The salvation of the common people of every race and of every land from war or servitude must be established on solid foundations and must be guarded by the readiness of all men and women to die rather than submit to tyranny.
Winston Churchill, September 19, 1946
I can never view the above scene from the movie Into the Storm (2009) without choking up. The movie relates Winston Churchill’s time as Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War II. The anniversary of D-Day caused me to think of the man who will always be associated with Allied victory in that conflict The half-American Churchill did more than any other single man to consign Hitler and his grisly gang of murderous thugs to the pages of history, and to have Hitler’s vaunted thousand year Reich die at twelve years in ashes and total defeat. He kept his country going until America intervened after Pearl Harbor, a time when victory seemed all but hopeless. However, Churchill remained confident that, as he had warned a Nazi official in the thirties, if need be Britain would lead the world against them to bring down their tyranny.
His apogee of course was during VE Day. Hailed by his countrymen as the man who won the War, he told them that they had won the War, along with their Allies, and it had merely been his privilege to voice the roar of the British lion.
Then the British electorate promptly tossed him from power in the first post war elections in July of 1945. Such is politics.
He would be back in power from 1951-1955, but it will always be for his magnificent performance in the darkest days of World War II that he will be remembered by his nation, and by all who cherish liberty.
The men and women like Sir Winston Churchill – Lady Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan come to mind – are no longer welcome to serve in western society, either Europe or North America. Even religious leaders like Pius XII, JP II and B XVI are no longer welcome. In liberal progressivism and radical Islam we are facing a catastrophe greater than the twin threats of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and we have no leader.
That the free peoples of our planet found such a leader in their time of need strikes me as a working of Providence.
Indeed Dale, especially considering how Churchill looked like roadkill in British politics throughout most of the thirties, viewed as a man of the past, distrusted by most of his party and ridiculed as an alarmist at best, a warmonger at worst.
How ashamed we should feel when history looks at the people we’ve turned to in our current hour of need! They’ll sigh and say that human nature is always like this, willing to follow the scoundrel and the bully. I hope they judge us harsher than that. But is that a form of vanity too, asking to be held to a higher standard? I don’t know, but we didn’t have to be like this.