light. He was a community organizer I thought..surely people would know how disqualified he was for the leadership of America! Then the exposed past of Obama raised little more than an eyebrow or two. It seems America was hell bent on believing the color of your skin somehow made you leadership material, slapping in the face all logic and reason to the contrary. His thug associates and back alley deals had no effect, his lack of experience and track record of no vote in the Senate had no effect, his association with Rev. Wright and Louis Farrakhan and lying about it, had no effect…Obama was Teflon because skin color was going to save America and how dare anyone else say it wasn’t! They were promptly called a racist and slapped into the corner. Well America, you are living with what you bought at the highest price possible (and still counting) how do you like your hope and change now? I mean golly, I was told: “what could he possibly do that would be so bad in 4 years?, lets give him a chance”. I hope you now understand the answer to that question.
Many of us saw through Obama. Unfortunately, only 58% of the electorate turned out that day and of those, 52% voted for this pretender. Only 30% of the US electorate saddled us with this clown.
I’m sure poor Winston is spinning in his grave. If Churchill were alive today, one look at Obama would give him a stroke. And when he saw what Britain has now become, he’d likely have a heart attack. We seemingly have a shortage of potential Churchills these days, most of our politicians are a pretty spineless lot. I wonder if the inhabitants of the Roman Empire had an inkling of what was to come towards the end?
No doubt Obama’s approach would be one of those things ‘up with which’ Churchill ‘would not put.’
An excellent analysis, Dr. Hanson.
To Obama’s resemblance to Baldwin and Chamberlain, I would add that domestically, he seems to be channeling James Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour PM who Baldwin played “musical chairs” with at No. 10 for a decade.
Like Obama, MacDonald firmly believed that the era of private enterprise was over, and that it had been a horrible mistake to ever allow it to exist to begin with. He tried to nationalize everything, used union “organizers” to cow his opponents into silence, and repeatedly blamed everyone else for his failures. He even had his own version of the BP accident, in the form of serious safety problems in the coal-mining industry that cost lives and damaged Britain’s energy availability.
As to foreign policy, MacDonald also managed to ignore the impending storm developing in Germany, mainly because he was too busy admiring Stalin in Russia. Early on, he decided that since the NSDAP had the word “Socialist” in its name, they could be trusted. After all, good socialists didn’t go to war against each other, according to him.
MacDonald was rigid, ideological, petulant, thin-skinned, and vindictive. Sounds very much like somebody we all know.
The major difference between the two men is that Obama hasn’t had an R-101 disaster. Yet.
cheers
eon
As to the question: What Would Winston Churchill Think of Obama?
“Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham”.
Sir Winston Churchill..
This is what I believe Sir Winston “would have” thought. He may have quite possibly yanked his cigar out of his mouth, for fear of spitting it out. Terribly crude, you know.
According to that famous author Anon, “Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.”
During a debate at the House of Commons in 1934 on Britain’s inadequate air defenses, Churchill recalled but refrained from reciting some lines remembered from you youth about a railway accident:
I think there is, or at least should be, a legitimate concern that we are passengers on the train.
Excellent reflection on Churchill by Mr. Miller. However, I think Churchill (who unfortunately had to rely on FDR, who pressured him to agree to surrender half of Europe to another totalitarian regime, Soviet Russia, thus laying the groundwork for the Cold War) would have been baffled by Obama’s Chamberlain-like foreign policy. He would have had the perspicuity to make the astonished observation that here was an American president seemingly bent on seeing his own country vanquished and reduced to a third-rate, bankrupt, and defenseless nation, burdened with astronomical government debt, governed by a clique of corrupt administration and Congressional collectivists determined to punish Americans for being Americans, and subjected to constant attacks by ethnic nationalists (e.g., La Raza) and Islamic jihadists — all with Obama’s implicit approval.
Excellent reflection on Churchill by Mr. Miller. However, I think Churchill (who unfortunately had to rely on FDR, who pressured him to agree to surrender half of Europe to another totalitarian regime, Soviet Russia, thus laying the groundwork for the Cold War) would have been baffled by Obama’s Chamberlain-like foreign policy. He would have had the perspicuity to make the astonished observation that here was an American president seemingly bent on seeing his own country vanquished and reduced to a third-rate, bankrupt, and defenseless nation, burdened with astronomical government debt, governed by a clique of corrupt administration and Congressional collectivists determined to punish Americans for being Americans, and subjected to constant attacks by ethnic nationalists (e.g., La Raza) and Islamic jihadists — all with Obama’s implicit approval.
Obama’s toadying patronization of various strongmen and dictators (e.g., the King of Saudi Arabia, Hugh Chavez) would have served as omens of ill. His ice-cold policy towards Britain, Israel, and other allies would have had Churchill shaking his head and worrying about the survival of civilization. Churchill would have stated that any comparison of Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement with Obama’s foreign policy was invalid; that Obama was the son of the Woodstock and Weathermen anti-establishment generation, many of whose members went on to make careers in academia and politics (to better implement their anti-Americanism from within the “establishment”), and that he seemed to be William Ayers’ and Herbert Marcuse’s vengeance on a nominally free country. He would have wondered about the foolishness of Americans who elected Obama, when his collectivist rhetoric was so transparently obvious during the presidential campaign.
Churchill would have retired to his garden to paint, and resigned himself to letting America learn the folly of its choices, and reap the harvest of its illusions, just as Britain and Europe had to learn their lessons the hard way.
The comparison of Obama with Chamberlain is a bit unfair. Although Chamberlain pursued a very unwise policy of appeasement, he also put a hedge in place, in that he invested in buiding up Britain’s defenses, including large-scale production of the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters and the deployment of a radar-and-communications-based air defense network. It’s hard to imagine Obama doing anything like the latter steps.
I agree. I have always thought Chamberlain gets a bit of a raw deal. Labour enjoyed using the “Guilty Men” line again the Tories after World War II, yet the Tories under Chamberlain started rearmament in the late 1930s. Yes, Chamberlain should have stood strong at Munich, but no one really knew how weak Germany was, that it was all an elaborate bluff.
Labour opposed rearmament almost as strongly as they opposed appeasement (which begs the question, what were they planning to oppose appeasement with, if Britain has no arms?). Atlee at one point wrote his sister complaining (and I am parahrasing from memory here) that Chamberlain was talking peace all the while he was spending on arms.
As for Obama’s removal of Churchill’s bust from the Oval Office, Churchill might have quipped: “I never thought so highly of my own abilities and wisdom that I would expect to be a reproach to anyone — and you know how modest I can be.”
“Like (formerly Great) Britain in the 1930s…”
Great Britain is a geopolitical entity and the prefix is not some form of boast on the world stage.
I’m not trying to be pedantic, I’m just a Brit.
Thanks for the correction. I had assumed that “Great” Britain had something to do with her empire, one of the greatest. Her influence was once tremendous, as when Britain Truly Ruled the Waves. I do apologize for the last verse in the linked version of the song, the best I could find, which is one of those unfortunate and to me obscene efforts to bring G&S “up do date” and make it “relevant.” Unfortunately, with the death of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, I am afraid that Great Britain lost most of her remaining greatness. God may forgive her, but I never shall. It was doubtless more a symptom of world events than anything else.
1066 and All That by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, is an excellent work on history. It explains its purpose and attempts to correct a gross misconception of history:
The book notes, at the end, that as the Second World War concluded,
As a very young kid of nineteen, I played a bit of polo. One of the members of the team was the Pakistani military attache in DC. He was in many respects more an English Gentleman than the Pope is Catholic. I recall seeing him give his young daughter a “five pound note” to buy some goodies at the refreshment stand. He was a gentleman on and off the field, and I sometimes wonder what may have happened to him.
This was produced inter-war.
Well if you wish you can, en revanche and with perfect accuracy, drop the “United” from the front of the United States of America.
Churchill would have looked at Obama with complete contempt. The major difference is that, unlike the politically correct politicians of today, Churchill would have said so, too, and in no uncertain terms.
What is so sad about Obama is that he is throwing away all of our hard-fought military credibility in the Middle East. Whether you agree or disagree with what George W. Bush did in Afghanistan or Iraq, the word was out in the radical Muslim world that if you messed with the United States, you were dead. The Afghans supported the Taliban and al Qaeda, which led to 9/11, and they paid a horrible price, a price they are paying to this day. Saddam Hussein tried to take over the Middle East and threaten the world with terrorism, and he paid the ultimate price, swinging from a hangman’s rope. These lessons were not lost on the radical jihadists in the Middle East, where pure, raw, power is the only thing they really respect and understand.
But now we have Obama, the new “prince of peace” in the Middle East. He can’t wait to run away from Iraq and he’s already set a target date for withdrawing from Afghanistan. Again, whether you agree or disagree with this, the military implication for the Middle East is that America, under Obama, doesn’t have the stomach to fight and just can’t wait to leave.
But, you say, “Obama is sending more troops to Afghanistan.” Well, so what? They are basically being sent there to keep our puppet regime in Kabul stable enough so that we can leave next year. And, trust me, Obama is going to stick to that deadline. His liberal left base, the only people he has left supporting him politically, are going to DEMAND that he pull out on schedule.
So Obama is throwing away all of the hard-won credibility the Bush administration fought for and this lesson is NOT lost on Iran, who really doesn’t fear any of the “threats” coming out of Washington over their nuclear program. Thanks to Barack, we’re now back in 1938 with Iran, where we have a dangerous dictatorship of mullahs who really don’t fear the empty threats coming from the West. And, for good measure, they hate Jews too and want to eliminate them from the face of the planet. Haven’t we seen this movie before and don’t we already know how it turns out?
We are alive in perilous times. The self-same Progressives have one again inserted themselves into the body politic as they did during the time of Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was an elitist academic, he too talked down to the people, he was also concidered the “Smartest, most educated President” America had ever had. He was naive beyond belief. His “good intentions” like all liberal mind-set were how he was judged, not the outcome of what he had put in place that would effect the entire world. The difference today, is an alerted populace, with access to information and facts that previously could be manipulated due to time-lag in disemination of information. We are at the edge of the abyss, how we react to the dithering of this adminastration will be tatamount as to either prosperty or the downward spiral into another depression era culminating in conflict encompassing the entire world once again. We can only pray we have learned from history and can avoid catastrophy.
I think Churchill would have thought of Obama as a rascally blackamoor, put on display so that America could show how racist it’s not and then get on with its main business of racism and oppression. Coming from utterly different worlds, Churchill representing a fading past and Obama a coming future, they nevertheless seem to share the qualitites of utter vanity and opportunism. The main difference would appear to be that Churchill, despite his casual racism, was a man of the world and Obama, an Afro-centrist is a man of Chicago. Each man’s views of Abraham Lincoln speaks to this as Obama is fascinated with Lincoln only as far as Lincoln’s views on race while Churchill was only interested in the larger issues surrounding the prosecution of a civil war. In common, both Obama and Churchill never met rhetoric they didn’t like and seem to share an affinity for welfare states and socialism. As for what Churchill would have thought of Obama deciding he could do without a bronze statue of him in the white house he might have said, “Obama magnifies my racism and mitigates my accomplishment because he sees any acomplishment only through a lens of race.
“…I think Churchill would have thought of Obama as a rascally blackamoor, put on display so that America could show how racist it’s not and then get on with its main business of racism and oppression…”
Gee, thanks, James. Always wondered what America was all about. Kinda thought the business of America was business. Democracy and human rights and like that. Thanks for straightening me out.
How’re those pretty young Gyp boys, James ? Treating you nice?
Interesting read, Mr. Miller.
The personalities of Chamberlain and Obama are glaringly similar. Though the Britian’s ‘thrice’ Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin have many similarities to that of Obama also.
Having pacifists such as these as nation’s leaders has, and proven to be hara-kiri.
As for Chamberlain.. his cowardice, err ‘appeasement’ and Baldwin’s pompousness/ inaction encouraged Hitler to frightening admiration and power.
This same inaction, pomp can be said of GW Bush and Obama’s ‘policy’ with the likes of Iran. ‘Sanctions’? Yeah, that’ll show ‘em.. oy.
The world had not seen someone like Churchill since Julius Caesar. Like Caesar, Churchill was well into middle age when he attained the highest position in the Empire. Like Caesar, his experience as soldier, journalist and statesman included every important political position in the Empire. Like Caesar, he had already dramatically influenced the world before he took the highest office. It was Churchill’s momentous decision as naval secretary to turn away from coal which England had in abundance and switch to petroleum from foriegn sources halfway around the world that shaped the world we live in and began the “Great Game” which–though somewhat evolved–continues hotly to this day.
Saying Churchill and Obama in the same breath insults Churchill.
The fact that I am not shocked any more about our President should say quite a bit, I suppose. But I am still shocked concerning Sir Winston Churchill’s bust. I hope it went to a museum, at the very least. Artwork should never be ruined or disposed of.
Also, Mr. Miller, thank you for giving me another book title to read.
The world had not seen someone like Churchill since Julius Caesar. Like Caesar, Churchill was well into middle age when he attained the highest position in the Empire. Like Caesar, his experience as soldier, journalist and statesman included every important political position in the Empire. Like Caesar, he had already dramatically influenced the world before he took the highest office. It was Churchill’s momentous decision as naval secretary to turn away from coal which England had in abundance and switch to petroleum from foriegn sources halfway around the world that shaped the world we live in and began the “Great Game” which–though somewhat evolved–continues hotly to this day.
Saying Churchill and Obama in the same breath insults Churchill.
An odd thing about Obama is that he was boldly sacrificing those that got him elected long before he took office. Then as President Obama began to methodically rip America apart piece by piece; a process which inflicted more and much higher levels of destruction on his supporters than before and still they cheered him on.
Obama is not like any of our previous presidents nor does he fit the mold of other world leaders that Mr. Miller’s article eloquently describes.
Obama made no effort to hide who he was, nor what he intended to do once elected. He didn’t have to because the liberal news media and PRESS hid the truths by dressing him up in a bulletproof jacket of phony “Calm, Cool and Collected” while promising that they knew Obama would give everyone, everything that they wanted, plus baptize each one of them with a sacred pat on their empty heads.
With the election of Obama Americans chose the same destiny for itself that “peacemakers” have beginning with the Garden of Eden.
Offered the choice of drinking poison now or suffering the certain pain of tomorrow Winston Churchill would say to America, “I would drink it!”
I’d say there wouldn’t be much respect for our “liberal pacifist” president, although I hesitate to call him president. And I really don’t believe he’s a pacifist. I think he’d turn the dogs loose on us if he thought he could get away with it, and it would have to be “the dogs” because I do think he’s a coward and wouldn’t step up himself. I also believe he is trying to placate the muslim world and socialists since his background is heavy with both. Just to much evidence contrary to him being a true American. but I guess I can say th at of Pelosi, Reid, et al too.
Perhaps Churchill would have seen through the mask of naive incompetence Obama wears and discerned malignant calculation. “Obama was selected before he was elected,” Louis Farrakan says knowingly in a YouTube video. A telephone call from a well-placed New York black politician got Obama into Harvard despite so-so grades and evidence of a second rate mind stretching back to his days at an expensive private high school and afterward his attendance at Occidental on a scholarship reserved for foreign students. Before that was the guile of his mother and grandmother in hiding his Kenyan birth — see http://www.westernjournalism.com/?page_id=2697.
Churchhill created what was the world’s greatest personal intelligence service in the ‘Thirties, his wilderness years. Generals, admirals, top diplomats and businessmen passed on information that Baldwin and Chamberlain and their governments didn’t want to hear because if they had they would have had to do something about it. That something would have been rearming just as they were trying to rebuild their obsolete industrial base to compete with trade rivals like the U.S.
So Churchill would have dug up what our oddly-named mainstream media was too lazy, corrupt or incompetent to do: the shadowy background and Marxist beliefs of the strange man in the White House. What he would have said can be easily imagined. It would have been clear and incisive compared to the senatorial bloviating of the testy old man the Republicans nominated “because it’s his turn.”
Banjo:
Your first sentence says it all. Quotes in the blog essay show Churchill saw misguided good intentions in people like Chamberlain, though Churchill was pointed in his opinion that such naivete was dangerous to human life. Obama’s single-minded malevolence would have been obvious to Churchill from the get-go.
I’m quite certain Churchill would have disapproved of Obama, but then anyone with a modicum of common sense already does.
What I disagree with in your article is where you write, “the United States has seemed to be more intent upon ensuring political correctness in the military than upon preparing for the next war, in the forlorn hope that there will never be another. She has seemed to be more interested in gaining popularity with our enemies…”.
I see this in too many articles now, this sigh of futility at our apparent ineptness.
No. It is not the United States that feels that way. It is one soon to be irrelevent administration. To paint all Americans as having such feelings is wrong.
Obama and his crew will be kicked to the pavement and anything they’ve done can be undone.
We are Americans. We will not suffer these usurpations for long. We have a Constitution and we will restore it.
Never forget who we are.
I don’t.
More importantly, what would Churchill think of us, for electing Obama?
I believe did say something apropos to this administration. It went something like this “this administration seeks peace and security. It will get neither.”
WSC said and wrote so much worth remembering it would take a lot of research to track down the exact quote.
Excellent article Attorney Miller!
I, too, am a student of Churchill. I,too, have read the Gathering Storm. In the preface/forward, he calls World War II, “the unnecessary war.” All who have voted for Obama have made a very serious error. They are either stupid or lazy of both because Obama and his entire administration is stupid. Why stupid? Because anyone who consistently avoids facing history and reality is stupid. And one who consistently prevaricates is stupid. Limbaugh and Coulter have used these adjectives to describe Obama.
Churchill is not dead. His spirit is alive and well and speaks again through you, Mr. Miller. I agree with the above post by CMarie. The American people are awake. We just need another conservative with leadership abilities. I think it will take more American bodies on American soil just as in Ft. Hood to awaken this great people to the dangers posed by Islam. Islam should be outlawed until it reforms itself. There will be more bodies caused by Muslims in America. My hope and prayer is that, America wakes up before we have a Portobello over Washington/New York. This is the real danger. Ulysses Grant at the conclusion of his memoirs says, “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
Um, one issue: The Treaty of Versailles’ restrictions were nowhere near as unreasonable as has often been claimed. The French got it per capita far harder, and it IS worth remembering that the Germans had by this point in time devastated Europe and much of Africa and the Middle East as well as naval trade, and so it is quite reasonable to expect them to pay for the war they helped cause (and yes, the guilt clause was entirely justified by Berlin’s egging on of Vienna to reject the Serbian capitulation and go to war).
Just an irritating pet peeve of mine.
Another point to remember is the U.S. loaned Germany more money than it ever paid in reparations. Around two billion when that was real money. Nowadays you can find that much rooting around in the bottom of a White House sofa.
The old saw, “History repeats itself,” is false. History does not repeat itself. But, it often rhymes.
The question we desperately need to face is not “Is Obama our Neville Chamberlain?” The real, more important question is “Who will emerge to be our Winston Churchill?”
God Save Our Republic!
It would, in my view, be a good thing were President Obama more like Prime Minister Chamberlain than he has shown himself to be. That is not saying much for President Obama. Chamberlain seems to have recognized the error of his ways and toward the end worked reasonably well with Churchill. I simply can’t visualize President Obama working at all well with anyone who lacks his world view, no matter how demonstrably pernicious it may be.
As to “Who will emerge to be our Winston Churchill,” I don’t see anyone on the horizon. I don’t even see a Harry Truman, whom I also greatly admire, on the horizon. There may be one out there, somewhere, waiting in the wings. If so, he had best get busy on stage before it is too late.
Neville Chamberlain was not a narcissist. This is primary fault of Barack Obama. His ego—and poor education will likely prevent him from ever getting his act together. We are best to marginalize the president as much as possible. Obama should be no more than an Illinois state senator. He is not close to being ready to handle the responsibilities of the presidency.
Sir Winston could have been talking about the West and Islam. But here’s what he said about WW2 before the war.
“When the situation was manageable, it was neglected. And now that it is thoroughly out of hand, we apply too late the remedies which then might have affected a cure. There is nothing new in this story. It is as old as the Sibylline books. It falls into that long dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind.”
“Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel, until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong. These are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.”
May 2, 1936 – House of Commons – Sir Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill always seemed to KNOW what reality was. We don’t have to speculate or guess. Obama is a Muslim/Leftist.
http://www.savage-productions.com/winston_churchill.html
WINSTON CHURCHILL ON ISLAM – IN 1899!
“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.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.
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 – but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
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.”
-Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899). And;
http://westerncivilizationandculture.blogspot.com/2009/03/winston-churchill-on-appeasement-islam.html
On leftists:
“They are the most disagreeable of people…Their insincerity? Can you not feel a sense of disgust at the arrogant presumption of superiority of these people? Superiority of intellect! Then, when it comes to practice, down they fall with a wallop not only to the level of ordinary human beings but to a level which is even far below the average.”
“These very high intellectual persons who wake up every morning…see what they can find to demolish, to undermine, or cast away.”
“Let them quit these gospels of envy, hate, and malice. Let them abandon the utter fallacy, the grotesque, erroneous, fatal blunder of believing that by limiting the enterprise of man, by riveting the shackles of a false equality…they will increase the well-being of the world.”
It occurred to me that the reason that Mr. Obama had the Churchill bust removed was because its presence was a standing reproach to his (Obama’s) own limitations. Churchill was phenomenally well-read (his service in India was his “university”) and could effortlessly quote epic poetry and verse from memory; a particularly useful quality in the rough-and-tumble of parliamentary debate. By the time he became Prime Minister Churchill had the experience of having held every significant office in the British cabinet except that of Foreign Secretary. Churchill had a full life outside of politics and had to earn his own way in the world with his journalism and historical writings. (Although the grandson of a duke, Churchill was not wealthy.)
Most of all Churchill was truly and genuinely eloquent. Churchill always WROTE HIS OWN SPEECHES! Not only did he write them but he labored over them, polishing and refining them until they shone. His vast knowledge of history and grasp of events made them unique in the history of rhetoric. He was a brilliant speaker not because of a deep baritone voice or “cool” physical presence but because he had real passion, piercing intelligence and unrelenting will. He realized that a speaker must always have something to say.
What would Mr. Churchill think of President Obama? He would be kind because he was a compassionate man. In private however I believe that Churchill would equate Obama with Ramsay MacDonald – “The Boneless Wonder.”
This article does not augur well for peace in our time. It finds a parallel of sorts to Chamberlain and Czechoslovakia and notes,
As to the United States, the driver of the train needs either to wake up or to let someone else do the driving.
Dan,
Winston Churchill was a MAN, with a capital M. And, he was unapologetically a Christian. This combination is difficult to find these days. Ronald Reagan, and W. Bush were Christian men, and you see how well THEY have been tolerated by the Left.
Americans have always been naive children, emotionally.
There have been quite a few Great Men throughout history. If they haven’t been demonized to death, they have been ignored.
Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet heard nothing of Christianity.
Carl Jung
The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.
Carl Jung
Nine out of ten people have never heard of Carl Jung. Ten out of ten, of
de Tocqueville.
There are three major forces on earth, representing Darkness and Light.
Atheist/Communism and Islam, are DARKNESS and Feminine…Yin.
All other religions represent Light…Masculine…Yang.
Yin has had a permanent restraining order against Yang, for about 40 years now, in AmeriKa, and the rest of the Western World. I don’t see it turning around, any too soon.
I’m not a Chapter and Verse, type of Christian, but these days are being called, The End Times. They sure appear to be just that, from where I stand.
1967 was the Summer Of LOVE…1968 was The Neo Marxist/Stalinist/Maoist Coup.
Depraved Hippie Flower Children, are STILL wailing about Kent State.
Tiananmen Square, The First Attack On The WTC, 911, The Cole, Embassy Bombings in Africa, The Global Jihad…ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzz
Thinking that you are going to appeal to these lunatic’s humanity…They DON’T HAVE ANY!
“An overwhelmingly smug man with precious little to be smug about.”
Excellent article! However, one bone of contention. Niall Ferguson makes a good argument in ‘The Pity of War’ that the Versailles Treaty was a fair blueprint. He notes that the Allies were more lenient towards the Germans than the latter were to the French in 1871. The problem with the Versailles Treaty was that it was not implemented; John Maynard Keynes’ article or book ‘The Economic Consequences of the Peace’ was largely to blame for this. The Allies, Ferguson argues, should have marched through and occupied Germany in order to show them that they were defeated. Germans believed in the myth that they had not been defeated. It is worth making the further point that German culture did not have, and still seems not to have, any sort of tradition of individual rights.
Churchill had the opportunity to re-write not only history but also his own motives and decisions.For me, Churchill`s passion was the British empire and only the British empire. Nothing else. His second passion (he shared with whole England) was/is the hate towards Germany that started long before Hitler and somehow still goes on. Here I might refer to “Made in Germany” that should be seen as a stigma by the outside world but was a success in the end.In short: For me, Churchill is not a hero but only a warrior and when he would be alive today would he really be a friend of the US? I doubt it. Besides, who are the enemies of Poland and the Czech Republic? This needs to be explained. Somehow I am with Rudyard Kipling who suggested the following epigraph for dead soldiers: “We are her because our ancestors are liars”.
That sounds like a very German response. America and Britain took very different lessons from WW2 than the Germans; we learnt that tyranny is bad and must be avoided at all costs, while Germans learnt that war is bad and must be avoided at all costs. Germans have decided to content themselves with arming or supporting other conflicts while trying to maintain that their hands are completely clean in the matter.
If you want to find people who truly hate the Germans, try France, your next door neighbours.
Churchill was quite candid about his place in history. He once said “History will be kind to me because I intend to write it.” It should be added that he had the skill to do so. Churchill was certainly a warrior. He took part in the last great sabre charge of the British army at Omdurman and courted danger much of his life. Yet he was also a statesman of the highest calibre, famous for his magnanimity toward opponents. Who but Churchill could have made a friend of Michael Collins and brought the war in Ireland to a close in 1921? Who but Churchill could have driven Britain through the awful days of 1939, 1940 and 1941 with the German threat at their throats? (Certainly not Lord Halifax.) He was a committed friend of the U.S.(more than Roosevelt was to Britain) due in no small part to the simple fact that his mother was American.
If you were born in Britain, like him or not, you would admire his comprehensively heroic efforts to stay the decline of your empire.
If you were a proud American, you would admire his heroic efforts to make his country the next great power after America’s preeminence.
If you are neither, would you be jealous of his heroism for lack of anyone commensurably admirable in your country?
About American supremacy, Churchill could have said: America is the worst country to be the superpower, except for all those others.
“Besides, who are the enemies of Poland and the Czech Republic?”
Ya really think it helps you make your point to bring up Poland and Czechoslovakia who were so savagely raped by Nazi Germany?
My last comment on your story. I believe I’m making you uncomfortable.
I saw the word…”Peacemaker.” at the top of your article.
Marx and FDR’s Uncle Jo…There will be peace on the earth, when there is no more resistance to Communism/Socialism. Like in North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Red China, Venezuela, South Africa, AGAIN.
Real Peace was attained with Japan and at Appomattox Courthouse, with unconditional surrender. Except, Hirohito, the little Demigod, got to stay in power.
War cannot be fought to a draw. Thomas Sowell said, war is like a baseball game. You don’t stop the CONTEST, until somebody WINS!
You say, My last comment on your story. I believe I’m making you uncomfortable.
Not at all. Even were I easily made uncomfortable, nothing of yours I have found on the thread has had that effect. Indeed, I suspect we are about ninety percent in agreement.
Just out of curiosity, why would you think you have made me uncomfortable?
Ahem, the naked little fakir is a modest man…with much to be modest about. Ahem, and his trolls are for rum, sodomy and the lash.
Said by Golda Meir to someone other than President Obama, “Don’t be so modest, you’re not that great.”
I wonder what she would have said to Him.
Clearly Churchill would have been appalled. The best way I can describe the difference is to have Obama write his own version of Churchill’s speech where he spoke of ‘fighting on the beaches, in the towns…etc.’
Here is Barry’s version:
“We will not fight if we can possibly avoid it. Fighting is for those who can not resolve their differences in rational fashions. It is childish, and speaks to our darker muses. We will never seek to fight, and we will not use nuclear weapons if attacked. We will invite the enemy to dialogue, for we have provoked him then and we malign him now with words like ‘Islamic extremist’, which I have seen fit to ban. We must learn to stop demonizing, and that means stopping seeing the world as our enemy. That is George Bush logic. No, we will invite the enemy in for tea, and we will celebrate as he erects shrines to his faith hard by the places of our sacrifice. For did we not in some way deserves to be attacked?”
“We will not fight until all other recourse is exhausted. If and when we must fight, it is when all chance of dialogue is dead. And then we will fight justly, without weapons of awe and terror, and with respect for our enemy and his children, and with the certain knowledge that on the day after we must resume our dialogue.”
“If we must fight, we will fight tenderly, and with love. Preferably a little juiced up on the white powder, and with a little man-love in between the skirmishes.”
“If we must do this abhorrent thing, then that is how it will be.”
That’s almost too on-target to be funny.
What Would Winston Churchill Think of Obama?
That he’s a wuss, an appeaser, suffering from grandiose personality disorder, believing that his words alone will calm the waters, mollify and soothe all of Earth’s wackos.
Maybe something like Sarkozy has indicated, that he is dangerously naive in matters of foreign policy.
Even Maureen Dowd is getting fed up
“Republican senators who had a contentious lunch with the president last week described him as whiny, thin-skinned and in over his head, and there was extreme Democratic angst at the White House’s dilatory and deferential attitude on the spill.”
The headline of this just demands the adolescent smart remark, “Don’t worry about what people think of you. You’d be surprised how little they think of you at all.” Somehow, I can’t imagine Winston Churchill wasting much time thinking about oblameya at all, except as parenthetical matter to ascertain who someone else was referring to when they spoke the fraud’s name.
A truly apt, powerful and timely article given the re-occurring situation today.
Ah ah ah …. aaagghhh!
Churchill woud have compared Obama with hitler-musso-stalin combo
rather than the putridly timid deluded Chamberlaine and Baldwin.
Sometimes i wonder if these Conservative commentators are really as naive as they seem to be, or is there something more sinister at play.
Both the muslim menace AND the UN/Globalist international Left are Obama’s armies. He is not clueless about the foreign affairs (or domestic, for that matter). He and his armies ARE the enemy of America and everything that was good about the Western Civilization.
He is not acquiecing cluelessly, timidly, and helplessly with those armies. In a sense, he and his cabal are LEADING those armies to clash against America, Israel, and the West. Accusing him of being clueless about, say ahmedinejad’s ‘ulterior motives’, is like accusing Hitler of being naive about the ill-intentions of Stalin and Mussolini.
Didn’t i once mention the Manchurian President? Doesn’t anybody see
that we have imported the enemy, fostered him amongst our midst,
and then given him the Presidency/Congress/Media/Academia so he
can do whatever he wishes to with us?
It would be interesting to learn where our conservative commentators learn their history from. (That’s a rhetorical question, of course.)
Perhaps Churchill would have likened him to he of the “wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command”.
Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
This article presents an interesting analogy. Valid? I don’t know. Maybe.
I don’t QUITE miss Jimmuh Carter but comparatively he did less harm – only lost one ally (Iran) and only gave away one asset (The Panama Canal).
O-bow-Mao has lost us dozens of allies and assets, actually the whole world is convulsing because of him, each country trying to figure out their role in a world where America no longer matters much.
Might be the greatest article I have seen!!!