“There has arisen among America's elite a Churchill cult. It’s acolytes hold that Churchill was not only a peerless war leader but a statesman of unparalleled vision whose life and legend should be th model for every statesman. To this cult, defiance anywhere of U.S hegemony, resistance anywhere to U.S. power becomes another 1938 Every adversary is "a new Hitler," every proposal to avert war "another Munich." Slobodan Milosevic, a party apparatchik who had presided over the disintegration of Yugoslavia-losing Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia-becomes "the Hitler of the Balkans" for holding Serbia's cradle province of Kosovo. Saddam Hussein, whose army was routed in one hundred hours in 1991 and who had not shot down a U.S. plane in forty thousand sorties, becomes "an Arab Hitler" about to roll up the Persian Gulf and threaten mankind with weapons of mass destruction…This Churchill cult gave us our present calamity. If not exposed, it will produce more wars and more disasters, and, one day, a war of the magnitude of Churchill's wars that brought Britain and his beloved empire to ruin. For it was Winston S. Churchill who was the most bellicose champion of British entry into the European war of 1914 and the German-Polish war of 1939. There are two great myths about these wars. The first is that World War I was fought "to make the world safe for democracy." The second is that World War II was the "Good War," a glorious crusade to rid the world of Fascism that turned out wonderfully well.”
- Pat Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War.
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." -- Arthur Schopenhauer
All the things that would get me cancelled by saying are becoming obvious, which means our enemies ability to use soft power via post-war consensus are fading, meaning an age of violence is upon us.
Bravo, Mr. Turnipseed. You lay it out so well. Your points should resonate with any reasonable reader. And we can not rebuild the political alliances in the US without understanding this cornerstone of US/Anglo thinking.
History is written by the victors. The victors are always the "good guys."
Churchill and Hitler were both men. They both did good things for their nations and bad things. They both ultimately answer to God. Between now and the final judgement, it's the task of historians to evaluate the actions of the past in a critical and dispassionate manner within context.
What we're witnessing in the utter destruction of nuance and ignoring larger context is the "comic book-ification" of history. The logic is Hitler doing something evil makes him innately evil, and therefore someone opposing Hitler is doing the opposite of evil, and thus the logic is self-proving that the party opposing evil is innately good.
And that's frankly repugnant on both the theological and intellectual levels.
Clever angle. Body counts on the Dresden and other urban bombing campaigns would underscore the savagery of this man and the malevolent people and project he was the front for.
“There has arisen among America's elite a Churchill cult. It’s acolytes hold that Churchill was not only a peerless war leader but a statesman of unparalleled vision whose life and legend should be th model for every statesman. To this cult, defiance anywhere of U.S hegemony, resistance anywhere to U.S. power becomes another 1938 Every adversary is "a new Hitler," every proposal to avert war "another Munich." Slobodan Milosevic, a party apparatchik who had presided over the disintegration of Yugoslavia-losing Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia-becomes "the Hitler of the Balkans" for holding Serbia's cradle province of Kosovo. Saddam Hussein, whose army was routed in one hundred hours in 1991 and who had not shot down a U.S. plane in forty thousand sorties, becomes "an Arab Hitler" about to roll up the Persian Gulf and threaten mankind with weapons of mass destruction…This Churchill cult gave us our present calamity. If not exposed, it will produce more wars and more disasters, and, one day, a war of the magnitude of Churchill's wars that brought Britain and his beloved empire to ruin. For it was Winston S. Churchill who was the most bellicose champion of British entry into the European war of 1914 and the German-Polish war of 1939. There are two great myths about these wars. The first is that World War I was fought "to make the world safe for democracy." The second is that World War II was the "Good War," a glorious crusade to rid the world of Fascism that turned out wonderfully well.”
- Pat Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War.
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." -- Arthur Schopenhauer
All the things that would get me cancelled by saying are becoming obvious, which means our enemies ability to use soft power via post-war consensus are fading, meaning an age of violence is upon us.
Bravo, Mr. Turnipseed. You lay it out so well. Your points should resonate with any reasonable reader. And we can not rebuild the political alliances in the US without understanding this cornerstone of US/Anglo thinking.
Powerful, intellectually honest arguments against hero worship.
The victors write histories about war. We have to ask the losers what they think about the so-called statesmen.
History is written by the victors. The victors are always the "good guys."
Churchill and Hitler were both men. They both did good things for their nations and bad things. They both ultimately answer to God. Between now and the final judgement, it's the task of historians to evaluate the actions of the past in a critical and dispassionate manner within context.
What we're witnessing in the utter destruction of nuance and ignoring larger context is the "comic book-ification" of history. The logic is Hitler doing something evil makes him innately evil, and therefore someone opposing Hitler is doing the opposite of evil, and thus the logic is self-proving that the party opposing evil is innately good.
And that's frankly repugnant on both the theological and intellectual levels.
Clever angle. Body counts on the Dresden and other urban bombing campaigns would underscore the savagery of this man and the malevolent people and project he was the front for.
I recommend IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black for additional perspective on WWII.
WWII. The war that keeps on giving...
Great article!