Dan Miller: What Would Winston Do?

[Dan Miller graduated from Yale University in 1963 and from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1966. He lives in a rural area in Panama.]

Having read Churchill’s The Gathering Storm for the third or fourth time, it strikes me as frighteningly inauspicious, and not only for the United States today. Churchill was a leading proponent of stopping Hitler before stopping him would involve the massive devastation inflicted on much of the world when World War II eventually came. He noted:

We must regard as deeply blameworthy before history … [all British parties] during this fatal period. Delight in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success irrespective of the vital interests of the State, genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation … the strong and violent pacifism which at this time dominated the Labour-Socialist Party, the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality … constituted a picture of British fatuity and fecklessness which, though devoid of guile, was not devoid of guilt, and, though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries which even so far as they have unfolded, are already beyond comparison in human experience.

Far worse horrors and miseries are now, decades later, easily possible. The world has changed dramatically and we are now in an exponential age. Now, we have little more than “Churchillian resolution in the face of untrammeled cow flatulence” and the horrors of global warming; this seems a misplaced priority. History remains important — perhaps to a greater extent than ever before.

There are those who dilute the conception of what happened in and was done by Nazi Germany by drawing analogies to far less malign events. Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles recently said the following in reference to Arizona’s new immigration law: “I can’t imagine Arizonans now reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques.” Ironically, he went on to say, “Let’s not allow fearful and ill-informed rhetoric to shape public policy.” We have also declared war on obesity and possibly acne....