N.B.: If Mr. Olber­mann had done more research, he would know what Churchill did say about national health­care, which is more to the point: see Churchill and Healthcare.

Keith Olber­mann (MSNBC)

MSNBC com­men­ta­tor Keith Olber­mann is for the pro­posed Amer­i­can health­care reform bill, which is nei­ther here nor there.

What is inter­est­ing to Churchillians is his use of Win­ston Churchill’s words to sup­port it—from both 1945 (when Churchill was cam­paign­ing against social­ism), and 1936 (when Churchill was urg­ing rear­ma­ment in the face of Nazi Germany).

In 1945, Olber­mann says, Churchill

equated his oppo­nents, the party that sought to intro­duce “The National Health,” to the Gestapo of the Ger­mans that he and we had just beaten just as those oppos­ing reform now have invoked Nazis as fre­quently and falsely as if they were invok­ing Zom­bies. Churchill cost him­self the elec­tion because he didn’t real­ize he was over­play­ing an issue that peo­ple were already damned seri­ous about.

Er…not exactly, Mr. O.

Churchill did not use the “Gestapo speech” to oppose Labour’s national health plan, which, in gen­eral at least, he sup­ported (see next post). He used it to describe—in what was later thought to be a poor analogy—the kind of com­pul­sion cit­i­zens might expect under a social­ist government:

No Social­ist Gov­ern­ment con­duct­ing the entire life and indus­try of the coun­try could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expres­sions of pub­lic dis­con­tent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance. And this would nip opin­ion in the bud; it would stop crit­i­cism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party lead­ers, ris­ing like stately pin­na­cles above their vast bureau­cra­cies of Civil ser­vants, no longer ser­vants and no longer civil.

And where would the ordi­nary sim­ple folk—the com­mon peo­ple, as they like to call them in America—where would they be, once this mighty organ­ism had got them in its grip? I stand for the sov­er­eign free­dom of the indi­vid­ual within the laws which freely elected Par­lia­ments have freely passed.

It is an arti­cle of faith in “enlight­ened” cir­cles that Churchill made a bad mis­take by com­par­ing the 1945 Labour Party, led by the kindly, self-effacing Clement Attlee, to Hitler’s polit­i­cal police. Maybe so.

But it strikes me as inter­est­ing when a friend in Eng­land, a con­firmed Labour sup­porter, likens the tac­tics of cer­tain mod­ern Labour town coun­cils in Britain pre­cisely to those of the Gestapo: in their sup­pres­sion of free speech; in their attempt to destroy those who dis­agree with them; in their vit­ri­olic hatred of oppo­si­tion media.

If Churchill’s words don’t put you in mind of cer­tain recent devel­op­ments in Amer­ica, read on.

Olber­mann now switches to the Churchill of 1936, who, he says,

made the great­est argu­ment ever for gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion in health care only [sic] he did not real­ize it. He was debat­ing in Par­lia­ment the notion that the British gov­ern­ment could not increase expen­di­tures on mil­i­tary defense unless the vot­ers specif­i­cally autho­rized it, just as today’s oppo­nents of reform are now claim­ing they speak for the vot­ers of today, even though those vot­ers spoke for them­selves eleven months ago.

Churchill’s argu­ment was this: “I have heard it said that the gov­ern­ment had no mandate….Such a doc­trine is wholly inad­mis­si­ble. The respon­si­bil­ity [of Min­is­ters] for the pub­lic safety is absolute and requires no mandate.”

And there is the essence of what this is. What, on the eter­nal list of pri­or­i­ties, pre­cedes health? What more obvi­ous role could gov­ern­ment have than the defense of the life, of each cit­i­zen? We can­not stop every germ that seeks to harm us any more than we can stop every per­son who seeks to harm us. But we can try dammit and government’s essen­tial role in that effort facil­i­tate it, reduce its cost, broaden its avail­abil­ity, improve my health and yours, seems, ulti­mately, self-explanatory. [sic]

We want to live. What is gov­ern­ment for if not to help us do so? Indeed Mr. Churchill, the respon­si­bil­ity for the pub­lic safety is absolute and requires no mandate!

Leave aside the ques­tion of whether the cur­rent health­care pro­posal would expand or shrink access to health­care. To equate it with a threat to a nation’s exis­tence is quite a stretch. But let’s start by quot­ing all of what Churchill said, on 12 Novem­ber 1936:

I have heard it said that the Gov­ern­ment had no man­date for rear­ma­ment until the Gen­eral Elec­tion. Such a doc­trine is wholly inad­mis­si­ble. The respon­si­bil­ity of Min­is­ters for the pub­lic safety is absolute and requires no man­date. It is in fact the prime object for which Gov­ern­ments come into exis­tence. The Prime Min­is­ter had the com­mand of enor­mous majori­ties in both Houses of Par­lia­ment ready to vote for any nec­es­sary mea­sures of defence.

“The respon­si­bil­ity for the pub­lic safety is absolute.” Indeed so: the safety of the nation against those who would snuff it out. That is, inar­guably, “the prime object for which Gov­ern­ments come into exis­tence.” They do not come into exis­tence to pass out largess until the pub­lic till is exhausted and the cur­rency debased. The Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment was not cre­ated to force every cit­i­zen to buy a good or service—which is part of the cur­rent health­care pro­posal, but nowhere autho­rized by the United States Con­sti­tu­tion. And has never before been man­dated in history.

True, the Pres­i­dent does have “the com­mand of enor­mous majori­ties.” Yet he seems unable to make them “vote for any nec­es­sary mea­sures.” Why?

It would behoove him, and the Con­gress, and the rest of us to ask. Is it, for exam­ple, because 75% of cit­i­zens are happy with their health­care? Or because they pre­fer piece­meal solu­tions that are more eas­ily monitored—tort reform and porta­bil­ity, for example—to a com­pre­hen­sive plan that would inevitably lead to mas­sive spend­ing and rationing? Or because a large major­ity fear that like Medicare, which will go broke inside a decade unless altered, this ampli­fi­ca­tion of Medicare will also go broke—or exclude many for whom Medicare is now acces­si­ble? Or because it will require puni­tive taxes? Or because they can see no exam­ple of any­thing run effi­ciently by gov­ern­ment, from the Postal Ser­vice to the war in Afghanistan? All these are legit­i­mate objec­tions, and peo­ple are not Nazis to express them.

Salon.com, which agrees with Mr. Olber­mann about health reform, says he did noth­ing to advance their cause: that his argu­ment is self-defeating:

[He dug] up a Churchill quote from the 1930s where the for­mer British prime min­is­ter insisted gov­ern­ment had a right to pro­vide for people’s well-being. But what was the point? Churchill is dead; the health­care reform plan isn’t remotely mod­eled on Britain’s National Health Ser­vice; the only peo­ple who think it is are the con­ser­v­a­tive oppo­nents of reform.

In the nar­row sense, that’s a rejec­tion of Olbermann’s argu­ment. In a broader sense, Salon is also right. Churchill is dead. This is not 1936 or 1945. Lady Soames is often wont to remark: “You must never sug­gest what my father would do or say about any mod­ern issue—after all, how do you know?”

What her father said about lib­erty never goes out of fash­ion, and here is the most mem­o­rable sen­tence in  his “Gestapo speech” of 1945: “I stand for the sov­er­eign free­dom of the individual.”

Of course, Churchill’s times are often par­al­leled in ours. That’s the value of study­ing history—how Churchill reacted to chal­lenges which may seem famil­iar to thought­ful peo­ple. And, since Mr. Olber­mann likes to tell us what reminds him of Hitler, let me say what reminds me of Hitler.

It is peo­ple who think it appro­pri­ate to offer an email address where Amer­i­cans can report any­thing “fishy” they might see or hear ema­nat­ing from the thoughts and opin­ions of other Amer­i­cans. That reminds me of the Gestapo.

It is a teacher who makes lit­tle school­child­ren chant, “Mm, mmm, mm! He said that all must lend a hand, To make this coun­try strong again, Mmm, mmm, mm!
He said we must be fair today, Equal work means equal pay….Hello, Mr. Pres­i­dent we honor you today!
 For all your great accom­plish­ments, we all doth say hooray!”—set to the music of “Jesus Loves the Lit­tle Children.”

That reminds me of the Hitler Youth.

Com­men­ta­tor Mark Whit­ting writes: “This is going beyond the beyonds, as this writer’s Irish granny used to say.”

That, Mr. Whit­ting, is putting it mildly.

If we are going to draw any­thing from Churchill’s “Gestapo speech” that bears on our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, it might be what Churchill said about gath­er­ing “all the power to the supreme party and the party lead­ers, ris­ing like stately pin­na­cles above their vast bureau­cra­cies of civil ser­vants, no longer ser­vants and no longer civil.

“And where would the ordi­nary sim­ple folk—the com­mon peo­ple, as they like to call them in America—where would they be, once this mighty organ­ism had got them in its grip?”

Tagged as: Churchill's "Gestapo Speech", Clement Attlee, Gestapo, health care reform, Hitler Youth, HR 3200, Keith Olbermann, Labour Party, Mark Whitting, Medicare, MSNBC, National Health Service, Nazi Germany, Salon.com, schoolchildren praise Obama, socialism, United States Constitution