Case for the defense: “If we allow our monuments and statues and place-names to be torn down because of our present-day views, and claims of people being offended by our built environment that has been around for decades and sometimes centuries, it speaks to a pathetic lack of confidence in ourselves as a nation. We are on the way to a society of competing victimhoods, atomized and balkanized into smaller and smaller communities, which ironically enough is something racists want too.” —Andrew Roberts
Defense of the goodThe Hillsdale College Churchill Project has joined many other groups and individuals in defense of the good.…
Politicians, most often Boris Johnson and Donald Trump at the moment, are often compared to Winston Churchill. In a way it’s nice PR for Sir Winston. Half a century since his death, the Greatest Briton still dominates media. His Google hit count is 100 million. (Franklin Roosevelt, the West’s other great war leader, is at 72 million.)
Rightly or wrongly, every day on the Internet, Churchill is praised, lampooned, quoted and misquoted. But comparisons to modern politicians have worn thin. They may emulate him, but should not be compared to him.
Johnson’s Day in the barrelOn 15 June the Wall Street Journal focused on British prime minister in waiting Boris Johnson.…
Prime Ministers are always popular targets. Boris Johnson, Britain’s new PM, wears the bullseye over there now. For everything from domestic squabbling to “insensitivity” in reciting “The Road to Mandalay” on a visit to Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). In the immortal words of Richard Nixon, let us say this about that.
* * * * * “I appointed [Lord Roberts‘s] Commander-in-Chief in India when I was Secretary of State. That was the year I annexed Burma. The place was in utter anarchy. They were just butchering one another. We had to step in, and very soon there was an ordered, civilized Government under the vigilant control of the House of Commons.”…
My friend Steve Hayward had the wit to paraphrase, in reaction to the arrival of Boris Johnson at 10 Downing Street, some comments about another incoming PM, eighty years ago next May. “Cambridge Cute,” says another friend of Steve’s good piece.
Speaking of Cambridge Cuties, I immediately thought of what Andrew Roberts described as “The Respectable Tendency,” the British establishment, in his great book, Eminent Churchilllians. So I dug into the sources to find more of what they said back then about the new Prime Minister. (Lightly paraphrased.)
“Coup of the rabble…”“Even whilst the new PM was still at Buckingham Palace kissing hands, the junior private secretary and Chamberlain’s PPS, Lord Dunglass [Alec Douglas-Home] joined Rab Butler and ‘Chips’ Channon at the Foreign Office.…
On 15 June in the Wall Street Journal opinion columnist Peggy Noonan wrote a perceptive piece about the prospects and challenges for Boris Johnson as Britain’s new Prime Minister: “England Needs a Slap, and So Does China” (sorry, that link carries a paywall).
It was a good column, saying essentially what Britons of all stripes were saying to me on a recent visit.
“Talk to me about anything, except Brexit.” “Right, we voted, so let’s get on with it.” “We’re tired of platitudes and useless debates.” “Keep diddling and we end up with Corbyn.” “Just do it.”…
Boris Johnson, whose book, The Churchill Factor, is feted widely, speaks his mind with a smile. Like Mr. Obama, he’s a chap I’d like to share a pint with at the local.
But fame and likability don’t a Churchill scholar make. And in that department, Boris Johnson needs some help.
His remarks are quoted from a November 14th speech at the Yale Club in New York City.
Boris Fact-checks1) Lend-Lease, Roosevelt’s World War II “loan” of $50 billion worth of war materiel to the Allies, “screwed” the British.
I queried Professor Warren Kimball of Rutgers University, editor of the Churchill-Roosevelt Correspondence and several books on World War II, who wrote:
The U.S.…
