Winston Churchill, the convenient villain in many recent historical accounts, has a new role. He’s now the steadfast opponent of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), founded by Nye Bevan in 1948.

Churchill, goes the refrain, didn’t care about the health of Britons. (As WSC replied to a Bevan rant in 1944: “I should think it was hardly possible to state the opposite of the truth with more precision.”)

The estimable Robert Colville punctured this nonsense in The Times (London) on March 17th. His highly readable piece is entitled, “Even without Nye, the cult of the NHS is verging on pathological.”

The operative occasion was a new production by Britain’s Royal National Theatre. What’s a correct-thinking producer to offer? “After considering and rejecting Che! The Musical and Johnson’s Inferno,” Colville writes, “you might hit on the idea of a three-hour play about how Nye Bevan single-handedly won the war, invented the NHS and brought civilisation to Britain. Starring Michael Sheen. And then you’d probably scrap the idea for being past the point of parody.”

But no. It’s for real: “The central thesis of Nye, to quote Sheen’s peroration, is that founding the NHS was ‘the most civilised step any country has ever taken’—despite the best efforts of Winston Churchill and the British Medical Association.” The BMA maybe—but not Winston Churchill.

To the Editors of The Times

One shouldn’t write letters to editors. They have the editorial power to skew what you say and make you look silly. However, urged by a prominent British Churchillian, I wrote in praise, not condemnation:

Robert Colville is right to deplore the skewed concepts that render Winston Churchill a diehard opponent of British National Health. As Dr. Nicholas Bosanquet and Andrew Haldenby comprehensively explain, Churchill’s concern for the health of Britons extends from 1945 back through both World Wars to his Liberal reform years 1906-10—when Nye Bevan was still in short trousers. I will not clutter your columns with hyperlinks, but anyone interested may search for ‘Bosanquet Churchill and Health Issues’ on any web browser and learn the truth.

Big mistake. Even though I didn’t provide a link—a real no-no in Letters to the Editor—my British friend pointed out that this was the wrong approach:

They’ll come back to you to ask for your own opinion, as company policy is to not send people to other websites. The killer line you want is that Churchill invented the phrase “national health policy.” This is what you should lead with—and that WSC appointed Beveridge. [Churchill commissioned the Beveridge Report, which recommended a national health service in 1942.]

The Times didn’t bother asking me to revise, so it was a lost cause. However, the handful of readers who actually care may like to know that Churchill advocated national health policies for half a century.

Health concerns in war and peace

Bosanquet and Haldenby comprehensively reviewed Churchill’s record from those beginnings. In the trenches during the First World War, WSC launched a successful war against lice. A year later as Minister of Munitions, he asked his chief medical officer for “a handbook summarizing the welfare and health issues organized by the Ministry.”

As Minister of War (1919-20), Churchill organized a committee inquiring into treatment of shell-shock. As Chancellor of the Exchequer (1924-29), Churchill introduced widows’ and orphans’ pensions. In 1929 the Local Government Act

transferred functions of Poor Law Guardians and hospitals to local government…. The 1929 Labour Government took credit, but the effective improvements were owed Churchill and Minister of Health Neville Chamberlain. The municipal hospitals were an important part of the Emergency Hospital Service, which began coordination with voluntary hospitals in 1940….

In fact, spending was not reduced during Chamberlain’s and Churchill’s tenure, and more health issues were addressed. Three hundred more ante-natal clinics and 440 more Infant Welfare Centres were opened. The number of practicing midwives increased by 860. The expansion of these local services, mainly staffed by single women on low salaries, was a remarkable gain to health—at low cost.

“The spacious domain of public health”

Churchill’s dominating task from 1940 was winning the war. Yet he found time to commission the 1942 Beveridge Report on social insurance. He then proposed a four-year plan for postwar reconstruction, including what he called “the spacious domain of public health…” On 21 March 1943 he broadcast on the BBC:

I was brought up on the maxim of Lord Beaconsfield which my father was always repeating: “Health and the laws of health.” We must establish on broad and solid foundations a National Health Service. Here let me say there is no finer investment in any community than putting milk into babies. Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.

In 1943, Bosanquet and Haldenby write, Churchill appointed the social reformer Sir Henry Willink Minister of Health. Willink was asked to produce a Health Service White Paper and draft bill…. Churchill was determined. “The doctors aren’t going to dictate [the future law] to the country,” he told Moran, “they tried that with Lloyd George.”

After the July 1945 election, national health policy fell to Labour and to Nye Bevan. “In other words,” writes Robert Colville, “we owe to Bevan not the National Health Service but this National Health Service—the one that turned the existing profusion of provision into something regimented, standardised, centralised and nationalised.”

Whether this National Health Service is the optimum arrangement is the business of Britons, not Churchill historians. Our job is to uncover the truth, The truth is that for fifty years, Churchill was concerned with and implemented national health policies.

“A squalid nuisance”

Further reading

“Winston Churchill on Health Care: ‘The Inheritance of All,'” 2013.

“Churchill on Health Care: An Ongoing Discussion,” 2013

“McKinstry’s Churchill and Attlee: A Vanished Age of Political Respect,” 2019.

“Bevan and Trump’s ‘Vermin’ Crack: Nothing New Except the Reaction,” 2023.

___________

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project is rapidly completing final volumes of Winston S. Churchill, the official biography. (The name is somewhat of a misnomer; no one has ever censored any material.) Suitably, all thirty-one volumes will be complete by June 2019: the 75th Anniversary of D-Day. It will be fifty-six years since Randolph Churchill and his “Young Gentlemen” including Martin Gilbert began their work. Coinciding is a Hillsdale College cruise around Britain. A fitting climacteric.

After World War II,  The Churchill Documents offer testimony to Churchill’s vast preoccupations. Volume 22 (August 1945-October 1951, due late 2018) brings the stark realization of a new threat to liberty. Urgent messages flew across the ether between Washington, London, Ottawa, Paris. Speeches were made, partisans quarreled, editorials raged. There were communist incursions in the Balkans. The Red Army stalled on removing its troops from Iran. There was Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech at Fulton, a coup in Czechoslovakia. The Berlin Airlift was won, China was lost. War broke out in Korea.

These critical papers, amassed  by Sir Martin, represent every day of Churchill’s life. Woven between the weighty issues are lighter interludes. Documents of small importance—except to Churchill, his family, his colleagues, scholars. They round out our picture of a the man in a unique and personal way.

One of these was written by a Labour Member of Parliament. He became Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, KG OBE PC FRS (1916-1995).  He served thirty-three years in the Commons. His first cabinet position was the same as Churchill’s: President of the Board of Trade. By canny electioneering, he became prime minister in 1964-70 and 1970-76.

Wilson fancied himself part of the “soft left.” No one could ask for a more partisan advocate. And yet there was this deep collegial respect between him and the veteran Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Churchill.

Early on Wilson supported socialist firebrand Aneurin Bevan, founder of the National Health Service. But in April 1951, the Labour government introduced NHS medical charges to meet the financial demands of the Korean War. In protest, Wilson, Bevan and John Freeman resigned from the government. Churchill, leading the opposition and smelling an election, trumpeted the split. Privately, however, there was this interlude. I post it as bait, for there is much more like it to come in The Churchill Documents. Order them today.

Harold Wilson: Recollection

(A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers, pages 267-68)

Winston Churchill was, above all things, a Parliamentarian. He loved the House, he had dominated it over the years. In its most degenerate days it had refused to listen to his warnings and had treated him with disdain and hostility. His loyalty to Parliament, and his obeisance to the courtesies of an almost forgotten age, caused him to take personal initiatives which the world of today might find it hard to understand.

When Aneurin Bevan and I resigned from the Attlee Government in April 1951, because we could not accept the unrealistic arms policy forced on the Government—and in Bevan’s case its consequences for the National Health Service—Winston came up to us. He expressed sympathy with us: we were facing a situation which had been much familiar to him, though, as he pointed out, we would never be obsecrated as he had been. We had gone out with honour, but, he added with a twinkle in his eye, he and his party would make the most of the situation which resulted.

* * *

That evening Brendan Bracken sought me out. He had been charged, he said, “by the greatest living statesman, for that is what Mr. Churchill is,” to give me a message to convey to my wife. First, Mr. Churchill wanted me to know, he had been “presented” to my wife, otherwise he would not presume to send her a message. The message was that whereas I, as an experienced politician, had taken a step of which he felt free to take such party advantage as was appropriate, his concern was with my wife, an innocent party in these affairs, who would undoubtedly suffer in consequence.

He recalled the number of occasions his wife had suffered as a result of his own political decisions. Would I therefore convey to her his personal sympathy and understanding? Thanking Bracken, I went home about 1 am…. I conveyed the message, which was greeted with gratitude and tears. I was enjoined to express her personal thanks. On leaving home the next morning I was again enjoined to see “the old boy” and make sure I delivered the message.

* * *

In the early evening I saw Winston in the smoke-room. I went up to him and told him I had a message from my wife…. I expressed her thanks. Immediately—and with Winston this was not a rare event—tears flooded down his face, as he expatiated on the way that wives had to suffer for their husbands’ political actions, going on to recall a number of instances over a long life.

When I reached home it was 2 am, but she was awake. I was asked if I had seen the old boy and thanked him. I had, and recounted the interview. She burst into tears, and I was moved to say that whereas two days earlier I had been a Minister of the Crown, red box and all, now I was reduced to the position of a messenger between her and Winston Churchill, each of whom burst into tears on receipt of a message from the other. Of such is the essence of Parliament, or at least of bygone Parliaments, But this was the essential Winston Churchill.

Days past

What must strike the reader is this sheer affection between the idealistic socialist and dominant Tory. Would President Trump offer condolences if Senator Schumer resigned? Will Adam Schiff when Paul Ryan leaves as Speaker of the House? Yet as recently as 1981, Tip O’Neill prayed by the bedside of a stricken Ronald Reagan. Politics have changed. Not for the better.

Of course, Churchill was quick to assure Wilson he would take political advantage. And he did. As The Churchill Documents report, he was soon hard at it. Wilson and his colleagues had “rendered a public service,” he said, “by exposing to Parliament the scandalous want of foresight in buying the raw materials upon which our vital rearmament programme depends.”

“Of such is the essence of Parliament,” Harold Wilson mused, “or at least of bygone Parliaments.” And not just Parliaments.

* * *

In his book Lord Wilson also reprised what he said in 1965 after Churchill death. Naturally he remembered that kind action fourteen years before. Politicians today might ponder his sentiments:

For now the noise of hooves thundering across the veldt; the clamour of the hustings in a score of contests; the shots in Sydney Street, the angry guns of Gallipoli, Flanders, Coronel and the Falkland Islands; the sullen feet of marching men in Tonypandy; the urgent warnings of the Nazi threat; the whine of the sirens and the dawn bombardment of the Normandy beaches; all these now are silent. There is a stillness. And in that stillness, echoes and memories.

To each whose life has been touched by Winston Churchill, to each his memory…. Each one of us recalls some little incident—many of us, as in my own case, a kind action, graced with the courtesy of a past generation and going far beyond the normal calls of Parliamentary comradeship. Each of us has his own memory, for in the tumultuous diapason of a world’s tributes, all of us here at least know the epitaph he would have chosen for himself: “He was a good House of Commons man.”

Since President Trump has taken office, the public has quickly learned to get its political news from a novel source—namely, the President’s Twitter account.

The move to this platform represents a shift in the nature of politics, both for good and for ill. Trump might be among the first political leaders to use this medium to attack opponents or make major announcements. He is certainly not the first to utilize the kind of brevity the platform requires to make his points.

Such brevity also characterized the rhetorical style of Winston Churchill, whose wit, humor and insight complemented his decisive and effective political leadership. If Churchill tweeted, we’d be reading very different tweets from those we read from the president and other political leaders. I don’t suggest what he would say. No one can know that. But I do know how he would go about it. His methods offer an excellent example for today’s leaders. (I am speaking of public exchanges with political opponents, not enemies in wartime.)

Humor and Irony

First, Churchill avoided repaying vilification in kind. Instead he used humor, irony, plays on words. This lowered the temperature and took the sting out of debate. For instance, an opposition Member of Parliament, William Paling, called him a “dirty dog.” Churchill grinned: “May I remind the honorable member what dogs, dirty or otherwise, do to palings?”

Another irate MP charged that the Prime Minister never listened. Churchill responded: “I am afraid I did not hear what he said. Would he mind repeating it?”

Blunting insults with humor let Churchill off the hook. In the ensuing laughter, people forgot that he’d never responded to the accusation. “I have to measure the length of the response to any question by the worth, meaning and significance of that question,” he said to an angry inquisitor—which avoided any answer at all.

Avoiding Personal Attacks

Second, Churchill rarely attacked someone personally in public, though he didn’t hesitate to lampoon their well-known traits. (I refer to Parliamentary opponents, not villains like Hitler, who were fair game. Labeling Ramsay MacDonald “the boneless wonder” was more an exception than a rule.)

During a loquacious speech by an MP who questioned his veracity, judgment and even morals, Churchill interrupted: “I can well understand the honorable member speaking for practice, which he badly needs.”

Presented with long, disparaging editorial he took a similar tack: “I find [your paper] eminently readable. I entirely disagree with it.” And: “I like the martial and commanding air with which the gentleman treats facts. He stands no nonsense from them.”

Soon after regaining power in 1951, Churchill was asked why he was accomplishing so little, having promised so much in the campaign – a familiar accusation in our current moment. His response? “I did not get the power to regulate the way in which the affairs of the world would go,” he said. “I only got the power to preside over a party which has been able to beat the opposition in divisions [votes] for eighteen months.”

Korea was a problem in 1952, as today. “Is the Prime Minister aware of the deep concern felt by the people of this country at the whole question of the Korean conflict?” an MP asked. “I am fully aware of the deep concern felt by the honorable member in many matters above his comprehension,” Churchill replied, again using wit to avoid an unanswerable question.

What’s more, sometimes, in avoiding jibes, he did not even defend himself. The defense would come later, in a carefully worded statement at a time of his choosing.

Allegorical Parries

Third, Churchill would often use interesting allegories or images rather than vicious barbs when confronted with opponents. Several U.S. presidents in a row have been dogged by the contrarian Senator Rand Paul, and his father, Representative Ron Paul before him. A similar father-and-son team targeted Churchill simultaneously. “Isn’t it enough to have this parent volcano continually erupting in our midst?” Churchill asked. “And now we are to have these subsidiary craters spouting forth the same unhealthy fumes!” Using the pronoun “we” instead of “I” suggested subtly that everybody felt as he did.

Collegiality and Respect

Lastly—and perhaps most importantly—even though the political divide was as wide in his time as in ours, Churchill fostered respect and collegiality. Intrinsic to his methods was an underlying respect for opponents. To him they were not enemies, merely honorable people who were mistaken.

In the 1930s, demanding rearmament against Nazi Germany, Churchill was kept out of office by the pro-appeasement Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin. On the floor they were enemies, off it they were colleagues. Amateur painters, they were invited to address the Royal Academy. Churchill’s allusion to Baldwin’s lethargy on defense got his views across without insult: “If I were to criticize him at all I would say his work lacked a little in color…Making a fair criticism, I must admit there is something very reposeful about the half-tones of Mr. Baldwin’s studies.”

The Labour Party’s mild-mannered Clement Attlee was Churchill’s deputy in the wartime coalition government, then ousted Churchill as prime minister in 1945. He was the butt of many Conservative jokes; Churchill would have none of them. Mr. Attlee was a devoted servant of country and party, he would say, whenever he heard a barb aimed at his successor. (“Sheep in sheep’s clothing,” though funny, is not traceable to Churchill.)

Churchill’s greatest antagonist in later years was Labour’s Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan, founder of the National Health Service, who excoriated Churchill at every opportunity. Bevan would call Churchill a plutocrat exploiter of the workers, and Churchill would respond by naming Bevan “Minister of Disease.”

When Bevan died in 1960, Churchill shocked his fellow MPs by launching into an impromptu eulogy: “A giant in his party, a great advocate for socialism, a resourceful debater….” Then, stopping in mid-sentence he looked around: “Are you sure he’s dead?”

Tweet – Ready Churchillisms

Below are some of Churchill’s most Twitter-worthy ripostes – all within the platform’s 140-character limit and all characteristically clever, direct and humorous.

“Damned old fool!” shouted an opponent, who then apologized. Churchill shrugged: “The damned old fool accepts the apology,” repeating the insult while disarming its author.

During uproars following a contentious 1947 remark, he invoked Ecclesiastes: “The crackling of thorns under a pot does not deter me.”

Five years later: “The spectacle of a number of middle-aged gentlemen…being in a state of uproar and fury is really quite exhilarating to me.”

When one worked himself into such dudgeon that he became tongue-tied, Churchill observed: “My honorable and gallant friend must really not develop more indignation than he can sustain.”

Some said Churchill waffled, leaving his administration in disarray. A colleague asked why couldn’t he make up his mind. “I long ago made up my mind,” Churchill responded. “The question is to get other people to agree.” (Thus encouraged, his colleagues stopped squabbling. There’s a lesson there.)

A member of his own party said the PM never thought seriously about important issues. Churchill responded: “That would be a rather hazardous assumption on the part of the honorable gentleman, who has not, so far as I am aware…distinguished himself for foresight.” This was about as personal as Churchill’s ripostes got.

Time for a Revival?

One of his arch-opponents famously accused the Prime Minister of “cheap demagogic gestures” – an all-too-familiar accusation these days. “I think X is a judge of cheap demagogic gestures,” replied the PM, “but they do not come off when he makes them.”

Winston Churchill’s principles of debate and response—and his prevailing respect for the other side – are crucial values that have, in large part, vanished from the Twitterverse, if indeed they were ever there in the first place. It is time for a revival.

The campaign to Leave is heating up. Take Grassroots Out, a “combined operation” supporting Brexit—the campaign for Great Britain to exit the European Union. G-O fielded a broad spectrum of speakers in London February 19th. Along with UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage were Conservative Sir William Cash, Labour’s Kate Hoey, economist Ruth Lea, and a London cab driver.

The most unexpected Leave speaker was the far-left former Labour MP and head of the socialist Respect Party. Mr. George Galloway was immediately queried about his new colleagues.

“We are not pals,” Galloway replied. “We are allies in one cause. Like Churchill and Stalin.” He did not say which was which. We report, you decide.

Leave colleagues? Mr. Farage offered Churchillian collegiality. “I don’t suspect there’s a single domestic policy, in many cases foreign policy, of which George Galloway and I would agree. But, look, sometimes in life an issue comes along which is bigger than traditional difference.” (See “The New Happy Warrior.”)

Boris = Lord Randolph?

The Leave campaign received more support February 21st. London’s then-mayor and Churchill biographer Boris Johnson announced he would campaign for Brexit, invoking his admiration for Sir Winston.

Anti-Leave Conservative MP Sir Keith Simpson retorted that Johnson’s decision was “more reminiscent of [Lord] Randolph [Churchill] than Winston. “Randolph was a more extrovert character. [He] made the political weather then catastrophically offered his resignation when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. [It] was accepted by the then-Prime Minister Lord Salisbury.”

Lord Randolph more extroverted than Winston? YGTBK, as they say on Twitter.

Johnson’s principled decision to support Brexit, defying his prime minister, is far more reminiscent of Winston Churchill’s resignation from the shadow cabinet in 1931. Churchill left over differences on the India Act. That cost Churchill eight years in the political wilderness. This might be Johnson’s fate if Prime Minister Cameron survives the June 23 referendum.

Lord Randolph’s 1886 resignation, by contrast, was thought to be less decisive. He quit over a trivial issue, expecting to be asked back with more power. Lord Salisbury made no such offer, destroying him politically. “Have you ever heard of a man who, having had a carbuncle removed from his neck, asking that it be put back?” Salisbury quipped.

Leave Pied Piper: The True Churchillian

… in this kerfuffle is Mr. Farage—not for representing Churchill’s view of European unity (a complicated subject), but for expressing Churchill’s attitude toward political opponents. (See also: “What Would Winston Do?“)

Mr. Farage invited Mr. Galloway to speak. He introduced Galloway as “one of the greatest orators in this country…a towering figure on the left,”  adding that they would work together in the Brexit battle:

On that night, yes, the Respect Party was on the platform, so was the Conservative Party [and the Labour Party]. The point about Grassroots Out is, we’re bringing people together from across the spectrum….[Mr. Galloway] said some very disabling things about me but, look, sometimes…etc.

Farage was displaying Churchill’s famous collegiality—a rare commodity among politicians today. Churchill based this on his belief that everyone in public office deserved respect for serving the country, regardless of how violently he disagreed with their politics.

Churchill and Bevan

Instead of Churchill and Stalin, Mr. Galloway might like to compare Mr. Farage and himself to Churchill and Bevan.

Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960), socialist MP for Ebbw Vale, was a Welsh firebrand with whom Churchill frequently clashed. Bevan would label Churchill a servant of plutocrat oppressors of the workers. Churchill would call Bevan, founder of the National Health Service, “the Minister of Disease.”

Hearing that Bevan had died, Churchill launched into a soliloquy: “A great man, the founder of the National Health Service, a tremendous advocate for socialism and his party….”

Then he paused in mid-sentence. “Er, are you sure he’s dead?”*

_________

* Quotation from Churchill by Himself, 326.

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?”